SHUVAL Hillel Lunenfield-Kunen Professor of Environmental Sciences. Division of Environmental Sciences, The Herrmann School of Applied Science. The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel - email hshuval@vms.huji.ac.il
Five riparians share the water resources of the Jordan Basin- Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, the Palestine Authority and Israel. In general the rainfall distribution is such that the northern countries - Syria and Lebanon benefit from more plentiful rainfall which deceases drastically to south. These two most northern riparians have available to them about five times the potential water resources per capita/yr. as Jordan and Israel and some ten times that of the Palestinians who suffer from the most severe water shortages. The United States sponsored Johnston Plan of 1956 proposed a basis for an agreement for equitable allocations of the water resources of the Jordan Basin to all of the riparians. This proposal was accepted on the technical level by all the partners, but rejected by the Arab League for political reasons. No one knows if the recent severe draught conditions are indicative of general regional trends resulting from global warming or part of the normal cycles of draughts recorded over the past century. However, if the current trends continue the water shortages of all the riparian will increase and will exacerbate the tension between the five riparians over reallocation of the waters of the Jordan River Basin...