US President Donald Trump’s Middle East peace envoy said Thursday Israel would supply the Palestinians with millions of cubic metres of water annually, as Washington seeks to build confidence for fresh negotiations.
Jason Greenblatt hailed an "important step forward" in a wider regional water deal, as Israel announced it would provide more than 32 million cubic metres of water to the Palestinians annually.
Israel’s Regional Cooperation Minister Tzachi Hanegbi and Mazin Ghunaim, head of the Palestinian Water Authority, also attended.
Palestinians suffer from water shortages and say the unequal distribution of water resources favours Israel.
The deal announced Thursday is part of a wider water project involving the Red and Dead Seas to be developed over the next five years, but the Palestinians are likely to begin receiving water from it before then, Hanegbi said.
It came after Greenblatt helped broker an agreement between the two sides on the price and quantities of water, as well as where the connection points will be.
The deal is supposed to ease water scarcity in the Palestinian territories, including in the Gaza Strip, where more than 95 percent of water is undrinkable.
The deal is part of a pre-existing plan to link the Dead Sea and the Red Sea by pipes in Jordan.
In 2013, Israel, Jordan and the Palestinians signed a memorandum of understanding on the water project that included plans to build a desalination plant at the Red Sea.
Greenblatt is seeking to restart peace negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians, stalled since talks collapsed in 2014, with Trump saying he wants to reach the "ultimate deal".