Is Israel really to blame for Gaza’s water shortage

Although this article is a year old, it is still so relevant with the incessant complaints against Israel that we are not doing enough for the "poor" Gazans.

Never is a word written about the responsibility of the Hamas government to take care of its own citizens.

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RAHEEM KASSAM   FEBRUARY 13, 2013  

The question is often posed: If their Arab and Muslim brothers around the region feel so strongly about the Palestinian people, why haven’t billions of dirhams, dinars, riyals, pounds or even rupees found their way into large-scale development projects aimed at alleviating poverty in the Gaza Strip?

“But.. but… but… Israel!” the cry often comes. An argument that makes as little sense in theory as it does in practice. To get the facts straight from the outset is important, as misinformation propagated by the delegitimisers of the Jewish state often leads to erroneous beliefs being implanted in the minds of journalists, activists and, importantly, legislators. 

How else could an Early Day Motion in the British Parliament have been tabled blaming the Israeli government for a situation that the World Bank claimed in 2009 would make the Gaza strip ‘uninhabitable’? But the World Bank didn’t blame Israel and a similar report by the United Nations stated that while Operation Cast Lead intensified the problems already faced, Gaza’s problems were “due to underinvestment in environmental systems, lack of progress on priority environmental projects and the collapse of governance mechanisms.”

The Early Day Motion (below) states that “Israeli occupation policies” are to blame for the shortage of water in Gaza. In reality, the situation comes down to a number of factors that are not down to the “Israeli occupation”, a nonsensical reference to the state-of-affairs in Gaza that ended with Israeli withdrawal in 2005.

Since Hamas took control of the Gaza strip and turned the area into a launching pad for its terrorist attacks against Israel, ordinary Gazans have suffered as Hamas continues to provoke Israeli responses through rocket-fire into civilian areas of Israel. In late 2012, Hamas targeted both Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, evidence that its goal is to cause as much human suffering as possible. And indeed it has.

In Gaza, Hamas’s effective dictatorship over the strip means it is the authority responsible for infrastructure. Yet the aid it receives from international donors goes primarily into funding its terrorist activities. Supplies into Gaza are often, rightfully throttled to stop machine parts and materials that can be forged into weaponry getting in. This is not an ‘occupation policy’. It is a necessary defensive move taken by an embattled state in the throes of a prolonged conflict.

The World Bank found that indeed it is the case that a lack of materials remains a pre-eminent factor in the Gazan water problem. While Israel, it claims, is guilty of overreaching in terms of the extract of water from the aquifers; the point has been conversely made that authorities in Gaza have done similar things, such as illegally drilling over 250 wells without authorization from the Israeli-Palestinian Joint Water Committee.

Most recently of course, it was announced that the World Bank will be donating $6.4m to Gaza in order to assist in infrastructure building in Gaza. The grant will finally be augmented by an Islamic organisation, the Islamic Development Bank, to the tune of $11.1m, in order to construct water tanks and distribute water. Israel of course, has been keen to move forward with a project of this sort since early 2012, when Energy and Water Minister Uzi Landau stated, “Our expertise is available to all of our friends, including some of those who don’t accept us there, which is the Palestinians. We would like to see their projects going on. They however say they want to take care of their own needs, which is fine with us.”

Israel is no stranger to resourcefulness in this area, with government-sponsored innovations helping Israel to reduce its wastefulness and bring down the amount of water required per capita. In reality, Israel consumes only a fraction more water than Gaza does, on a per capita basis. The subject of water was agreed upon under the terms of the Oslo Accords (part II) and Israel has not only fulfilled its obligations under the terms of that agreement, but actually supplies more water to Gaza and the West Bank than it is obliged to do.

To repeat, for this is key, Israel has met all its obligations according to the Oslo Water Agreement, in terms of the additional quantities of water to the Palestinians, and has exceeded the requirements. Conversely, the Palestinians have breached two major areas of the agreement, specifically with relation to the digging of ‘pirate wells’ and in allowing wastewater to flow into streams untreated. That was their part of the bargain.

Meanwhile, of course, while Gazans continue to require more and more water to fuel the growing population in the area, their brothers in Egypt are squandering gallons of it to close off tunnels that run between Egypt and Gaza, as has been reported today. The Muslim Brotherhood-run country has connected a well on their side of the border to rubber hoses which flood the tunnels. Of course, this is an attempt to crack down on illegal smuggling similar, though arguably harsher and more wasteful than the policies enacted by the Israeli government. One can’t help but wonder when the charges of ‘creating a prison camp’ and ‘oppressing the Palestinian people’ will be leveled at Egypt.

Solar Device Purifies Saltwater and Contaminated Water

If water covers about three-quarters of our planet, why do some 750 million people in 45 countries have little access to clean drinking water?

“About 97 percent of the world’s water is saltwater or polluted water,” explains the CEO of SunDwater, an Israeli company that is ready to market its solar-powered distiller to provide clean water for drinking and agriculture. 
The SunDwater unit converts contaminated, unsafe or saltwater into potable water without any need for infrastructure or an external energy source. 

The device was invented by a  couple of childhood friends patents were applied for in June 2011. Today there is a pre-market operational unit..

Mimicking nature

Here’s how the low-cost, low-maintenance system works: Saltwater or polluted water is pumped into the unit. The sun’s rays heat the water until it evaporates. The water vapor flows into a cylinder where it gets condensed back into freshwater, just like in the natural cycle of rainwater to clouds.

New water is constantly pumped back into the closed system as the water evaporates, so the device produces clean water at five times the rate of similar systems -- 400 liters (423 quarts) per day, or thousands of liters if multiple units are joined together as a water farm.

The basic premise is old as the hills. “You could go back 2,000 years and find sailors taking seawater and putting it in flat beds to let it heat and evaporate to separate from the salt,” says the CEO, Zimels. “But with the technology we’ve used until now, you’d need a very big footprint of space to get a small amount of water.”
The breakthrough was to make this process workable on a commercial level by concentrating the sunbeams on a four-square-meter (43-square-foot) round dish to make the water heat and evaporate quickly.

