PA: 'Not aware' of World Bank contacts on Red-Dead canal deal

Date: 30 / 06 / 2009  Time:  14:17
Bethlehem – Ma’an –

Palestinian Water Authority Chairman Shadad Al-Atili said the Palestinian Authority (PA) was not made aware that Israel was approaching the World Bank for funding a project for a canal from the Red Sea to the Dead Sea.

Al-Atili was responding to a report in the mass-selling Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronot, that said Israel had secured a pledge of World Bank funding for the tripartite Israel-PA-Jordan canal project. The newspaper said Israel’s Vice Premier Silvan Shalom had received this assurance during a Washington meeting with World Bank officials.

Al-Atili told Ma’an’s radio network that Shalom does not have a right to make decisions in this regard without contacting all the concerned parties.

He pointed out that a feasibility study was signed in 2005, and was given to the World Bank to examine it and fund it in case concerned parties decided to carry out the project. Therefore, he said, the World Bank is meant to supervise and fund the project rather than make a decision whether to implement it or not.

The canal project proposes the construction of a 112-mile pipeline between the Red Sea and the Dead Sea, in order to pump some 200 million cubic meters of water that would then be desalinated and piped to Israel, the West Bank, and Jordan.

Al-Atili explained that alternatives were being studied in case the canal project was proved infeasible, and so all parties should jointly agree on how to manage water resources in the Jordan River basin.

He explained that a meeting was scheduled for 1 July between members of the directive committee to study a Jordanian project which was suggested during the last Davos conference held in the Dead Sea area.