Pray for Rain; Act for Peace

Yesterday I had one of my tour groups look down into the cistern at Nazareth Village, which is almost empty of water. I was about to remark on the sad lack of rain this winter when the cloud above me dropped about five drops of water on my head, and then moved on.

I looked up and felt like this was a cruel thing for the sky to do, to ruin my bit about needing rain, without actually giving us any water to work with.

It has been a couple of weeks with no rain, during the season in which the region gets their entire moisture for the year, and this does not bode well for the coming months. The poppies in my back yard already hang their heads in exhaustion.

People have described to me how the land starts to dry out from green to brownish yellow, as soon as the winter rains end. But I had no idea it could happen so quickly. I am used to green, so I take the green of winter here for granted. Besides, I love blue sky and sunshine, and feel pretty down on dreary days. Last year studying in Wuppertal, Germany, I woke up every morning to rain, and groaned.

Rain means something different here. I spent last Tuesday hiking on Mt. Arbel, and ate lunch overlooking the Sea of Galilee (Lake Kinneret), which is Israel's main freshwater resource. My friend Mike pointed out the various pumping stations along the coast of the lake, whose water levels reached a record and dangerous low last fall.

It is difficult to find information on the water crisis here without an obvious political slant. "Middle Eastern rhetoric often portrays the issue of water as an existential, zero-sum conflict - casting either Israel as a malevolent sponge sucking up Arab water resources, or the implacably hostile Arabs as threatening Israel's very existence by denying life-giving water," explains a BBC article, which summarizes the complicated issue much better than I can.

What I can say I've personally observed, though, is that Israelis have much greater access to resources than Palestinians, whether that resource is land, roads, building permits, or municipal trash pick up. The imbalance holds true with water as well.

Water resources--even the aquifers under the West Bank--are used at a much higher rate by Israelis than Palestinians. And although access to land is a constant sore point, access to water is a matter of immediate survival. And every bit of rain is a blessing.

Last night I went to sleep to the sound of heavy, driving rain. I dreamed of running through the rain, and woke to thunder. It can rain all day if it likes.

In the long run, no matter the political conflict, what this land as a whole needs is solutions that increase the sustainability of life in a dry land. As the BBC article states, on the issue of water, "Israel and the Palestinians must work together, because they cannot survive as combatants."