Israel has drawn up a clandestine plan for a giant desalination plant to supply drinking water to the Palestinian territory in West Bank. Apparently this is a ploy to retain control of the region's aquifers and keep at bay pressures to grant water to any future Palestinian state.
The new plan calls for seawater to be desalinated at Caesaria on the Mediterranean coast, and then pumped into West Bank. From here a network of pipes will deliver the water to large towns as well as several of the 250 villages currently relying on local springs and small wells. Israel, which wants the us to fund the project, has promised to ensure safe passage of the water on the condition that it can keep getting the lion's share of West Bank's waters.
The water sources of the area comprise West Bank's aquifers, Jordan river and the coastal aquifer. Of these, Palestinians residing in the Gaza Strip depend almost exclusively on small wells tapping the coastal aquifer. The Oslo agreement of September 1993 gives Palestine access to 57 cubic metres of water per person per year from all sources, while Israel gets a whopping 246 cubic metres per head per year. In the past 40 years that Israel has controlled West Bank, Palestinians have been largely forbidden from drilling new wells or recharging old ones.
According to Uri Shamir, the director of water research at the Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, the desalination project is "the only viable long-term solution". But other hydrologists point out that the process would cost around us $1 per cubic metre, too high for an average Palestinian family.
For their part, Palestinian water negotiators are deeply uneasy about the plans being drawn up on their behalf, especially if they involve abandoning claims to the water beneath their feet.