“There is no need for electricity,” Zimels emphasizes. “We are just using nature to improve nature itself, not creating new environmental problems.”

The device will be targeted to urban, rural and remote communities for basic fresh water needs.

Deslination not practical for spread-out populations

“Taking in account that the vast majority of the people in need reside in developing countries, our focus through the development process was to deliver a smart but very simple-to-operate and relatively cheap solution to assure that they are able to purchase and operate the units on their own,” Zimels says. 

Israel is not one of the target markets.

“Here we’ve built mega plants to desalinate enough seawater for our needs, but we are a small country,” Zimels points out. 

“For a country where people are more spread out, desalination plants won’t resolve the problem because they are too expensive to build and it’s too expensive to transport the desalinated water. Today these populations drill wells, or get transport of bottled water, or even use contaminated water despite the huge health risks. Our solution is efficient, green and easy to implement.”

A demonstration and research SunDwater unit is set up in an industrial park at Kfar Adumim, a sunny Judean Desert town not far from the Dead Sea. The distiller can convert the salty, mineral-rich water from the Dead Sea into a clean glass of drinking water within half an hour.

“The system is working very nicely,” Zimels reports. “In the last six to nine months we’ve had a lot of ideas of how to improve it, making it smaller and quicker. We want to build a much larger unit, about 20 square meters [215 square feet] to generate 5,000 liters per day Now we need capital to start building the whole supply chain, to train the communities in need how to operate the unit and to continue the development and improvement of our solution”

Customers in Madagascar, Nigeria and other African and Indian countries have expressed interest in the product. SunDwater is working with an Israeli water consultancy for rural areas, WaterWays, to implement the solution most efficiently for those potential buyers.

“We believe in the long run the unit could be manufactured in the country where it will be installed; we’d send somebody to install it and train the local operators,” says Zimels. “That offers an added financial advantage to those countries.”

Avaaz Exclusively Blames Israel - Part 2

Continuing Avaaz's criticism's exclusively of Israel, another document has been issued with more invective, more emotive terminology and no basis of fact or reality. See below:- 

“It was the hottest week of the year. All Fadel Jaber wanted was some water for his family. But Fadel lives in the occupied West Bank,….”

Where does he live? In areas A and B where 96% of all Palestinians live the responsibility for water is in the hands of the PA. They have done nothing to provide the appropriate infrastructure for their citizens. Water is available in accordance with the Oslo agreements - in fact more than was agreed is available.  If he was living in area C, it is likely he is living in an unauthorized place, simply “land grabbing”. Israel has no responsibility to supply infrastructure in this situation. So that leaves us with the 4% of the Palestinians who live in area C. These Palestinians live in recognized areas and have full services provided by Israel

“Where the Israeli government has redirected water pipes to provide swimming pools for Jewish settlers and empty faucets for Palestinians like Fadel.”

No water pipes have been “redirected”. Palestinians have more than enough water supplied annually by Israel over and above the agreed quantities in the last water agreement. The PA problem is that they:-

a) don’t conserve water,

b) the don’t recycle water, (Israel recycles over 75% and is aiming for 90%.

c) have allowed over 300 illegal wells to be dug so there is no obligation to pay water rates and which is destroying their own aquifers and water table  and

d) send all their waste into the rivers ending up in Israel where POLIO has now reared its head again.

“When the Israeli forces dragged Fadel off for taking water, his heartbroken five-year-old son Khaled could be heard screaming “baba, baba!” as his dad was torn away. This is daily life for Palestinians living under the brutal fist of martial law where their land and water has been stolen by settlers”

“…and they have no basic human rights. But after years of violence and hopelessness, a movement is growing in Palestine -- a nonviolent resistance seeking the same thing that all Israelis already have: freedom, dignity and a state of their own.”

NO, land is being grabbed by the Palestinians without any proof of ownership. Those grabbing land have to be removed. The High Court of Justice deals with all claims concerning land, however Israel cannot accept the illegal grabbing of land

Such typical land grab attempts by Palestinians are commonplace, they “claim” ownership, yet have no legal papers to show proof of ownership. The most recent case  of Susito is a case in point. Palestinians claimed they had been on that land “from time immemorial. Yet photographic evidence presented by Regavim, www.regavim.org showed that there had not been a presence there as recently as the year 2000. The PA is using every trick in the book to fool gullible human rights activists. See video on constant illegal Palestinian building on State lands http://tinyurl.com/n53zn8o

“For years, the media has focused on Palestinian militants, and to this day, extremists on both sides are pushing peace further out of reach. But what’s lost in all that vitriol are the loving families like Fadel’s that just want a normal life. Now, those families are stepping forward, leading peaceful marches, organizing sit-ins, and working with Israeli activists to seek justice and freedom. In response, the Israeli military has thrown them in jail, beaten up organisers, and ripped children from their beds.”

