HEBRON, West Bank -- In the heat of summer, when Palestinian water taps run dry, Ibrahim J'bour drives from his village to the outskirts of this city, where he buys water on the black market from a Palestinian who claims to get it from a Jewish settlement.
J'bour makes the trip three times a day and pays $6 for 1,056 gallons. But it's the only way the farmer can ensure that his 200 sheep and 20-member family will have enough water during this summer's severe regional drought.
In the parched Middle East, water is more sought after than oil. It is a commodity in great demand and in short supply in a region where enemies outnumber friends. Summer water shortages are endemic to the West Bank and Gaza Strip, home to about 3 million Palestinians, posing a problem that is fundamental to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The dispute turns on questions of ownership, control and historical use of a fragile natural resource.
"Water conflicts in the Middle East have been zero-sum: Water for one user means lack of water for the other," political scientist Amikam Nachmani wrote in a study of regional water conflicts for the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies.
The lack of rainfall in the region this year has produced its worst drought in 60 years and aggravated historical water disputes, especially between Israel and the Palestinians.
In Iraq, 70 percent of food crops were lost to the drought, raising concerns of a possible famine. In Jordan, emergency food aid was distributed to a quarter of the population because of the drought. Syria, despite its shortages, agreed to supply the desert kingdom with additional water during the hot season.
In the West Bank town of Bethlehem, hundreds of Palestinians took to the streets Saturday to protest water shortages. Shouting "We need water," they blocked a street outside a Palestinian refugee camp with burning tires. They blamed Israeli policies for their lack of water.
Since early summer, Palestinians have been without a reliable water supply. The Palestinian Authority, which operates the water system in the towns and cities under its control, rations the water. Palestinians who are connected to the public water system can expect water from their taps once every two weeks. Then it's a mad dash to fill rooftop tanks, bathtubs, buckets and soda bottles.
About 20 percent of the West Bank population, nearly 300,000 people, has it worse. They are not connected to public water and must rely on springs, private wells or water merchants.
In Israeli homes, including the Jewish settlements in the occupied territories, water flows freely because Israel controls the sources within its boundaries and along the West Bank, which it captured during the 1967 war with the Arabs.
Israel and the Palestinians derive their water from several sources -- aquifers, rivers, rainfall and desalinated seawater. They share two sources -- the Yarmuh and Jordan rivers and an underground reservoir known as the mountain aquifer. The aquifer stretches from Mount Carmel in the north to Beersheba in the south, the Dead Sea and Jordan valley in the east to the eastern border of a Mediterranean coastal strip on the west.
Rainfall on the mountains of the West Bank feeds the aquifer. The Palestinians consider the aquifer part of their land, but they receive only 20 percent of the water produced from it. Israel takes 80 percent of the mountain aquifer water -- that represents about 30 percent of Israel's water supply for its nearly 6 million people. Israel gets 50 percent of its water from the Sea of Galilee, whose sources flow from parts of Lebanon, Israel and Israeli-occupied Syria. The remaining 20 percent comes from the coastal aquifer.
Israel's water commissioner, Meir Ben Meir, acknowledged that Israelis consume far more water than Palestinians; 1.6 billion cubic meters (422 billion gallons) by Israelis, 250 million cubic meters (66 billion gallons) by Palestinians, according to government figures.
But Ben Meir makes no apologies. Wells dug by Jews before the creation of the state of Israel drew water from the mountain aquifer that straddles the so-called "green line," the 1967 border between Israel and Jordan. Israel claims historical use of that water.
"We started to develop our water resources 100 years ago and they regrettably did not," he said. B'Tselem, an Israeli human rights organization, attributes the disparity in water consumption between Israel and the Palestinians to Israeli policy, beginning with its 1967 decision to declare as public property water resources in the occupied territories.
It also faults Israel for not maintaining the water system infrastructure during its control of the West Bank. A review of the water dispute by B'Tselem blames discriminatory Israeli policies for the water problems confronting Palestinians today.
"What we have in water we have to divide equally," said Tomer Feffer, a spokesman for the group.
Ben Meir views it differently: "There isn't enough water for both sides. Having two parties without sufficient [quantities] doesn't solve the water problem nor the dispute."
