Mideast Drought Fuels Future Crisis

Yitzhak Rabin, the assassinated former prime minister of Israel, is said to have remarked, "If we solve every other problem in the Middle East but do not satisfactorily resolve the water problem, our region will explode" (The Jerusalem Report, March 13, 2000, p. 34).

I became vividly aware of the water crisis in the Middle East two years ago, while visiting Bethlehem. I was riding into the city after lunch with an Arab believer, a man I had led to the Savior some 25 years before. As we drove into town, we fell in behind a large tanker truck. Liquid was sloshing from the poorly-maintained filling holes on the tanker top. I mentioned to my friend that the driver should be more careful on the bumpy road. My friend replied, "Oh, that's a water truck bringing in our weekly supply." He explained that Bethlehem was no longer supplied with water by the Israeli water ministry, even though it was still a part of Israel. Residents purchased water for every use, even their toilets, from a water truck.

Leaky tanker trucks are obviously a poor way to supply water for a population the size of Bethlehem, but currently there is no other alternative. Bethlehem has been cut off from the Israeli water supply by a government trying desperately to conserve. So low was the water supply during the drought in 1998 that orange groves in the Sharon Valley were being cut down and there was no water for crops such as cotton and avocados. Farmers and kibbutzim were going out of business.

The water shortage isn't a new problem. I was living in Israel in 1991 when farmers lost virtually their entire crop for lack of water. The government had to subsidize the farmers¡¦ lost crop income, a huge expenditure. During this time the government also called for drastic cutbacks in drinking water. I was holding a weekly Bible study on Kibbutz Kerem Shalom, where the water supply was treated effluent from Tel Aviv's sewage plants. The kibbutznik in charge of the water supply claimed the water was pure enough to drink, but no one, including me, would take him at his word.

Nor is the water shortage limited to Israel. Israel's main reservoir, the Kinneret (Sea of Galilee) is also used by Jordan and the Palestinians. The June 16 issue of Israel Line, an online digest of news from Israel, reports that by the end of the summer the Kinneret will drop to its lowest recorded "red line" level, creating a drinking water shortage of 130 million cubic meters. An Israeli friend who visited me in early April lives just above the Kinneret in the little town of Givat Avni. He sees the lake daily, and notes that what was beach a few years ago is now dry stone. He mourns the lack of water and the loss of the beautiful shore his family enjoyed only two years ago. This vital reservoir could turn brackish because of overuse and evaporation. Such a change in the lake would be virtually irreversible.

According to the World Bank, each Palestinian in Gaza has access to only 15 gallons of water a day in comparison to 800 gallons for people in the United States. The water shortage in Amman, Jordan is just as serious; residents there receive municipal water only 24 hours a week. The rest of the time they must buy water from trucks such as those used in Bethlehem. Last year the new king of Jordan, Abdullah, said, "Future potential conflict in our area is not over land. It's over water" (The Jerusalem Report, p. 36).

The Nile can no longer supply the needs of the Egyptian people. Syria is also thirsting for a reliable water supply. Again according to The Jerusalem Report, water was shut off three or four nights a week last fall to Damascus¡¦ three million residents. Lacking funds to build a pipeline from the Euphrates River, Syria is looking to gain a piece of the Kinneret to meet its water needs. In currently stalled peace talks with Israel, Syria is asking for the entire Golan Heights, plus a strip of land along the Kinneret. I believe this demand is the prime reason for the breakdown in peace talks between Israel and Syria.

What is the government of Israel doing to address the Mideast water crisis? As is often the case in Israel, problems of potentially great magnitude are not dealt with in the cool of plenty, but in the heat of dramatic need. After the drought of 1990-91, 1992 was a year of unusually good rainfall. The water ministry postponed seeking answers to the impending shortage. But that year's rainfall was a once-in-200-year event. If, as water authorities say, the weather is getting drier in the Middle East, the crisis will only worsen in coming years. According to an informed Israeli source of mine, Israel, Jordan and the Palestinians together currently use 3.2 billion cubic meters of water each year. Normal rainfall replenishes only 2.5 billion cubic meters. In Israel alone, annual growth requires an additional 30 million cubic meters of water per year. Waiting for a good year of rain is not the answer.

By 1999, the Israeli media was urging the government to action. An editorial in the June 25, 1999 issue of Ha'aretz, one of Israel's largest daily newspapers, said, "Many of those involved in managing Israel's water resources have reached the conclusion that the current crisis is even worse than that experienced during the 1990-91 drought. For the first time, there is an imminent threat to the supply of drinking water. In the long term, Israel will have to work toward the desalination of seawater. The usual Israeli reaction ' to act only when the crisis is upon us' may prove disastrous."

A close friend of mine and internationally known hydrologist who lives in Israel echoes Ha'¦aretz's concerns in a letter to me dated March 5, 2000: "The 1998-99 drought has been one of the most severe droughts in the last 50 years. . . but political leaders tend to play down the severity of the water crisis. Since 1990 the various governments ought to have prepared the country for the next severe drought by planning and budgeting large-scale water desalination plants. Nothing was done in concrete terms. Now the Water Commission wants to develop large scale desalination, but the Finance Ministry is reluctant to provide all the required funding."

