Jordan Valley Irrigation
By M. G. 1ONIDES COUPLE of weeks ago the Government of Jordan pub- lished a report by a British firm of consulting engineers, Sir Murdoch Macdonald and Partners, on a project to irrigate about 165,000 acres in the floor of the fordan Valley between the Sea of Galilee and the Dead Sea. It would provide for the settlement of upwards of 100,000 refugees, counting the people settled directly on the land and all the others who would get an indirect living. It is an extension and elaboration of a project worked out well before the war, brought into more authoritative and fuller form. ow From the engineering point of view it is plain sailing, but there are non-technical obstacles of which the biggest is that of getting 9 agreement between the Arabs and the Jews. If the fullest use is to be made of the waters of Jordan—and the pressure of popula- tion is so great that it would be a tragedy'if any were wasted— there has to be an agreement between the iwo peoples about the 'share each shall get, and some kind of joint body to control the flow of the water properly. The reason is that neither the Arabs nor the Jews can get the best out of the river unilaterally ; the necessary works would lie partly in Jewish and partly in Arab territory, so that if they do not get together in their mutual interests neither can get as much water as they might. Both will suffer.
How long it will take to get agreement no one can say. At the moment of writing there is a report that Israel has offered to get down to a water agreement of some kind, as a result of com- plaints by Jordan that Israel has been manipulating the flow of the Jordan to the Arabs' disadvantage. If this incident could lead to a general understanding about the waters one of the most anxious problems would be cleared away. 'But, in any case, there is no valid reason why everything should be held up till a general agreement is concluded. A preliminary irrigation project in the Kingdom of Jordan could be started straight away, almost within a matter of weeks, which on any conceivable basis of settlement of the water rights would come well within Jordan's share. The biggest tributary of the Jordan is the Yarmuk. It rises in Syria and forms the boundary between Syria and Jordan in its lower reaches. Its right (northern) bank just touches Israel, for a few kilometres, near the point where it joins the River Jordan south of the Sea of Galilee. Israel could not reasonably object if, without prejudice to a general settlement, a part of the waters of the Yarmuk were diverted to irrigate the land in the Jordan Valley on its eastern bank, and the obvious thing is to get it started. It would require the agreement of Syria, but as the water concerned comes out of the deep springs in the gorge of the Yarmuk, below any point where Syria can make use of it for perennial irrigation, this should not be difficult to arrange.
It is very easy to find, reasons for not doing this, for waiting till everything is settled before starting anything—the surest way of ending by starting nothing. Even if Israel and Syria agree to making a beginning, it might be objected, can we be sure that a first stage started now would not cut across the full scheme later on ? Do we know enough about the soil and what can be grown on it ? Are we certain that markets for the produce will be found ? Ought we not to be more sure of our ground before we launch out ? Ought ,there not to be a lot more surveying and research, detailed examination of every aspect by teams of experts ? Can we find the technicians and scientists necessary to make a success of it ? The answers are all very simple. An immediate scheme to irrigate, say, ten or twelve thousand acres could be planned in the office, on paper, in a matter of weeks, and digging could be started as soon as the labour could be organised. It is quite easy to plan it so that it will not interfere with the bigger extensions to follow later on—it is just a question of leaving room in the right places. There is no doubt at all about the soil in this region ; you have only to ride up the Valley and see the patches of irrigation round the small springs and streams, where anything from bananas and oranges to vegetables of all kinds, stone fruits and grains grow in profusion. As to markets, it is not worth Wasting a moment's worry about them. Both Jordan and Israel are land-hungry. Whey both need all the land they, can till to grow food to eat. You cannot have land hunger and a marketing-problem simultaneously. Quite enough is known about every other, aspect of the project to warrant going ahead at once. There *re sufficiently long records of measure- ment of the rainfall and the flow of the river. There are cadastral surveys showing the land holdings as they exist at present. All the necessary information is there.
It is the sort of thing that the Arabs themselves are well able to do with the absolute minimum of outside technical help, and the more they do it on their own the better it will be for them. Our modern science of integrated: economies, balanced capital investment and the like, all demanding ,teams of experts with slide-rules, may be all: very well, but they are not what these countries require. The sort of capital investment they need, first and foremost, is tffe kind that 'happens when a peasant stirs himself and clears his land, builds terraces, plants rows of trees as windbreaks, puts in check-dams on the wadis to conserve the soils and water, clears out a spring or tank so as to get more water. You cannot measure this sort of capital investment or add it up into an item in a comprehensive economic plan, nor budget for-it ; so the planners do not notice it. But it is the thing that really counts. That is why, on this Jordan project, what is needed is to get the Arabs digging under Arab engineers and supervisors on a canal system which they can make by methods long familiar to them, using as many local materials as possible and leaving as much of the detailed work of clearing lands, making field-channels and building houses to be done by the settlers themselves with their own hands.
The project just published is a comprehensive one, a sound guide to work to and a good basis for discussions about water shares with Israel. What is needed now is to get some spades to work and to put the refugees to useful labour instead of keeping them on relief, than which nothing is more demoralising. Above all, the immediate work must be simple, within their compass, and quickly undertaken. We can learn from some of the ancient canals. Irrigation is the oldest engineering art in the world. Almost at the beginning of civilisation irrigation systems were built which rival anything we do today. In those days there were no theodolites as we know them, no trigo- nometric surveys, no steel, no reinforced concrete, no soil scientists, no plant biologists, market-researchers, agronomists or any other of the bevy of experts we rely on nowadays. When people wanted more land to grow more crops to feed more people they dug canals with their spades, built dams and sluices with bricks or #ones formed on the spot, led the water on to the land, harvested the crops and ate them. They used the tools that were in their hands and the materials that lay around them to make themselves more prosperous. We can do a bit better nowadays with the machines and materials the industrial age produceS. But the fundamental rule still holds. Our job is to use the funds and resources we command to help these people to help themselves. There is a real opportunity here to gekon with useful work.
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