Civil disobedience cannot be ignored. Peace can only come about when the Palestinian leadership come to terms with the existence of Israel. However, this seems to be forlorn hope when one hears a number of Palestinian leaders making statements such as

“The Palestinian people will never accept the right of the Jewish people to their own state.  Not for 1000 years”.                                                                                           Abu Mazen, , 12/7/2009

“It is impossible to realize the inspiring idea or the great goal in one stroke....Israel will come to an end....If I say that I want to remove it from existence, this will be great, great,[but] it is hard.  This is not a [stated] policy. You can’t say it to the world.  You can say it to yourself”  Abbas Zaki, Fatah Central Committee member, Al-Jazeera TV, 23/9/2011

“I will never allow a single Israeli to live among us on Palestinian land”. Mahmoud Abbas, Fatah , 28/7/2010, to Egyptian media (ynetnews)

“It Is Okay to Say One Thing in Arabic and Another in English for Western Audiences” Editor-in-Chief Al-Quds Al-Arabi Newspaper Abd Al-Bari Atwan:December 2010

When PA leaders signed agreements with Israel, they knew how to walk  "the right path, which leads to achievement, exactly like the Prophet [Muhammad] did in the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah." Al-Habbash's sermon was delivered in the presence of PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas and was broadcast on official Palestinian Authority TV. (The Hudaybiyyah peace treaty was a 10-year truce that Muhammad, Islam's Prophet, made with the Quraish Tribe of Mecca. However, two years into the truce, Muhammad attacked and conquered Mecca).  PA Minister of Religious Affairs Mahmoud Al-Habbash July 2013

This occupation has gone on for too long and for too long the resolution of this conflict has been controlled by extremists on both sides. Where are the Palestinian peace movements? Why does every attempt be Palestinians to build bridges shot down by their leadership. Hate indoctrination is endemic throughout the whole of Palestinian society - just look at what is shown on their TV, taught in their schools, spoken about IN ARABIC to the community at large But today, there are a few things most people agree on: first, both the Israelis and the Palestinians should each be entitled to a state; and second, the treatment of the Palestinians in the occupied territories violates every sense of justice we have, from international law to basic common sense. Even hard-line retired Israeli military leaders say this. 

Polio Virus and Contamination of Israel's Aquifers

by Mark Langfan - Arutz Sheva Wednesday, 31 July 2013

For article read http://tinyurl.com/oczx5hs

The polio virus has been found in Israel's water. Its source is not hard to find. The Health Ministry has decided to innoculate 200,000 Israeli children living in the south of the country. This is just the beginning.

Israel gave up Gaza, and the Hamas genocidally rocketed pre-1967 Israel-Sderot and Ashkelon.  Israel gave up the civil administration of the Palestinian Authority; the Palestinians Arabs responded with the Intifada.

Today, there is a more insidious attack at play. On 3 June 2013, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported:

“In Israel, wild poliovirus type 1 (WPV1) was isolated from sewage samples collected on 9 April 2013 in Rahat, southern Israel.  . . .  Genetic sequencing and epidemiological investigations are ongoing to determine its origin. Preliminary analyses indicate the strain is not related to the virus currently affecting the Horn of Africa.”

Wikipedia states that:

“The serotype PV1 [the type found in Israel] is the most commonly encountered form, and the one most closely associated with paralysis.”

Medical News Today explains:

“What causes polio? Polio is caused by the poliovirus, a highly contagious virus specific to humans.  The virus usually enters the environment in the feces of someone who is infected.  In areas with poor sanitation, the virus easily spreads through the fecal-oral route, via contaminated water or food.  In addition, direct contact with a person infected with the virus can cause polio.”

On 3 July 2013, Israel's newspaper Haaretz reported:

"Almost 90 percent of sewage from Palestinian towns in the West Bank flows into the environment untreated, contaminating the groundwater and 162 kilometers of streams,“ according to a report prepared by the Israel Parks and Nature Authority.

"The report, prepared for the Environmental Protection Ministry and the Civil Administration in the West Bank, is based on water samples taken from various locales in 2012.  It found that some 50 million cubic meters of sewage flow into the environment from Palestinian towns every year.  Only 5 million cubic meters go to treatment plants, some of which are substandard.  This affects Israel as well as the West Bank, since the polluted streams flow into Israel.. .

Israel has tried to cope with the problem by building treatment plants near the Green Line separating Israel from the West Bank and treating the contaminated water once it enters Israel.  But the facility built to treat the Hebron Stream − the most polluted of all − can’t handle the volume of waste it receives.  Contaminated water reaches nearby communities, emitting a stench and attracting mosquitoes."

On 11 July 2013, Arutz Sheva reported:

"Traces of the poliomyelitis (Polio) virus are continuing to appear in sewage treatment facilities in southern and central Israel according to the (Israeli) Health Ministry."  The central areas where the virus has been detected include the Lev Hasharon (Tulkaran-Tel Aviv) area, Modi'in (Green Line), Ramle (Green Line), Tel Aviv, Ashdod (south of Tel Aviv).  The southern areas are Rahat, Be'er Sheva.

None of this Palestinian contamination of Israel should come as a surprise because in February 2012, the State of Israel Water Authority, in a report entitled "The Water Issue Between Israel and the Palestinians," (see http://mfa.gov.il/MFA_Graphics/MFA%20Gallery/Powerpoint/Water-IsraelPA.pps) stated:

“The Palestinians constantly breach the [Olso Water] agreement, as shown in the following:

1.    The Palestinians do not treat their sewage which flows freely in the [West Bank] streams and into [pre-1967] Israel, contaminating the [pre-1967 Israel] environment and the [pre-1967 Israel coastal] aquifer en route.

2.    The Palestinians are not developing any new water source, either through sewage treatment, or desalination (also in contradiction of the [Olso] Water Agreement, M.L.).”

The key topographic/geologic fact is that what is termed the 'West Bank' is the mountains of Judea and Samaria. And any Palestinian untreated sewage water introduced into the  aquifers of the Western salient of the mountains of Judea and Samaria gravitationally migrates underground westward into the aquifers of pre-1967 Israel.  Geologically, there is no functional impermeable dividing line between the political pre- and post- 1967 Israel.  Hence, it is impossible to stop Palestinian Authority untreated sewage water from  contaminating pre-1967 Israel.

All the contaminated polio clusters in central Israel are in line with the general westward flow of the contaminated sewage water from the PA.  This makes it very probable that the polio now being discovered in these areas and in southern Israel is from the northern and southern lobes of the area.  And the ceding of Israeli civilian jurisdiction over  Palestinian Authority sewage is a direct result of the Oslo Accords.

