2-4-2020 Mother Nature Scoffs at Trump’s Mideast Peace Plan - Thomas L. Friedman New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/04/opinion/middle-east-climate-change.html

Climate change and other conditions don't respect boundary lines [An environmental report on Israel/Palestine]… The mountain aquifer running down the spine of the West Bank and Israel is also being rapidly depleted and polluted. The Jewish settlers in the West Bank are connected to the Israeli water system through a sophisticated network that runs 24/7, but the Palestinian cities are not. So, in hot summer months in Bethlehem, for instance, residents get municipal water only episodically.  You also have many West Bank Palestinian villages and towns without sewage treatment facilities. Their raw sewage is tossed into cesspits — unlined holes in the ground — that let the liquid seep into the groundwater and the solids collect, to then be dumped into wadis. Sewage in the greater Hebron area, with over 300,000 people, flows via the Hebron Stream to the Israeli town of Beersheba, where it becomes the Beersheba Stream! As [Mother Nature] said, I recognize no borders…

For more on all of this, look at the work of the organization EcoPeace Middle East and particularly its feasibility study. ..

 

Posted by Judith Ferster, AIME member

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