Peace with Israel?! Never ever. Too much money for Big Weapons relies on Israel pretending to be threatened by its surrounding countries.
No country leader right in his mind, not even Kim Yong (all NK is after is more Western aid money and a bit of luxury goods for the elite, and potential nukes are a perfect way of extorting), would ever sign off a military attack against Israel, given its nuclear abilities and the support of NATO. Still, Israeli government successfully manipulates the entire world to believe they're threatened.
The only threat for Israel is its corrupt, right-wing-extremist government. Israel government complains all the time about raising anti-semitic behaviour worldwide yet completely ignores that it is the fault of Israeli government.
"Pretending"...
Just because you live in a place where the existence of your country isn't threatened, doesn't make it not true for other places.
Israel is in a place where you have 10s of thousands of rockets aimed at your population centers, UN member countries publicly threaten to wipe you off the map while creating a nuclear program.
History of your surrounding countries trying to actually wipe you off the map, many many times...
I don't believe that Iran would do as much as send a dummy conventional rocket towards Israel. Israel and the US would likely send enough nukes flying towards Teheran to vaporize the country for centuries before the Iranian missile crosses the border, and Iran leadership knows that.
Because they can't just give a dirty bomb and smuggle into into Israel?
You can say but.. they will hurt the Muslim population.. but hmmmm what did Hezbollah did when they shot thousand of missiles at the norther part of Israel and hit many Arab villages or Hamas shooting and hitting Bedouin settlements in the south of Israel..
It's fine to kill "your own" as long as you take the infidels with them..
That same "I don't believe that they will do that" was said about Nazi Germany.. fool me once shame on me... fool me twice... oh nvm I'm dead...
The US promised to protect Israel in the first golf war, they shoot missiles that hit Tel-Aviv. Israel wanted to respond but the US asked Israel to hold back and they did.
> You can say but.. they will hurt the Muslim population..
Well, I'd actually say that Iran would have no benefit from that.
Really, the main threat to Israel from Iran -- or any of Israel's other regional foes -- getting nukes is that Israel's own nuclear arsenal would no longer provide it as free a hand in its own policies towards it neighbors as it has heretofore had, since it wouldn't be holding an unequaled trump in any runaway escalation provoked by Israel's policy choices.
I don't even understand what types of escalation you're talking about. Israel has peace aggreements with all its neighbourhood countries, and Israel being a nuclear power hasn't changed a thing for terrorist organisation which have attacked israel for the last 30 years.
All the trouble in the region comes from non-national entities, or state-sponsored terrorist organisations ( with daesh being a weird hybrid of the two). Letting iran have the nuclear bomb will only push conflicts toward even more terrorism, especially between shiite and sunnites.
Israel has peace agreements with Jordan and Egypt, but not its other neighbors, and fairly regularly engage in cross-border military operations, recently particularly in Syria.
Israel is a stable democracy which has been responsible with its nuclear weaponry for the past 30 years. Meanwhile, surrounding countries are unstable dictatorships which have routinely experienced coup d'etat, murder, and genocide against their own people and their neighbors. Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Gaza, are all dictatorial entities with significant portions of the population espousing verious messianic callings to wipe Israel off the map, kill all Jews, kill all Shia, kill all Sunni, bring order to Islam (ISIS), wipe out Kurds, etc. These types of unstable countries can not be allowed to obtain Nuclear weapons.
So even when palestinian have a written agreement with israelis on something as crucial as water in a semi desertic land, and someone posts about a peacefull technology used heavily in israel to the benefit of everyone in the region and probably everywhere in the world soon, there will people that come here to spread hateful propaganda... That's really depressing.
Sadly, the Palestinians elected for their government, Hamas, which has as part of its charter the destruction of Israel when they could have elected the Palestinian Authority to lead them which does recognize Israel. Hamas has spent much of its money on missiles that it shoots at Israeli civilian population centers. Consider, would the US be obligated to give water to Mexico or Canada if these countries had as part of their charter the destruction of the US and shot missiles at US civilian population centers?
I can assure you, that the Palestinian standard of living, esp. in Gaza, will markedly improve once they elect a government which signs a peace agreement with Israel.
So the Israeli apartheid and ethnic cleansing is actually the Palestinians fault? For electing the wrong political party? How long until Israel implements the final solution for this evil minority?
You are aware that black minorities and jews in europe never declared war to anyone, and didn't throw thousands of rockets on their neighbours every couple of years, right ?
