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Receiving only 5 inches of rainfall per year on average, Israel's "water crisis" is one of the country's most pressing challenges, said retired Col. Sharon Davidovich during a talk at Princeton Jewish Center on Jan. 31.

"This is the amount we're getting, and we need to get used to [the fact] that these are the resources that Israel has," Davidovich said.

Davidovich, who served for 23 years in the Israel Defense Forces and now works as the emissary for the Jewish National Fund's New England Region, spoke about how Israel's problem of water resources affects all aspects of the state from agriculture to national security.

This problem is, of course, not unique to Israel or even the Middle East exclusively, he said.

Davidovich recalled meeting with a local official in Atlanta recently, during which the official discussed the ongoing legal conflict between Georgia, Alabama, and Florida over the sharing of a nearby lake.

"I said: Welcome to the club," Davidovich reported saying to the official, adding to him that in the Middle East they didn't have the luxury of courts to arbitrate the matter.

"In our neighborhood, we're sharing the same resources with the Palestinians, Jordanians, Syrians," he said.

In addition to Israel, the major players in water-related issues in the Middle East, according to Davidovich, are Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Egypt.

Israel has several major sources of water, namely the Jordan River and the Kinneret, he explained.

The Jordan River, only 156 miles long and 100 feet in width on average, has two main tributaries, the Banias and the Dan, both located at Mount Hermon in the Golan Heights.

"If Israel wants to make any agreement with Syria, with the Golan Heights, that would be one-third of the supply from the Jordan River," Davidovich said.

The Kinneret is also a major source of water, whose supply is transported to the South via the National Water Carrier.

While the carrier, built in 1964, was originally intended for agricultural purposes, it is "now the main resource of freshwater for drinking."

The Kinneret, however, is dramatically shrinking, said Davidovich, noting that since 2005, the Kinneret has receded at a distance of three football stadiums.

"If I talk about cubic meters, no one knows what I'm talking about," he said. "But everyone understands three football stadiums."

In 2007, this rapid depletion led the Israeli government to declare the water crisis as having reached "red level," a level which had already been pushed off for many years.

"Every year we reach the red, and we just create another red line and by this we can sleep very well," Davidovich said.

Two years ago, however, the situation became so dire that the government finally designated the status as red, leading to a 50 percent reduction of water resources supplied to agriculture.

"Imagine you wake up one day, and it was one day, and 50 percent of the farmers are out of business," Davidovich said.

Then in 2008, Israel reached the "black line," an even more severe status with increased cuts to water distribution.

Furthermore, Israel, in accordance with international agreements, gives 13.2 billion gallons of water to Jordan annually and another 14.5 billion gallons to the Palestinian Authority, Davidovich said, roughly 10 percent of its total water supply.

Davidovich said that the JNF has been on the forefront of promoting and funding new initiatives that will help Israel's water situation.

Over the past 10 years, the JNF has built 205 reservoirs at a cost of $75 million, he said.

Another project that the JNF has implemented is the recycling of sewage water from Nablus, with the resulting clean water funneled into the Alexander River as well as Palestinian farms on the West Bank.

"If a Palestinian farmer makes money, he won't allow terrorists through. This is a way we combine water and security," Davidovich explained, adding that there has not been a single terrorist attack from this location since they began the project.

The JNF's Parsons Water Fund seeks to raise $100 million to invest in water conservation projects over the next 10 years.

Israel currently recycles 77 percent of its used water, more than any country in the world. Spain comes in second, recycling 17 percent. The goal of the JNF fund, Davidovich said, is to increase Israel's water recycling to 90 percent in 10 years, "because we believe that in our region we don't have the ability to use one drop of water only one time."

To this end, the JNF is implementing "primitive, but effective" projects such as recycling rainwater at schools to use for the toilets to other more high-tech initiatives such as the Shamir Drilling Platform, which will drill for water a mile below the ground, or submarine transport and storage systems.

Another solution to the water crisis that the JNF has proposed is importing water from Turkey, which Davidovich said was well received by the Turkish government and that the JNF is now waiting to hear back from the Israeli government for the green light.