Palestine, Israel and the Geo-Politics of Water

You care for the land and water it;
you enrich it abundantly.
The streams of God are filled with water
to provide the people with grain,
for so you have ordained it.
Psalm 65: 9-10



In 1985 the then Egyptian Minister of State for Foreign Affairs and future Secretary General of the UN, Dr Boutros Boutros Ghali predicted that the “next war in the Middle East will be fought over water, not politics.” Ghali seemed, conveniently, to be ignoring the Palestinian-Israeli conflict which had, at it’s heart, been about water since 1948 at the very least.

The boundaries...outlined are what we consider essential for the necessary economic foundation of the country. Palestine must have its natural outlets to the seas and the control of its rivers and their headwaters... that the geographical area of Palestine should be as large as possible, so that it may eventually contain a large and thriving population which could more easily bear the burdens of modern civilized government than a small country with a necessary limitation of inhabitants.

The economic life of Palestine, like that of every other semi-arid country, depends on the available water supply. It is, therefore, of vital importance not only to secure all water resources already feeding the country, but also to be able to conserve and control them at their sources.

The Hermon is Palestine's real "Father of Waters," and cannot be severed from it without striking at the very root of its economic life...It must, therefore, be wholly under the control of those who will most willingly as well as most adequately restore it to its maximum utility.

www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org...

The above, an extract from the February 1919 Zionist Organisation’s statement on Palestine to the Paris Peace Conference, demonstrated a clear understanding of the importance of water to the region’s future prosperity, and that water and politics have been indivisible in the Middle East. Could Dr Ghali truly have been ignorant of this fact?

Each escalation of the conflict between Arabs and Israelis, peaking with the Six Day War in 1967, has been motivated by the acquistition and control of water sources. While political rhetoric may claim that the Israelis were, and indeed are, driven by a clear and present danger of Arab hostility, the outcome has been the occupation of territories integral to the control of the River Jordan, the Sea of Galilee and the West Bank Aquifer and have resulted in Palestinian dependency on Israel for water.

In the very same year that Dr Ghali made his ‘prediction’, the Oslo II Accord, recognising the inequity of the situation, drew up an agreement on the division of groundwater between Palestine and Israel.

The West Bank's main resource of natural water is groundwater from the Mountain Aquifer, most of it derived from rainfall and snowmelt on the Palestinian side of the Green Line. Palestinians abstract about 20% of the "estimated potential" of the aquifers that underlie both the West Bank and Israel.[8] Israel abstracts the rest and in addition overdraws its share by over 50%, using about 1.8 times what it is allowed under the Oslo agreement.[8] In Gaza, the only source of natural fresh water is the Coastal Aquifer, which is heavily over-exploited and salinated as the result of seawater intrusion. The development of seawater desalination is hampered by the blockade of the Gaza Strip, which is attended with import restrictions on construction materials and fuel needed for desalination.

Generally, the water quality is considerably worse in the Gaza strip when compared to the West Bank. About a third to half of the delivered water in the Palestinian territories is lost in the distribution network. The lasting blockade of the Gaza Strip and the Gaza War have caused severe damage to the infrastructure in the Gaza Strip.[9][10] Concerning wastewater, the existing treatment plants do not have the capacity to treat all of the produced wastewater, causing severe water pollution.[7] The development of the sector highly depends on external financing.[5]

In 2008, the settlers in the Niran settlement, north of Jericho, used more than 5 times the amount of the nearby Palestinian village al-A’uja. The Argaman settlement, in the central Jordan Valley, used more than 5 times the amount of the adjacent Palestinian village a-Zubeidat. The household use in the Ro’i settlement, in the northern Jordan Valley, was per head 21 times that of the adjacent Bedouin community al-Hadidya, which is not connected to the regular water supply.[38]

In 2009, the settlers in Efrat consumed, with 217 liters, three times the amount of the per capita use of 71 liters in the nearby Palestinian Bethlehem Governorate.[44]

While many Palestinians living in rural communities have no access to running water, Israeli settlers who export their products have irrigated farms, lush gardens and swimming pools. The 450,000 settlers use as much or even more water than all 2.3 million Palestinians together.[47] Many Palestinians have to buy water from Israel, of often dubious quality, delivered with tanker trucks at very high prices. Water tankers are forced to take long detours to avoid Israeli military checkpoints and roads which are out of bounds to Palestinians, resulting in steep increases in the price of water.[47]

en.wikipedia.org...

