Hydro-Peace in the Middle East

Author(s): J.A. Allan

Source: SAIS Review (1989-2003) , Summer–Fall 2002, Vol. 22, No. 2 (Summer–Fall 2002),
pp. 255-272
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press

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 SAIS Review vol. XXII no. 2 (Summer–Fall 2002)

Hydro-Peace in the Middle

East: Why no Water Wars?
A Case Study of the Jordan
River Basin

J.A. Allan

The Middle East is very poorly endowed with freshwater: the region ran out
of water resources to meet its strategic needs—for domestic and industrial use
as well as for food production—in 1970. Despite depleted water resources and
growing water demand pushed by population growth, international relations
over water have, if anything, become less tense since 1970. The reason is that
water has been available on the international market in the form of “virtual
water.” Indeed, economies that can import grain avoid having to mobilize
scarce freshwater from their own resource base to produce wheat themselves.
By the year 2000, the Middle East and North Africa were importing fifty mil-
lion tons of grain annually, satisfying the largest demand for water in the re-
gion—food production. The remaining 10 percent of water demand for drink-
ing, domestic, and industrial use may soon be met through low-cost desalinated
seawater. The global political economy of water use and trade has had impor-
tant impacts on the way water is perceived in the Middle East. But at the same
time, the impact of the global system has been perverse in that the availability
of virtual water has slowed the pace of reforms intended to improve water ef-
ficiency.

T he Middle East is the most water-challenged region in the

world, with little freshwater and negligible soil water.1 Water
is therefore a key strategic natural resource, and realist theory, as

J.A. Allan is based at King’s College and the School of Oriental and African
Studies at the University of London. He received his Ph.D. from the
University of London in 1971, where he has been teaching since 1988. He
researches and publishes on the water resources of the Middle East and
North Africa as well as on global water and hydropolitics. His research group
has pioneered the study of “virtual water.” He is currently researching water
futures—integrating the sciences of global hydrology, international trade,
and international politics. His most recent book is The Middle East Water
Question: Hydropolitics and the Global Economy (London: I. B. Tauris, 2001).

255
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 256 SAIS Review Summer–FALL 2002
well as popular intuition, has it that the scarcity of water in the
region will lead to water wars. Despite growing water demand, the
Middle East has shown no signs of a water war since some minor
military events in the northern Jordan Valley in the early 1960s.2
On the contrary, there is much evidence of cooperation over scarce
water resources in the region, especially in the Jordan River Basin,
where freshwater is scarcest.3 Water is too important to be left to
the uncertainties of rapports de force.4
Many Middle Eastern economies must use fresh surface and
groundwater resources for food production. In contrast, in tem-
perate regions, up to 90 percent of the water used in food produc-
tion comes from naturally occurring water in soil profiles, called
soil water. Soil water differs from freshwater in that it can only be
used in agriculture to produce crops. Freshwater can be used by
all sectors (for domestic, industrial, and agricultural activities) and
can be lifted, pumped, and transported. It can therefore be assigned
an explicit value in commercial transactions. Although soil water
can only physically be used in situ, it can also be “moved” and ex-
ported through agricultural production and trade.
Indeed, at the global level, soil water resources are in surplus.
Fortunately for the water-short economies of the Middle East, this
soil water can be made accessible via trade in staple food commodi-
ties such as grain. Every year,
farmers and traders in the
Importing a ton of wheat Middle East move volumes
therefore relieves a commu- of water equivalent to the
flow of the Nile into Egypt,
nity from having to harness or about 25 percent of the
region’s total available fresh-
one thousand tons of its water. The water “imported”
own water resources. in this way can be called “vir-
tual water.”5 To produce one
ton of wheat requires one
thousand tons (cubic meters) of water. Importing a ton of wheat
therefore relieves a community from having to harness one thou-
sand tons of its own water resources.
The purpose of this analysis is to show, first, that the per-
ceptions of water resources in the Middle East are constructed,
namely that the notion of water scarcity is based on too narrow
an interpretation of freshwater availability. Second, the reason this
constructed perspective has endured thus far lies in the effective-
ness of the international political economy, which has in fact

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 HYDRO-PEACE IN THE MIDDLE EAST 257
solved the region’s water resource problems, albeit invisibly and
silently. Finally, it is important to draw attention to the impact of
the international political economy on the region, which has been
perverse as well as favorable. Indeed, the global trade system has
slowed the pace of water policy reform and has distorted interna-
tional relations where shared freshwater resources are in contention.

Constructed Knowledge and the “Sanctioned

Discourse” on Water in the Middle East

In the realm of international relations theory, the case of interna-

tional shared waters in the Middle East can be understood within
a nonrigorous, realist framework. In each river basin there is a he-
gemon, such as Turkey in the Euphrates-Tigris river system, Egypt
in the Nile river system, or Israel in the Jordan Basin. Within a re-
alist framework, riparian relations can be explained in terms of
each country’s capacity to project power.6 Functional approaches
and regime theory have not provided a useful basis for analysis
because there are no international structures that work in the region.7
Contentious issues arising over shared freshwater resources
are also embedded in what Barry Buzan calls “security
subcomplexes.” Securitization theory, well articulated in the case
of the Middle East by Buzan, contrasts the high politics of extreme
circumstances—“security politics”—with the “normal politics” that
they interrupt, but finally confirms the realist analysis.8 Buzan
identifies the Middle East and North Africa as a significant secu-
rity complex containing three subsystems. Whereas in the Gulf and
in North Africa water is only a peripheral issue, the competition
over water resources is central to the eastern Mediterranean
subcomplex, comprising Israel, Jordan, and Palestine. Yet, despite
the importance of water as a source of tension, its significance is
limited in negotiations between the Jordan Basin riparian states.
Instead, symbolic issues have traditionally dominated negotiation
agendas.
Water is just one of many contentious issues with which
neighboring political economies in the Middle East must contend.
For example, the major issues between Jordan and Israel before
their negotiated Peace Agreement in 1994 were peace, territorial
boundaries, and water.9 In the case of Israel and Palestine, there
have been five issues—Jerusalem, territorial boundaries, settlements,
refugees, and water.10 When numerous issues are at stake, linkages
in negotiation are unavoidable. However, the symbolic significance

