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According to some Middle East experts, the most pressing issue in the region has nothing to do with refugees, borders, settlements, or Jerusalem.

Instead, the fate of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict may rest in how both sides share a resource that allows industry to function, agriculture to prosper, and mouths to be fed. The lifeline of Israel and its neighbors is the water supply of the Jordan River, a supply that is continuously dwindling due to drought, pollution, and overuse.

Since water is so critical for survival in the arid Middle East, the resource has the dual potential of leading to deadly conflict or historic peace.

"It's maybe the single most critical issue, because without sufficient water, you can't support either society," said Douglas Bloomfield, former chief lobbyist of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

Perception and reality

Under the Oslo Accords, the Israeli Water Authority and the Palestinian Water Authority are supposed to "make a decision together about how to use the water resource that we are sharing together," said Sharon Davidovich, director of the Jewish National Fund's (JNF) Parsons Water Fund. The purpose of water collaboration is to control the amount of water both sides use, create a framework for joint management of the mountain aquifer beneath the West Bank, exchange information, and prevent environmental pollution.

In the April 2010 special edition, "Water: Our Thirsty World," an article in National Geographic magazine stated that Palestinians in the West Bank have been largely prevented from digging deep water wells, "limiting their access to shallow wells, natural springs, and rainfall that evaporates quickly in the dry desert air." Palestinian farmer Muhammad Salama said "we're powerless to do anything about it."

JNF, however, paints a much different picture. Davidovich explained that people tend to think of the West Bank as one area, but it is really divided into three sub-areas: areas A, B, and C. In area C -- containing all Israeli settlements, roads used to access the settlements, buffer zones, and almost all of the Jordan Valley, eastern Jerusalem, and Judean Desert -- Palestinians need to secure permits from the Israeli Water Authority for any projects. But in areas A and B, which comprise 80 percent of the West Bank, Palestinians can dig wells or perform any other projects without Israeli permission, Davidovich said.

Until 2008, Israel approved 70 wells in the West Bank, but most were never drilled, Davidovich said. Instead, Palestinians are using 10 million cubic meters of unapproved water from what is called the "eastern aquifer." The Palestinians are not doing a good enough job of drilling in areas A and B, Davidovich said.

"When somebody blames Israel, he needs to look at where the project is taking place," he said.

A recent World Bank study detailed that between 2001 and 2009, Israel rejected 82 Palestinian water projects. But upon closer examination, 47 of the 82 projects were in the Palestinian-controlled areas A and B, making Israeli rejection impossible, and among the 35 in area C -- the only area where approval is necessary -- 28 were approved but Palestinians never completed them, Davidovich said. Six of those 35 projects were never submitted for a license, he added.

Israel today provides 180 million cubic meters of water per year to Palestinians, Davidovich said, far more than the 118 million required under the Oslo Accords. Before 1967, he said, 90 percent of Palestinian villages and cities in the West Bank were not connected to any main water or sewage system, but today 80 percent are connected.

"The facts are showing that [the Palestinians'] situation, it's much better than before," Davidovich said.

National Geographic also cited a 2009 World Bank study report stating that Israelis use four times more water per capita than Palestinians. If Israelis in fact do use much more water than Palestinians, it's because they have an advanced industrial economy, Bloomfield said. Regardless of the per capita numbers, the Palestinian population has a much faster growth rate than Israel's, Davidovich said, meaning that Palestinians are increasing their water consumption overall compared with Israel's.

Desalination and reclamation

Davidovich said that Israel's preferred solution for the water crisis is to build desalination stations, referring to the process of removing excess salt and other minerals from water, thus transforming sea water into fresh water. Israel has already built three of its intended seven desalination stations, Davidovich said. According to JNF, the Sea of Galilee (Kinneret in Hebrew), Israel's largest freshwater reserve, is almost at its "black line," the level at which continued pumping would cause irreversible salinity and the Kinneret would cease to be a viable source of drinking water.

Desalination costs have come down tremendously in recent years, from $6 to as little as 53 cents per cubic meter, but "to a developing people like the Palestinians, this is still not cheap," said Shlomi Dinar, assistant professor of politics and international relations at Florida International University.

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) planned to build a desalination station in the Gaza Strip that would have created 50 million cubic meters of drinkable water per year, but the political stalemate between Israelis and Palestinians is retarding that plan, Dinar said.

"Until something happens with Gaza, that's not going to go anywhere," Dinar said of the desalination station.

Besides desalination, water monitoring and wastewater reclamation are critical initiatives in dry regions, explained Dan Kroll, chief scientist and principal investigator at Hach Company, a firm that specializes in water quality testing. People tend to think water is a free resource because they pay a small monthly bill for it, Kroll said, but the reality is that aging infrastructure like pipes in decay make water distribution very expensive.

In the last seven years, about half of the wells that supply water to Tel Aviv have been shut down because of contamination caused by over-pumping, according to JNF. Monitoring capability is necessary to prevent water contamination, Kroll said. Often, distribution systems are vulnerable to backflow events, when contaminating materials are push back into pipes, he said.

