The correct answer is B. Scarcity of water in the Middle East has played a major role in continuing the conflict between the Arab nations and Israel.
The problem of water is one of the most important factors that affect the Jewish-Palestinian conflict. Israel needs to control the supply sources of the Jordan River and the underground aquifers of the Gaza and West Bank locations. The water policy of this country is one of the fundamental geostrategic issues for its subsistence as a country
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The Jordan, Hasbani and Litani rivers are essential for human survival in Israel and throughout the Middle East, where rainfall does not exceed on average 300 mm3 / year.
In 1967, after the total occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, Israel declared all the water resources of its property. Therefore, Palestinians have to obtain a license from the Israeli army before developing any water infrastructure on their own land.
Since 1982, the control of all water resources of the Palestinians was passed to the new Israeli water authority, the Mekorot. Eleven years later, under the process of the Oslo Peace Accords of 1993, a partial responsibility for the water resources of the West Bank and Gaza was transferred to the Palestinian Water Authority. However, Mekorot still controls 53% of the supply for domestic use in the West Bank.
Palestine has natural water resources both on surface and underground. Surface waters flow in the form of permanent rivers and wadis (stream beds that remain dry part of the year) or in seasonal reserves. The main source of drinking water in Palestine is groundwater.
Water, as we see, is a matter of national security in Israel. Their military brains and those of their Muslim neighbors are very aware of the water resources of the area. The Golan Heights, the Jordan, Yarmouk and Litani rivers have passed through the hands of the country's military planners, before making any decision.
In the early seventies of the last century, Israel bombed without warning a Syrian dam under construction that diverted part of the water from a tributary of the Jordan River in the Golan Heights, which was to limit the arrival of it to Israel. Then he also bombed a canal that Jordan was raising to take advantage of another tributary of the Jordan.
The so-called Six Day War (that took place in 1967, which confronts Israel against all its Arab neighbors and ends with a great Israeli triumph) began when Syria wanted to divert the Hasbaya River, a tributary of the Jordan. In this way, it seized all sources of supply in Palestine that generate a total of 80 million m3 of renewable water, in addition to the quota from the Jordan River, estimated at around 250 million m3.
In this war, Israel seized the heights of the Syrian Golan, where Lake Tiberiades and half the banks of the Yarmouk valley meet, whose river of the same name is the main tributary of the Jordan River. In total, the Jewish state controls 939 million m3 of water located in the occupied Arab territories.
As we see, the water problem is fundamental in this conflict. The solution of the conflict necessarily involves a joint management of the existing resources in the region by Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria under the supervision of the UN. For this reason, the intervention of international organizations is required, for example by economically supporting desalination projects that cause an increase in fresh water in the region, while demanding a rebalancing of its use between Jews and Palestinians in a sustainable manner.