Is the Palestinian Authority purposefully and knowingly contaminating Israel's aquifers with sewage?  Israel has begged the Palestinian Arabs for years to install sewage treatment plants at no cost to them and with funds from abroad.  But the Palestinian Authority has refused to build anything except one small sewage treatment plant.  Given that Palestinian Arab sewage is gravitationally bound to migrate westward into the pre-1967 Israel coastal plain, Palestinians (and Israelis!) could easily have predicted the biological diseases that this untreated sewage water would cause to pre-1967 Israel: Polio, for one.

Israel could define this as a possible instance of what the Geneva Convention terms Genocidal War Crimes. Israel and its civilians are being attacked with a form of biological warfare.

The Israeli cabinet debates destroying future Iranian genocidal nuclear warfare a thousand miles away.  Somehow the same Israeli cabinet is impotent to stop current Palestinian Authority  bio-warfare only 3 kilometers away.  In fact, Israel may yet reward the Palestinian Authority's  bio-warfare with more land!  .

Can anyone imagine the cries of “Zionist Biogenocide” against Israel if it were to contaminate the Palestinian Authority aquifers the way the Palestinian Arabs are doing to Israeli aquifers? .”

The Iranians see Israel's total impotence and appeasement of the Palestinian bio-warfare, and calculate that Israel will be just as impotent and appeasing when they gain their long sought-after nuclear weapon capacity.

Israel Army Rescues Palestinians

With the extreme conditions this week culminating in heavy snow on the high ground, the IDF , the Civil Administration and the Palestinian security forces have coordinated rescue activities in several operations throughout the Judea and Samaria region: Seven people were rescued near Jenin, five in Hirbat Jabara and five near Nua a-Shams.

IDF forces also rescued an Arab-Israeli school bus carrying 30 children near Jenin, as well as two cars and an a Palestinian ambulance – all stuck due to rising water.

Fifteen people had to escape to the roof of their building in Baqa-jatt, near Haifa, after the area was flooded. The Air Force has been able to rescue them and they were taken to Hillel Yaffe Medical Center in Hadera in mild condition.

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4330127,00.html

NEWS ABOUT ISRAEL UNLIKELY TO BE IN YOUR MEDIA

(With thanks to BIG the British Israel Group)

• There are few signs in Jerusalem to show that the Christmas season is here, apart from a few Christmas lights twinkling along the section of the Hevron Road where it leads into Bethlehem. Jerusalem Christians have, however, not been forgotten. In mid-December Mayor Nir Barkat toured the Christian Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City to give religious leaders and residents Christmas greetings and good wishes for the New Year and in the days running up to Christmas, a cheerful Father Christmas has been seen, walking along the Old City walls with a large selection of Christmas trees, inviting Christians to select one as a free gift from Jerusalem’s municipality. The Minister of tourism hosted a traditional pre-Christmas reception for the leaders of the Christian churches and communities in Israel at Jerusalem’s Mishkenot Shaananim. More Christians than ever before gathered in Bethlehem on Christmas Eve to celebrate, it was estimated that at least 70,000 people had visited the little town by the end of the day.

• According to the Ministry of Tourism, 75,000 tourists were due to arrive in Israel over Christmas of which 25,000 are Christian pilgrims. The Ministry of Tourism provided free transportation to Christian pilgrims traveling between Jerusalem and Bethlehem.

• The collaboration between Israel’s Department of Health and the West Bank is little known. In 2011, 197, 713 healthcare permits were issued to Palestinians and their companions, 21,538 Palestinian children were treated in Israeli hospitals and 118 training courses took place in Israeli hospitals to provide training and support for medical teams from the West Bank. The Civil Administration, along with Israeli hospitals and donor organisations arranged various ‘fun days’ for Palestinian children hospitalised in Israel. The venues included the Jerusalem Zoo, the Safari Park at Ramat Gan, the beach at Haifa, bowling in Holon, and a trip to see the snow on Mount Hermon which was arranged by the Israeli Army Alpinist Unit.
(The Israeli Embassy, London)

• The recent heavy rains have gone some small way to relieving Israel’s water shortage, Water Authority officials calling the winter of 2012- 13 the wettest since 2004. The Jordan River is now fuller and flowing faster than it has for 20 years and since the first of the winter’s rainfalls at the end of October, the level of the Sea of Galilee, one of the countries primary sources of water, has risen by 26 centimetres. Mount Hermon received 30-40 centimetres of snow, unusual for so early in the year. In the ongoing battle to provide enough water for Israeli citizens the Israeli government together with Water Authority are building desalination plants and cleaning contaminated and obsolete wells so that water can once more be pumped from them and it is hoped that these measures will cover the water deficit within two years. In recent years, 220 new water reservoirs have been built or are in various stages of completion, thanks to these reservoirs, Israel currently recycles more water for agricultural usage than any country in the world.

• During the recent attacks on Israel by thousands of Grad Rockets fired from the Gaza Strip, the efficiency of the Iron Dome system in intercepting very many of them was much praised. Few people have any idea that parts for these state-of-the-art systems were manufactured by residents of a home for people with mental disabilities. Abie, Ida and Michael have been employed by the Rafael company in the production of the Iron Dome system for over a year, as part of the company’s community outreach programme. The Hostel’s manager stated that the residents delivered highly accurate products that measured up to the company’s high standards and the Social Affairs Ministry is very proud of the project, “We believe that everyone is entitled to live and fulfill his or her potential,” said the Director General of the Ministry.
(Thanks to Ynetnews)

• India is probably the country with the largest cow population in the world yet most of its dairy farms operate using antiquated methods this, however, is about to change as Israeli kibbutz members have been called in and two Israeli companies have begun planning and constructing 10 state-of-the-art dairy farms on the subcontinent. In Hinduism, cows are sacred animals and there are specific laws for protecting them which the Israeli teams are having to consider when designing the farms. So while ideas will be introduced to increase the number of cows kept and the quantity of milk produced, the farms will contain hostels where older cows can receive special care and alarm systems will be installed to notify the farmers if a cow suffers even the slightest distress.
(NO Camels)

• Click on this if you want to know how Israel has been feeling in recent weeks.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cbdnu_R9G40

Israeli tablets to purify water for Syrians

Israeli government blesses a deal for Israel Chemicals to sell AquaTabs to UNICEF for Syria despite a law nixing trade with an enemy state.

