By Ori Nir

Israel has always suffered a water shortage. Seven years ago, the shortage turned into a crisis. The Sea of the Galilee receded to an unprecedented low, as did the mountain aquifers. Under the slogan “Israel is drying up,” the government ran terrifying television ads, featuring Israeli celebrities whose photoshopped skin was cracking like arid earth and peeling off. My mother used to cover her eyes when these ads ran. “I can’t see it,” she would say. Concerned citizens took shorter showers and stopped using garden hoses to water their plants or wash their cars. Consumption dropped but not enough. The country’s dwindling reserves couldn’t meet demand.

Today, the state of Israel has solved its water problems. Four large water desalination and purification plants were built (two more are under construction), including one that until recently was the largest in the world. Today, more than half of Israel’s drinking water is desalinated Mediterranean water. There is a surplus of water, even as consumption grows.

For the first in a series of ads from APN, Gen. Meir Dagan speaks about why the security community concur on reaching a political settlement with the Palestinians. This one appears in the Washington Jewish Week and the Baltimore Jewish Times.

You can support additional ads by donating here.

Yossi Alpher is an independent security analyst. He is the former director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University, a former senior official with the Mossad, and a former IDF intelligence officer. Views and positions expressed here are those of the writer, and do not necessarily represent APN's views and policy positions.

This week, Alpher discusses why the very first Palestinian intifada erupted 80 years ago; if last month's arrival of Yemeni Jews fleeing the fighting in Yemen to Israel means the end of exile in Arab lands; and whether last week's announcement of the deployment of 250 additional US combat troops to Syria is a sign of mission creep.

The pro-Netanyahu newspaper Israel Hayom, a political daily distributed free of charge and funded by American billionaire Sheldon Adelson, is the main reason for Israel’s dropping to the unflattering “partly free” category in Freedom House’s 2016 Global Freedom of the Press report. Vanessa Tucker, Freedom House’s vice president for analysis, explains in the following interview why her organization is concerned about the impact of the Adelson-funded daily on Israel’s public arena.