Sunday, May 15, 2016

How much water supply is this region experiencing?

May 14, 2016
By Hana Namrouqa


Amman — Temperatures this week (click here) will rise 11°C above their annual average for this time of the year, as the season's first heatwave takes hold of the country, a meteorologist said on Saturday.
The heatwave, which started affecting the country on Saturday, is caused by multiple factors, including a hot air mass affecting northern Saudi Arabia, in addition to cold weather in Europe and northern Africa that has pushed hot air in the Sahara towards the country.
"The heatwave will push temperatures to their upper thirties in Amman and will bring very hot and dry weather. It will peak on Monday and start to gradually subside on Tuesday evening," Amer Armoush, a forecaster at the Jordan Meteorological Department (JMD), told The Jordan Times over the phone.
Sunday's weather will be hot across the Kingdom and very hot in Aqaba, the Dead Sea and the Jordan Valley, according to the JMD....

2 September 2010
By Martin Asser

The Arab-Israeli (click here) dispute is a conflict about land - and maybe just as crucially the water which flows through that land.
The so-called Six-Day War in 1967 arguably had its origins in a water dispute - moves to divert the River Jordan, Israel's main source of drinking water.
Years of skirmishes and sabre rattling culminated in all-out war, with Israel quadrupling the territory it controlled and gaining complete control of double the resources of fresh water.
Any country needs water to survive and develop. In Israel's history, it has needed water to make feasible the influx of huge numbers of Jewish immigrants.
Therefore, on the margins of one of the most arid environments on earth, the available water system had to support not just the indigenous population, mainly Palestinian peasant farmers, but also hundreds of thousands of immigrants.
In addition to their sheer numbers, citizens of the new state were intent on conducting water-intensive commercial agricultural such as growing bananas and citrus fruits....