I wonder how long people will tolerate this kind of verbal abuse ( since you're unfortunately not the only one to draw those kind of hateful comparisons).
> You are aware that black minorities and jews in europe never declared war to anyone, and didn't throw thousands of rockets on their neighbours every couple of years, right ?
So there is such a thing as justified abuse? Jews in Europe were abused without just cause, unlike Palestinians in Israel and the occupied territories?
> I wonder how long people will tolerate this kind of verbal abuse
What verbal abuse are you talking about?
> since you're unfortunately not the only one to draw those kind of hateful comparisons
Take a moment and think why that happens. Are we all haters who want nothing but to tarnish Israel's good name, or is there some real parallel between horrible political decisions? What will historians say 100 years from now? Will they sound more like me, or more like you?
Let's assume for the sake of argument that there is apartheid (it's clear there isn't, but let's assume it anyway). They are in Gaza! Gaza is not Israel, the entire concept of apartheid doesn't even make any sense in that concept.
> ethnic cleansing
Oh definitely. Most effective ethnic cleansing in history.
> implements the final solution for this evil minority?
Your antisemitism is showing.
You do know your github and other public data is linked from your profile? Most people at least try to be anonymous before being antisemitic.
You try to criticize Israel and you don't actually know anything about the area, do you?
Gaza. Does the word mean nothing to you? Apartheid is about two types of citizens, Gaza is not in Israel, the concept make no sense there at all. (And did you actually read the article you linked? I suspect you didn't.)
> In my criticism of Israel?
You didn't criticize Israel, you suggested they solve their problems by massacring millions of people.
> Fear is the mind-killer.
And mindlessly hating other people is the civilization killer.
> Hamas has spent much of its money on missiles that it shoots at Israeli civilian population centers.
Just compare the victims of the junkyard Hamas missiles and the countless, often innocent victims of Israeli air strikes. Not to count any of the violations of international law Israel has committed against the Palestine people (border violations, the illegal settlements encouraged by Israeli government, illegaly withholding Palestine tax income, ...).
Israel is able to get away with more illegal stuff than the US.
edit: oh, just btw, a single Hellfire missile costs $100k. Imagine if that money spent on a single missile was instead spent on improving the lives of Palestine citizens. Hate and religious extremism is far too often fueled by poverty.
So because Israel invested in early warning systems, mandates shelters to be built, and build anti missile systems like iron dome which shoots down incoming rockets and thus the amount of injuries is lower it's their fault?
Sure let's get rid of all that and play the number game...
There is not correct statistics of the number of innocent victims from air strikes. The one coming out of a terrorist organization? They count every dead as a civilian.
The Israeli Air Force tries to minimize the number of casualties, there have been numerous occasion where they canceled an operation while it's in the air because innocent civilian will get hurt, even if it means the terrorist will fire at Israeli target or get away.
If Israel really wanted to kill as many as they can, the would, they would just carpet bomb that place, they don't so your argument is invalid....
Israeli isn't an angel but it's not the devil you try to make it be.
The problem I have with the Israeli government is that they continue to provoke Hamas.
Bulldozing the houses of families of terrorists (punishment of the family is these days only heard of in North Korean prison camps)? Illegal settlements?
If the Israeli government wanted peace, they could immediately stop these measures and gain a lot of political credit in peace negotiations without losing anything (except votes from the illegal settlers of course). But the way things are running now, it becomes harder every day to defend Israel.
Provoke Hamas? Really?
An organization that killed hundreds in suicide bombings? That dig tunnels into kindergartens? Says to wipe Israel off the map in the charter...
That terrorist group is evil as they come.
By your logic we shouldn't provoke Isis either.. by merely existing...
Peace needs two sides, the Palestinians don't want peace, if they did there would have been one decades ago... Just look at what the previous prime ministers before the current one offered them, but it's too lucrative to just maintain a stats of war (All their leaders are basically millionaires who steal aid money).
You do realize that they did freeze building of settlements for 7 months as a show of good faith and told the Palestinians to come back to the negation table and they refused?
> Sadly, the Palestinians elected for their government, Hamas, which has as part of its charter the destruction of Israel when they could have elected the Palestinian Authority to lead them which does recognize Israel.
This is a bit confused -- they elected the Hamas-led Change and Reform group, which then led the government of the Palestinian Authority, until the Hamas/Fatah civil war occurred, causing the Hamas-led government to be dismissed (the PA Chairman -- chief of state, effectively, rather than head of government -- was Fatah), and a new Fatah-led government to be installed (with debated legality) which only effectively had any control in the West Bank.
