Examination of Witnesses (Questions 100-107)
MR MARTIN
DINHAM, MR
DAVID HALLAM,
MR MICHAEL
ANDERSON AND
MR PETER
GOODERHAM
24 OCTOBER 2006
Q100 Joan Ruddock: So the Palestinians
have restricted access to the water supply and limited because
of the absence of new wells, is that the case, but the Israelis
are drawing water from the Palestinian Occupied Territories?
Mr Dinham: Yes.
Q101 Joan Ruddock: What is DFID doing,
or does it feel it can do anything in the circumstances, to ensure
that there is an adequate supply for the Palestinians, and they
also believe that there is contamination of water supplies, which
is very serious because of the breakdown of some of the other
aspects of their society?
Mr Dinham: As with so many of
these issues that we have been discussing, they all come back
to the political process and trying to find a way in which the
parties can get to discussing the key areas for the final status
negotiations. This is a key one and we have seen that our most
useful contribution to this has really been to try and prepare
the factual ground from a technocratic point of view, to avoid
getting involved in the emotional part of the discussion but actually
to look at what would be in the negotiating brief on the Palestinian
side, and so the best possible resolution of the issue could come
out of a final discussion. It seems to us that there will not
be any particular movement on this, as on many of the other issues,
until you wrap it into a political process, which is what is desperately
lacking.
Q102 Joan Ruddock: In the TIM that
we talked about earlier what provision is there in that mechanism
for water?
Mr Dinham: In our second tranche,
which was through the First Window of the TIM, we are providing
assistance to the operation and maintenance for water supply,
sanitation supplies and electricity supplies, so that is one of
the ways in which we are helping in a fairly modest way to ensure
that water, such as there is, is made available to people who
are really in desperate need of it so there is a mechanism through
the TIM to do that.
Mr Hallam: We were instrumental
in setting up this part of the Window by inviting the World Bank
to prepare work that will enable us to put money into it. We have
put £1.5 million into water and sanitation.
Q103 Joan Ruddock: It would be quite
interesting to find out exactly what that had provided for in
terms of whether it is new wells, whether it is maintenance of
the existing pipes, whether it is delivery to households and how
many hours a day the Palestinians do have access to water.
Mr Hallam: We can get you details
of what the money has been earmarked for6. I should say that the
money only went out a couple of weeks ago, so things are being
procured and things will happen.
Mr Dinham: But access to water
is two to three hours a day.
Mr Hallam: In Gaza it is, yes.
Mr Dinham: And six to eight hours
of electricity.
Q104 Joan Ruddock: Pretty grim?
Mr Dinham: Yes.
Mr Hallam: Could I also just add
that there is a project that we are working on with the Foreign
Office, particularly on pollution monitoring, and it is a project
that is joining up Palestinian and Israeli and Jordanian water
counterparts to talk and learn more about pollution.
Q105 Chairman: With the imbalance
between the water on the West Bank and Israel's requirements for
water being as great as it is, how do you envisage the two-state
solution working where Israel is potentially dependent on water
from an independent Palestinian state whose security threat will
inevitably lead to, at the very least, suspicion? Does it not
rather suggest that that is a fundamental obstacle?
Mr Dinham: It is one of several
very tough issues which are going to have to be brought to the
table. The important thing is to get a basis on which people start
talking and then you can start to deal with those issues, but
it is going to be difficult. If you look around the world water
is often a huge issue of controversy and dispute and all the rest
of it, but in most places it is possible to come to a solution,
so as long as the will is there and people are talking then we
are hopeful that we can find some technical solutions to it and
we would obviously want to help with that if we were asked to
do so.
Q106 Joan Ruddock: But arguably the
case here is that there is a total inadequacy of supply for the
Palestinians so, although water, of course, can reasonably be
traded,—Scotland and Wales provide
6 Ev 87
quite a lot of water for England—in this case,
to satisfy Israel's needs might be extremely difficult if the
Palestinians were not to self-deprive.
Mr Dinham: It will be a tough
negotiation.
Mr Anderson: It is even slightly
more complicated than that because many of these water resources
are regional in nature and so Jordan and Syria and so on will
have to be brought into the picture in some kind of sharing agreement.
Q107 Chairman: Thank you. We are
debating in the House on Thursday the White Paper, which I mentioned,
the focus on governance. I will be surprised if some of these
issues do not surface in that. We are also just about to publish
a report on conflict and this is probably the most difficult and
intractable issue we face. DFID does actually have a Strategic
Conflict Assessment Tool which is supposed to help inform policy-making
and how you deal with conflict. Has that been applied in the context
of Israel and Palestine or is it being applied?
Mr Anderson: We did, not a full
conflict assessment, but a preliminary conflict assessment, several
years ago which is now out of date and we have just put in place
new conflict adviser within the team. We are looking at analysing
conflict with some partners that have been analysing conflicts
in the region, and also within the Palestinian Territories, which
is one of the issues that we need to take forward. Increasingly
DFID is seeking to combine the Strategic Conflict Assessment Tool
with what we call the Drivers of Change Tool to try to understand
the political incentives that operate. We have been doing some
work on understanding the alignment of political forces within
the Palestinian Territories as well, without which conflict issues
cannot be understood fully.
Chairman: Thank you very much. This has
inevitably been a fairly tough exchange because we are going to
visit Palestine in the next couple of weeks and obviously we will
want to see the situation on the ground. I have been to Israel
and parts of Palestine but quite a long time ago. Other members
of the Committee have been there in the last three years, and
by the sound of it we are going to find a worse situation. I hope
our report can be constructive but I do thank you for giving us
your views, and it is very important that we have both Departments
here. Thank you all very much for taking the time and trouble
to be here.
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