Blockades not only hinder the water tankers and prevent the development of desalination but also essential imports of the materials required for maintenance to the water supply and treatment facilities, as a result those systems are direly inadequate. The Palestinians are under siege in the most draconian way imaginable, and most recently, Israel has been targeting water mains, exacerbating the situation further. Without water, no one can survive and without waste treatment, disease is the inevitable next step towards a full scale humanitarian crisis.

The ever worsening situation between the water-rich Israelis and water poor Palestinians provide a model by which the future of conflict will be shaped as water becomes an ever scarce commodity which nations, as well as private individuals, seek to control for their own benefit and to the detriment of their neighbours.

“Despite its growing scarcity and preciousness to life, ironically, water is also man’s most misgoverned, inefficiently allocated and profligately wasted natural resource.”
Steven Solomon, Water: The Epic Struggle for Wealth, Power and Civilisation

Although 70% of this planet is covered with water, 97.5% of that water is ocean, leaving only about 2.5% that is fresh water. 70% of that fresh water is frozen in the ice caps of Antartica and Greenland, and a significant portion is locked in aquifiers too deep to be exploited, or held as soil moisture, that leaves about 1% that is circulated by rain and snowfall, and available on a sustainable basis.

Without water there would be no life on Earth, it has the power to transform, transmute and transport the vital elements that comprise all life on this planet. As a gaseous vapour it can move between continents, circulating other gases and elemental micro-particles, frozen it can cut through landscapes, eroding and splitting rocks, releasing vital minerals that are then carried away in liquid water, to be carried along rivers, deposited on their banks as silts and sediments giving the land it’s fertility, before making it’s way to the sea.

Prior to the Second World War water was considered a finite resource, back then, we used about one third of the water that we use today - there were roughly half as many people eating a lower calorific diet containing much less meat which resulted in less water needed to produce that food. Numerous agencies, including the World Bank, CIA and the UN have identified food production, combined with water management, to be a impending major global issue. Competition for water resources is increasingly intense and 2.8 billion people currently live in water scarce areas.

Water scarcity is among the main problems to be faced by many societies and the World in the XXIst century. Water use has been growing at more than twice the rate of population increase in the last century, and, although there is no global water scarcity as such, an increasing number of regions are chronically short of water.

Water scarcity is both a natural and a human-made phenomenon. There is enough freshwater on the planet for seven billion people but it is distributed unevenly and too much of it is wasted, polluted and unsustainably managed.

www.un.org...

The installation of dams and the creation of reservoirs which serve agriculture via irrigation systems, thus insuring the food supply, it is often at the cost of those living down stream, not only in terms of the reduction of available water, but also the distribution of silt. Since the construction of the Aswan dam, the silt flow along the Nile has been steadily decreasing and now, particularly in the Delta region, the soil is losing it’s ability produce, not only due to the reduction of fertility but also because of salination. Salts and minerals, distributed by irrigated water, remain trapped in the surface soil following evaporation, thus rendering the soil barren and toxic to most traditional food crops.

“In all, by the end of the twentieth century mankind had built some 45,000 large dams; during the global peak of dam building in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, some 13 were being erected on average every day. World reservoir capacity quadrupled between 1960 and 2000, so that some three to six times more water than existed in all rivers was stored behind giant dams. World hydropower output doubled, food production multiplied two and half times, and overall economic production grew sixfold.” Steven Solomon, Water: The Epic Struggle for Wealth, Power and Civilisation

Similarly, a rapidly growing problem, since the development of mechanised pumping equipment, is the unsustainable use of ground water. Natural acquifers, some which took thousands of years of rain to fill, are running dry.