The PA was the institution for which they were electing leadership, not one of the parties.
(Incidentally, since the existing government of the now-named State of Palestine -- effectively, the government of the West Bank -- is Fatah-led as a result of the Fatah/Hamas civil war and subsequent dismissal of the Hamas government, even to the extent it might be reasonable to use Hamas as an excuse for Israel obstructing water to Hamas-led Gaza, its pretty ludicrous to try to extend that justification to Israeli treatment of Palestinians generally, or the area under the effective control of the Fatah-led State of Palestine specifically.)
Israel is considered an occupying power within Gaza and the West Bank according to international law. Comparisons with Mexico and Canada are not particularly relevant, in that regard.
>You are mistaken, Israel is not an occupying power within Gaza.
well, technically you're right. Since the withdrawal, Israel is the occupying power _around_ Gaza as it controls all access to the Gaza - by land, sea and air.
While i'm completely pro-Israel, in the sense that i fully support right of Jewish people for their state (where it is now, whatever way it happened, it has already happened), i can't understand while the same standard - the right for their own state - isn't applied to Palestinians, nor by Israel (themselves being huge beneficiary of such a right) nor by the rest of the world. Palestinians' hate toward Israel can't be a valid reason to deny their own state to Palestinians as for example nobody denies the right of statehood to Iran who officially hates Israel, nor such right was denied to Egypt back when Egypt waged a war against Israel.
As a computer scientist you probably know that implementation details are actually more than just details. The right for a pal state has been accepted by pretty much everyone, including israel, since the beginning. The problem is the borders and the guarantees that it won't become a terrorist state for the whole region right from the first minute.
It probably seems a bit abstract for americans or europeans, but it's fundamental to the people risking their lives on it.
Israel is a occupying power in the West Bank and effectively is a occupier in Gaza. Israel collects taxes on Palestinian goods (as do the PA and Hamas). Regardless of how you _feel_ about their government, Israel has mandatory obligations as such it has to meet. This means things like not turning off power to Gaza from the power plant at Ashkelon, as some were suggesting offhandedly a couple of years ago.
They probably don't even pay for what they agreed to buy anyway... just like with electricity where they owe about 2 billion shekels (500 million $)
But they still get water regardless on the amount they are allow to pump, clean safe water coming from the same sources used for the rest of Israel, including the one in the article. They will have water without concerns for drought or whatever happens with the aquifer.
The thing is that this aquifer is under both Israeli and Palestinian land and therefor one affect the other. Just look at what they did in Gaza (From the article):
"Overpumping in Gaza, which causes seawater and sewage to penetrate into the aquifer, has made 90 percent of the potable water undrinkable."
It's probably best that they have a limit on drilling and pumping. Otherwise it could be really bad...
It will likely take efforts on many fronts to resolve SoCal's water issues. Charging for agricultural water use, enforcing drip-irrigation, improving reclamation/recycling, etc.
Reasonable options haven't been exhausted until California stops producing crops like rice.[1]
Our ideal climate, ample water supply and
innovative farming techniques result in some
of the highest rice yields in the world,
while at the same time providing rice of the
highest quality.
That was written a few years ago. Growing rice in a desert is hardly an "ideal climate", and the recent drought has certainly changed the perception of an "ample water supply".
Same thing with other water intensive crops like almonds. TV was recently reiterating the trope that a single almond takes 1 gallon of water. That seems way high, but I haven't searched further.
I had the same reaction. Water access for Israel is a question of security, while a drought in California is just the ugly underbelly of needless excess and unsustainable policy rearing its head.
This biggest issue in California is getting agricultural uses down and splitting off consumer use.
Desalinization works pretty well in California for getting water to people. Not so much for agriculture.
We need to start letting the agricultural water price rise to where it needs to be in order to get the agribusinesses to start growing less water intensive crops.
Note that one of the things that Israel did was digging up water-using orchards.
What's interesting about this is the desalination costs... The Sorek plant mentioned (largest of it's kind, 40 billion gallons/year) cost just $500 million to build. [1] They sell it back to Israel for $0.58/m^3 or $0.0022/gallon profitably.
That's way cheaper than, for example, Glendale, California, whose residential rates run anywhere between $0.0030 and $0.0052/gallon depending on consumption levels. [2]
What will it take to bring this kind of technology to Southern California?
>What will it take to bring this kind of technology to Southern California?
San Diego county is already getting a desalination plant in Carlsbad, although it's projected to cost more, for much less water: $530 million for ~18 billion gallons a year. No idea why it's so expensive.
