Jordan Times
Monday, March 20, 2000
Water working group survives regional political
challenges
By Dana Charkasi
THE HAGUE — The prototype of a desalination plant in Aqaba is one of the most prominent projects at hand as a result of multilateral working group efforts in the Middle East peace process, representatives of Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian Authority told the Second World Water Forum in The Hague on Sunday.
Zafer Alem, technical advisor at the Ministry of Water and Irrigation, said the planned desalination plant was estimated to cost between U$10 and 15 million and was expected to provide an extra 10 million cubic metres of desalinated water per year to the city of Aqaba.
However, the Jordanian government is also understood to be in negotiation with Germany for a feasibility study which would look at the whole desalination issue, with a view to the possible construction of a much larger plant, German aid sources, attending Alem's presentation, said afterwards.
Although no sponsor to help set up the plant has been found, it is planned that construction will start next year. Attached to the desalination plant will be a training centre where experts from around the world will train Jordanians, Israelis and Palestinians in desalination management and techniques, Alem said.
Beside several other achievements, representatives of all the three entities repeatedly praised the fact that after many years of enmity between Arabs and Israelis, the multilateral working groups in general have succeeded to create an atmosphere of respect and the opportunity to build confidence between the respective sides. This fact constitutes one of the most valuable results of their eight-year cooperation.
“Suddenly we could greet each other, sit and talk with each other,” said Fadle Kawash, the Palestinian representative of the multilateral working group on water. All three representatives said they hoped Syria and Lebanon would accept an open invitation to join the multilateral talks on water.
Participants seemed to share a similar concern that the freeze in the multilateral track of the peace process since 1996 — when former Israeli hardline Premier Benyamin Netanyahu assumed the helm of Israeli government — might negatively have affected the work of the water working group.
But Alem said “difficulties in the bilateral track political process did create some obstacles.”
“But the process of confidence building in the earlier years clearly paid off. The confidence built before 1996 kept the process robust and resilient to changing political realities,” Alem said in his presentation.
Critics charge that, even after the change of government in Israel, the multilateral process is only reluctantly being revived, but all participants assured that meetings are held regularly, and are succesful because hot political topics are left out of the doors of the meeting rooms.
“We do not want to touch political issues,” Kawash said in response to a question on why the multilateral working group focuses on finding new water resources such as recycling wastewater and better management of available water instead of focusing on sharing aquifers.
Crucial political issues, such as water rights and sharing water are dealt with in bilateral negotiations and are some of the most contentious issues to be confronted in the upcoming final status negotiations between the Palestinians and Israel. Other achievements in the multilateral talks include the upgrading the existing water data banks in Jordan and Israel and the creation of a data bank for the Palestinians.
After the Madrid Peace Conference in 1991, parties to the peace process agreed to establish a multilateral track to support the bilateral negotiations. Five working groups were set up to discuss water resources, environment, regional economic development, refugees and arms control and regional security. The broader goal of the multilateral track is to focus on issues of common interest and importance throughout the region that can best be addressed on a regional basis.