Between 2000 and 2008 the total areas of land equipped with irrigation infrastructure increased from 2,788,000 km2 to 3,245,566 km2, an area, roughly, the size of India. (en.wikipedia.org...) Although that figure only represents 16% of all agricultural land, irrigated land represents 40% of the total crop yield globally. Water taken, and diverted from rivers, reduces the discharge downstream, while increasing the evaporation in the irrigated area. The groundwater recharge is similarly affected, resulting in a water table rise. Additionally, in coastal areas, extraction of groundwater, can lead to salt water intrusion, which can be fatal to the food productivity of land. (en.wikipedia.org...)

The Ogallala Aquifer stretches 800 miles from Texas to South Dakota and provides one third of all US irrigation water. Levels are falling by as much as 150 cm a year.

“The land, known as Section 35, sits atop the High Plains Aquifer, a waterlogged jumble of sand, clay and gravel that begins beneath Wyoming and South Dakota and stretches clear to the Texas Panhandle. The aquifer’s northern reaches still hold enough water in many places to last hundreds of years. But as one heads south, it is increasingly tapped out, drained by ever more intensive farming and, lately, by drought.

Vast stretches of Texas farmland lying over the aquifer no longer support irrigation. In west-central Kansas, up to a fifth of the irrigated farmland along a 100-mile swath of the aquifer has already gone dry. In many other places, there no longer is enough water to supply farmers’ peak needs during Kansas’ scorching summers.

And when the groundwater runs out, it is gone for good. Refilling the aquifer would require hundreds, if not thousands, of years of rains.”

www.desdemonadespair.net...

The US could learn a lesson from it’s Mexican neighbours. Mexico City was once nestled within a lush lakeland but over use resulted in first the lakes being drained, followed by depletion of the groundwater, the source of 80% of it’s water. As a direct result, Mexico City is sinking, with land levels having fallen around 9 feet since 1900 and an estimated one million of it’s residence are dependent on water trucks which bring in water from other regions.

Elsewhere in the world, Lake Chad has shrunk by 95% since the 1960s due in part to a change in localised weather patterns but exacerbated by irrigation systems. The level of the Aral Sea in Central Asia, at one time the fourth largest inland sea, has fallen by at least 16 metres due to the two major rivers which feed it being diverted by the Soviets to irrigate cotton crops. While in Iraq, drainage and irrigation schemes instituted under Saddam Hussein’s regime, destroyed 90% of the country’s wetlands. Dig a little and it rapidly becomes apparent that these examples represent only the tip of the iceberg. The worst hit areas are, expectedly, Africa, the Middle East, South Asia and northern China, but as we progress into the 21st century, adapting to a change in climate, it is likely that more and more of us will begin to feel the effects of reduced access to water. This is largely due to the way in which we produce our food that is heavily reliant on irrigation systems, but other factors, such as an increasing trend towards hydroelectric power, industrial water usage are creating a heavy burden on ground water sources. According to a report produced by the CIA in 2000 by next year, 2015, around three billion people will be living in areas of ‘water-stress’ with access to less than 1,700 cubic metres of water per person, per year. According to the UN, it is estimated that by2025, 1800 million people will be living in areas with absolute water scarcity, and two-thirds of the total global population will be experiencing water stress.

Concisely, the currently held outlook for the future of climate change is that those areas that are dry will get dryer, and those that are wet, wetter. Control of water is increasingly seen as a tinder box which could ignite internecine wars, as well as mass migrations.

Water war "is a term devised by environmentalists for a type of conflict (most probably a form of guerrilla warfare) which has not yet occurred, but which they predict will happen sometime shortly after the millennium through an acute shortage of water for drinking and irrigation. About 40 per cent of the world's populations are already affected to some degree, but population growth, climate change and rises in living standards will worsen the situation: the UN Environment Agency warns that almost 3 billion people will be severely short of water within 50 years. Experts point to the disaster of the Aral Sea, which has already lost three-quarters of its water through diversion for irrigation of the rivers feeding it. Possible flash points have been predicted in the Middle East, parts of Africa and in many of the world's major river basins, including the Danube. The term has been used for some years, happily only in a figurative sense, to describe disputes in the southern and south-western United States over rights to water extraction from rivers and aquifers." [6]

www.worldwidewords.org...