Great benchmark for California... Actually, it looks like the project is closer to $780 million for the plant (not sure why the Wikipedia summary is off). [1] Central question is, can the Sorek method/scale be implemented in SoCal to get better results? Can it be run on integrated solar or other renewables?
These plants are running on cheap natural gas; Israeli price controls are looking at about $6 per million BTU [1] whereas US prices are around $8-10 [2]. The US could have cheap natural gas, too; Even cheaper than Israel could get it. But we can't move it around without pipelines, which is limiting both our production and consumption. What's blocking the pipelines? Nimbyism, to be short.
I like this idea very much. Make water only during the day. Water consumption is highest during the day anyway, and water can be stored much easier than electricity.
In a desert with plentiful sunshine for an application where you don't need to worry about distribution and storage, I would expect solar to be quite competitive with even the notional price of fossil fuel.
When you compare it with the real price of fossil fuel (i.e. add the negative externality of carbon dioxide emission to the notional price), solar wins by a country mile.
It's worth pointing out that Natural Gas is an extremely clean fossil fuel, as far as fossil fuels go. It's a shame that so much is simply burnt off rather than harnessed. That doesn't help anyone.
Yeah, from a purely non-political, engineering-only perspective, nuclear power and desalination seem like a match made in heaven: No carbon; steady, predictable power loads; near-limitless demand for agricultural freshwater in CA; near-guaranteed markets because of indefinite CA droughts; even a chance to do something useful with the waste heat.
No, no, no. Desal is not ever going to be used to irrigate crops in California. You would need to build something like 100 of the largest desal plants in existence to meet the ag demand (~= 100k AF/day). Oh and a way to pump it all a hundred miles inland, over a coastal mountain range. Also, there are significant environmental impacts associated with both desal and nukes which you have completely ignored. Pretend like technology is going to rush in and save the day delays our transition to a realistic, sustainable way of life.
> Making natural gas cheaper should not be one of our priorities. It's non-renewable and contributes to carbon emissions.
Your attitude is WHY there is so much CO2 emission.
If everyone switched to natural gas no one would worry about global warming. You would not be happy if CO2 emission was slashed in half in one go? Because that's what switching to natural gas would do.
Instead people bash it because it's not perfect.
Quite the opposite: If you actually cared about climate change cheaper natural gas would be your top priority.
From my understanding it's not unreasonable that someone whose goal is not "reduce CO2 emissions" but "reduce CO2 missions to a sustainable level" might see natural gas as a waste of time, diverting energy that might be better spent on a long-term solution.
Another data point: In Sweden water costs 15-25 kr/m^3 or 1.5-3 dollars/m^3 and we get it untreated directly from lakes. So $0.58 is very cheap even if it is the bulk price and it quadruples before it arrives at the end customer.
I'd love to have a conversation with the author of the piece and ask them what sort of mental conception of the universe leads to calling desalinated water "artificially produced."
"artificially produced water" just seems like a shortening of "artificially produced freshwater", and that seems like a correct statement. It's just semantics, man.
So, let's state my affiliation first: I lived in Tel Aviv for a year, I still work for a company that was founded in Israel. I have friends there and would love to go back.
Now .. water? That's insane. You'll see lots of places that offer a 'lawn'. Which doesn't work without a lot of water. People seem to be rather wasteful. We (my wife and me) had discussions with Israelis about how to do the dishes (the 'German way', if that is really special, is filling your sink with water and washing your dishes. The 'Israeli way' - anecdotally, among friends - was running tap water) and about reusing glass bottles ("What? You have people that prefer to buy Coke in a glass bottle, because that bottle will be washed and reused? Isn't that totally baaah?").
We tried to discuss that topic a couple of times, but nobody local (in our circles) cared One. Little. Bit.
(Ironically we were in a hotel before we found our final apartment for our time in Israel and the management stole the bathtub plug from each and every room, citing water shortage as a reason. That was before we had all the conversations that are summarized above)
I'm glad that desalination works and helps. But the attitude might need adjustment as well, based on my non-scientific observations.
Keep in mind that because they recycle so much wastewater, "wasting" water by running the tap is not as bad as it sounds.
Washing and reusing glass bottles is really stupid in a desert. You have unlimited amounts of sand to make glass, but water is less plentiful. Plus kosher issues make washing bottles problematic (doable, but more complicated).
Now, water in Europe is recycled as well. Maybe I'm missing the context, but .. so far I'm unconvinced. And even IFF that would be true, not using a running tap would save more water.
