Water water everywhere. More Water Libel from Gaza

The ever vile Jackson Hinkle has posted a clip of well bathed children with freshly laundered clothes, smiling happily as they pose for the camera, under the caption "There is no water in Gaza."

No Jackson. You are wrong.

Despite propaganda from Hamas and its Western enablers to weaponize access to water resources over 70,000 cubic meters of water is available daily for use in Gaza.

The water supply available to Gazans consistently exceeds humanitarian thresholds.

The Daily Impact:

North & South: 28,000 cubic meters via the Birkat Said & Bani Suheila lines.
Emirati line: 5,000+ cubic meters through the Emirati line.
Deir Al Balah & Southern desalination: 18,000 cubic meters from Southern & Deir Al Balah desalination.
Dozens of local wells are active, providing tens of thousands of additional cubic meters daily.

Liars in Gaza need better memories.   

The Palestinian Media Center has been posting clips of children playing in the water.  If water were truly a scarce commodity,  would you see scenes like this?

Gaza. Blast from the Past. The more things change...

From a February 1, 1957 article on Gaza, from the Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle, detailing the extraordinary efforts Israel put in to raising the standard of living in Gaza.

"Meanwhile it was revealed that within the next two months work will be begun on linking Gaza farmland into Israel's complex irrigation to bring sufficient water this summer to increase irrigated lands in the Strip by 50 percent.  The Israel Government will subsidize water prices and, as a result, water from the Yarkon River will cost Gaza Arab farmers less than Israeli farmers in the Negev."

Some things never change.

"UNRWA, meanwhile, has agreed to strike out of textbooks, passages which incite hatred of Israel"

Its been 62 years.  We are still waiting.

Water Water Everywhere: Israel Doubles Gaza's water supply

Water issues are not unique to the Middle East. 145 countries share inter-river systems. 21 countries receive 50% or more of their freshwater from "upstream" nations. Nearly 2/3 of the world's population lives under water stress. Most shared water resources are not covered under treaties- it took the United States and Mexico 40 years of negotiation to  to agree to the 1944 Water Treaty for the "Utilization of Waters of
the Colorado and Tijuana Rivers and of the Rio Grande".

According to the World Resources Institute, Israel faces greater water stress than the Palestinian territories. 

Facing the facts on the ground, it makes this article even more remarkable.

From Haaretz: Israel doubles water supplies to Gaza

Israel's national water company Mekorot, in accordance with the Water Authority's guidelines, recently doubled its water supply to the Gaza Strip by 5 million cubic meters. The annual supply will now amount to 10 million cubic meters of water.

The new water supply of 5 million cubic meters to the Gaza Strip will come from two sources including the Nahal Oz pipeline in the south and an older line in the Kissufim area that provides water to the center of the Strip.

The article continues:

Over the years, the quantity of water supplied by Mekorot increased far beyond the amount agreed upon. Over the last five years, over 52 million cubic meters of water were annually supplied to the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and 5 million cubic meters of water were annually supplied to the Gaza Strip, nearly 2 twice the agreed-upon amount.

The amount of water provided to the Palestinian Authority from Israel's national water system and its quality are among the highest in the world, in accordance with international standards. Moreover, Israel transfers, via Mekorot, 55 million cubic meters of water annually to Jordan.

Unfortunately, in the strange and truth-option world of anti-Israel activism we can't count on the actual facts to put the water libel to rest.

Quenching California's Thirst. Lessons from Israel

Everyone is talking about the drought in California and wondering if our 4 years of  historic dryness are part of a larger future trend.  Emergency water restrictions are in place in many municipalities, with more on the way.

In an effort to quench California’s thirst, experts are looking across the ocean to tiny Israel, a country that is 60% desert.  After a seven-year drought beginning in  2005 depleted Israel’s main natural water sources — the Sea of Galilee and the mountain and coastal aquifers, Israel considered importing water from Turkey.   But now through a combination of conservation, recycling and innovation, Israel has temporarily solved its water issues.  Currently, the natural fresh water at Israel’s disposal in an average year does not cover its total use of roughly 525 billion gallons and over 50 percent of the water used in Israeli homes, agriculture and industry is artificially produced

Israel established a Water Authority  in 2007, which led the way to decrease demand and increase supply of this precious commodity.

Conservation.

