[lbo-talk] Till the Last Drop: The Palestinian Water Crisis in the West Bank, Hydrogeology and Hydropolitics of a Regional Conflict

[Bryan Atinsky]

News from Within: Palestine/Israel Podcast - Till the Last Drop: The 
Palestinian Water Crisis in the West Bank, Hydrogeology and 
Hydropolitics of a Regional Conflict

On June 12th 2007, at the Daila center in West Jerusalem, Clemens 
Messerschmid, presented the first of a two-part lecture series sponsored 
by the Alternative Information Center, titled "Till the Last Drop: The 
Palestinian Water Crisis in the West Bank, Hydrogeology and 
Hydropolitics of a Regional Conflict."

Mr. Messerschmid is a German hydrogeologist who has worked for many 
years on international water projects in the West Bank.

He introduced the physical settings of water resources in the region and 
their extremely asymmetrical allocation between the Palestinians and 
Israelis.

In addition, he gave an introduction to the hydrogeology of the shared 
aquifers and an overview of the historical development of their 
utilization, focusing on the years of overt occupation between the 1967 
War and The Oslo Interim Agreement of September 1995.

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His lectures were some of the most extensive and researched discussions 
on this subject of the relation between the occupation and the conflict 
over water resources that I have heard, and West Jerusalem was an 
interesting venue (and part of the reason I set up the lectures there), 
as the audience included a few academic hydrologists from Israeli 
universities, an Israeli economic journalist from Yideot Aharonoth, 
members of Israeli environmental NGOs and then some other locals and 
internationals. So there was some very interesting critiques and 
discussion back and forth (especially after the lecture section during 
the question answer portion...which sadly, I couldn't record due to 
technical limitations...I forgot to bring the second mic for the 
audience), and Clemens and his statistics stood up well to the 
argumentation.

Clemens uses a quite extensive slide presentation with maps, charts and 
statistics along with his lecture. I will be making a version that has 
the audio with the slide presentation together in a few weeks, but for 
now, you can download the powerpoint presentation and the audio podcast 
separately and flip slides along with the audio.

To download the slide presentation that goes along with the lecture, 
click here: 
http://www.alternativenews.org/images/stories/news/Last_drop_AIC_1.pps

To listen to the podcast: 
http://www.alternativenews.org/podcasts/podcasts/news-from-within-podcast-till-the-last-drop-the-palestinian-water-crisis-in-the-west-bank-20070708.html

To see the archived shows:
http://www.alternativenews.org/podcasts/archive.html

For those who prefer iTunes:
http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=253955206