Oblique reservoirs
Groundwater aquifers are underground water containers and are a key component of the geochemical water cycle: when it rains, water reaches the ground and has three possible destinations: it flows into streams, rivers, lakes and then evaporates again; it is absorbed by vegetation, part of which will be released as vapour during the transpiration process; or it penetrates the ground by pushing through the unsaturated zone by passing the phreatic surface to reach the subsurface level where the water is present – the saturated zone. Groundwater is an element of the hydrogeological basin, which may consist of one or more aquifers constituting the most permeable hydrogeological units within which groundwater flows. The hydrogeological basin is usually composed of different permeable materials such as un-compacted gravel and sand, sedimentary rocks such as sandstone and limestone, or fractured volcanic and crystalline rocks.
Chart 1: Water consumption data and market capitalization of five large agribusiness companies. Although Nestle has seen a 15 percent decrease from 2020, its water footprint remains the highest among companies in the sector. If today’s consumerist pattern remains unchanged there will be a 40 percent water deficit by 2030. It is expected that national governments will impose more controls and stricter regulations such as limits on freshwater withdrawals, but slow bureaucracy, technological advancement, and conflicts of interest are obstacles to the development of a sustainable agribusiness (Total Water Withdrawal by Top Food Companies in 2021, Global Data).
Natural groundwater recharge is represented by precipitation, infiltration from rivers or lakes, and agricultural activities when crops are irrigated more than necessary. Conversely, overexploitation of aquifers or long periods of drought lead to a reduction in available resources. Other factors affecting groundwater availability are evaporation rates; soil characteristics; the amount and type of vegetation; and the porosity and permeability of soil and rocks. Finally, groundwater in turn contributes to the maintenance of the level and flow in rivers, lakes and wetlands, especially in times of drought. In fact, water underground does not stand still, but moves very slowly driven by gravity until it is discharged into another aquifer or reservoir unless there are anthropogenic impacts such as well pumping activities. The low velocity and underground location of these natural water supplies implies that the negative impact of human activities is difficult to identify with certainty and can last for a long time.
Figure 1: The hydrogeological basin: aquifers are an element of the hydrogeological basin, which may consist of one or more aquifers constituting the most permeable hydrogeological units within which groundwater flows. The aquifer is the seat of the aquifer but the two terms are not synonymous since they do not always correspond. In the case of the confined aquifer – bounded both above and below by impermeable rocks, water is present throughout the rock layer (the aquifer corresponds to the water table), while the aquifer closer to the surface is never fully saturated precisely to allow rainwater to seep into the ground and recharge the water table.
Le acque sotterranee nel Levante
Le Falde Acquifere della regione del Levante sono costituite da calcare e dolomite e attraversano i confini di Israele, Palestina, Giordania e Siria e quindi la loro gestione è particolarmente problematica. L’impatto antropogenico sulle falde della regione ha due principali conseguenze: l’aumento della salinità dovuto al sovrasfruttamento e all’aumento della superficie marina; e la contaminazione dell’acqua causata dall’assenza di adeguati sistemi di depurazione dei liquami e dei rifiuti industriali.
In questa regione arida e scarsamente interessata dalle precipitazioni, le risorse idriche sotterranee sono rappresentate dalla Falda Acquifera Montana che giace sotto la Cisgiordania e si estende dalla valle del Fiume Giordano a est fino al Mar Mediterraneo a ovest; e la Falda Costiera che si estende lungo la piana costiera della catena montuosa del Carmel a nord sino a Gaza nel sud. Meno consistenti sono le risorse idriche sotterranee della Galilea Occidentale, le Falde Carmel a nord e la Falda Negev-Aravah a sud.
Groundwater in the Levant
The Aquifers in the Levant region consist of limestone and dolomite and cross the borders of Israel, Palestine, Jordan, and Syria, so their management is particularly problematic. Anthropogenic impacts on the region’s aquifers have two main consequences: increased salinity due to overexploitation and increased sea area; and water contamination caused by the absence of adequate sewage and industrial waste treatment systems. In this arid region with little rainfall, the groundwater resources are represented by the Mountain Aquifer that lies beneath the West Bank and extends from the Jordan River valley in the east to the Mediterranean Sea in the west; and the Coastal Aquifer that extends along the coastal plain of the Carmel mountain range in the north to Gaza in the south. Less substantial are the groundwater resources of the Western Galilee, the Carmel Aquifer in the north and the Negev-Aravah Aquifer in the south.
