ISRAEL 



merging with the Jordan River 

 in Israel. The Jordan then con- 

 tinues its journey southward to 

 the Dead Sea. 



A source of water crossing 

 so many political boundaries, 

 especially given the overheated 

 politics and thirsty terrain of 

 the Middle East, is a recipe for 

 tension. Political leaders have 

 routinely threatened war over 

 the control of water. Golda 

 Meir warned in 1960, when 

 she was the Israeli foreign min- 

 ister, that any attempt by Arab 

 nations to divert the northern 

 tributaries of the Jordan would 

 be "an outright attack on one 

 ot Israel's means of livelihood" 

 and "a threat to peace." In 1990 

 Jordan's King Hussein declared 

 that water was the only issue 

 that could take him to war 

 with Israel. 



Ever since the creation of 

 Israel in historic Palestine in 

 1948, the quest for water se- 

 curity among the parties of 

 the Jordan basin has veered 

 between unilateral action and 

 cooperation. Recognizing the 

 importance of water-sharing 

 to the region's stability, in 1953 

 the U.S. president, Dwight D. 

 Eisenhower, appointed Eric 



Johnston, chair of the International Development Advisory 

 Board, as special ambassador to the region to help negotiate 

 a water-development plan. After two years, the so-called 

 Johnston formula emerged. It allocated water according 

 to the amount and location of irrigable land that could 

 receive surface water by gravity — a sensible approach that 

 placed water "needs" above water "rights." By overlaying 

 political boundaries on the map of irrigation potential, 

 the Johnston plan arrived at a fair and technically feasible 

 way of divvying up the water. Amazingly, the Johnston 

 plan was acceptable to all parties at the time (though the 

 Palestinians were not yet viewed as a distinct political 

 entity). In the end, however, politics won out over ratio- 

 nality, and the plan was never formally ratified. 



A spate of unilateral moves to capture and claim water 

 followed, dramatically changing the hydrological land- 

 scape. In 1964 Israel began conveying the upper Jordan 

 into its National Water Carrier, a system of canals and 

 tunnels that supplies water to Tel Aviv and other coastal 

 cities, as well as to desert agriculturalists in the Negev. 



JORDAN 



Attempts by the Arab nations 

 to thwart Israel's diversion 

 plans and capture the Jordan's 

 headwaters for their own use 

 led to skirmishes in the mid- 

 1960s, including Israeli attacks 

 on construction facilities at 

 diversion sites in Syria. 



t was Israel's military victo- 

 ries during the Six-Day War 

 of June 1967, however, that 

 sealed its strategic hydrologic 

 advantage. None other than 

 Ariel Sharon, an Israeli com- 

 mander in that war, noted 

 that "the Six-Day War really 

 started on the day Israel de- 

 cided to act against the diver- 

 sion of the Jordan." Before the 

 war, less than a tenth of the 

 Jordan River watershed lay 

 within Israel's borders; by the 

 war's end, Israel had secured 

 the vast majority of it. Israeli 

 control extended to what had 

 been Syria's Golan Heights 

 (which drain into the Sea of 

 Galilee) and Baniyas River, as 

 well as to critical groundwater 

 aquifers under the West Bank. 

 The latter territory, previously 

 the possession of Jordan, now 

 provides Israel with about a 

 third of its water. 

 The three underground aquifers of the West Bank 

 figure centrally in any effort to delineate and constitute 

 a Palestinian state. The Yarqon-Taninim aquifer, the 

 largest, runs along the foothills of the West Bank and 

 flows westward across the Green Line (the Israeli bound- 

 ary before the 1967 war) toward the Mediterranean Sea. 

 Israel can now tap this groundwater on either side of the 

 Green Line, but the aquifer's main recharge zones lie 

 under the West Bank. 



During its occupation of the West Bank, Israel has 

 prevented Palestinians from drilling wells for irrigation 

 and has severely restricted Palestinian access to supplies. 

 Journalist Fred Pearce reported in his 2006 book When 

 The Rivers Run Dry that Palestinian families around Nab- 

 lus spend between 20 and 40 percent of their income on 

 water for drinking, cooking, and cleaning, while Israeli 

 settlers nearby enjoy lawns and swimming pools. 



This hydrologic inequity has worsened as a result of 

 Israel's construction of the controversial separation barrier 

 that it began building in 2002. Israeli military officials say 



Green Line 



Israel National Water Carrier 

 Jordan River Basin 



62 



na'iurai history November 2007 