The construction of water desalination plants along the Mediterranean coast is the most practical and politically feasible option open to the drought-stricken Middle East. It is also the option favored by most recognized hydrologists, including Eli Suissa, Israel's Minister of Infrastructure.

Other proposals so far are not workable, or ludicrous. A tunnel from the Litani River in Lebanon must wait until full peace comes between Lebanon and Israel, a remote possibility in the near term. A pipeline suggested by the late Turkish President Turgut Ozal, connecting his water-rich country with Syria, Israel and Jordan has been dropped due to its enormous expense and the current unrest between Turkey and Syria. Turkey has also proposed shipping water to Israel in renovated oil tankers or in enormous plastic bubbles hauled by tug boats across the Mediterranean Sea. Current Turkish President Suleyman Demirel insists this last idea would be "much cheaper than desalination." But his offers to supply water are probably influenced by his interest in Turkey's ongoing joint project with Israel to upgrade the Turkish Air Force. A proposal to tow large icebergs from Alaska to Israel, melt them and use the water has been deservedly scorned by Israeli authorities (Israel Line, June 25, 1999).

 Israel has considered desalination for years. But even in the midst of the devastating drought of 1998-99, the government was still moving slowly. The March 8, 1999 issue of Israel Line reported that the executive body of the Israeli Cabinet "voted down a proposal by Foreign and National Infrastructure Minister Ariel Sharon and Agriculture Minister Rafael Eitan to provide funding this year for a plan that would have made desalination possible by the start of the new millennium. . . The Cabinet adopted the position of the Treasury, which argued that moving toward desalination now would cost taxpayers some $200 million."

The complete desalination project proposed by Sharon and Eitan would benefit the entire Middle East. In an April 15, 1999 speech to the Foreign Ministers Conference in Stuttgart, Germany, Sharon asserted that the "major regional challenge" facing Israel and its neighbors is "water shortage." Sharon outlined for his audience a construction plan for desalination plants that would, "over a period of 10 to 15 years, provide 1 billion cubic meters a year of desalinated seawater, and provide a solution to the current water crisis as well as meet the future needs of Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority, and also benefit Syria." Because desalination would benefit the entire region, implementing it "will require direct investment of the leading industrialized countries, private enterprise, and the international community at large, with active participation of Israel and its Arab neighbors" (Arutz Sheva News Service, April 16, 1999).

One year after Sharon's speech, on April 17, 2000, the Israeli ministerial economic committee authorized an initial $150 million facility to desalinate 50 million cubic meters of seawater annually. Israel has finally begun to act on the water crisis. Whether the entire project outlined by Sharon to the Foreign Ministers Conference becomes a reality remains to be seen. Much depends on outside investment and on the extent to which Israel and its Arab neighbors can cooperate with each other on their common problem. But the point remains: Israel often only moves to solve a crisis when it is nearly too late for a solution. As the June 14, 2000 issue of Israel Line comments, "Recent decisions made by the Government, including the establishment of a desalination plant, will not provide an immediate solution to the crisis because [its] implementation will not be complete for several years."

In the same way, much of Israel has also ignored the Messiah, who is the "water of life." In the past several years many sectors of the Israeli government have sought to stop the preaching of the Gospel through antimissionary laws and other forms of pressure on believers. The Word of God that provides "water for the souls of their people" is not a part of most Israelis' lives. Yet, the Gospel is reaping souls in spite of the attempts to stop its spread.

 A spiritual crisis is upon the Land far more serious and long lasting than the current drought. Please pray for Israel, its lost multitudes, and the Church there that continues to witness under persecution.

Israel Briefs

 The five largest cities in Israel: Jerusalem (633,700); Tel Aviv-Yafo (348,100); Haifa (265,700) Rishon Letzion (188,200); Be'er Sheva (163,700).

 The four most popular vacation spots in Israel: Eilat (42%); the Dead Sea (13%); Tiberias (12%), Jerusalem (6%).

The food product most commonly purchased by Israelis: Tnuva's 5% cottage cheese; 8.5 million containers sold monthly.

 As compiled by Ma'ariv reporters

One-third to one-half of the approximately 6,000 Messianic believers in Israel are still minors, reports the Messianic Action Committee. Though most of the present Messianic Jewish leadership is largely populated by immigrants, "as they [immigrant believers¡¦ children] mature to adulthood, they are expected to be more assertive, more linguistically authentic, and without other national roots. It is this future prospect that, for some, causes our small numbers to be so threatening."

William Currie and his wife, Swannee, have served with AMF International in Israel for extended periods since retiring from the office of General Director in 1989. They have traveled extensively in the Land, and met with and witnessed to Israeli leaders in the academic and political arenas, as well as other Israelis and Palestinian Arabs.