Groundwater is the main fresh water resource of Palestinians, accounting for 69% of water resources. The water availability in all of Palestine is 417.9 MCM, of which 289 MCM comes from wells built by Arabs that draw from the aquifer at an increasing rate that corresponded to 79% in 2019, creating a risk for future availability because the replacement rate is already much lower than the extraction rate. The Montana Aquifer is the largest in the region and is affected by abundant rainfall that recharges groundwater with an average of 721 MCM. It is divided into three sub-basins: Western, Eastern and Northeastern that flow north and west towards the territory of Israel and eastward feeding the Jordan River. The sustainable yield of these resources is 360 MCM annually, but Israel alone extracts about 600 MCM, which amounts to one-third of the Hebrew state’s consumption of fresh water. To cope with the increasing saline seepage from the salty water body lying beneath the aquifer, Israel has developed modern desalination plants that have ensured recovery of optimal aquifer levels, and today the Israel Water Authority is maintaining a sustainable extraction rate while limiting soil and water pollution derived from anthropogenic activities. Access to the resources of the Mountain Aquifer is particularly problematic for geomorphological and political reasons: to date, the water extracted by the Arab population of the West Bank does not exceed 14% of the total potential of the three sub-basins because the reservoir extends under an area shared by Israel and the Palestinian Authority, as stipulated in the Oslo Accords. Relations between the Palestinians and their water resources are bound by the decisions and measures of the Israel Water Authority and the national water company Mekorot, which have unlimited access to groundwater.
The situation is very different in Gaza, where rainfall is less abundant and the Coastal Aquifer is recharged for a maximum of 60 MCM annually. There are few wells in Gaza compared to those in the West Bank, but they extract far more water – 187.6 MCM in 2019 – indicating an alarming depletion of groundwater reserves, with the water level in the aquifer dropping 19 metres below sea level. Israel does not allow Palestinians to transfer water from the West Bank to Gaza, so the Arab population is forced to extract more water resources where they are scarce while they are deprived of water exploitation where it abounds. Along with the excessive withdrawal of groundwater and the resulting increase in salinity levels comes pollution due to anthropogenic activities, such as the seepage of chemicals used in agriculture – fertilisers and pesticides, contamination from industrial wastes, and the release of sewage into surface streams that seep into the aquifer. As a result, the state of the hydrological basin under Gaza is in tragic condition with about 96% of the groundwater undrinkable. In contrast, according to the Israel Hydrological Service, only 15% of the water pumped into the northern part of the Coastal Aquifer does not meet potability requirements due to high chlorine and nitrate concentrations, and about 40% of Israeli wells installed in 1980 are no longer in use. To cope with this problem, Israel has made substantial investments in sewage treatment plants since the 2000s, and today the Coastal Aquifer contributes 240-300 MCM of water to the water needs of the population of the Jewish state.
Climate warming and the water crisis in the Levant
Aquifers are already a key water source for the Levant region, but their importance will be even more significant in the near future because the evaporation rate of surface water is steadily increasing with marked differences depending on the area: in 2019 in Jericho and Hebron there were increases of 15% and 29%, respectively, above the annual average. In fact, it is estimated that the region will be affected by a general increase in seasonal average temperatures by 2100, which will be accompanied by the lengthening of the hot and dry season from four to six months while winter will shorten from four to two months. In addition, seasonal precipitation will decrease by up to 40 percent in some areas, but will be much more intense in others over circumscribed annual periods. This dynamic will drastically reduce vegetation soil cover, a key element in preventing drought and erosion. The sudden pouring of rainfall in short, limited periods and in the absence of vegetation will have even more dramatic implications, such as increased frequency of flooding and the spread of tropical diseases such as cholera.