By Viva Sarah Press October 17, 2012, Israel 21C http://tinyurl.com/cfdmuwp  


Citing humanitarian reasons, the Israeli Finance Ministry recently gave the green light for a subsidiary of Israel Chemicals – which is owned by the Israeli company but is based in Ireland – to sell water purification tablets for distribution in war-torn Syria, even though it is considered an enemy state.

With clean water availability at an all-time low in Syria, the United Nations international aid agency UNICEF has been working to rehabilitate the country’s water sources.

The organization turned to Medentech, Israel Chemicals’ Ireland-based subsidiary, with a request to buy its AquaTabs water purification tablets. But the law prohibiting Israeli companies from selling a product to a hostile state could have sunk the plan.

Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz was called to authorize the deal and did so, noting that the world’s best-selling water purification tablets would not be sold directly to Syria but rather to the UN agency.

Humanitarianism trumps politics

The Israeli law drafted in 1939 forbids Israeli companies from knowingly selling products that will benefit an enemy state. According to a report in Calcalist, the government must authorize all business agreements between Israel and enemy nations.

The Israeli business daily reported that while this is not the first time the government has okayed such a transaction, it is unusual.

But as Israel is known for its humanitarian efforts around the globe, obtaining special authorization and waiving the law for the water purification deal was more a formality than an anomaly.

The AquaTabs are effervescent tablets that kill micro-organisms in water to prevent cholera, typhoid, dysentery and other water-borne diseases. The chlorine pills are considered a better alternative to boiling water to remove contaminants.

“UNICEF is urgently scaling up its emergency response to reach hundreds of thousands of children with child protection, water, sanitation and hygiene, health and nutrition, and education initiatives,” according to a UNICEF statement.

According to the UN about 1.2 million Syrians have been internally displaced within the country, and hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees have fled to neighboring countries. The UN also estimates that there are another one million Syrians still living in their homes in need of humanitarian aid.

And Why Won't the Palestinians Cooperate?

Israel leads way in making saltwater potable

Scarce rainfall and abundant seawater prompted Israel to find desalination solutions now getting a ‘green’ makeover and being shared globally. So, instead of "bleating" about "unfair" allocation on inflated population figures, why not cooperate with Israel and a) build a desalination plant and b) start recycling water instead of destroying the infrastructure.

In an old Middle Eastern curse, enemies are told to drink from the sea. Cursed with water-shortage problems, Israel has pioneered desalination solutions that are changing the world. From manufacturing China’s largest desalination plant and smaller ones on Caribbean islands, to watering its own agricultural industry, Israel’s desalination business is a story that started at the founding of the state.

Today Israel’s award-winning desalination companies are quenching the thirst of dry nations, and are challenged by today’s environmental questions to provide greener options for tomorrow.

Desalination is a process that removes salts and minerals from otherwise undrinkable sea or saline water. With about 70 percent of the world covered in water, and more than 90% of it saltwater, even the water-rich United States finds itself in need of desalination solutions in California. And Israel is there to help.
The biblical Book of Exodus relates how the ancient Israelite leader Moses was empowered to turn bitter water sweet for drinking. Wind the tape forward to the 1950s, when Israel’s technological progress in desalination was catalyzed by founding father David Ben-Gurion, who saw desalination as part of Israel’s destiny.
Over the last few thousand years, nothing has changed: To survive and thrive, Israelis still need a source for fresh drinking water.

Israel’s major foray into desalination began with IDE Technologies – known as Israel Desalination Engineering when it was government-owned – which has built more than 400 desalination plants in some 40 countries, from Caribbean islands to the United States, to mammoth plants in China and Israel. The company is headquartered in Kadima.

Every day, IDE plants produce about two million cubic meters of potable water for the world to use, and its R&D staff is investigating and implementing greener solutions for an industry not known for its environmentalism. Desalination alleviates world “water pressure”

Some estimates suggest that the demand for water-treatment products will rise 6.2 percent every year to $65 billion in the year 2015. Meeting the world’s water needs requires local and international policy and legislation. Israel is deeply involved in implementing policy locally and sharing its processes with the world.

Looking locally, Israel’s major sources of water are the Sea of Galilee, its holding tank and a number of inland and seaside aquifers. Those sources, now combined with desalinated water, supply a population that has expanded many times over from its former size in the last 80 years. As environmentalists rally to protect coastlines from development, the country is also seeking to establish the creation of artificial islands on which to build desalination plants.

Booky Oren, a former CEO of Israel’s national water carrier Mekorot, is now an independent water consultant and is chairman of Israel’s WATEC conference and expo, held in Tel Aviv from November 15-17, 2011. Oren says rising needs lead to little choice but to desalinate water, and similar situations are felt in the rest of the world as well.

“All the population here is increasing and the demand for water is increasing. This is the force that caused Israel to reinvent itself,” he says. “In the beginning, 50 years ago, Israel began to deliver water from the north to the south from the national carrier. Then we moved to recycled water. We began to recycle the wastewater to create more water because we don’t have enough. All the time there is a crisis because we are coping with continuous droughts. The water you have from natural collection is not enough,” says Oren.

“While tools like drip irrigation help to alleviate the problem, at the end of the day this doesn’t solve Israel’s crisis. Israel took a strategic decision to produce more water from the sea,” he continues, though this is expensive. “By 2015, Israel will be fully independent from rainfall and will produce enough water from the sea. Even coping with continuous droughts, we will have enough.”