Despite this summer's drought, Israel did not reduce its water allocation to the Palestinians, Ben Meir said. He did cut back supplies to Israeli farmers by 40 percent, which caused a storm of protest. Israeli farmers account for the largest consumption of water in the Jewish state, although agriculture represents less than 3 percent of GNP.
But the early Zionists saw agriculture and "the greening of the desert" as essential in developing the new Jewish state. Ben Meir still subscribes to that notion.
"Without water we cannot paint the desert green, which is 52 percent of our land. Israel's small dimensions will shrink even more," he said.
The peace agreements between Israel and the Palestinians acknowledged the Palestinians' water rights, but they put off decisions on the scope of those rights until "final status negotiations." The peace deals increased the amount of water Israel transfers to the Palestinians and required Palestinians to develop new sources of water.
Those same agreements, however, retained Israel's right to have a say in the number and location of new wells drilled by Palestinians. A joint panel of Israelis and Palestinians makes those decisions. Palestinians charge that Israel frustrates their efforts to develop new resources.
"We finished drilling four wells between Bethlehem and Hebron," said Ihab Barghouti, an economic adviser to the Palestinian Water Authority. "In order to
get the permits, it took us more than 18 months. If they had facilitated the issuance of the permits, the people would not be suffering as much as they are suffering."
But the Palestinian Authority, Yasser Arafat's 5-year-old interim government, has its own trouble financing water projects, carrying them out and updating an old system troubled by significant leaks and thefts.
That leaves many Palestinians to find ways of supplementing their water rations.
Alia Hospital in Hebron buys water eight months of the year to meet its needs, said hospital director, Dr. Yusef A. Shaarawi. The water is bought from private contractors and costs about $450 a week, said hospital administrator Ismail Atawaneh.
"In April I was about to close the hospital because I couldn't find any water to buy," Shaarawi said. The Palestinian police, he said, bought water from a Jewish settlement and solved the hospital's water emergency.
Shaarawi said a lack of potable water results in an increase in water-born illnesses. About 60 percent of the children treated at the hospital so far this summer suffered from stomach infections caused by poor-quality water, he said.
"When I asked [the mothers] where do they take the water, they say from the well," Shaarawi said. "They don't have water from the tap."
On a recent day, farmer Ibrahim J'bour drove his tractor from his village of Yata to the West Bank city of Hebron. The 51-year-old farmer hauled a large water tank to a dirt lot within view of Kiryat Arba. Kiryat Arba is a gated Jewish settlement of apartment buildings and religious schools where water supplied by the Israeli government keeps the lawns green, the flowers blooming and the local pool filled.
There, J'bour hooked up to a water pipe in the ground, filled his tank with 1,056 gallons and paid water merchant Ramadan Murra $6 for the load -- about twice the price consumers would pay for the same amount of public water, according to the B'Tselem report.
"Last year was bad," J'bour said of the water shortage. "But this year was much worse. I have to buy more water because our wells are empty. No rain. No water."
Murra, 28, said he buys the water from a man named Shimon who works at the Kiryat Arba settlement. Murra said he makes a profit of 12 cents on every cubic meter.
Zvi Katsover, the mayor of Kiryat Arba, denied that the settlement sold water to Palestinians. "In the area there are at least 300 tankers which travel around, buy, sell, rob. All the day they steal our water," he said.
From the living room of his house in Hebron, Jamil Rajabi can see the lush green lawns of Kiryat Arba, home to about 5,000 Jewish settlers. Rajabi and his family get their water from a private well they share with two other apartments. They too buy water from Murra.
To conserve water, Ikhass Rajabi bathes her four children only one night a week. The 25-year-old housewife then reuses the bath water to wash the apartment floors. "When I go to see my family in Jerusalem," the young mother said, "I shower every day."
Ben Meir, Israel's water commissioner, believes the solution to the Palestinian water shortage is desalinization, a process in which salt is removed from seawater. He said Israel should encourage the Palestinians in this costly endeavor and lobby the international community to finance it.
Daniel Hillel, an Israeli scientist and author of a book on the Middle East water conflict, believes Israel should be "generous" in its water policies.
"Because otherwise Israel is going to have a disgruntled neighbor and there will be no end to conflict and violence," said Hillel. "The only way to achieve security is through peace, and you can only have a stable peace with a contented neighbor."