http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportID=77415

 JERUSALEM, 23 March 2008 (IRIN) - With the rainy season in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory nearly over, water experts are concerned that after the dry summer months there may be a serious water shortage, especially if conservation efforts are not stepped up.

Population growth, rising levels of consumption and below average rainfall in some areas in recent years threaten to cause increasing problems, experts say.

According to Eli Ronen of Israel's national water company Mekorot, this winter was the fifth relatively dry year in a row, with only about 60 percent of the expected amount of rain in certain parts of the country so far.

The company sells to the Palestinians about 55 percent of the water consumed in the West Bank and also exports water to Jordan. It is unclear if these services will be affected.

Ayman Rabi from the Palestinian Hydrology Group, a non-governmental organisation, said certain West Bank areas like Hebron had been hard hit by lack of rainfall. "Already the Palestinians receive less water than is needed," Rabi told IRIN. "In the best case scenarios, in urban areas, we receive 50 litres per capita per day."

According to the Israeli non-governmental organisation Btselem there is a huge gulf in water consumption levels between Israelis and Palestinians.

Gib Clarke, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars on March 4, 2008 - 8:02am

http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2008/03/04/demography-is-not-destiny

The connections between security and demographic trends-including migration patterns, age distribution, and population growth rates-have become increasingly prominent in academic and policy circles, as well as in the mainstream media. While researchers have been studying these links for decades, they are worth a deeper look-not only because of their newfound attention, but also because we now have more evidence to evaluate them.

No reasonable scholar or practitioner would argue that there is a simple causal relationship between demography and security-i.e., that a total fertility rate of 5.0 children per woman indicates that civil war will break out 20 years from now, or that a country cannot remain stable unless its age distribution resembles a bell curve. However, many argue that demographic trends can interact with other factors such as poverty, poor governance, competition for natural resources, and environmental degradationto exacerbate tensions and contribute to conflict. All of these factors influence each other-for example, high population density can accelerate environmental degradation, or poor governance can lead to inequitable access to natural resources.