Reusing bottles is stupid? Really? You want to create those from scratch, because .. you have sand? What happens to the old/used bottles? I cannot even begin to understand this point, tbh.
Kosher: I'm no expert on kosher regulations, but a bottle of coke (in a specific form) will stay a bottle of coke. Washing it, refilling it should (??) be irrelevant for people that want kosher stuff. If you consider Coke kosher (which - ignoring Coke - is arguably something that you have to decide for yourself. People often seemed to eat seafood but reject pork for example) then this bottle is just going to be cleaned and .. refilled with the same stuff. I don't see how kosher comes into play here?
Okay - I don't want to say "that's insane". If you have a religious reason for not recycling glass bottles, there's no way to argue about that. None.
But that didn't apply in my social circles. My selection of citizens (say .. more than one, less than two dozen people) were not observant. Some were gay. Some recently immigrated and had more or less about as much idea about Jewish laws as I did.
So while you might present a point for refusing recycling (?), people around me were really mostly complaining about the 'Ewww' part of using a bottle that someone else used. Maybe downed, and used as an ashtray afterwards. Etc. etc..
We had that discussion (when talking about doing the dishes) and they were at least convinced that restaurants do their dishes the same way - open the tap, rinse the dishes...
There was no way to proceed. Obviously these guys did it that way at home. Stating that this is wasteful (and even worse for a restaurant!) didn't help. The 'sink full of water in which you dip all the dishes of the night and whatever you need to clean' was considered 'ewww'.
I'm still baffled today (we returned about 2.5 years ago). I still have exchanges about water usage (i.e. "It is our right to use as much water as we want to grow our garden") with my coworkers to this day.
> and they were at least convinced that restaurants do their dishes the same way - open the tap, rinse the dishes...
They are both right and wrong. Restaurants use the tap to wash food off of plates (no soap). Then they sanitize (not wash) the dishes with bleach, and minimal water.
> I'm still baffled ... with my coworkers to this day.
I hope you do not consider them representative of Israel. Israel has lots of people, with lots of opinions and ways of doing things. I get that they were who you knew there, but I hope you'll categorize them as "that's how they do it", not "that's how Israel does it".
> And even IFF that would be true, not using a running tap would save more water.
Agreed.
> What happens to the old/used bottles?
Crush them and put them back in the ground. Energy is more plentiful than water in Israel, it makes little sense to spend precious water to make glass. Are you worried about waste? Of all things glass is hardly a problem, it's impossible for us to run out of it, and it causes no harm if buried.
> Kosher ... will stay a bottle of coke ... If you consider Coke kosher .. refilled with the same stuff. I don't see how kosher comes into play here?
Anyway the problem is that you don't know what they did with the bottle while they had it. Did they put other products inside it, and now the bottle is not kosher? Probably not, but it's a concern.
You can make the bottle kosher again by boiling it in water, but that costs you more energy.
Mr. Shezaf, who also grows olives, prefers older agricultural methods and says desalination is essentially a privatization of Israel's water supply that benefits a few tycoons.
Basically pointing out, once again, that it really is a question of price, not of availability. Cheaper energy would make this more doable. And water has been proposed as a transfer medium for value from photovoltaic arrays (they desalinate water by cracking it into hydrogen and oxygen, which then gets recombined to produce local energy and exportable potable water. Only makes sense if you are willing to pay more for the water.
What's the state of the art of water desalination? I remember some interesting research on graphene filters a year or two back. Is this doable on a micro level for off grid living on coastlines?
81 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 72.6 ms ] threadBy removing this casus belli peace with Israel is much more likely.
Look at Jordan for example: Once they had a good treaty for water everything else fell into place.
No country leader right in his mind, not even Kim Yong (all NK is after is more Western aid money and a bit of luxury goods for the elite, and potential nukes are a perfect way of extorting), would ever sign off a military attack against Israel, given its nuclear abilities and the support of NATO. Still, Israeli government successfully manipulates the entire world to believe they're threatened.
The only threat for Israel is its corrupt, right-wing-extremist government. Israel government complains all the time about raising anti-semitic behaviour worldwide yet completely ignores that it is the fault of Israeli government.
The threat is real.
It's just exaggerated v-penis comparisons, imho.
You can say but.. they will hurt the Muslim population.. but hmmmm what did Hezbollah did when they shot thousand of missiles at the norther part of Israel and hit many Arab villages or Hamas shooting and hitting Bedouin settlements in the south of Israel.. It's fine to kill "your own" as long as you take the infidels with them..