A  tax was placed on excessive household water consumption, penalizing families with lawns, swimming pools and leaky pipes. Most families opted for water saving  

Recycling

Israel has  become the world leader in reusing wastewater for agriculture and landscaping. It treats 86 percent of its domestic wastewater is treated and reused- about 55 percent of the total water used for agriculture. Spain is second to Israel, recycling 17 percent of its wastewater. The United States lags behind, with only 1 percent of its water reused.

Innovation

Since 2005, Israel has built 5 desalination plants, with one-third of Israel's drinking-quality water now coming from desalination. By 2050, it is expected that 70% of Israel's drinking water will come from the sea.

For more information on what California can learn from water-thrifty Israel, see:

Israel to California: Here's How to save water

Israel Desalination Shows California Not to Fear Drought

Israel Gives California Some Advice On How To Deal With Drought

Could Israel's water technology ease drought conditions in California?

On June 11, a team of experts will be meeting in Sacramento to discuss what steps we can take to avert a water crisis, and what lessons we can learn from Israel's experiences.

And of course, there will be a protest, organized and promoted by Jewish Voice for Peace and other assorted haters.   Israel haters would rather succumb to thirst than take anything- even information- from Israel.

Water Libel

Akron Ohio in partnership with Israel

All -American city Akron has joined in a  $5 million partnership with 5 Israeli companies as part of an “Advanced Waste Water Treatment Demonstration Project.” MemTech, WaTech-Mekorot,  Technion-Israel Institute of Technology; and the Israel Export Institute will be involved with this project, that is poised to put Akron at the forefront of water recycling.

Akron Mayor Don Plusquellic said. “This is really a significant announcement to be identified as the single place in North America for these high-tech companies, ”adding “The technology eventually could help Akron deal with its ongoing combined sewage overflow issues with the federal government as well as help with the high-tech needs of wastewater facilities”

 

From the City of Akron Press Release:

 

“This Project will create new jobs and investment through business attraction, further our water initiative, and place Akron in the forefront of water innovation and technology,” said Mayor Plusquellic. “We are being entrusted with an exclusive platform and pipeline for Israeli companies to demonstrate innovative technologies and new solutions for water treatment worldwide.”

Mayor Plusquellic also mentioned Akron’s past experience with projects in Israel including: being the first US City to partner with an Israeli municipal utility in Netanya, Israel, to develop and commercialize new water technology solutions; creating a partnership with Mekorot, to promote bi-lateral cooperation and innovation; and including the Israeli water company delegation in the Akron Global Water Alliance Launch Event last October. Plusquellic particularly noted Akron’s $500,000 investment in the Targetech Innovation Center, an Israeli incubator that nurtures science, technology, research and development, and commercializes these efforts in Israeli and the U.S. market through Akron

Looks like BDS is all wet in Akron.

Israel water-use experts offering help to drought devastated California

Don Ford reports this as  "an unusual meeting in an unusual place"

Israel, a tiny desert nation has a great deal to teach California about water recycling. According to water expert Eilon Adar from Israel's Ben Gurion University California currently recycles less than 10 % of its sewage.  Israel, the world leader in water-reclaiming, reuses  83.5%.

From Wikipedia:

As of 2010, Israel leads the world in the proportion of water it recycles.^Israel treats 80% of its sewage (400 billion liters a year), and 100% of the sewage from the Tel Aviv metropolitan area is treated and reused as irrigation water for agriculture and public works. The remaining sludge is currently pumped into the Mediterranean, however a new bill has passed stating a conversion to treating the sludge to be used as manure. Only 20% of the treated water is lost (due to evaporation, leaks, overflows and seeping). The recycled water allows farmers to plan ahead and not be limited by water shortages. There are many levels of treatment, and many different ways of treating the water—which leads to a big difference in the quality of the end product. The best quality of reclaimed sewage water comes from adding a gravitational filtering step, after the chemical and biological cleansing. This method uses small ponds in which the water seeps through the sand into the aquifer in about 400 days, then is pumped out as clear purified water.

Currently, a  delegation from Israel is touring the Delta Diablo Sanitation plant in Antioch, to compare what the two countries can learn from each other regarding  recycling water.Both California and Israel are currently in serious drought conditions.

Watch it here

More Shameless Israeli Water- washing

South by South West Eco 2014   (SXSW Eco)  features three days of informative panels and workshops, inspirational speakers, intensive mentor and coaching programs, workshops, networking events, and much more. Visualize our local Green festival,  but without the irritating politics we’ve come to expect from any Global Exchange- sponsored venture.