Israel had to formulate policy to assure that the price of desalinated water would remain relatively low, and this is where ingenuity had to factor in. Water in Israel was about $2 per cubic meter 20 years ago, and it now it is down to 50 cents– a 75 percent reduction, says Oren. To achieve this cost benefit, Israel invented better ways to recycle water, and processes that were less energy intensive.

The Facts about Water in the Middle East

Complaints by anti Israel writers continue to point the finger at Israel (who else?) for the problems of water supplies to the Palestinians. Yet nearly all these claims are never backed up by facts. So let’s look at the recent comments and the real situation.

Claim
a) Israel’s ‘discriminatory policies’ are to blame for the lack of water in Palestinian society.
b) Israel uses the Joint Israeli Palestinian Water Committee (JWC) to veto and delay Palestinian water projects.
c) Israel illegally exploits 90% of the shared water sources.
d) Israeli is stealing water and destroying of water wells and treatment plants.

These claims are full of distortions, outright lies and false accusations, and yet another proof of the PA’s intransigence.

To answer these claims, Missing Peace,a European group www.missingpeace.eu obtained authentic papers documenting meetings of the Joint Israeli Palestinian Water Committee (JWC), and correspondence between Colonel Avi Shalev, head of the International relations branch of COGAT, and Dr.Atilli, the Palestinian representative. These documents paint an entirely different picture. In fact, the Palestinian Authority has been sabotaging the two-state solution by preventing the development of an independent water infrastructure for the future Palestinian state.

Claim - Israel delayed and vetoed Palestinian water projects

Facts
a) Article 40 (14) in the Oslo Accords clearly states that all JWC decisions about water projects in the West Bank need mutual agreement. Once approved, JWC projects for the territories under Palestinian control (Areas A and B) do not need any further Israeli involvement.

b) Projects in Area C, where Israel is in control, need approval from the Israeli Civil Administration (ICA). Since 2000 the PWA submitted 76 requests for permits to the office of the ICA. Subsequently 73 permits were issued by ICA and three denied because there was no master plan.

c) In a letter of June 8 2009, Shalev responded to Atilli’s complaint that ICA did not honor a PWA request to issue 12 of these permits. Shalev wrote that these permits had already been issued in 2001, and that ICA wondered why the PWA did not execute these projects.

d) Another 44 JWC-approved projects, the majority in Areas A and B, like the construction of a waste water treatment plant (WWTP) in Jenin that received approval in 2008 - have not been implemented. The German government has even withdraw a plan to build a WWTP in Tulkarm when it concluded that the PWA could not handle the project.

e) When, back in November 2009, the PWA complained about a lack of funds, the Israeli government offered to finance water projects for Palestinian communities. The PA has yet to respond to this offer.

Claim - Israel allocates only 10% of the shared water sources to the Palestinians.

Facts
a) The water quota for the West Bank were mutually agreed upon in the Oslo Accords and 33% of the water in the aquifers under the West Bank is allocated to the Palestinians.

b) In 1993 the Palestinians could pump up 117 million cubic meters and Israel would provide an additional 31 million. In 2007 200 million cubic meters were allocated to the PA, of which Israel provided 51.8 million. However, of those 200 million cubic meters, only 180 million were actually used.

c) The main reason for this is that the PWA did not implement projects in the Eastern aquifer that would have solved much of the Palestinian water crisis. More than half of the wells approved for exploitation of the Eastern aquifer have still not been drilled. The permits were issued in 2000.

d) In a letter written on April 4, 2001, the civil administration urged the PWA to execute these projects. A letter from June 8 2009 repeated that request.

Claim - Palestinians are limited to an average of just 60 liters per capita per day.

Facts -
In 2009 Atliil’s own PWA published a report that mentioned an average supply of 110 liters per capita per day.

Claim - Israel is stealing water and destroying Palestinian water projects

Fact
a) In fact, Palestinians steal millions of cubic meters of water per year by drilling illegal holes into the water pipes of the Israeli water provider Mekorot. The Civil Authority fixes 600 of these illegal taps each year. Furthermore, since 2008 Israel has asked the PA to re-establish the joint JSET water patrols that fought water theft before the Al Aksa intifada. The PA has refused.

b) Another reason for the loss of water is the poor maintenance of the Palestinian water infrastructure. A staggering 33% of the fresh water supply gets lost because of leaks, theft and poor maintenance.

Lack of Action by PA
Other documents provided solid evidence that the closing of 250 illegal wells was agreed upon in the JWC meetings. For example, minutes of the JWC meeting on November 13, 2007 show a consensus decision to destroy ‘illegal drillings and connections.’ Nevertheless, Atilli acted as if he never attended these meetings or co-signed the joint decisions.

He even had the gall to write urgent appeals to the international community as soon as ICA, after numerous appeals to the PWA to follow up on the agreed closure of illegal wells, finally closed those wells.

These are only few examples of the shocking way the Palestinian Authority neglected the basic needs of its citizens and cynically uses water as a weapon in a PR campaign against Israel. It shows that, contrary to reports dealing with progress in state building, the PA is far from ready for statehood.

Conclusion

The stubborn refusal to work with Israel on mutual interests like improvement of the water infrastructure, and the way the PA subsequently uses that lack of improvement to demonize Israel, prove that the PA is not interested in the two-state solution, or peace.

In fact, the bid for UN recognition of a state without a peace agreement, and the way the PA deals with Israel regarding water are part of the same campaign. The goal of that campaign is, as Mahmoud Abbas pointed out in his infamous NYT op-ed, the continuation of the conflict by different means.

By now it has become clear that the use of water as weapon is one of those means.

Israeli Invention Saves London's Water

Working with infrastructure companies in London, an Israeli start up, TaKaDu measures and monitors the changing pressure and flow throughout London’s water system. The World Bank stresses that solutions to address water leaks and inefficient practices are sorely needed, as drips and leaks amount to a hefty $15 billion in global funds annually - money just literally going down the drain. Generally, municipal workers don't know there is a problem until a pipe bursts. And as many American cities have found out recently, burst pipes - now occurring randomly across the country - cause millions of dollars of damage.