NASA research estimates that such an acute and prolonged dry spell may already be upon us: the dry spell that began in 1998 in the Eastern Mediterranean would be the most acute in nine centuries and will contribute to increased desertification and forest fires. The region has already experienced very acute heat waves in recent years that have negatively impacted crops, livestock, and people. Finally, sea-level rise, in addition to increasing saltwater intrusion into coastal aquifers, could also threaten land, soil and coastal infrastructure, while ocean warming could negatively impact both Palestinian and Israeli fishing activities. As pointed out by Karry B. Anderson, Middle East political risk advisor, “Climate change will have many effects on Israel and the Occupied Territories, but the most important will be the decrease in water supply.”
Structural scarcity
It has already been discussed how political trade-offs related to water resource management can either ensure the modernization of water infrastructure and thus compensate for seasonal scarcity or, on the contrary, result in the deterioration of infrastructure with the consequent decrease in the availability of drinking water for citizens and usable water for agricultural activities and industrial processes. Political decisions can take on even greater significance when two countries share their water resources, as in the case of Palestine and Israel, where conflicts over water can be traced back to the period of the British Mandate (1923 – 1948), when the British government entrusted hydrologist Michael Ionides with the analysis of water resources and irrigation potential of the Jordan Valley Basin. Independent resource management persisted until 1967, when Israel began its illegal occupation of Palestine. The presence of settlers involves not only the usurpation of space but also (and especially) of “hidden” resources such as the underground aquifers that were declared state property after the end of the war. In addition, the Jordan River Valley, historically an area inhabited by Arab nomads, has become a military area restricted to Palestinian access. Immediately after the war, in November 1967, the Israeli authority issued Military Order 158 imposing strict restrictions on the supply of Palestinians who cannot build new water facilities without first obtaining a permit from the Israeli army. Little or no use was made of the Oslo Accords, which provided for the principle of “equitable use” of the water resource, and to this day Palestinians are still denied the ability to drill wells, install submersible pumps or develop existing wells without first obtaining a permit, which is virtually impossible to receive. Between 1967 and 1989, 36 wells were built in the West Bank by settlers but not a single one by Palestinians. In addition, settlers supported by the Israeli army systematically destroy cisterns in which Palestinian communities traditionally stored rainwater.
Another issue that well exemplifies the structural deprivations imposed on Palestinians’ water consumption is desalination and wastewater treatment plants. In Gaza, desalination technologies include 150 small plants of which more than half are privately owned and use the reverse osmosis process but do not monitor water quality. In the West Bank, plants are few and of limited capacity with 162 wells using brackish water for irrigation. In contrast, the Tel Aviv government has five modern seawater desalination plants located on the coast that alone artificially produce more than 50% of the drinking water consumed by the Jewish state. These plants are directly connected to the National Water Carrier (NWC), a system that transports water from the north to the arid regions of the south that have significantly increased water consumption on the backs of the impoverished northern regions. Desalination plants, however, take an economic and ecological toll because they require a lot of energy and thus increase CO2 in the atmosphere; they operate through the use of harmful chemical components; and they require the confiscation of coastal areas with negative impacts on the marine ecosystem. In addition, these plants produce iodine-free water that has serious impacts on public health. As for wastewater disposal, 53% of Palestinians are connected to sewage systems, the remainder is discharged directly into the environment. In Gaza, the sewage network totals 1888 km, yet the energy costs of operating this infrastructure often negatively impacts the sewage service. In 2004 alone, 60 million cubic metres of sewage was discharged into the environment by Palestinians polluting West Bank waterways flowing to Israel, thus contaminating underground aquifers throughout the region. The situation is even more dramatic in industrial areas such as Hebron, where carcinogens are being discharged into the environment, polluting the water used by Israel’s desalination plants. In comparison, Israel has installed several sewage treatment plants since the 1980s, growing to 87 large ones that in total treat 1,000 m3 per day. As University of Cincinnati research (2014) points out, the Palestinians’ inability to equip themselves with modern and efficient sewage treatment plants is a direct result of the occupation: Israel continues to deny Palestine development projects for sewage management and prevents the construction of water infrastructure, even that funded by external actors. The only plant built in 1998, funded by the UN International Development Agency, is still unused because Israel fears that one of the recycling components – sulfuric acid – could be used by Palestinians to build explosive devices.
