(JTA) — An Israeli and a Palestinian researcher are sharing a U.S. grant to increase the supply of clean water in Israel and the Middle East.
Dr. Moshe Herzberg of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and Professor Mohammed Saleem Ali-Shtayeh of the Biodiversity and Environmental Research Center in Nablus will share a grant of $659,410 from the U.S. Agency for International Development’s MERC program funding Israeli-Arab collaborative projects.
Herzberg and Ali-Shtayeh will lead a study bringing together Israelis and Palestinians to address clean water issues in the West Bank area of Nablus over a five-year period.
The study will focus on bio-fouling problems that occur during secondary wastewater reclamation processes. Israel and the Palestinian areas depend on wastewater reclamation for much of their usable water.
According to Herzberg, "Purified secondary wastewater is an immediate resource for irrigation and, after [other cleansing techniques] those waters, can be used indirectly for drinking."
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