Based on statistical and mathematical algorithms from online and historical data provided by a waterworks source, TaKaDu software can detect leaks and prioritize and confirm repairs. It requires no additional technology or upfront investment on the client's side. With a return of investment of 250 percent within a day, TaKaDu's model is a pay-as-you-play (or monitor) model.

Plugging the world's leaks

Already working in London, TaKaDu now has a contract with Thames Water of London to create a central nervous system for the city's water pipes. The company has also developed software to enable a smart water grid. This high-tech online software, now being used in Rotterdam, Sydney and Melbourne, gives water infrastructure companies a way to manage and monitor leaks and repairs before any damage is done.

The Thames trial lasted six months before the municipal company decided to award TaKaDu a full contract. The system is monitoring the water serving 75 percent of the population in London. The water savings of two percent, though that sounds small, is significant, translating to hundreds of megaliters per day.

Mainly, however, London is counting on TaKaDu to save money. If water companies in England don't manage repairs in a timely manner, they get fined. "We are talking about millions of pounds per year," says VP Marketing Guy Horowitz. Monitoring some 10,000 kilometers of pipes in London alone, TaKaDu estimates that it saved the British capital millions of pounds in fines over the last year.

"As we do every year, we are currently stepping up all our leakage reduction activity before the winter chill sets in," Thames Water CEO Steve Shine reported last fall. "Our new TaKaDu central nervous system helps us focus our efforts in the right places and the right times."

'It's all on our roadmap'

While the company is still in startup mode, there is hope of breaking even by the end of the year - with the $10 million invested so far being funneled toward making the world's cities, like London, better managed.

Customers have not yet been found in the esteemed market of the United States simply because American water works companies are too far behind the times. "The prerequisite is that we need something [some data] to work with," says Horowitz. The situation could change, though, if the US Environment Protection Agency makes water companies accountable for providing data. Then, the sky would be the limit.

"There is so much we can do with the same algorithms," says Horowitz, who can boast what he thinks is a world record on a patent application for the technology.
"We've got so much on our hands. It's all on our road map. We want to grow and do it all properly," says Horowitz, who is proud that his company was the only Israeli one represented at Davos, selected by the World Economic Forum for its sound business development.

Middle East and Water

The Middle East is likely to plunge into serious humanitarian crisis due to depletion of water resources, unless remedial measures are introduced urgently, says a new Strategic Foresight Group report, and reported in a newswire from Mumbai.

The report prepared by the Strategic Foresight Group, with support from the Swiss Agency for Development Cooperation and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, and input from almost 100 leaders and experts from Israel, the Palestine Territories, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Turkey, also says that water crisis can be converted into an opportunity for regional peace.

The rivers that flow in Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Jordan have been depleted by 50 to 90 per cent from 1960 to 2010. The annual flow of the Yarmouk River declined from 600 MCM to about 250-300 MCM, while the Jordan River has declined from 1300 MCM to 100 MCM. The water level in Barada River Basin in Syria has dropped from 50 meters below ground in 1990 to 200 meters at present.

The renewable freshwater resources in the Mountain Aquifer, shared by Israel and the Palestinian Territories, have been reduced by 7 per cent since the Oslo Accords in 1993 and in the Western Galilee Aquifer by 15-20 per cent. This is assuming full recharge in a normal rainy year.

The water level in the Dead Sea dropped from 390 metres below sea level in the 1960s down to 420 metres below sea level at present and will be 450 metres below sea level by 2040. The water surface area has shrunk by a third, from 950 square kilometres to 637 square kilometres. If the surface water level in the Dead Sea continues to erode, it will be reduced to a lake in 50 years, and will eventually disappear altogether.

Thus there must be a sustainable water management in Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and Iraq, building on cooperation between these countries in trade, transit, and energy. A Cooperation Council will enable the countries to have common standards for measuring water flows and quality, develop regional models for combating climate change, spread new technologies, and facilitate basin level integrated water management.

The report also proposes confidence building initiatives between Israel and the Palestine Authority to agree on the status of water resources and method of functioning of the Joint Water Committee. It recommends decentralised waste water treatment plants for the Palestine Territories.

In the long run, it recommends that the threatened water bodies be managed as Regional units and the export of the waters from the Turkish national rivers via the Mediterranean to the Jordan Valley countries.

For the interest of all peoples in the region surely this makes sense?

Maximising the Use of Waste Water

We are now in the middle of November and are still waiting for the first serious rains of the winter. The Sea of Galillee is fast approaching its black line, the line at which serious damage to the eco system will occur.

Desalination plants are coming on stream one by one, but the need to recycle waste water is paramount.

Out of a total of 500 million cubic meters (MCM) of sewage produced in Israel in 2008, about 70% of the effluents were reclaimed, a figure not many countries can claim to reach.

Local authorities are responsible for the treatment of municipal sewage. In recent years new or upgraded intensive treatment plants were set up in municipalities throughout the country. The ultimate objective is to treat 100% of Israel's wastewater to a level enabling unrestricted irrigation in accordance with soil sensitivity and without risk to soil and water sources.

Some Facts and Figures

500 MCM of wastewater were produced in Israel in 2008

31% MCM of the effluents underwent tertiary treatment (155 MCM)

55% of the wastewater underwent secondary treatment (275 MCM)

92% of the wastewater was adequately treated (460 MCM)

8% of the wastewater remained untreated.

We still need to pray for rain and after the current hot spell with temperatures in the 90's is due to end tomorrow, we have been told by the forecasters to expect rain. Let's hope they are right.

Quenching your Thirst with the Sea

A report from Israel 21C http://www.israel21c.org/ tells of an Israeli company not more than 30 minutes from where I live, making seawater potable for millions of people worldwide, with 400 desalination plants in 40 countries, producing 2,000,000 cubic meters of water a day.