Today the first glimpses of the coming water wars are emerging. Many countries in the Middle East, Africa, Central and South Asia -- e.g. Afghanistan, Pakistan, China, Kenya, Egypt, and India -- are already feeling the direct consequences of the water scarcity -- with the competition for water leading to social unrest, conflict and migration. This month the escalating concerns about the possibility of water wars triggered calls by Zafar Adeel, chair of UN-Water, for the UN to promote "hydro-diplomacy" in the Middle East and North Africa in order to avoid or at least manage emerging tensions over access to water.

The current effort is nowhere near what is needed to deal with the water-challenge -- the world community has yet to find the solutions. Even though the 'water issue' is moving further up the agenda all over the globe: the US foreign assistance is investing massively in activities that promote water security, the European Commission is planning to present a "Blueprint for Safeguarding Europe's Water" in 2012 and the Chinese government plans to spend $600 billion over the next 10 years on measures to ensure adequate water supplies for the country. But it is not enough. The situation requires a response that goes far beyond regional and national initiatives -- we need a global water plan.

In 2009, The International Water Management Institute called for a blue revolution as the only way to move forward: "We will need nothing less than a 'Blue Revolution', if we are to achieve food security and avert a serious water crisis in the future" said Dr. Colin Chartres, Director General of the International Water Management Institute. This meaning that we need ensure "more crop per drop": while many developing countries use precious water to grow 1 ton of rice per hectare, other countries produce 5 tons per hectare under similar social and water conditions, but with better technology and management. Thus, if we behave intelligently, and collaborate between neighbors, between neighboring countries, between North and South, and in the global trading system, we shall not 'run out of water'. If we do not, and "business as usual" prevails, then water wars will accelerate.

www.huffingtonpost.com...

There is enough water to go around, but only if water sources are shared and given the greatest level of protection available, both from mismanagement and pollution. There still remains though a fundamental problem with distribution, in many areas of the world, there is still no access to clean, safe water. Additionally, once a stable and reliable infrastructure for the delivery of water has been introduced it has to go hand in hand with effective waste water treatment to prevent that source from being contaminated. Developing nations are often provided, via charitable organisation, with the former but not the latter. It has been the policy of the World Bank for some time now to encourage developing nations to privatise their water supply to fulfil the short fall required for taking away waste water processing. In theory, this frees the country from the economic burden of maintaining infrastructure and ensures a consistently high standard of surface. In this age of collateral damage equation driven, cut throat corporationism, the reality is shaping up to be something quite different as revealed by a year long investigation by the International Consortium for Investigation Journalists (ICIJ).

In South Africa, heavy lobbying by private multinational water companies, such as Suez, together with advice from the World Bank helped persuade local councils to privatize their waterworks. Some communities began turning their utilities into commercial enterprises as a preparatory step to outright privatization. Others immediately contracted out to private water. Urged by the World Bank to introduce a "credible threat of cutting service," the local councils began cutting off people who couldn't pay. An estimated 10 million people have had their water cut off for various periods of time since 1998. The result has been cholera and other gastrointestinal outbreaks.

The investigation showed that while these companies claim to be "passionate, caring and reliable," as one company states, they can be ruthless players who constantly push for higher rate increases, frequently fail to meet their commitments and abandon a waterworks if they are not making enough money. As in South Africa, the water companies are pillars of a user-pay policy that imposes high rates with little concern over people's ability to pay. These rates are then enforced by water cutoffs despite the serious dangers to people's health that these actions create.

While private companies still run only about 5 percent of the world's waterworks, their growth over the last 12 years has been enormous. In 1990, about 51 million people got their water from private companies, according to water analysts. That figure is now more than 300 million. The ICIJ investigation, which tracked the operations of the six most globally active water companies over a 12-year period, showed that by 2002, they ran drinking water distribution networks in at least 56 countries and two territories. In 1990, they had been active in only about a dozen countries.