Arie Brish, Brewster McCracken, Kevin Wagner, Michael Ben-Eli, Michael Webber spoke on Lessons from the Negev: Allaying Water Scarcity at  the Austin Convention Center as part of the SXSW Eco festival . Tiny Israel is the world’s leading water recycler- reusing nearly all of its grey water.  As we enter our fourth year of drought, California ought to pay close attention.

From the Program announcement:
 

Ambassador Meir Shlomo, Ph.D., Consul General of Israel to the Southwest of the U.S., will give opening remarks for this session. Impending water shortages affect not just agriculture, but the comforts and lifestyles many Americans have become accustomed to. Since its existence, Israel has found innovative ways to make the most of its small water resources. Because Israel and Texas share similar climatic conditions they face similar water challenges. As a result, collaborative relationships and discussions are underway to address shared water scarcity issues. These relationships coupled with evolving solutions can serve as a basis for innovative approaches elsewhere. The panel will discuss specific research, technologies and practices from several Israeli and Texas based projects and companies, as well as entities such as Mekorot, Israel's national water carrier. By considering new technologies, project based experimentation, tax incentives, market based strategies, public-private partnerships and philanthropy, a framework for enhancing collaboration and providing solutions for water scarcity will emerge. 

From Yahoo News

Israel is a desert country suffering through a devastating drought. And it has so much water it’s considering exporting the excess.

How Israel went from being chronically water stressed to banking water surpluses offers lessons for the United States and other drought-stricken regions of the world.

“Israel has been in drought since forever,” Arie Brish, a consultant to Israeli water authorities, said at a presentation at the SXSW Eco conference on Monday. “Today, most people in Israel, when they start their shower, there’s a pot to collect water and they use that water to water plants at home. It’s showers to flowers.”

The country also uses drip irrigation to send water directly to the roots of crops rather than spray water on the surface, where it evaporates. Nearly all the country’s gray water—from dishwashers, washing machines, and toilets—is recycled for irrigation.

(Texas, in contrast, only drip-irrigates about 3 percent of its crops, according to Kevin Wagner, associate director of the Texas Water Resource Institute, a state-chartered organization.)

Conservation may be ingrained in Israelis from childhood, but the construction of five massive desalinization plants since 2008 has allowed the country to become water-secure, according to Brish.

“Israel is now talking about exporting water to Turkey,” he said.

Read it all here.

BDS is all wet in California.

About two-thirds of California is facing “extreme” or “exceptional” drought with  this years' cumulative rainfall at an historically low level. In troubled times like this, California water authorities have turned to the world's expert on water issues-  Israel.   In Israel, desalination provides about one-quarter of the country’s water supply. 75 percent of the country’s sewage is reclaimed, the highest percentage in the world, and over 50 percent of water used in agriculture comes from treated sewage.

An Israeli company is currently involved in building what is expected to be America's largest seawater desalination plant    The $922 million plant is being developed by Israel's IDE Technologies working alongside a local company,  Poseidon Resources Corp. By its completion in 2016,  the plant in Carlsbad, California will be able to provide 50 million gallons of potable water a day. 15 additional plants have been proposed. Ultimately, desalinated water is expecting to provide about 10 percent of the county’s supply.


From the Bloomberg news:

Six decades of providing water in a country that’s 60 percent desert have made Israel a technological leader in the field, a model that points the way for drought-stricken California. 

Desalination of sea water, reuse of treated sewage for agriculture, software creating an early-warning system for leaks, computerized drip irrigation and careful accounting of every drop have become the norm in Israel, the world’s 40th biggest economy.
“This is the one supply that San Diego County is investing in that is truly drought-proof,” said Poseidon senior VP Peter MacLaggan. "It does cost more, but it has some reliability benefits that are very important to the regional economy.”

Avraham Tenne, head of the Desalination Division at Israel’s Water Authority offers this advice to drought weary Californians:

In the meantime, Californians should learn to conserve water, Tenne said. Raising prices, education to reduce waste, and cutting back on grassy areas are some of the methods that Israel has used to cut back on consumption, which is currently about 90 cubic meters per year per person, compared with 170 in California. 

“We do a lot of things, not just desalination,” Tenne said. “These are all things that California can do.”