That same "I don't believe that they will do that" was said about Nazi Germany.. fool me once shame on me... fool me twice... oh nvm I'm dead...
The US promised to protect Israel in the first golf war, they shoot missiles that hit Tel-Aviv. Israel wanted to respond but the US asked Israel to hold back and they did.
US will not do Israels job for them.
Well, I'd actually say that Iran would have no benefit from that.
Really, the main threat to Israel from Iran -- or any of Israel's other regional foes -- getting nukes is that Israel's own nuclear arsenal would no longer provide it as free a hand in its own policies towards it neighbors as it has heretofore had, since it wouldn't be holding an unequaled trump in any runaway escalation provoked by Israel's policy choices.
All the trouble in the region comes from non-national entities, or state-sponsored terrorist organisations ( with daesh being a weird hybrid of the two). Letting iran have the nuclear bomb will only push conflicts toward even more terrorism, especially between shiite and sunnites.
Not enough water in the West Bank? (Press the + in the top-right corner) http://visualizingpalestine.org/visuals/west-bank-water?v=la...
Water supply and sanitation in the Palestinian territories http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_supply_and_sanitation_in_...
I can assure you, that the Palestinian standard of living, esp. in Gaza, will markedly improve once they elect a government which signs a peace agreement with Israel.
I wonder how long people will tolerate this kind of verbal abuse ( since you're unfortunately not the only one to draw those kind of hateful comparisons).
So there is such a thing as justified abuse? Jews in Europe were abused without just cause, unlike Palestinians in Israel and the occupied territories?
> I wonder how long people will tolerate this kind of verbal abuse
What verbal abuse are you talking about?
> since you're unfortunately not the only one to draw those kind of hateful comparisons
Take a moment and think why that happens. Are we all haters who want nothing but to tarnish Israel's good name, or is there some real parallel between horrible political decisions? What will historians say 100 years from now? Will they sound more like me, or more like you?
Let's assume for the sake of argument that there is apartheid (it's clear there isn't, but let's assume it anyway). They are in Gaza! Gaza is not Israel, the entire concept of apartheid doesn't even make any sense in that concept.
> ethnic cleansing
Oh definitely. Most effective ethnic cleansing in history.
> implements the final solution for this evil minority?
Your antisemitism is showing.
You do know your github and other public data is linked from your profile? Most people at least try to be anonymous before being antisemitic.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_and_the_apartheid_analog...
> Your antisemitism is showing.
In my criticism of Israel?
> You do know your github and other public data is linked from your profile?
Fear is the mind-killer.
Gaza. Does the word mean nothing to you? Apartheid is about two types of citizens, Gaza is not in Israel, the concept make no sense there at all. (And did you actually read the article you linked? I suspect you didn't.)
> In my criticism of Israel?
You didn't criticize Israel, you suggested they solve their problems by massacring millions of people.
> Fear is the mind-killer.
And mindlessly hating other people is the civilization killer.
Ah, the Guantanamo defense. I know that maneuver.
Just compare the victims of the junkyard Hamas missiles and the countless, often innocent victims of Israeli air strikes. Not to count any of the violations of international law Israel has committed against the Palestine people (border violations, the illegal settlements encouraged by Israeli government, illegaly withholding Palestine tax income, ...).
Israel is able to get away with more illegal stuff than the US.
edit: oh, just btw, a single Hellfire missile costs $100k. Imagine if that money spent on a single missile was instead spent on improving the lives of Palestine citizens. Hate and religious extremism is far too often fueled by poverty.
Sure let's get rid of all that and play the number game...
There is not correct statistics of the number of innocent victims from air strikes. The one coming out of a terrorist organization? They count every dead as a civilian.
The Israeli Air Force tries to minimize the number of casualties, there have been numerous occasion where they canceled an operation while it's in the air because innocent civilian will get hurt, even if it means the terrorist will fire at Israeli target or get away.
If Israel really wanted to kill as many as they can, the would, they would just carpet bomb that place, they don't so your argument is invalid....
Israeli isn't an angel but it's not the devil you try to make it be.
Bulldozing the houses of families of terrorists (punishment of the family is these days only heard of in North Korean prison camps)? Illegal settlements?
If the Israeli government wanted peace, they could immediately stop these measures and gain a lot of political credit in peace negotiations without losing anything (except votes from the illegal settlers of course). But the way things are running now, it becomes harder every day to defend Israel.
And that, honestly, is unacceptable.
