Israel and water: The Zionist dreams and nightmares

Just as the combination of two hydrogen atoms with an oxygen atom to form water preceded the creation of heaven and earth in Genesis, so too Zionist dreams preceded the creation of the State of Israel. Theodor Herzl, in making his last great literary splash with the publication of his novel Altneuland, envisioned taking advantage of the world-leading drop in height from the Mediterranean Sea to the Dead Sea. Herzl’s vision was that all of Israel’s energy would be supplied by a massive, roaring hydroelectric plant modeled on Niagara Falls, and it would produce enough energy to share with our neighbors in the interest of promoting peaceful relations.  Many Zionist dreams are transboundary, mostly due to the precarious position of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, which is the 10th-driest country on the planet, with which we share a water border – the river previously known as the mighty Jordan.

The Jordan River was once so mighty that in 1920 Pinchas Rutenberg, the founding father of what later became the Israel Electric Company, submitted to the British a plan to build more than a dozen hydroelectric plants on the river. A year later, he received a concession granting him all the water power rights to the Jordan and to build the first station. The plant, which produced 18 MW, operated successfully for 16 years until it was ransacked by Iraqi forces on May 14, 1948.

However, Israeli control of the Sea of Galilee ensured that David Ben-Gurion could began work on the national water carrier, 130 kilometers of pipes and canals, and the national faucet for agriculture and drinking water was turned on in 1964 by prime minister Levi Eshkol. Today, Israel is producing so much desalinated water that we have fulfilled the miraculous equivalent of Psalm 114, “The Jordan reversed and flowed upstream,” with this year reversing the direction of the carrier flow back into the Kinneret.