As a result of all these structural deprivations, compared to the 300 litres per day consumed by an average Israeli, an average Palestinian has between 60 and 90 litres of water per day, among nomadic communities this number can drop to 20 litres, well below the World Health Organization (WHO) minimum limit of 100 litres per day, and more than 180 Palestinian communities in rural areas of the West Bank are without running water (OCHA).
Apartheid idrico
L’occupazione della terra della Cisgiordania da parte degli oltre 600 mila coloni israeliani è basata sulla sistematica depredazione e separazione dei palestinesi dalle loro risorse naturali, specialmente quelle idriche. Il diritto d’accesso all’acqua è un diritto umano fondamentale tutelato dalla Quarta Convenzione di Ginevra che si interseca con altri diritti fondamentali che lo Stato occupante deve garantire allo Stato occupato – come il diritto al cibo, alle forniture mediche e alla salute pubblica.
Tuttavia, dopo il 1967, i coloni ebrei diedero inizio a un processo di isolamento e rimozione delle risorse idriche realizzato con la coercizione, la violenza e l’imposizione di un regime di scarsità che caratterizza la vita di tante comunità della Cisgiordania. Questo processo può essere ricostruito come segue: dopo la guerra dei Sei Giorni, i primi coloni iniziarono da subito a creare degli avamposti in Cisgiordania che vennero prontamente collegati alla rete idrica al fine di ottenere un sistema di distribuzione a gestione totalmente israeliana e destinato all’uso esclusivo della popolazione ebrea; successivamenti gli avamposti si allargarono e diventarono gli odierni insediamenti – i kibbutz – e oggi se ne creano sempre di nuovi e con maggiore aggressività; allo sviluppo dei kibbutz, si affianca l’attività dei coloni che armati e sostenuti dall’esercito incendiano le case, bloccano il traffico, manomettono le reti elettriche, tagliano i tubi per l’irrigazione e confiscano i campi.
Chart 2: Total Palestinian water resources. Groundwater is a critical resource because Palestinians in the West Bank do not have access to surface water while in Gaza they are deprived of opportunities to build modern water desalination plants. The continued exploitation of groundwater resources together with the water apartheid imposed by the Jewish state are causing the over-exploitation of the aquifer, which is being contaminated by the saline reservoir underneath it and by anthropogenic activities such as sewage disposal and excessive use of fertilisers. The graph shows the consequence of Israel’s imposed structural scarcity regime: the Palestinians segregated from their water resources and are forced to buy more and more water at very disadvantageous prices from the Israeli national company Mekorot with negative impacts on human health and the sustenance of agricultural activities that form the basis of the Palestinian economy.
Water Apartheid
The occupation of West Bank land by the more than 600,000 Israeli settlers is based on the systematic depredation and separation of Palestinians from their natural resources, especially water resources. The right of access to water is a fundamental human right protected by the Fourth Geneva Convention that intersects with other fundamental rights that the occupying state must guarantee to the occupied state – such as the right to food, medical supplies and public health. However, after 1967, Jewish settlers began a process of isolation and removal of water resources carried out through coercion, violence and the imposition of a regime of scarcity that characterises the lives of so many West Bank communities. This process can be reconstructed as follows: after the Six-Day War, the first settlers immediately began to establish outposts in the West Bank that were promptly connected to the water network in order to achieve a fully Israeli-run distribution system for the exclusive use of the Jewish population; later the outposts expanded and became today’s settlements – the kibbutzim – and today new ones are being created more and more aggressively; the development of the kibbutzim is accompanied by the activity of settlers who, armed and supported by the army, set fire to houses, block traffic, tamper with power grids, cut irrigation pipes and confiscate fields. The deprivation of the water resource has been and is a key element of Israel’s colonialism, which has been able to create invisible corridors that carry water to all regions of the Jewish state and tend to compact the settler presence and isolate the increasingly rarefied Palestinian presence. Similarly, the Jordan Valley has become a military zone where Israel is implementing a project to channel water from East Jerusalem and transport it into the valley to feed the settlers’ date plantations, limiting access to water resources for the 65,000 Palestinians in the region.
