Posted on 02/22/2018 4:17:54 PM PST by SJackson
Cape Town, South Africa, July 9 “Day Zero.” That’s when water taps throughout the city are expected to go dry
before Israel declared statehood in 1948, its leaders focused on water security as closely as they did military preparedness.
Israel is in the fifth year of drought, today citizens can reliably count on abundant water.
Cape Town another story. reservoirs began receding more than two years ago. This problem turned into a crisis because of subsidy-distorted water pricing, inefficient irrigation, and a lack of desalination facilities and a long-term plan. In 2016 officials from Israel’s Foreign Ministry recognized the problem and alerted national, provincial and local governments in South Africa. Israel has trained water technicians in more than 100 countries, and it offered to bring in desalination experts to help South Africa.
South African officials ignored or rebuffed the no-strings Israeli proposal.
The leadership of South Africa’s dominant political party, the African National Congress, aligns itself with the Palestinian cause...the ANC has refused to develop warm relations with Israel. This antagonism goes back to the 1960s, when current Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas lived in Moscow with exiled ANC leaders, and Yasser Arafat often visited.
Even more confounding, the South Africans turned to Iran for help. South Africa’s water minister visited Tehran. Iran agreed to help develop South Africa’s water infrastructure.
Unlike Israel, Iran is not known for its water-management expertise. Anger over water shortages was a feature of the recent Iranian protests.
Israel brought a team of water professionals to Cape Town. Neither the mayor nor any senior municipal official would see them.
If the South Africans are snubbing the Israelis out of solidarity with the Palestinians, they might want to consider this: The Palestinian Authority has worked with Israel on a range of water projects since 1995.
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
Perhaps a return to colonialism is the answer to Africa’s problems.
This is explained by the fact that there are a lot of Muslims in the Cape area.
Having seen the place first hand—colonialism is the only remedy.
“Perhaps a return to colonialism is the answer to Africa’s problems.”
Try not to be obvious. You might upset the liberals who will cry all over you.
:)
Well didn’t the Palestinians offer to help solve their drought problem, I mean if the Cape Town rebuffed the Israelis?
The article details came through well enough. You did good.
What no one outside of Israel and likely Saudi Arabia understands is that the world changed profoundly in 2014 when Israel became water independent. They now used desalinated water for agriculture. Israeli officials talk of this achievement as being on the order of the neolithic revolution. Why? Because it portends a time when all the worlds deserts will be turned green for agriculture.
This was a silent bomb that went off in the middle east 4 years ago that rendered completely moot all past and current political calculation because of a vastly changed future.
The sad thing is that the USA created and help nurture and continues to nurture the technology but is now poised to get very little benefit either financial or political from the coming global revolution in agriculture.
Three presidents: Eisenhow, Kennedy andJohnson understood what water desalination portended. Then desalination was forgotten. There is in the USA no leadership for desalination. But cheap clean water from the ocean is the future of the 21st century and beyond.
Well okay then, we’re not asking the right question: Why aren’t there any Olympians from Yemen?
Mandella and the ANC sure did save South Africa./s
Drought? Us? It’s been raining like crazy all winter.
Let them dry up and blow away, then.
God bless Israel.
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