A worker at IDE's desalination plant in Ashdod, which has been operating since 2005 (Photo: - courtesy Israel 21c)

Champagne glasses containing the finest fresh water were raised in a toast last month to celebrate the opening of Israel's third desalination plant, this one in the northern city of Hadera. Lauded as the largest reverse osmosis desalination facility in the world, the plant that takes water from the Mediterranean Sea and makes it safe to drink is expected to produce 127 million cubic meters of water each year - enough to meet the water needs of one in every six Israelis.

Created with an investment of nearly half a billion dollars, the plant was built by IDE Technologies, an Israeli company that has already built two seawater desalination plants on the country's Mediterranean Sea coastline.

It was the government that put in place the plan to create the desalination plant, to meet the demands of a growing population and an imperiled water supply, dependent almost entirely on winter rainfall.

In a 25-year agreement with the government and with its full blessing, the water will be produced at just over 50 cents per cubic meter. IDE's first desalination plant, built on the coast in Ashkelon, has been performing well since 2005, according to company reports. There is a third plant at Palmahim, just south of Tel Aviv, and two more are planned along the coast, in Ashdod and Soreq.

A new era of cheap water?

"The success of the mega-desalination plant concept has ushered in a whole new era of plentiful, affordable water for a world facing severe water challenges," says IDE Technologies CEO, in a press statement. "With the launch of the Ashkelon plant in 2005, we pledged to continue pursuing further breakthroughs in plant capacity and water cost."

IDE boasts technological breakthroughs in the fields of thermal and membrane desalination, and also, perhaps surprisingly for a country in the Middle East, in snowmaking. In desalination, the salt is removed from seawater using a process called Reverse Osmosis (RO) one of two ways to use desalination membranes to process water. In RO, water from a highly pressurized salty solution is channeled through a water-permeable membrane to separate it from its salty component. The second approach is via a process called electrodialysis.

The new desalination plant at Hadera is the largest in the world, and is expected to produce enough water for one in six Israelis.

Shmulik Shai, general manager of H2ID, the Hadera desalination plant, told ISRAEL21c that for the past five years Israel has been facing a severe shortage in its three main sources of water: The Sea of Galilee, its mountain aquifer and its coastal aquifers. Below the red line in terms of volume and nitrates, if the country doesn't find a solution now, these sources could be damaged indefinitely, he warns.

"The balance of rainwater is not good enough," says Shai. If there's one short season of rain and a spike in population, Israel's semi-arid climate could find itself with a "chronic shortage problem," he continues. And while 70 percent of the country's water is supplied by rain that falls in the winter months, there are periods of drought in Israel when the rain does not come down at all. To make things worse, rainfall is not evenly distributed, he remarks.

The new plant will furnish a good portion of the 750 million cubic meters of water that Israelis require for personal use, he tells ISRAEL21c. And among the desalination technologies that the Hadera plant utilizes are those developed by IDE, including new processes and new mechanisms, such as how to pressurize the water. To date, IDE has constructed some 400 desalination plants in 40 countries, with a total water output of 2,000,000 cubic meters per day.

Plugging those Leaks in Water Pipes

With an ever increasing demand for water around the world, a new Israeli invention may save up to 30 percent of the 88 billion liters of water lost to pinhole leaks in pipes all over the world, every day. So reports Israel 21C http://israel21c.org/environment/launching-little-pigs-to-fix-leaky-pipes

The solution is designed to seal leaks fast, with little inconvenience to the customer.

Most kids know that some little pigs ate roast beef, some stayed home and some had none. Today, some new little pigs from Israel are going out to fix pipes - tackling a billion dollar problem in the world's water, gas and oil industry.

Curapipe, on Israel's southern coast in Ashkelon, has a new solution that can detect and repair a problem that hides below the radar of the water and gas industries. Tiny pinhole, almost undetectable leaks emit water, oil and natural gas, costing the taxpayer money and causing unnecessary greenhouse gas emissions to enter our atmosphere.

Water is energy, yet the background leakage in city water pipes is so extensive that the World Bank estimates that about 88 billion liters of water is lost through urban pipes every day - in both rich countries like America and poorer ones where every drop counts.

Rather than overhaul existing infrastructure to replace new pipes, water management bodies accept this as unavoidable loss, and deal with tiny cracks in the pipes by reducing water pressure. At some point, however, this approach won't work anymore, and expensive repairs will need to be done. Curapipe's cost-effective solution can seal leaks fast, with little inconvenience to the customer.

The company has developed a solution based on an existing method to clean water mains: Small spongy objects referred to as 'pigs.' Water maintenance teams suspend the water supply for a couple of hours while the 'pig' is pushed through the system using water pressure. As the pigs are propelled through the pipes they remove scale and other types of unwanted buildup. The pigs can do their work in pipes made of lead, cast iron and even concrete.

Piggybacking on the pigs

Curapipe has found a way to "piggyback" on this system. It has developed a device that employs two pigs with a sealant material held between them. Pushed through the water pipes in the normal way, when the pigs encounter a crack or a leak, a composite material is squirted out to fill it in. The material then hardens in place. Once the pipe has been flushed with water to clean it, it returns to normal usage.

Curapipe is based in one of the many incubator around the country, with funding from the Office of the Chief Scientist in Israel, the company is looking for a $2 million investment to take their little pigs to market. The pigs will be ready for action in mid-2010 and by 2011 they should be on the market in the US and other countries.

Curapipe is now working with the Eilat Ashkelon Pipeline Company, Israel's major oil pipeline company, to test the pigs in both water pipes and oil pipes. The solution could also prevent devastating leaks and oil spills in nature.

A solution for oil leaks will have to wait awhile, because of the "crucial situation in the water industry," says the CEO, but thanks to Curapipe's pigs you can expect fewer neighborhood streets to be dug up in the meantime.