Throughout Area C – Israel’s administrative zone – Israel disenfranchises the water rights of Palestinians who have lived in the region for many generations and ironically are forced to travel twice a day to the nearest water refill point operated by the Mekorot company when the company itself owns the pipes that run beneath their homes. The national company Mekorot provides water to Palestinian water utilities, but often imposes arbitrary restrictions on distribution as in the summer of 2023, when the Palestinian Water Authority (PWA) reported a reduction in daily supply in the cities of Hebron and Bethlehem for no apparent reason or technical reason. The decision to reduce the equivalent of 6,000 glasses daily was called a “racist” move by the PWA, especially during the scorching summer period. Because of these restrictions, Palestinian communities in the West Bank have no choice but to purchase water transported by trucks also owned by Mekorot at a much higher price ranging from $4 to $10 per cubic metre. For the poorest communities, the expense of purchasing water can take up half of the monthly income of the entire family. Mekorot is responsible for systematically opening wells and capturing springs in the West Bank to supply the Israeli population, including settlers living in illegal settlements. In 1972, Mekorot established a major pumping station by capturing the Wadi Auja spring, which was an abundant source of water and supplied Arab villages and fields through a series of irrigation canals. Mekorot’s coercive practices seem symmetrical to those of the settlers who since the 1970s have established new settlements by encompassing local springs and forcing the Arab population to buy water from the Israeli company.
One example is the village of Qaryut, where the five local springs have been systematically tapped by settlers since the 1980s. The segregation of Palestinians from their land occurs in repeated acts of daily violence such as the one on March 27, 2022 when seven settlers and five soldiers drove a number of Arab farmers from their fields, two of whom recorded settlers stealing four spools of plastic irrigation pipes that would be used for the installation of a drip irrigation system funded entirely by the Red Cross. After resuming from the armed conflict on Oct. 7, 2023, the settlers’ aggression became increasingly aggressive. At the end of the year, after destroying one of the large water reservoirs near one of Qaryut’s springs that had been employed by generations of Palestinian farmers for irrigation, settlers and the army closed off access to the spring and set to work turning the reservoir into a large pool.
The consequences of water apartheid have even greater effects for agricultural activities, the basis of the Palestinian economy. Traditional citrus farmers have had to diversify their crops due to water scarcity and can only plant seeds that do not require much water and at the same time are less profitable, such as zucchini, squash and cucumbers. In the past, Arab citrus growers were also active exporters of lemons and oranges, which were a key economic income. Amnesty reports on the case of a farmer and former exporter in Al-Auja village who had access to water for only 40 days in 2017, losing the gourd crop that requires at least 120 a year. In addition, many of the residents of this village were forced to find work on farms located in settler settlements, whose access to water is unlimited. Similar fate befell the village of Furush Beit Dajan in the northern West Bank with a population of 930, known for its citrus cultivation. Coinciding with the long-awaited Oslo Accords in 1995, the village’s farmers had to diversify their crops due to a lack of water because the neighbouring Israeli settlements of Hamra and Mehora had depleted the water reserves in the Eastern Aquifer that they had begun exploiting since the 1970s.
Conclusions
Groundwater reveals the paradigm of the modern consumerist model: hidden resources whose existence and importance we ignore continue to be withdrawn at an ever-increasing rate and are contaminated by increasingly intrusive human activities. In the Levant, maintaining the good status of groundwater poses an even more complex challenge because its management is shared by Israel and Palestine, which have been perpetually at war since the 1920s. The rate of extraction of these resources is already very high and is bound to increase because of the grim prospects of climate change that will diminish the presence of surface water. Add to this the fact that Israel imposes a regime of structural scarcity through ad-hoc laws and arbitrary restrictions on the exploitation of Palestinians’ land resources coupled with complicity between the Mekorot company that controls the region’s water resources and West Bank settler violence that yearns for the complete isolation of Palestinians from their resources and thus from their land. This dramatic situation harms both sides and will have neither winners nor losers: the waters of the Mountain Aquifer are the main resources of the region and flow from the West Bank into the northern Israeli territory. It is understood that if these are irreversibly contaminated both states will have to pursue the development of new technologies and find an agreement to preserve the region’s water resources that do not follow the boundaries decided by the national policy of sovereign states.
A graduate in Chinese Studies (Unibg and Unimc), he is currently pursuing a degree in Environmental Humanities at Ca’ Foscari University. He is a teacher of Italian in a public school in Beijing. He believes in the importance of environmental justice.
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