Ultimately, from just a few percent up to 40-50 percent of a water supply can spill out into subsoil and never get to end users, Kroll said. While Israel loses an average of 7 percent of its water to subsoil, Palestinians lose more than 33 percent, Davidovich said.

The solution, Kroll said, is to purify wastewater for agricultural use at treatment plants, freeing up the rest of the water for domestic use. Of the 52 million cubic meters of wastewater Palestinians create per year, they only treat 4 million cubic meters, Davidovich said. Israel, however, recycles over 75 percent of its water, said Marcy Needle of Morristown, a JNF activist who often speaks about the water issue at synagogues and other Jewish organizations. Needle said Israel's water reclamation proficiency is her favorite statistic to give during presentations.

"Israel is head and shoulders above any other country in that area," Needle said.

Another problem is that 60 percent of the water that Israel provides for Palestinians is used for agriculture, Davidovich said. Israel has tried to convince the Palestinians not to use drinkable water for farming, he said, but "unfortunately the Palestinians are not taking our advice to an action plan."

Alternative sources

Large sections of the lower Jordan River are likely to dry out in 2011, according a recent study by EcoPeace/Friends of the Earth Middle East (FoEME). If Israel, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and the Palestinians are going to share the Jordan River's dwindling resources, there is clearly a deficiency of water in the region, Dinar said. The Palestinian side has the desire to obtain more water from the mountain aquifer, but that resource is over-drilled and "there is not more water to share," he said.

That is why Dinar believes one element of a water agreement must be finding alternative sources.

"Donor countries have to come in and invest," Dinar said.

JNF has been working for two years on a project to import water from Turkey because "we believe that in our region, we need additional sources of water to share with Israel, the Palestinians, and the Jordanians," Davidovich said. Jordanians particularly need water around their capitol city of Amman, where water runs only three days a week, he said.

While most of the publicity on Israel's relations with Turkey these days focuses on Israel's stopping of a Gaza-bound Turkish flotilla purporting to be on a humanitarian mission, a much different story could have been ships from Turkey arriving on Israel's coast with tankers of water for the region. Under JNF's plan, which was imminent but never went through, a private company would have purchased five single-hull tankers to transport the water from Turkey. When the tankers arrived at Israel's coast, Davidovich said, they would have been unloaded onto JNF platforms and the water would have been stored in JNF reservoirs.

Turkey is the closest outside country that is able to supply water, Davidovich said. Water authorities in Israel and Turkey both agreed to the deal, but the Turkish side decided to bring the process to the political level, where it got "stuck," he said. But as long as Turkey continues to negotiate on the "professional level," meaning between its water authority and Israel's, JNF will continue to work on the project, Davidovich said.

"We are willing to continue the process," he said. "We are willing to make this project happen." Dinar said the importation of water from Turkey "had been tabled for quite some time, even before the flotilla," and that "of course, the flotilla incident doesn't help." The logistics of getting the water in tankers and cleaning the tankers made the plan "economically untenable," Dinar said.

A 'path to peace'

In February, when Needle went on a JNF mission to Israel led by Davidovich, she witnessed a number of the organization's water projects, including the upgrading of a water treatment facility on an air force base in the Negev. The project, which will provide water for Bedouin villages suffering from soil erosion, shows that Israel "recognizes that water is a path to peace" because it responds not only to its own needs, but those of other communities.

Water was part of the Oslo Accords as well as Israel's peace treaty with Jordan, Needle noted, meaning that agreeing on water can provide "a level of cooperation and a guideline for the future."

"It really will be, through water, that a lasting peace can be achieved," Needle said.

Davidovich said the Israeli and Palestinian water authorities are committed to working together and understand that "we should not involve the political decision makers" in water-related matters. Water authorities in Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan are also on board with that philosophy, he said.

"All of us are sharing the same climate and the same crisis," Davidovich said.

Bloomfield is less optimistic. He said that because of the major political issues between Israel and its neighbors, the water issue will continue to be ignored and overlooked. The prevalent attitude in the region is "I don't want you taking my water, I'm going to drill anywhere I damn well please," Bloomfield said.

"I expect the problem will be addressed only on the fringes," he said.

At least in policy and academic circles, the water issue is "very much a hot topic," Dinar said. But laypeople, he said, are more interested in political topics: Jerusalem, borders, settlements, and refugees.

"It's not naturally on the minds of people," Dinar said of the water issue.

Needle, however, said that when she speaks about water to Jewish audiences, "everyone is interested because they recognize it's such a crucial issue." She said she tries to convey the magnitude of the problem, but that there are "solutions on the drawing board" and that JNF can make a difference.

Regardless of the public's level of interest and the political obstacles that exist, water is an issue that Israeli and Arab authorities "have been able to sit down and agree on" because "they both need the water," Dinar said.

"You have to talk, you have no choice," he said.