MIDDLE EAST : More Contentious Than West Bank Is Resource Below: Water : Dispute over right to aquifers may again stall long-delayed Palestinian self-rule. Israel says it won’t relinquish control of precious liquid.

JERUSALEM — Even as it prepares to pull its troops out of West Bank towns and villages, Israel has infuriated the Palestinians by insisting that it will not relinquish control over the area’s critical water resources.

So serious is the dispute over water that both sides say they may not be able to resolve it in time to meet their July 25 deadline for signing an agreement expanding Palestinian self-rule to the West Bank. Israel says there will be no deal until the Palestinians agree that Israel will retain control of the water.

“The basic fact is that this area is suffering from a very severe shortage of water,” said Yaacov Tsur, Israel’s agriculture minister. “We are using all the water we have. We cannot give the Palestinians more.”

The aquifers feeding Israel and the territories are growing dangerously depleted, and in another decade, Tsur predicted, the two sides will be forced to cooperate anyway to build desalination plants to make seawater drinkable.

In the meantime, if the Palestinians want to increase their supply of water, he said, they will have to increase conservation and capture more rainwater.

In the West Bank, “we and the Palestinians share the same pot of water,” Tsur said. “If one takes more, he is taking it from the other. So the agreement we reach with the Palestinians is not going to re-share the water. It must keep the existing system.”

He spoke after Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin held a high-level strategy session this week with Tsur and several other senior Cabinet ministers to decide Israel’s final position in the current negotiations on the two most sensitive issues: land and water.

The ministers reportedly agreed that Israel will allow some drilling by Palestinians in the southern part of the West Bank, where there is some unused water in a partly brackish aquifer. But control over water resources will remain in Israel’s hands, and the current division of three-quarters of the West Bank’s annual aquifer draw for Israel and one-quarter for the Palestinians will be preserved, the ministers said.

Palestinians reacted bitterly to the hard-line public stance the ministers took after that session.

“The Israelis are not recognizing the water rights of the Palestinians,” said Riyad Khoudary, head of the Palestinian water delegation. “The Israelis are allocating for us a quota regardless of our needs.”

“It’s disgusting,” said Faisal Husseini, a minister without portfolio in the Palestinian self-governing authority. “It is not just. They are not the masters, and we are not the slaves.”

Palestinians say that self-rule is meaningless unless they control the use of water and land on the West Bank. Since Israel occupied the area during the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, Palestinians have not been allowed to dig new wells. As a result, many Palestinian towns and villages suffer frequent water shortages, according to Palestinian water experts.

“Whoever controls the natural resources holds in his hand the sovereignty over the land,” said Khader Shkirat, general director of the Land and Water Establishment for Studies and Legal Services, a Palestinian legal-aid office in Jerusalem. “What the Israelis are proposing is that the water resources will be under Israeli authority and that the Palestinian national authority will collect payment on the bills that Mekorot [Israel’s water company] will issue.”

*

Each year, Israel allocates about 120 million cubic meters of water from the West Bank aquifers for use by the Palestinians living there. About two-thirds is used for agriculture and the rest for residential use, Palestinian water experts say. Palestinians use about 40 cubic meters of water each annually.

By contrast, Israel draws 450 million cubic meters from the West Bank aquifers, most of which is used for drinking water by Israelis living in the densely populated coastal plain. Tsur said the West Bank aquifers provide one-third of Israel’s annual water use. Israelis use about 100 cubic meters of water each annually.

Khoudary said that Palestinians living on the West Bank need at least 350 million cubic meters of water to alleviate shortages, meet their residential needs and provide for growth in agriculture and industry.

“The fact is that the Israelis would like to continue allowing Israelis to consume five times as much water as Palestinians do,” Khoudary said.

Particularly grating for Palestinians is the fact that the more than 100 Jewish settlements in the West Bank--home to about 140,000 Israelis, according to the settlers, although the latest census figure is 121,900--suffer no water shortages. Several settlements, supplied by the Israeli water company, even have community swimming pools.

Some Israeli hydrologists believe that ultimately, when Israel and the Palestinians negotiate the final status of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem, Israel will agree to sell the Palestinians a greater allotment of water. But until those talks begin, Israel is determined to freeze the current situation. It is equally determined never to relinquish control of the aquifers.

“The issue is the danger of precedence and the possibility of loss of control,” said Saul Arlosoroff, a senior adviser on water issues at Hebrew University’s Truman Institute. Arlosoroff, who was put in charge of West Bank water supplies by the Israeli Ministry of Defense in 1967 and who now consults with government water negotiators, said that Israeli water officials were badly frightened by uncontrolled well-drilling in Gaza after Israeli troops withdrew and the Palestinian Authority took over in May, 1994.

*

“Before the Palestinian Authority managed to get control of the situation there, hundreds of wells were drilled by private contractors,” Arlosoroff said. “Such drilling will destroy the already severely depleted and damaged aquifer in Gaza.”

The other fraught issue for negotiators is the question of who will decide how so-called “state lands”--those the Israeli Land Authority has ruled have no clear private owner--will be used after the army redeploys from towns and villages. Israel has controlled all land use in the West Bank since 1967.

The Israelis reportedly are willing to turn over some state lands to the Palestinian Authority after redeployment. In the past, Israel has commonly used such land to build Jewish settlements.

The Israelis say the Palestinians will be handed control of state lands within the boundaries of the six towns Israeli troops are slated to vacate. But the Palestinians say that there is very little state land left within municipal boundaries on the West Bank. They demand that Israel hand over control of all state lands throughout the territory.

Negotiators on both sides say that a compromise over the land issue will probably be easier to reach than one on water.

“Water is not just economics,” said Arlosoroff, who now heads a state commission studying the reform of water use in Israel. “The sensitivity to the word ‘water’ is incredible. There are tremendous emotional and social implications to the way a government controls and distributes water. How it decides to use water can bring people into the streets.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Aquifer Use

450 million cubic meters of water are drawn annually from the aquifers by Israel.

120 million cubic meters are drawn annually by the Palestinians.

Yearly Rain

Jerusalem: 19.7”

Los Angeles: 14.7”

Water Woes

The aquifers supply one-third of the water Israel uses every year.