Seattle

Residents of both the Palestinian territory and neighbouring Israel could benefit from action to desalinate groundwater crossing their border, according to a geological study of the Gaza Strip.

A team of Israeli, Palestinian and French scientists funded by the European Union and led by geochemist Avner Vengosh of Ben-Gurion University in Beer Sheva, Israel, announced their findings at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America in Seattle on 3 November.

Some 1.2 million people in the Gaza Strip depend on water from the southern Mediterranean Coastal aquifer that underlies the territory and extends into Israel. In general, the amount of chloride ions present in a sample is used as a guide to how much sodium chloride, or salt, the water contains. Drinking-water in the Gaza Strip typically contains more than a gram of chloride per litre, far more than Europe's legal limit of 250 mg or Israel's of 600 mg.

Vengosh's team found that most of the salt comes from naturally saline groundwater flowing into the aquifer from Israel. The researchers then modelled the system and suggested what they say would be a relatively simple solution to the problem. Pumping the saline water from Israel out of the aquifer before it reaches the Gaza Strip and reducing the amount of water drawn from the aquifer in Gaza would lower salt levels, the researchers say. Desalination plants could convert the salty water to fresh water to make up for the reduction.

“Palestinians will benefit from improved water and Israel will earn goodwill, while only losing saline water it wasn't using anyway,” says Vengosh, who estimates that adding just ten wells near the border between Israel and the Gaza Strip and two small desalination facilities could do the job.

But moving the proposal from the scientific arena to the political one will be tricky, says hydrologist Amer Marei of Al-Quds University in Jerusalem. The project will need a sponsor, such as the World Bank, and the political climate in the region will have to improve. “This will not fit with the current political agenda. But that agenda will change,” he says. “It will happen.”