The Palestinians uses water as a political weapon

Be prepared to discard much of what you've heard about water in Israel and the Palestinian Territories.Lauro Burkart a Swiss graduate of the Institute of International and Development studies in Geneva has published  a thesis titled ‘The politicization of the Oslo water agreement’ that  gives a more accurate and impartial picture of the topic of the scarcity of water in the Palestinian Authority.   Interviewing Palestinians and Israelis  and examing  original source documents such as the minutes of the meetings of the joint Israeli Palestinian Water Committee (JWC), Buckart has reached several important conclusions;

From  A Missing Peace:

The goals of the Oslo 2 water agreement have been reached regarding the quantities of water provided to the Palestinian population (178 mcm/year in 2006). The Oslo water agreement estimated that the needs would eventually be 200 mcm a year.  The Joint Water Committee functioned well in the first years following signature of the agreement, but since 2008 cooperation has come to a halt

The facts disseminated by the Palestinians, international organizations and donors about the root causes of the water scarcity in the West Bank are incorrect.

Burkart writes: ‘It is not the Israeli occupation policy but the Palestinian political resistance against joint management and cooperation that is responsible for the relatively slow development of the Palestinian water sector and the deteriorating human rights situation in the Palestinian Territories’ and ‘There is convincing evidence of mismanagement within the Palestinian Water Authority (PWA).’

He cites the pro-Palestinian NGO AMAN who concluded that there is ‘no clear legal separation between the political and executive levels within the Palestinian water institutions. To date there is no real functioning water law. Furthermore the National Water Council is not meeting and not functioning well’.

Although the PWA embarked on an institutional reform process in reaction to international critics such as the World Bank this did not solve the issue of mismanagement within the institution. The head of the Palestinian Hydrology Group called the reform a ‘fundraising mechanism’. The PWA also did not manage to gain control over many municipalities (where Israel has no control) due to the autocratic and undemocratic manner in which they are managed.  These power holders did not want to lose control of the water systems since it was one of the main services provided by the municipalities.  As a result the water supply is not centralized and illegal drilling is rampant.

The fact that the PA pays for most of the water bills of the Palestinian population gives no incentive for saving and leads to an unreasonable use of water in the domestic sphere as well as in the agricultural sector.

Read the entire article at A Missing Piece. Lauro Bukart's full thesis is available for download as well.

86 Wells Approved for W. Bank but PA has failed to drill

Photo: Palm Trees by the Sea of Galilee

NOTE TO READER: In the long list of "crimes" the State of Israel is accused of, "stealing" water is always on the list. The last time I investigated the merits of the claim, I found that the major aquafirs that Israel taps into reside on Israeli territory. If anything, unchecked Palestinian building sans permits or appropriate sewage planning have caused something of an environmental problem which affects the water supply. This appeared in the Jerusalem Post on August 5, 2009. --- Becky Johnson -- One Woman Talking
Sept 12 2009

Israel Refutes Claims on West Bank Water Supply

- Yaakov Katz
(excerpted from the Jerusalem Post)

Palestinian claims that Israel denies water rights in the West Bank are "baseless and incorrect," Lt.-Col. Amnon Cohen, head of the civil administration's infrastructures department, said Tuesday. He said that in 2007 the Palestinians received 47 million cubic meters of water and in 2008 over 52 million. In addition, Israel recently allocated land on the beach next to Hadera for a Palestinian water desalination plant, which could provide over 100 million cubic meters of water annually. "The land was allocated over a year ago and the Palestinians have yet to move forward with the project," he said. "The Palestinians do not cooperate to try and independently improve their water situation," Cohen added. "While we in Israel are cutting back on water use due to the drought and imposing fines on people who use too much water, the Palestinians are doing nothing of the kind."

The Palestinians claimed that while the Israeli-PA joint water committee approved the drilling of 82 wells, none have been carried out due to Israeli refusal. "This is nonsense," Cohen explained. "Out of the 82, 43 are in Areas A and B which are under PA control and they do not need us involved. Out of the remaining 39, in Area C and under Israeli security control, 21 have been approved and 11 have not even been submitted for approval." Dozens of drillings have been approved over the years but the Palestinians have not acted upon them. There are already 11 open wells in the territories that have not been connected to pumps. "If they were to connect the wells, they would get another 11 million cubic meters of water," he said. (Jerusalem Post)

Article can be read in its entirety here.