Moshe Sharett Quotes
As for now, we must not forget who would have to exchange the land? those villages which live more than others on irrigation, on orange and fruit plantations, in houses built near water wells and pumping stations, on livestock and property and easy access to markets.
Sharett, Moshe. Speech to the Jewish Agency Executive, 1937. Quoted in Masalha, Nur. Expulsion of the Palestinians: The Concept of "Transfer" in Zionist Political Thought, 1882-1948. Institute for Palestine Studies, 1992, p. 70.
This was the justification for the Boer, South African farmers trekking North and seizing Black Native land
The Rio Grande River flows through New Mexico on its way to Texas. However, for many reasons the river flow is diminishing and only a little water makes it to Texas. Some Texas politicians wanted the New Mexican farmers, who were miles from the river and have paid to drill wells which they use to pump water for their irrigation, to limit their water pumping. They argued that the pumping was diminishing the water in the underground aquifer, and this was causing some of the water flowing down the river to flow into the New Mexico aquifer thereby diminishing the river flow. The New Mexican farmers argue that they paid a great deal for that land because it came with water rights under the ground and the water is theirs. This was one of the many intractable problems of agricultural water allocation in the West where farmers plant many crops that would not normally survive in that part of the country without artificial irrigation.
Agriculture, in most of the country, uses much more water than the human population does for personal drinking and hygiene, but in a number of places there is just not enough water to support all the uses in our growing nation. Agriculture has been organized and has been willing to spend large amounts of money to bribe and/or lobby legislators to block many efforts to develop water supplies for cities large and small under the theory that the more water that went to cities, the less there would be for agriculture.
Moshe Sharett was the second Prime Minister of Israel (1954–55), serving for a little under two years between David Ben-Gurion's two terms. He continued as Foreign Minister (1955–56) in the Mapai government.
