آثار حفر آبار المياه الجوفية العشوائية على التنمية الزراعية في محافظة جنين
Date
2020-08-19
Authors
رجوى معروف أحمد عابد
Rajwa Ma'rouf Ahmad Abed
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Al-Quds University
Abstract
Palestine suffers from limited access to freshwater resources due to unsolved political obstacles since 1967, while the agricultural sector depends totally on the availability of groundwater. The Mountain Aquifer system with its rich water sources is mostly under Israeli control, and drilling deep wells is limited to drinking purposes, while the Shallow aquifer systems in Jenin district mostly under Palestinian control, and historically used for drinking and agricultural purposes, where water drain in form of springs or taped water through groundwater boreholes. The needs for agricultural freshwater increase continuously, and greenhouse agriculture becomes common farmer practices in Jenin District, on the other hand, to receive a drilling license for agricultural purposes is very difficult due to the Oslo agreement. This study aims to investigate the reasons that encourage farmers to drill illegal groundwater wells in Jenin district, for this we use the descriptive method including interviews and web design, and distribute a questionnaire for 140 framers who drilled "so-called illegal" wells in Jenin District. The questionnaire was handled statistically using SPPS. The result shows that the first reason for drilling groundwater is to shift from rain-fed agriculture to greenhouse irrigation of cash crops such as baby Cucumber, Bell Bibber. The second reason was to expand the private business in irrigated agriculture. The third reason was the monopoly of the legal well owner, and the high prices that they dictated to the farmers; this causes a reaction to drill illegal wells. In general most of the illegal well owners are ready to cooperate with the Palestinian Water Authority in aquifer management of water those purchases from legal. The study also shows that drilling illegal wells in the Jenin District improve the production of agriculture sector in term of quality and farmer income, but also harm the sustainability of the Shallow aquifer system. The high water need, complex procedure to get a drilling license, and the weakness of law enforcement is the main reason illegal drilling of groundwater boreholes in the Jenin District.