Likud is indeed associated with the economical Israeli right, but what guided PM Sharon to make this decision was, I gather, his belief that Israel should have as much control as possible on its water sources.

There are various things that have not been done yet and should be done. Like reusing the waste waters for agriculture, this will reduce the consumption of fresh water by one its larger users. It's not a problem of the agriculture to use the water as was said here in regard to the sabres farm, but the problem of building the right units and the pipes. It will be faster and _Cheaper_ to do than setting up all those sea water transformers(whats the correct phrase?).

I believe that agriculture users can be converted to cleaned waters instead of fresh water and thus saving more than the aforementioned 200 million figure.

However it probably sounds better to have the sea water machinery than to do The Right Thing(tm).