Summary
Israel’s successful efforts to increase water security will lessen one of the country’s geographical constraints. But new sources of water are more energy intensive, and this could increase Israel’s short-term dependence on energy imports unless domestic energy sources are successfully developed.

Analysis
While Israel enjoys relative national security compared to its neighbors, which are struggling with internal fragmentation, this will probably change eventually. Because concerted military efforts have been required in the past to secure water resources, Israel has had a strong incentive to develop technological solutions to improve water security. Additional domestic water resources — including increasing desalination capacity and continued efforts to recycle water — allow Israel to mitigate one of its inherent geographic constraints.

Israel has substantially increased its capacity to desalinize water over the last decade. The arid country of roughly 8 million already has a number of desalination plants — including the Sorek plant, the world’s largest desalination plant of its kind, which became fully operational in October. Israel has plans to increase total desalination capacity through 2020 such that it approaches the estimated annual amount of internally generated natural water resources.

Read more: Israel’s Water Challenge | Stratfor
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