Revenue growth, according to corporate annual reports reviewed by ICIJ, has tracked with the companies' overseas expansion. Vivendi Universal, the parent of Vivendi Environnement, reported earning over $5 billion in water-related revenue in 1990; by 2002 that had increased to over $12 billion. RWE, which moved into the world water market with its acquisition of Britain's Thames Water, increased its water revenue a whopping 9,786 percent – from $25 million in 1990 to $2.5 billion in fiscal 2002.

Undoubtably, an audience as information savvy as ATS is well aware of the Bolivia-Bechtel scandal...

But the private companies are increasingly running up against strong opposition because of the vital nature of water itself and the politics that swirl around it. The most famous example of this is the privatization in Cochabamba, Bolivia. After Aguas del Tunari, a consortium jointly owned by Bechtel and United Utilities, took control of the city's waterworks in 1999 without any contract bidding, the company announced water rate increases of up to 150 percent. Manager Geoffrey Thorpe threatened to cut off people's water if they didn't pay.

The contract gave the company control over ground water and allowed it to close down people's private wells unless they paid Aguas del Tunari for the water. Union leader Oscar Olivera said: "They wanted to privatize the rain." When protests erupted throughout the city of 450,000 in 2000, police and army troops were called in. They killed two people. The government reacted by cancelling the concession. Aguas del Tunari is suing the Bolivian government claiming losses of a reported $25 million, although Bechtel has stated that it has not put a number on its claim. The suit is before the International Center for the Settlement of Investment Disputes, an organization of the World Bank Group.

It was on the advice of the World Bank that Bolivia began privatizing its water services in the mid 1990s. Discussions about Cochabamba's water began in 1995, Christopher Neal, the World Bank's external affairs officer for Latin America, told ICIJ. "The Bolivian government agreed, as a matter of policy, with the Bank's view that [privatization] was needed there," Neal said. However, according to Menahem Libhaber, the bank's lead water engineer for Latin America, the bank opposed the Cochabamba deal with Aguas del Tunari because it believed it was not financially viable.

www.icij.org...

However, the “water barons”, despite this grevious bite on the ass, remain undeterred. Why? Simple...

The water business has gone from being seen as a low-return utility, to a source of "blue gold."

Peter Spillett, a senior executive with Thames Water, calls water the petroleum of the 21st century.

"There's huge growth potential," he says. "There will be world wars fought over water in the future. It's a limited, precious resource, so the growth market is always going to be there."

www.doccentre.net...

They, like us, know that war makes money and the hand that rests on the faucet, will be the hand that pulls the strings. Theoretically, the supply of water nestled in the hands of three corporations could, in an ideal world, prevent the coming water wars, ensuring that water is evenly distributed and efficiently managed. Corporations though are seldom run on such altruistic ideals, and the water barons are clearly no exception. The operating procedures of corporations are determined by shareholders who want the maximum return on their investment and most probably lack even a rudimentary knowledge of what they are investing in. They certainly accept no responsibility for the often nefarious practices of those corporations that profiteer on suffering and war mongering.

That water is at the heart of the troubles in Palestine and Israel is seldom mentioned in the reporting, yet if one delves into the literature it is central to the analysis. Palestine is a country made impotent by it’s inability to provide for it’s people and this fact alone would be enough to radicalise anyone. Their very lives are most literally on the line, who would not fight to survive under such circumstances? Surely Israel must understand this, just as emissaries of the various peace processes must understand what is needed to end the conflict. Instead, the ‘Powers that Be’, if you will, those that set the tone, the movers and shakers, the World Bank for one, are arranging the game board seemingly based on the Israeli-Palestine model, engineering the direction that future water wars will take. Not aiming to prevent, or even limit, just ensuring that they put their money behind those that will prosper, and no doubt, if they fail initially to do so, the globalised military-industrial complex will ensure that they get the arms and equipment necessary to game-change. All on the back of a bevy of shareholders and pension-fund investors, who carefully guard their ignorance and hide behind a shield of plausible deniability, only raising their hands in question when their dividend cheque fails to meet expectations.

