Critical Essays on Israeli Society, Religion, and Government: Books on Israel, Volume IV

1. Water in the Arab-Israeli Struggle: Conflict or Cooperation?

1. Water in the Arab-Israeli Struggle: Conflict or Cooperation? Ofira Seliktar Natasha Beschorner, Water and Instability in the Middle East (London: The International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1992). John Bulloch and Adel Darwish, Water Wars. Coming Conflicts in the Middle East (London: Victor Gollancz, 1993). Elisha Kally with Gideon Fishelson, Water and Pence. Water Resources and the Arab-Israeli Peace Process (Westport, Conn: Praeger, 1993). Nurit Kliot, Water Resources and Coriflict in the Middle East (London: Routledge, 1994). Miriam R. Lowi, Water and Power. The Politics oj a Scarce Resource in the Jordan River Basin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993). Arnon Soffer, Rivers ojFire. The ConJlict oJWater in the Middle East (Tel-Aviv: Am Oved, 1992) (Hebrew). A lthough the struggle over water resources has been a ~\feature of the Arab-Israeli conflict since its beginning, the phenomenon has only recently received serious academic attention. Whether the potential for conflict has actually increased or not, water scarcity has come to be perceived as a 9 10 The Arab-Israeli Conflict real issue. with some observers presenting it as a possible casus belli in the future. The six books considered in this essay offer a wideranging overview of the issues involved in the water struggles of the Middle East. including the Tigris-Euphrates. Jordan-Yarmuk . and the Nile basins. Rather than attempt to cover the entire subject. this review will focus on the contested waters between Israel and her Arab cOriparians. Whenever relevant, references will be made to other watersheds in the region. especially to demonstrate how problems there impact the Arab-Israeli water conJlict. I Well before the emergence of independent states in the Middle East. it was recognized that its river systems form unitary basins-the area of land drained by a river and its tributaries . All six books share the premise that arbitrary political divisions are detrimental to a rational utilization of these water basins. They also agree that nowhere has this been more evident than in the Jordan-Yarmuk basin. Kliot described it as representing "an extreme case of an international river with a very small amount of water bitterly fought over by Israel and its Arab neighbours" (p.272). Indeed. Kally and Fishelson argue that all the development plans in Mandatory Palestine were based on the assumption that the waters of the region would be cooperatively developed (pp. 5-20). Estimation of the availability of water was part of the broader calculations of the "economic absorptive capacity" which the British Mandatory authority undertook after promulgating its first immigration ordinance in 1920. Given the anticipated influx of Jewish immigrants. the White Paper of 1922 presented a scientific formula for estimating the numbers of Jews and Arabs that Palestine could support. l While the formula became subsequently politicized-with Arabs and Jews claiming different numbers of potential settlers-all the various plans to develop the Jordan-Yarmuk river system remained cooperative. In 1938. Dr. Walter Conflict or Cooperation 11 Lowdermilk, an American land-conservation expert, proposed the ambitious Jordan Valley Authority project. Conceived in the spirit of the American Tennessee Valley Authority, the venture would have utilized the waters of the Jordan-Yarmuk, Yarkon, and possibly the Litani. Lowdermilk also envisioned a Med-Dead Sea Canal to generate electricity. In 1939, M. G. Ionides, an advisor to the Transjordanian government, published a plan that would have used the water of the Jordan River for irrigation of large areas of land. Among other cooperative measures, Ionides designated the Sea of Galilee as a storage facility for the excess of winter floods. During the same period, the World Zionist Organization appointed the American engineer, J. B. Hays, to prepare a comprehensive plan entitled "Water Resources in the Land of Israel." Hays included Syria, Lebanon, and Transjordan in his scheme for pooling water resources in the basin. The plan called for a regional storage facility in Beith Netofa Valley, a large water carrier and a possible Med-Dead Sea Canal. Hays's projection was, by far, the most optimistic in terms of the level of cooperation. He estimated that, in addition to irrigation, the pooled water and electricity generated would provide a base for a population of four million in Palestine. In 1947, the special United Nations Commission on Palestine, UNSCOP, reexamined Hays's projections and found them to be exaggerated. The British Mandatory authority suggested a more limited alternative which included the waters of the Litani, a...