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On the International Day
for Water "By getting out watery rights, we can ensure the development of our country" The case of suffering from a shortage in water supply and bad quality of the existing one is considered one of the most important environmental and economical issues that occupy that Middle East thinking, since it is considered as a national case, and on top of the priority of any country. The area of the Middle East is considered to have the Eco-System of Semi-desert, meaning that the rain is its only source for water, and it is always threatened in scarcity of the water resources, as well as the high degrees of sun in the summer causes around 60-70% of this rain to be steamed. Considering that, this fact was considered as the lotto card in the hand of Israel, since from the time of the occupation, Israel took over all the natural water resources in the area, and get as much usage of the agricultural land as possible, which made them concentrate on Tiberius, Al-Yarmook Triangle, The Syrian Hill, and south of Lebanon, where these areas are the main source of water to Palestine. Water resources sharing proposals: After the year of 49, the United Nations tried to find a solution over the water conflict and secure it's pumping to all around the area, so a project called Johnston (1953) appeared on the scene, when the Republic of Syria complained against the changing of the bath of Tiberius water to Al-Nakab, hence this program became the major step in sharing the water, and it declared that the water would be distributed as follows; Jordan: 774 Million m3, Syria: 45 Million m3, Israel: 394 Million m3, and the West Bank share was joined with the Jordanian one. But the Arab countries refused such distribution, and proposed another project to get use of the water of the Jordan River and its feeders (Al-Yarmook), according to this project, a channel called "the south Valley channel" was supposed to build and carry the water to the Valley lands, the values was estimated to be 220 Million m3, but this proposal was a failure, and it didn’t implement on the real life. Hence, the farmers had replaced this channel with a water bumps from the river to their lands, but these bumps were destroyed after the war of 1967, which upon that, the share of the Palestinians in water had been stopped, and from that time till now, the situation is the same with no progress to solve this problem. The Water issue in the Peace Negotiations: The water issues was one of the most important issues that had been laid on the table of negotiation beginning in Madrid convention; which resulted in the reforming of a union for the negotiation, as for the first Oslo Convention-1993, it was mentioned that the water rights for each side would be based upon the fair use of the water resources. In Cairo convention-1994, which was called the convention of Gaza-Jericho, the water structure (mentioned above) of the two areas was totally under the authority of the Palestinian, and Israel had been given the right to provide water for the settlements and army camps through a company called Microt. Oslo Agreement (2): The point 1 paragraph 40 of this agreement, states that "Israel agrees upon the water rights of the Palestinians, and there will be negotiation upon these rights to find a settlement through the end of the negotiation period." This agreement agreed upon urgency of given the Palestinian their supplies from water, where they were given approximately 26million m3 most of it comes from the eastern pool, and also declared the Palestinian right of getting 80 million m3 in the next phase. But this agreement was never implemented in reality. What are the water rights of the
Palestinians? The water rights can be summed as follows:
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Laith Hazim Qumsiyeh
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