Israel Responds to Climate Change in Middle East

Storm Byron pulverized the eastern Mediterranean for three days in December. The most severe weather system since meteorological records began being kept more than a century-and-a-half ago turned low-lying areas into lakes, wadis into fast-flowing torrents, and dry Judean Desert waterfalls into raging mini-Niagaras. Mount Hermon was crowned with snow.

Two Israelis died of hypothermia in Jerusalem and Netanya. At least 16 displaced people in the Gaza Strip froze to death – according to unreliable Palestinian sources – as refugee encampments in al-Mawasi, Deir al-Balah, and Khan Yunis were inundated by a fetid ocean of mud and misery. The icy water compounded the suffering of the coastal enclave’s residents, nearly all of whom were displaced in the war that followed Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, massacre ironically named the al-Aqsa Flood.

Flash flooding along highways and roads in central Israel trapped dozens of drivers in their vehicles, the Fire and Rescue Authority reported. The municipality of Yavne declared a state of emergency. Israel Railways temporarily halted train service between Lod and Beersheba after signaling equipment failed.

With Israelis’ typical black humor, Jerusalem Report editor Ruth Eglash posted a meme of blasé backgammon players rolling the dice as a missile alert siren wailed but then cowering under an umbrella from the deluge.

Embodying the aphorism that all news is local, this writer and wife, Randi, spread an array of pots and pails across the kitchen floor to catch the water seeping through the leaky roof.

But just in time for Chanukah – the Festival of Light – the storm front passed and the Levant’s beautiful blue winter skies returned.

How then is one to understand this historic flood of cats and dogs? Many people misunderstand global climate change as causing warmer temperatures. That’s simplistic. Climate change is Mother Nature’s revenge. Fueled by man’s disregard for the environment, global weather is becoming ever more extreme – alternating droughts and floods, and record heat waves and freezing temperatures, with endless muddy thaws in between.

The weather in Israel in recent years exactly fits this paradigm. The country’s major source of fresh water, Lake Kinneret, also known as the Sea of Galilee, currently stands at -213.4 cm below sea level – 40 cm below the lower red line and approaching the historic minimum of -213.8 below which the priceless water source will be irreparably damaged. Yet, in the spring of 2024, after a winter of particularly heavy rains of blessing, the Deganya Dam at the south end of the storied lake was almost opened to release excess water and prevent flooding of the city of Tiberias. Water levels came within 20 cm of the upper red line. Since then, the country has been gripped by a two-year drought. Normal precipitation of some 100 cm of rain annually can no longer be relied upon.

With the Jewish State’s population surging past 10 million and a further five million in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, water from the lake and the mountain and coastal aquifers has proven inadequate for the needs of human consumption, agriculture and industry.

The solution has two parts. The first was the construction from 1958 to 1964 of the visionary National Water Carrier (NWC) – a 1.7 billion-liter network including 87 km of steel and concrete pipelines, 13 km tunnels carved through the mountains of the Galilee, and eight km of open canals and reservoirs allowing the pumping of drinking water from Lake Kinneret south to the Coastal Plain and the Negev Desert.

Technically bold and crucial for the nation’s prosperity, the NWC allowed the greening of the desert. But it ultimately proved inadequate for the growing country’s burgeoning needs.

Thus, beginning in the early 2000s, Israel embarked on a national program for large-scale seawater desalination plants making the salty water of the Mediterranean Sea potable.

Today, five huge desalination plants are currently operating along the Mediterranean coast: in Ashkelon, Sorek, Hadera, Palmachim, and Ashdod. These reverse osmosis (RO) facilities supply an aggregate of 585 million cubic meters of water a year, amounting to 70 percent of the country’s total water consumption. New major plants are planned in Eilat on the Red Sea and in the Western Galilee, as well as a second facility at Sorek south of Tel Aviv.

In the land of milk and honey, water has always been in short supply. Visible to the south of Caesarea with its monumental ancient aqueducts is the Hadera Power Station and Desalinization Plant. It’s simple to boil seawater and distill salt from it. The tricky part is scaling up the chemistry and reducing the cost. Israeli scientists have excelled at that: innovative firms developed the more efficient reverse osmosis process using a filtration-like technology. Since the 1970s, the cost of removing salt from seawater has plunged from about $2.50 per cubic meter to 40 cents. The cost is coming down further thanks to the vast offshore natural gas fields Israel began tapping in 2013 to generate electricity.

Few Israelis have been to the Tamar gas field’s giant, high-security, mid-sea production platform in the Mediterranean, 25 km off the coast of Ashkelon. But all are benefiting from its economic impact. Not just a newly-minted energy exporter, for the first time in its history, arid Israel is experiencing a water surplus. The country has pioneered its way to become the global market leader in desalinization and water technology. Today, Israel treats and recycles more than 80 percent of household wastewater. By contrast, Spain, which has the second-highest reclamation rate, recycles about 30 percent.

Israel’s first major desalination plant opened in Ashkelon in 2005. Since then, four more large-scale seawater desalination plants have come online, with additional capacity in the pipeline.

Israelis today drink from the sea nearly 600 million cubic meters of desalinated water. Under the terms of the 1994 Israel-Jordan peace treaty, Israel committed to supplying the Hashemite kingdom with at least 50-55 million cubic meters (MCM) of water annually from the Jordan/Yarmouk rivers. Given Jordan’s chronic water scarcity, this crucial water treaty was subsequently expanded to up to 100+ MCM total.

Desalination has revolutionized Israel, says Shlomo Wald, chief scientist at the Ministry of Energy and Water Resources. “Now, Israel isn’t always dependent on the mercy of G-d to give us rain.”

While the surfeit of desalinated water has the potential to bring peace in the parched region, with the current drought there simply isn’t enough water for the needs of Israel and Jordan.

Today, Israel’s entire strategy of water management has been turned on its head. Instead of further depleting Lake Kinneret by pumping water south, the NWC is being used to convey desalinated seawater into the freshwater lake. Launched in phases, with initial operations in late 2022 and expanded flows in 2025, this “Reverse Water Carrier” project is the first time a natural lake is refilled this way. With the water level rising by one cm monthly independent of winter rain and summer evaporation, hydrologists hope to avoid a disastrous ecological collapse.

The alternative? In Iran, where the country’s bounty of natural resources and fresh water has been squandered, a severe drought has depleted the reservoirs that provide the capital, Teheran, with drinking water.

The apocalypse may come not with a bang but a whimper when the taps run dry, and the toilets can’t be flushed.