Peace needs two sides, the Palestinians don't want peace, if they did there would have been one decades ago... Just look at what the previous prime ministers before the current one offered them, but it's too lucrative to just maintain a stats of war (All their leaders are basically millionaires who steal aid money).
You do realize that they did freeze building of settlements for 7 months as a show of good faith and told the Palestinians to come back to the negation table and they refused?
This is a bit confused -- they elected the Hamas-led Change and Reform group, which then led the government of the Palestinian Authority, until the Hamas/Fatah civil war occurred, causing the Hamas-led government to be dismissed (the PA Chairman -- chief of state, effectively, rather than head of government -- was Fatah), and a new Fatah-led government to be installed (with debated legality) which only effectively had any control in the West Bank.
The PA was the institution for which they were electing leadership, not one of the parties.
(Incidentally, since the existing government of the now-named State of Palestine -- effectively, the government of the West Bank -- is Fatah-led as a result of the Fatah/Hamas civil war and subsequent dismissal of the Hamas government, even to the extent it might be reasonable to use Hamas as an excuse for Israel obstructing water to Hamas-led Gaza, its pretty ludicrous to try to extend that justification to Israeli treatment of Palestinians generally, or the area under the effective control of the Fatah-led State of Palestine specifically.)
well, technically you're right. Since the withdrawal, Israel is the occupying power _around_ Gaza as it controls all access to the Gaza - by land, sea and air.
While i'm completely pro-Israel, in the sense that i fully support right of Jewish people for their state (where it is now, whatever way it happened, it has already happened), i can't understand while the same standard - the right for their own state - isn't applied to Palestinians, nor by Israel (themselves being huge beneficiary of such a right) nor by the rest of the world. Palestinians' hate toward Israel can't be a valid reason to deny their own state to Palestinians as for example nobody denies the right of statehood to Iran who officially hates Israel, nor such right was denied to Egypt back when Egypt waged a war against Israel.
It probably seems a bit abstract for americans or europeans, but it's fundamental to the people risking their lives on it.
But they still get water regardless on the amount they are allow to pump, clean safe water coming from the same sources used for the rest of Israel, including the one in the article. They will have water without concerns for drought or whatever happens with the aquifer.
The thing is that this aquifer is under both Israeli and Palestinian land and therefor one affect the other. Just look at what they did in Gaza (From the article): "Overpumping in Gaza, which causes seawater and sewage to penetrate into the aquifer, has made 90 percent of the potable water undrinkable."
It's probably best that they have a limit on drilling and pumping. Otherwise it could be really bad...
What are your objections to desalination?
Same thing with other water intensive crops like almonds. TV was recently reiterating the trope that a single almond takes 1 gallon of water. That seems way high, but I haven't searched further.
[1] http://web.archive.org/web/20060210141916/http://calrice.org...
Desalinization works pretty well in California for getting water to people. Not so much for agriculture.
We need to start letting the agricultural water price rise to where it needs to be in order to get the agribusinesses to start growing less water intensive crops.
Note that one of the things that Israel did was digging up water-using orchards.
That's way cheaper than, for example, Glendale, California, whose residential rates run anywhere between $0.0030 and $0.0052/gallon depending on consumption levels. [2]
What will it take to bring this kind of technology to Southern California?
[1] http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/534996/megasca...
[2] http://www.glendaleca.gov/water-rates
San Diego county is already getting a desalination plant in Carlsbad, although it's projected to cost more, for much less water: $530 million for ~18 billion gallons a year. No idea why it's so expensive.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlsbad_desalination_plant
[1] http://carlsbaddesal.com/carlsbad-final-schedule-taking-shap...
[1]http://www.platts.com/latest-news/natural-gas/jerusalem/isra... [2]http://www.eia.gov/dnav/ng/ng_pri_sum_dcu_nus_m.htm (I'm fudging the BTU->Cubic Foot conversion here, but it's darn close to 1000:1)
Everyone keeps looking into batteries and they are not yet sufficient.
Why not store the massive amounts of Solar that Southern California receives during the day as clean drinking water?
When you compare it with the real price of fossil fuel (i.e. add the negative externality of carbon dioxide emission to the notional price), solar wins by a country mile.
Making natural gas cheaper should not be one of our priorities. It's non-renewable and contributes to carbon emissions.
Your attitude is WHY there is so much CO2 emission.
If everyone switched to natural gas no one would worry about global warming. You would not be happy if CO2 emission was slashed in half in one go? Because that's what switching to natural gas would do.
