Pompeo to warn Israel over Chinese involvement in water plant

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is scheduled to arrive in Israel on May 13. Though there are many issues on his agenda, one specific topic is particularly sensitive, since it revolves around tiny Israel’s involvement in the worsening clash between Washington and Beijing. The Americans are worried that the Chinese firm Hutchison will win the tender to build the world’s largest desalination plant planned for the Palmahim Mediterranean coast in the south of Israel.

The facility, known as Sorek 2, will produce 200 million cubic meters of drinking water per year, raising the total water processed in Israeli desalination plants to 786 million cubic meters per year. This amounts to some 85% of all domestic and municipal consumption per year. The tender is worth an estimated $1.5 billion. Whoever wins it will operate the facility for 25 years. According to Barak Ravid of Channel 13 News, the US administration has asked Israel to reassess Hutchison’s participation in the bidding, even though it has already reached the final stage of the tender. According to various diplomatic sources, messages sent by Washington to Jerusalem were unequivocal about the matter.

“The Americans are very worried about China’s efforts to expand its foothold around the world by investing in strategic infrastructures. They regard this as a threat to their national security,” says Galia Lavi, a post-doctoral student in the East Asian Studies department of Tel Aviv University who also conducts research for the China-Israel program at Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies. She tells Al-Monitor, “This is not one of [President Donald] Trump’s whims. The current president may say it more sharply than his predecessors, but the Americans have been keeping a worried eye on what China has been doing for several years now. What concerns the US most is what they identify as a Chinese attempt to dominate the future technology market. Israel has the reputation of being a greenhouse for advanced technologies, so China shows interest in what is happening here. That is exactly what alarms the United States.”

As the former head of Israel's water authority, Alexander Kushner fully understands what is motivating China. “The Chinese have been tracking Israel’s water market for over a decade now,” he tells Al-Monitor. “As far back as when I headed the water authority, Chinese delegations came to learn more about our desalination technologies. The Chinese are out there, hunting for knowledge. We knew that they were going all around the world, armed with unlimited sums of money, just looking for where to invest. They are attempting to acquire any technology that they believe they might need at some point in the future. They don’t care if they [currently] lose money on it.”