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the Middle East as well. There are two principal ways to increase supplies: bring in outside sources of
170 water and capture unused portions of the
current supply to building reservoirs to store flows during wet
periods for use during dry periods. Many ideas for developing new sources in the Middle East have been
proposed, including building desalination plants to make freshwater out of seawater or brackish water;
175 constructing enormous pipelines to divert underused rivers in Turkey or Pakistan to the parched regions of
the Middle East and the Persian Gulf; tankering or towing enormous bags of freshwater to coastal areas;
laying aqueducts from the Mediterranean Sea or the Red Sea to the Dead Sea to generate electricity and
180 desalinate saltwater; and building new reservoirs on major rivers to increase storage for dry periods.
3.
All of these proposals are controversial, and all have uncertain economic and environmental costs. In
addition, political disputes over who would control the sources of some of these options make the
185 construction of new facilities extremely unlikely in the absence of a lasting political settlement. On the
other hand, some new sources of supply may eventually be developed as the economic value of water rises
and as demands grow:
190
— Desalination — Ninety-seven percent of the water on the planet is too salty to drink or to grow crops.
This had led to great interest in devising ways of removing salt from water in the hope of providing
unlimited supplies of freshwater. Indeed, by the beginning of 1990, there were more than 7,500 facilities
195 worldwide producing more than 13,2 million cubic
meters of freshwater per day. More than half of this
desalination capacity is in the Persian Gulf region, where inexpensive fossil fuels provide the energy
necessary to run the plants. For other regions, however, the high energy cost of desalination continues to
200 make unlimited freshwater supplies an elusive goal. In the long run, the use of desalination will be limited
by the amount and cost of the energy required to purify saltwater. Unless unanticipated major technical
advances reduce overall energy requirements or the price of energy drops substantially, large-scale
205 desalination will always be limited to extremely water-poor and energy-rich regions.
—
Peace Pipelines — Various proposals have been presented for pipelines to transfer water from
Turkey to the Middle East and the countries around the Persian Gulf. Nicknamed the «Peace Pipeline»,
210 such a project would take water from the Seyhan and Ceyhan Rivers in southern Turkey as far south as
Jidda and Mecca in Saudi Arabia and as far east as Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates. Along the way,
water could be delivered to Damascus, Amman, Kuwait, and Israel. One version of the Peace Pipeline
215 would deliver more than 1,000 million cubic meters of water per year, but little real progress has come of
the various proposals. In part, the Arabs, particularly the Saudis, and the Israelis fear the political
dominance of Turkey or the possible interference of other states across which the pipeline would pass.
220
Other Out-Of-Basin Transfers — There have been many other proposals to transfer water to the Middle
East from basins where surplus water may be available. Such transfers could be accomplished via
pipelines, aqueducts, tankers, floating bags, and even towing icebergs. Among the projects proposed have
225 been pipelines from Baluchistan across the gulf to the United Arab Emirates, from the Euphrates in Iraq to
Jordan, and from the Nile through El Arish to the Gaza and Negev to alleviate the severe water crisis in the
230 Gaza Strip. Each of these projects depends on the long-term availability of surplus water and the political,
economic, and environmental feasibility of transferring that water. Similarly, it has been proposed that
Israel and Jordan purchase water from the Litani River in Lebanon, build a short pipeline and set of
235 pumping plants, and move water to northern Israel, the West Bank, and Jordan. While Litani River water is
used for hydroelectricity, some surplus is currently thought to be available if the economic and political
price is right.
3. Moving water by tankers or by towing «trains» of bags filled with freshwater is also being explored
240 for supplying coastal areas. For the Gaza Strip, where overpumping of limited groundwater supplies is
leading to saltwater intrusion, such alternatives may prove feasible, though technical and political obstacles
still must be removed.
245
— Med-Dead or Red-Dead Canal — Another alternative that has been suggested in various forms is to
bring large quantities of seawater from the Mediterranean Sea or the Red Sea to the Dead Sea, which lies
well below sea level. The large elevation drop would permit the generation of hydroelectricity, which in
250 turn could be used to satisfy the energy requirements of a desalination plant. The freshwater provided by
such a system could be allocated to Israel, the occupied territories, or western Jordan, where it would
reduce pressures on the limited water supplies in those regions. Brine from the desalination process or
255 additional seawater could be diverted into the Dead Sea to help raise its level, which has dropped nearly 20
meters over the last several decades because of the use of the Jordan River — its only inflow. Many
different schemes and locations have been presented for such canals, and more work is needed to explore