The execution of a Jewish project to bring water to the Negev, the desert area of southern Palestine, and turn those parched wastes into arable land, has been suspended by order of the Palestine Government, it is learned here.
Protests by the Jewish Agency office in London to the British Colonial Office have elicited the explanation that this Jewish development in the Negev could be interpreted as an attempt to change the status quo there before the United Nations reaches a decision on the Palestine problem, and might thus prejudge the issue. Accordingly, it was ruled that the project could not be continued at this time.
The Jewish irrigation plan–the first of a series–is to lay six-inch water pipelines over a distance of 170 kilometers (108.2 miles) through which water would be pumped from three wells on the edge of the Negev to various settlements engaged in reclaiming the desert. So far, 45 kilometers of the pipeline have been laid and are now carrying water to three of the 14 settlements in the Negev.
In planning these pipelines, the Jews negotiated with local Arabs and Bedouins, and gained their enthusiastic approval and goodwill by arranging for drinking-water outlets for the Arabs at various points along the conduit route. An example of such agreements working for the good of all is the case of the Arab village of Huj, where the water pipeline, running through the main street on the way to a Jewish settlement, has drinking water for the Arab villagers.
There is not the question in the Negev watering scheme of the Jews tapping water reserves which, it might be asserted, rightfully belong to the Arabs. The water from the three wells feeding the Negev pipeline is said by geologists to be a small fraction of the amount known to filter underground from the Hebron Hills to the Mediterranean, where of course it is lost.
The British ban on the Negev project is in line with other aspects of the British status quo policy in Palestine, observers point out. It carries with it also the suggestion that in the event of the partition of Palestine, the Jews will be custed from the Negev and that, therefore, the less they have to their credit the easier it will be to remove them later.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