Concisely, the currently held outlook for the future of climate change is, that those areas that are dry will get dryer, and those that are wet, wetter. I sit here, writing about a rapidly impending future of water wars driven by scarcity from a relatively comfortable position. The UK is getting wetter, we have an abundance of precipitation, too much in fact. We face flooding of homes built without foresight on floodplains to cope with a burgeoning population. In a rich nation such as ours, an insignificant problem. Things get damaged, they can be replaced. Few lives, relatively, are lost. It would be naive though to presume that the effect of water scarcity elsewhere in the world will not reach my doorstep eventually. Britain is an island and dependent upon imports to support the nutritional demands of it’s populace. If food production is threatened elsewhere, it will impact on the price of food. As productivity is effected further, by conflict, which will inevitably also effect the supply chain, our military will be called in to protect our food supplies, and everything will get more and more expensive as taxes and levies are raised to meet the growing costs of meeting the nutritional demands of the country. What are today isolated skirmishes in remote parts of the world, will eventually touch each and every one of us. Starvation and suffering will assail us from our TV screens and monitors at every turn, and we will tell ourselves that we are powerless to do anything to help. As we do so already.

“The sage’s transformation of the world arises from solving the problem of water. If water is united, the human heart will be corrected. If water is pure and clean, the heart of people will readily be unified and desirous of cleanliness. Even when the citzenry’s heart is changed, their conduct will not be depraved. So the sage’s government does not consist of talking to people and persuading them, family by family. The pivot (of the work) is water.”

Lao Tze.

Excellent thread, KilgoreTrout!

Anybody who cannot see that the real issue of the future is water, is blind.

If somebody told me 30 years ago that I would pay $2 for bottled water at the local convenience store, I would have called them crazy.

We live on land with a well that draws from the Ogallala Aquifer in west Texas. The water is crystal clear and tastes wonderful. I do, however, understand that it will not last forever, as it is a finite resource, and T. Boone Pickens is already trying to get his greedy claws on it based on Texas' "right to capture" water law, and ship the water to the Dallas area.

Long ago in the 1980s I read "Cadillac Desert" by Marc Reisner, while I was living in California. He lays out his case for the insanity of building large civilizations which cannot be sustained without imported water. en.wikipedia.org...

Same goes for Israel. A lot of their population is from the US, and of course being Americans, they want swimming pools and green lawns in the desert. Apparently, they're willing to commit genocide over it.

a reply to: FlyersFan

The general instability in the Middle East is currently working in Israel's favour, in water terms. It prevents any unified response to Israel's water richness and they are taking the opportunity to crush Palestine. There seems to be very little enthusiasm for diplomacy, no one wants to touch the situation, and one can only surmise that Israel is being left to dig it's own grave in that respect, or be allowed to gain regional supremacy over water. Four years ago, an agreement to import water from Turkey broke down, suggesting that Israel was setting itself up as a water distribution hub. It still wants that role, but to do so now means over exploiting it's own resources and further excluding Palestinian needs. Geo-politically, it appears as though Israel and Turkey have since ended most of their accords leading to mutual isolation, but internationally Turkey will always retain European protection, if not integration, due to it's ability to serve as an effective buffer-zone. I suspect that Israel is increasingly seen as disposable in the long term and is merely being given enough rope to hang itself.

S&F'd to read later as I'm a bit tied up, but funnily enough I've noticed water make an apperance in articles but didn't understand. I'm sure after reading this I will. Thanks!

originally posted by: FissionSurplus
Excellent thread, KilgoreTrout!

Anybody who cannot see that the real issue of the future is water, is blind.

If somebody told me 30 years ago that I would pay $2 for bottled water at the local convenience store, I would have called them crazy.

We live on land with a well that draws from the Ogallala Aquifer in west Texas. The water is crystal clear and tastes wonderful. I do, however, understand that it will not last forever, as it is a finite resource, and T. Boone Pickens is already trying to get his greedy claws on it based on Texas' "right to capture" water law, and ship the water to the Dallas area.

Long ago in the 1980s I read "Cadillac Desert" by Marc Reisner, while I was living in California. He lays out his case for the insanity of building large civilizations which cannot be sustained without imported water. en.wikipedia.org...

