Scant water an obstacle to Palestinian statehood

Over 90 per cent of water resources in the Palestinian territories are exploited by Israel, leaving insufficient water for an eventual Palestinian state, according to a Palestinian official.

Total annual agricultural, industrial and domestic consumption in the West Bank and Gaza amounted to 330 million cubic metres (mcm) in 2009, while Israel's consumption that year was seven times greater, Fuad Bateh, adviser to Palestinian Water Minister Shaddad Attili, said in an interview with The Jordan Times during World Water Week in Stockholm, Sweden last september.

According to Bateh, only about 10 per cent of agriculture in the Palestinian territories is irrigated, while the rest is rain-fed, leaving the agricultural sector - one of the main economic drivers of the envisaged Palestinian state - vulnerable to droughts.

The Palestinians rely on three shared ground basin aquifers in the West Bank and one underneath Gaza for water, Bateh said, from which Israel draws over 90 per cent of the water.