REFUGEES AND THE JORDAN
By M. G. IONIDES
AMID all the confusion of Palestine one fact stands out clear and insistent in its appeal. There are half a million refugees, men, women and children, who must be settled somewhere on the land or die. Temporary relief, vital though it be, will not suffice for long. Hard on its heels must come some permanent arrangement. Where and how ?
When the Peel Commission proposed Partition in 1937 no one dreamed that it was not our responsibility to find room for those Arabs who would leave the Jewish areas. A survey was put in hand at once, covering the proposed Arab areas of Palestine, and also Transjordan, then under the Mandate. It took little time to prove what everyone knew perfectly well who had given more than a cursory glance at the country through Zionist spectacles. Even then, ten years ago, there was land-hunger throughout the rain-fed lands, and, though there were obviously possibilities of better productivity, this could do no more than keep pace with a population rapidly rising through natural causes. The only thing left was new irrigation, and the only substantial source of water was the River Jordan and its tributaries. It still is. So far as the refugees in the Arab parts of Palestine and in Transjordan are concerned, irrigation of the Jordan Valley terraces is the only possible hope for their future existence. There is nothing else.
It is easy to look at a river and the lands on its banks, put them together in the mind's eye and visualise a great irrigation project. The difficulty and delay come in surveying, planning and proving a practicable scheme. Detailed large-scale contour surveys have to be made. A long series of water measurements stretching over a number of years is required. Sites for control works have to be considered, special problems of construction checked over—the dis- posal of destructive flood waters, awkward crossings over wadis, passages for the canal over tricky ground. Existing rights in land and water have to be surveyed and recorded ; legal powers to re- arrange them without hardship when the new canal system is built have to be provided. Agricultural knowledge and data have to be collected ; factors for the usage of water for different crops have to be known ; the type of crops themselves has to be thought out ; the size and type of holding must be decided. All this may often take years of preparatory work where a big project is involved. But it was all done years ago so far as the left bank of the Valley is concerned, between the Sea of Galilee and the Dead Sea. The possibilities were proved beyond doubt. Several alternative schemes were worked out, and are on record in preliminary form. It would only be a matter of months to review them, bring them up to date and get out provisional estimates. All this could be done, from existing data and maps, without the need to set foot in the Valley at all.
On the left bank alone, for which full data are at hand, roo,000 acres could be irrigated intensively, and this area, taking into account the townsmen and villagers, and all the indirect employment it would create, would suffice to settle as many souls as there are acres. It would by no means be enough for all the refugees, but a great contribution none the less. The land is of the highest quality, with good natural drainage. It yields, as existing small-stream irrigation shows, abundant crops of every kind from cereals, vegetables and stone-fruits to citrus fruits of all sorts, bananas, sugar-cane and most tropical fruits and crops. It could be one of the finest irrigated regions in the whole of the Middle East.
The River Yarmuk would be diverted at the mouth of the gorge down which it pours from the mountains of Transjordan and Syria. It hardly touches Palestine at all, and the canal would run entirely within Arab territory. Turning south where the river comes out into the Valley, the canal would hug the edge of the foothills, separated from the Jordan itself by a strip of land two or three miles long, over which the sweet waters from the canal would be spread through a network of distributory channels. The half-dozen existing perennial streams, across which the new canal would cut transversely on its way south, would be gathered up and added to the main flow. The existing land holdings, sparsely and inefficiently irrigated by primitive works, would be exchanged for consolidated holdings with assured water-supply from the main canal. For full canalisation of the whole area, additional water from the Jordan would be led out of its left or east bank and joined to the main canal just south of the River Yarmuk. Or it could be pumped up the slopes from a point downstream from the Rutenberg hydro- electric works.
Much of the constructional programme, however, would be earth- works, to economise water and make the fullest possible use of it, the canal itself would best be concrete-lined or, in difficult land, formed as a reinforced concrete flume. The digging work could be done by some of the refugees themselves. With determination, it would be possible to decide the main line of the canal in quite a short time, and then, leaving the control works and all the rest of the design to follow on, to start digging straight away on the main canal and perhaps some of the distributory channels. Professionally unorthodox, technically tricky, economically inefficient ? Perhaps, but such things have been done, and can be done again if the will to do them is there. Engineers dislike such untidiness. There are risks. What of that, when half a million refugees face starvation, disease and death—this winter, next winter and the one after that, till something is done ? Mulberry came off. So has the Berlin airlift. So c,an a Jordan Valley Relief Project—if we will it.
Innumerable other doubts and fears will be voiced. How much water should go to the Arabs and how much should be left for the Jews ? How can this even be negotiated till they are on speaking terms ? Where is the money to come from, the steel, the trained staff ? And then why should we be expected to spend millions for others when we are so hard-pressed ourselves ? How much we have still to do in our own country—new schools, hospitals, fine houses with gas and electricity laid on, a rising standard of living round the corner and no need to work longer hours either, free false teeth for all—everything that makes life worth living!
There are many pkactical reasons to prove why we should do nothing. And yet they used to talk, in the Middle East, of the " word of an Englishman." It meant something real. Some phrases in the Mandate still had the authentic ring, or so it was thought. There was that bit where we said that nothing we did was tc " prejudice the civil or religious rights " of the Arabs. What on earth has happened to us ? We talked less of " social justice " in 1937, but at least we should have been horrified to leave the Palestinian Arabs to their fate. Social justice and fair shares for all swept the polls in 1945—and half a million Arabs are now starving by our act. A Jordan Valley Relief Project would cost us about half this year's bill for free spectacles. The sum is quite big, but then so is our obligation. So is Arab suffering. So is our risk, and the risk to the world, if we cannot restore faith and confidence in our word. It would be worth being quite a bit poorer if we could do that.
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