The parched soil is cracked open. Half of the citrus crops are rotting on the ground, where they have fallen prematurely, and the rest are badly shrunken, unlikely to bring much on the market. The thirsty trees are skeletons of themselves.
“I won’t get any money from the crops and I will have to borrow. This is the first time I have ever borrowed because of the crops,” said farmer Ali Abu Shariyah, glancing up at the fierce, blistering sun after crouching close to the ground to gather some of the dead fruit.
All along the Jordan Valley, a narrow sliver of land just east of the Jordan River that represents this desert kingdom’s only stretch of green, the worst drought in 90 years threatens to further divide a politically unstable part of the world.
Who gets what water and how is as critical an issue in Middle East diplomacy as any.
While land, peace and security issues continue to divide Israelis and Arabs, it is the unalterable necessity of water, upon which life itself depends, that simultaneously brings them together yet sets them at loggerheads. There is a universal recognition of the need for Israel and the Palestinians–and their neighbors–to share the region’s scarce fresh water resources.
Under the peace accords, the Palestinians and Israelis are to work out the status of water resources in their final agreement. Israel now controls the basic resources; the Palestinians are responsible for developing new additional resources.
Israel provided new water resources to Jordan as part of its peace treaty with the kingdom, but not all of the co-operative plans have been carried out. The Jordanians do not blame the Israelis, however, saying other issues have taken greater priority.
So, too, water is linked to any future Israeli peace deals with Lebanon and Syria.
If the Israelis hand over the Golan Heights to Syria, then the Israelis would be giving up as much as 5 percent of their water resources. The Lebanese have ample amounts of water in southern Lebanon, and it is widely expected that any deal with them is likely to involve sending some water to parched farms in Israel’s northern Galilee region.
Against this background, Middle East governments are seeking solutions to the water shortage.
Faced with the most severe drought since Israel became a state 51 years ago, Israeli officials earlier this year threatened to markedly cut back on the water they supply Jordan as part of the two nations’ 1994 peace agreement.
Amid fierce protests from the Jordanians, the Israelis ultimately agreed to send the same annual amount, but to change the distribution over the time period, said Avedis Serpekian, head of the Jordan Valley Authority in Amman.
Others allege the Israelis have cut back on the water. Serpekian insists that is not true.
Stirred by Israel’s threatened cutbacks, Jordan’s King Abdullah II not long ago turned to the Syrians, who have long been fierce opponents of the Hashemites, Jordan’s ruling family. In turn, the Syrians, who have their own problems in transporting water to their southern region, agreed to supply a small quantity of water to Jordan during the hottest months this year. The Syrians seemed eager to cement their ties with the new king.
Meanwhile, the Israelis, fearful that their water conservation efforts will not be enough, have been talking with the Turks about buying water from them, and shipping it across the Mediterranean Sea.
In Jordan, entire crops have been destroyed by the drought. New trees have been sacrificed to save older ones. And the soil is slowly dying from exposure to polluted water, the only kind available for most farmers.
The Sea of Galilee, one of Israel’s three major sources of water, has already reached the red line for withdrawing water. The fear is that as the water level drops further, the historic sea may be permanently damaged.
If Israel’s water shortage is not resolved, half of Israel’s farms may vanish in a decade, warns professor Moshe Inbar, head of Haifa University’s geography department.
The Jordan River, which separates Israel from Jordan, is so low pilgrims do not need a miracle to cross it. And as its water level continues to shrink, the slow-moving, dirty brown stream and its narrow banks may sustain long-term environmental damage.
Most Jordanians do not have to be told they have a serious environmental problem. They have drinking water only one day a week, the most extreme rationing the government has resorted to in years.
In the densely crowded Gaza Strip, the lack of water has forced Palestinians to drink water polluted by the nearby eastern Mediterranean, forcing officials to use excessive levels of chlorine to clean it. And in the West Bank, Palestinians, who have about half of the water resources of the Israelis, beg for water or empty their thin wallets to buy water at exorbitant prices.
The situation is so dire that Israeli peace activists have occasionally brought water to thirsty Arab villages as a sign of compassion.
Jordan faces the worst situation in the region because it had the least water to start with. It is almost totally a desert where nearly all of the rainfall evaporates the same day it hits the ground.
What accelerated Jordan’s long-term water problem was the combination of a growing demand–reflecting the arrival of thousands of Palestinians expelled from Persian Gulf nations after the gulf war–and an unusually dry winter.
“This year the rainfall was almost nil. By the end of the rainy season in April, the water was only 40 percent of the normal amount,” says Serpekian, whose agency is in charge of developing the Jordan Valley, where more than a quarter of a million people live.
Because of the drought, most farmers have lost their summer crops, he says. Because of the drought, the scarcity of water has led the Jordan Valley Authority to ship just under half of what most farmers need to irrigate their fields. And so, too, the water coming from the King Talal Dam, Jordan’s major reservoir, is more polluted than usual because there is less water to dilute it.
For Tayseer Ghezawi, the drought has a special meaning, and special pain.
As an official of the Jordan Valley Authority in Deir Allah in the heart of the valley, he has to deal with farmers’ constant stories of despair. The tall, thin middle-aged water engineer comes from a farm family, and so he knows what it is to see fields go fallow, leaves dry up and scatter, and hard-working neighbors sink into debt.
On an even hotter-than-usual summer day, with the temperature just above 100, Ghezawi takes a ride in an automobile, bouncing along the bumpy farm roads, exploring the latest damage to the farmers’ fields.
He comes upon Shariyah, who is doling out his water as if he were dispensing drops of an expensive wine. Normally, it takes him three hours to water his citrus trees, but now, he says, it takes him all day and he waters only a selected handful.
“I’m so depressed by this,” the farmer admits.
Traveling further along the roads, Ghezawi points out the fields where the vegetables were burnt crisp, and where the farmers, desperate for water, are using polluted water and farm land runoff. They will have one or two meager crops and then the soil will be destroyed permanently by the water, he says with a shrug.
He is stopped by two exasperated farmers who raise their arms in the air and rapidly spell out their complaints about how their lives will be destroyed by the drought. He tells them to come see him in his office and he will try to help them somehow.
Ghezawi takes the road that runs along the Jordan River, and gets out to examine the river. It is lower than usual, and darker, meaning that there is more polluted runoff and less clean water flowing south from the Sea of Galilee. Pilgrims coming to the place where John baptized Jesus will not be happy with the scene, he says.
It is a broiling hot day and he would like to take a shower at the end of it, but this is not the day for tap water in his town, according to the government’s rationing schedule, he says. But that’s a small sacrifice, he adds, compared to what is happening to the fields.
Finally he arrives at a field where a farmer has invested heavily in the latest equipment and latest techniques. The trees are hardly any healthier than the others.
“Look at this,” he says, staring at yellowed scraps in his hands. “Look, how these leaves are suffering.”