Instead people bash it because it's not perfect.
Quite the opposite: If you actually cared about climate change cheaper natural gas would be your top priority.
Now .. water? That's insane. You'll see lots of places that offer a 'lawn'. Which doesn't work without a lot of water. People seem to be rather wasteful. We (my wife and me) had discussions with Israelis about how to do the dishes (the 'German way', if that is really special, is filling your sink with water and washing your dishes. The 'Israeli way' - anecdotally, among friends - was running tap water) and about reusing glass bottles ("What? You have people that prefer to buy Coke in a glass bottle, because that bottle will be washed and reused? Isn't that totally baaah?").
We tried to discuss that topic a couple of times, but nobody local (in our circles) cared One. Little. Bit.
(Ironically we were in a hotel before we found our final apartment for our time in Israel and the management stole the bathtub plug from each and every room, citing water shortage as a reason. That was before we had all the conversations that are summarized above)
I'm glad that desalination works and helps. But the attitude might need adjustment as well, based on my non-scientific observations.
Washing and reusing glass bottles is really stupid in a desert. You have unlimited amounts of sand to make glass, but water is less plentiful. Plus kosher issues make washing bottles problematic (doable, but more complicated).
Now, water in Europe is recycled as well. Maybe I'm missing the context, but .. so far I'm unconvinced. And even IFF that would be true, not using a running tap would save more water.
Reusing bottles is stupid? Really? You want to create those from scratch, because .. you have sand? What happens to the old/used bottles? I cannot even begin to understand this point, tbh.
Kosher: I'm no expert on kosher regulations, but a bottle of coke (in a specific form) will stay a bottle of coke. Washing it, refilling it should (??) be irrelevant for people that want kosher stuff. If you consider Coke kosher (which - ignoring Coke - is arguably something that you have to decide for yourself. People often seemed to eat seafood but reject pork for example) then this bottle is just going to be cleaned and .. refilled with the same stuff. I don't see how kosher comes into play here?
But that didn't apply in my social circles. My selection of citizens (say .. more than one, less than two dozen people) were not observant. Some were gay. Some recently immigrated and had more or less about as much idea about Jewish laws as I did.
So while you might present a point for refusing recycling (?), people around me were really mostly complaining about the 'Ewww' part of using a bottle that someone else used. Maybe downed, and used as an ashtray afterwards. Etc. etc..
Do they not eat at a restaurant that washes dishes?
I doubt they actually thought about what they were saying.
There was no way to proceed. Obviously these guys did it that way at home. Stating that this is wasteful (and even worse for a restaurant!) didn't help. The 'sink full of water in which you dip all the dishes of the night and whatever you need to clean' was considered 'ewww'.
I'm still baffled today (we returned about 2.5 years ago). I still have exchanges about water usage (i.e. "It is our right to use as much water as we want to grow our garden") with my coworkers to this day.
They are both right and wrong. Restaurants use the tap to wash food off of plates (no soap). Then they sanitize (not wash) the dishes with bleach, and minimal water.
> I'm still baffled ... with my coworkers to this day.
I hope you do not consider them representative of Israel. Israel has lots of people, with lots of opinions and ways of doing things. I get that they were who you knew there, but I hope you'll categorize them as "that's how they do it", not "that's how Israel does it".
Not to the degree that they do in Israel.
> And even IFF that would be true, not using a running tap would save more water.
Agreed.
> What happens to the old/used bottles?
Crush them and put them back in the ground. Energy is more plentiful than water in Israel, it makes little sense to spend precious water to make glass. Are you worried about waste? Of all things glass is hardly a problem, it's impossible for us to run out of it, and it causes no harm if buried.
> Kosher ... will stay a bottle of coke ... If you consider Coke kosher .. refilled with the same stuff. I don't see how kosher comes into play here?
Coke is kosher, it's actually one of the very first commercial products that was certified kosher. They had to tell the Rabbi all the secret ingredients. https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/Kasheri...
Anyway the problem is that you don't know what they did with the bottle while they had it. Did they put other products inside it, and now the bottle is not kosher? Probably not, but it's a concern.
You can make the bottle kosher again by boiling it in water, but that costs you more energy.
Mr. Shezaf, who also grows olives, prefers older agricultural methods and says desalination is essentially a privatization of Israel's water supply that benefits a few tycoons.
That said, the ability of graphene to desalinate water is something I think should get more investigation than it does. See (http://cleantechnica.com/2015/04/03/methane-rescue-new-energ...) for example.
And those comments were very predictable.