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2 State-Building and Water Development, 1920–1956 This chapter examines the formative years (1920–1956) of the ArabIsraeli /Zionist conflict, particularly the water disputes between the players. During this period, the parties developed unilateral and often-competing water development schemes. In response, the United States mediated among Jordan-basin states and negotiated a regional water plan. This well-publicized diplomatic effort came closer to breaking the Arab-Israeli impasse than other initiatives until the 1978 Israel-Egypt Camp David Peace Accords.1 However, by 1955, the politics of the Arab-Israeli conflict and the cold war combined to halt the US water mission from attaining a formal agreement from all Jordan River riparians. First to be examined is the importance of water to state-building and why Jordan River riparians perceived water as a vital national preference. The second section analyzes the various water-development programs. These plans were consequential because they established both the basic concepts for state water development and crystallized the contentious water-related issues that would lead to acute conflict between the riparians. Because the United States had vital interests in the region and provided funding for many competing water projects, as detailed in the third section, the United States sent a presidential representative to mediate a unified plan for the development of the Jordan River. Although the mediation failed to lead to a formal agreement between all riparians, it did succeed in producing an important water-development scheme that would continue to influence the water politics of the region for the next half-century. This, in turn, is analyzed in the fourth section. The final segment explains why water cooperation seemed attainable for the two years of the US mediation but failed in the end to reach an agreement 19 among all riparians and why acute conflict subsequently occurred in two separate instances. Also, as discussed in chapter 1, some scholars have argued that political issues must be addressed first before functional issues, such as water, can be resolved. During this period, there were two major attempts to resolve the political dispute and both failed. The US negotiator was correct that the region was not ripe for a comprehensive peace. He also accurately observed that there was a strong preference to address the Jordan water-scarcity issue. I argue that, in this subcase, the US mediator correctly saw the Arab preference for economic aid, against a political settlement with Israel, and the willingness of elites to cooperate on technical issues as well. However, the US mediator misjudged the Arab public’s strong preference to not even tacitly cooperate with Israel. I would argue that, had the United States judged correctly this last preference and used an appropriate strategy such as secretive or low-key diplomacy, limited the number of participants to Israel and Jordan, and concluded the negotiations before 1954, the US mediation for water cooperation might have been a success. STATE-BUILDING As the colonial era ended in the Middle East in the first half of the 1900s, newly established states quickly realized that water resources and their development were a critical national preference. Irrigated farming was the means to jumpstart their war-torn, immigrant burdened, struggling economy. Ottoman rule of the Jordan River basin, and the Middle East in general, lasted for more than four hundred years (1516–1918). The Ottoman Empire organized the basin into numerous districts, which were part of larger provinces or administrative units, but they did not adequately develop the Jordan Valley area economically or socially. With the collapse of the empire and its central government in Constantinople, the inhabitants of the Jordan River basin began a long process of nation-state building. At the end of World War I, a compromise was struck between the Wilsonian principle of self-determination and the desire of the colonial powers to control the region and maintain a regional balance of power. The Jordan River area, along with much of the Ottoman Empire, was divided between the colonial powers into new political entities called mandates . The British and French administered these units under supervision of the League of Nations until the inhabitants were ready for independence and self-government. In 1920, the French controlled a mandate incorporating both Syria and Lebanon. Palestine, which included land on both sides of the Jordan River, and Iraq were both under British control. However, in 1921, the British decided to divide the Palestine mandate and create a new entity, Transjordan, on the east bank of...

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