Thanks Fission...it is part of a larger project that I am working on, and although a little dark and gloomy, I thought there might be a few here that it would interest. Cheers for the vindication.

originally posted by: FissionSurplus

Same goes for Israel. A lot of their population is from the US, and of course being Americans, they want swimming pools and green lawns in the desert. Apparently, they're willing to commit genocide over it.

It certainly seems that way. I only listen to the news on the radio, but I have been waiting for some mention of the water rights issue to come up...and nothing. Not one word. That is the BBC of course, could be that others are discussing it, however I still find it shocking. I have been saying for a very long time, Israel is not a Middle Eastern culture, it is European culture transplanted into the desert and greedily taking all available resources in order to maintain that European (and by default North American) lifestyle illusion.

Well cant say you dont have interesting threads, dont see why it got so little flags and stars. Will not say much on the whole Israel/Palestinian conflict, but pretty much everything you see spewed on the tubes is just misdirection, it was all a land grab from the beginning, most wars and such thing always are and everything else like religion and all that bickering is just filler. And well you know water there in lies on, or in the land, among other things that is, so its important. If anything the majority of what people call Israelis or the whole state of it, the majority it seem are something and belong to the genus that I like to call confused europeans.

But hey everybody has a schtick, and propaganda aplenty to reach there goals, and generally when you break things down, there goals and true aims are simple. Like you thread says, what do people need ie they need water, among other essentials, well you control the water you control the people, like a famous quote once said.

In all I do not see humanity surviving in the long run, sorry to say, but I do believe all this came before and it all failed big time before. But hey such is the way of things, and that's just my theory, and so we shall see. But yes fighting for water is pointless, when you do have it. When you dont? Well then its a different story. Makes you ponder on that whole harp thing, but the thing is if they could make it rain in the dessert they would, and places like Dubai with all there $$ from oil, already tried it, to no specific avail, and generally once the oil money runs dry, so to will the desert take everything back.

But really what I think is, a lot of people are wasting there time and resources, and really the whole middle east conflict is just because there exists within humanity a certain genus among its overall worldwide populous to always be there at the place and time were you could make a profit and killing. And there are plenty of places were so far and for some time to come water will not be an issue, so much so that they could export it and make a hefty profit, if they took all the money and energy being spent on controlling markets and people, in all the generations they have been fighting over that land, they could have seeded the deserts by now.

And generally after all I dont see what all the fuss is about, there is nothing special about the so called holy land, it is, and has been, anything but that. If some god told me that, or it was written down in some scriptures, or whatever, that would be my promised land, and I have been chosen, well I think it would be about then that I look into the market to get me a new god. It just seems like a bad deal for everybody involved, your trading short term massive gains for long term massive losses. Sure everybody thinks 10 or 20 years into the future, and the really incentive think 100 or 200 years in the future, but they all seem to forget the whole thousand years, or a few hundred thousand years ahead.

But ya! In general scripture generally follows there profits the two have been so ingrained into primitive mind and groups for so long that they are interchangeable, merely another arm of the human survival and opportunism mechanism. So one day humanity, or certain parts of the world, could be in the hands of the water barons, and some already are, even the Bushes bought some land in Ecuador or somewhere in South America because there are massive fresh water underground reservoirs there, there was even a thread about it on ATS years ago.

From black gold to blue gold, there be water under them hills.

Hello Petal

originally posted by: galadofwarthethird
And generally after all I dont see what all the fuss is about, there is nothing special about the so called holy land, it is, and has been, anything but that. If some god told me that, or it was written down in some scriptures, or whatever, that would be my promised land, and I have been chosen, well I think it would be about then that I look into the market to get me a new god. It just seems like a bad deal for everybody involved, your trading short term massive gains for long term massive losses. Sure everybody thinks 10 or 20 years into the future, and the really incentive think 100 or 200 years in the future, but they all seem to forget the whole thousand years, or a few hundred thousand years ahead.

The 'Holy Land' is what it has always been, a conduit. On the current playing field, it is a strategic pivot, no more, no less. But, talk about hitting the nail on the head there...that is all that is required, forward planning. Thanks for that, for understanding that very simple point that seems to escape the vast majority.

originally posted by: galadofwarthethird
But ya! In general scripture generally follows there profits the two have been so ingrained into primitive mind and groups for so long that they are interchangeable, merely another arm of the human survival and opportunism mechanism. So one day humanity, or certain parts of the world, could be in the hands of the water barons, and some already are, even the Bushes bought some land in Ecuador or somewhere in South America because there are massive fresh water underground reservoirs there, there was even a thread about it on ATS years ago.

I think it was Argentina that the Bushes bought into, they got themselves a nice little patch slam bang in the middle of continental shield. Astute choice of real estate on a variety of levels, it wouldn't shock me if they own large bodies of groundwater too...although, internationally, there are issues arising about whether land ownership extends to below ground resources. The fracking debate is highlighting that.

Anyway, having had my information dump in this thread, I've absorbed the salient points. I am on to the next thing, and I don't like backtracking, therefore I will refrain from going on (and on).

Good to see you though and I appreciate your thoughts.

All the best.

a reply to: KilgoreTrout
Well skipping that whole "petal" thing since I dont know what that means.

Ya well, all I'm saying is a lot of future headaches could be avoided if they just learned to turn salt water into fresh water. I suppose it can be done, put half the effort and moneys were putting into this ongoing thing in the middle east and you never know. But then again! You know what they say. Teach a man to fish and he will fish the oceans dry, so maybe turning the ocean water, into fresh drinkable water, is not such a good idea.

Anyways! Whatever comes, will come at some later date, not that it will matter to any of us here, and the middle east and its problems? Well! We will be long gone no longer in these fleshy bodies due to old age, so the way I see it its a non issue and not anybody's problem but them. Though to be correct I should say water/fleshy bodies, as you know a human body is about 60% water so were more like walking talking water bags more so then anything else. Seems like an important thing, but I guess its not as nobody is bothering with the whole water H20 problem thing.

a reply to: galadofwarthethird

I have a son, my son may have children, those children may too reproduce. I have a vested interest in the future, doing what I can to ensure that it can support whatever children I am responsible for. In terms of our environment we have sufficient data that we can roughly, with reasonable clarity, look forward 1000 years and project a possible future.

Given the current route and trajectory we are headed into a really bad, bad place. It is entirely unnecessary for us to go there, concerted effort could change the picture dramatically, but the work needs to start now. Lots and lots of talk is going on. We don't have the social cohesion necessary. Profiteerism at the expense of a long term future is still going on unchecked and this has helped maintain the 'enemy without' story line. They need conflict in order to obtain and fix markets. The Free Market system is all about just getting your foot in the door, at all costs, before anyone else does. Without a powerful and effective counter force of neutrality, interventionism is merely an extension of the corporations bow.

I am not sure that desalination is a good idea, I haven't as yet got around the studying the various impacts, pros and cons. We are daily gaining a greater understanding of how the biosphere works, I think that it is wise at this point to look at better ways in which to 'manage' the hydrological cycle, both above and below ground. There is more than enough fresh water to go around, it is just poorly distributed and badly managed. Ensuring that, first, every person has the basic right to water combined with installing the infrastructure necessary to deliver should be priority. The 'waters', as a collective resource, essential to life, have to be internationalised. There is, in my opinion, no other reasonable solution.

a reply to: KilgoreTrout

Ya well the likelihood that is going to happen is pretty slim. And even if it does, its not likely to last because it will need to be maintained at all times, all it would take is one lapse and? Well things fall and degenerate much faster then they build up. All in all I have seen the far future once, I think, and there were no humans in it. But till then people will do what people do. I fully expect the middle east to become a tinderbox, like it always has been and I fully expect that any and all little things including fresh water and all and any which can be taken advantage off, will be. As it was, generally is as it will be. Maybe you should consider that humanity as a whole was never meant to survive into the far future, or even into the not so far future. But I suppose we will see, or not as we wont be around that long.