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258 SAIS Review Summer–FALL 2002
of some of the issues at hand, such as defining the status of Jerusa-
lem, determining borders, and gaining a lasting peace will typically
overwhelm other, economically significant disputes (e.g., joint wa-
ter management, the right of return for refugees)—even when these
are strategically profound. For example, in the 1994 Jordan-Israel
Peace Agreement, gains in terms of symbolically charged issues
such as suing for peace and obtaining favorable territorial bound-
aries came at the expense of losses on water claims for Jordan.
In fact, in the Jordan Basin, water policy, including water al-
location decisions and joint management of common freshwater
resources, is typically formulated based on “constructed knowl-
edge,” or the product of biased views toward water resource secu-
rity. Indeed, important decisions regarding water resources depend
on public perceptions of water security, which are manipulated and
distorted—i.e., “constructed.” Policymakers purposefully downplay
their economies’ water deficits because politically, such a risk-free
approach to water policy is easier than to confront the seemingly
intractable problems posed by acute water scarcity. What has sus-
tained these distorted, “constructed” notions of water security thus
far are the global trading system and access to virtual water.11
Throughout the past fifty years, Middle Eastern governments have
leveraged the global political economy in order to implement oth-
erwise unsustainable water allocation policies. Yet, instead of pub-
licizing the contribution of international trade to solving the
region’s growing water scarcity problem, policymakers have kept
“virtual water” imports, in the form of grain and food commodi-
ties, invisible economically and silent politically. Indeed, to discuss
them publicly would contradict deeply held beliefs regarding wa-
ter security (as well as each country’s independent national water
policies), which would be politically destabilizing to say the least.
As a result, the spectacularly successful benefits of interna-
tional trade, conforming to classical notions of comparative ad-
vantage, have been subordinated to the “sanctioned discourse” on
water in the region.12 The “sanctioned discourse” on water is that
Middle Eastern economies only need a little more water to be “se-
cure.” Politicians, the agricultural sector—the single largest water
consumer in local economies—and the media all reinforce the sanc-
tioned discourse and advocate self-sufficiency in water and food
production, without ever clearly defining these terms. These policy
goals, highly charged politically, are rarely examined or challenged
publicly. For politicians and policymakers, the importance of vir-
tual water is that it allows the pretense, perhaps better described

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 HYDRO-PEACE IN THE MIDDLE EAST 259
as the fantasy, of claiming that water deficit problems are being
solved domestically and that their countries are achieving self-suf-
ficiency in water and food production.
However, such distorted risk awareness regarding water us-
age among the region’s populations has significant, adverse im-
pacts on the way negotiations over water resources are approached
or even initiated. The sanctioned discourse is equally evident in the
efforts riparian states make to avoid negotiations over common
water resources and in their negotiating strategies once they have
initiated conflict resolution efforts. In the case of the Israel-Pales-
tine negotiations, a significant turning point was reached when the
focus of the negotiations shifted from the contradictory principles
of sovereignty, espoused by the Palestinian negotiators, and prior
use, argued by Israel, to those of equitable utilization. Equitable
utilization will always be difficult to implement, but it does have
the merit of integrating
international and na-
tional economic pro- Contention over water has
cesses into a final agree-
ment, thereby enabling proved to be subordinate to
a solution that im-
proves the livelihoods
symbolic and territorial issues
of local populations in- such as peace, Jerusalem, bor-
stead of merely focusing
on the narrow issue of ders, settlements, and the re-
water deficits. Access to turn of refugees.
virtual water and, in
due course, desalinated
water will contribute both to economic well-being and to decreas-
ing water scarcity by freeing up scarce freshwater resources for
other, nonagricultural purposes.
That such constructed knowledge dominates water policy is
not unusual, nor even reprehensible. Recognizing the phenomenon
of constructed knowledge is, however, critical for understanding
the discourse that surrounds water security and water policy in the
Middle East.

The Jordan Basin

The relations between riparian states of the Jordan Basin have been
characterized by very intense international politics over diverse, yet
linked issues. Contention over water has proved to be subordinate

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 260 SAIS Review Summer–FALL 2002
to symbolic and territorial issues such as peace, Jerusalem, borders,
settlements, and the return of refugees. The riparian states in the
basin have all been strong adherents of the “sanctioned discourse”
on water. Even Israel has re-
lapsed into a confusing and
Water policy in the Jordan contradictory water policy since
Basin as a whole has been the peace talks began in 1992,
despite having charted a new
a parable of how political course in the mid-1980s that
rejected the usual assumptions
impediments attenuate about water politics. Jordan is
principled innovation. currently in a transitional mode
and the government’s water
policy seems to be moving away
from the sanctioned discourse. Water policy in the Jordan Basin
as a whole has been a parable of how political impediments attenu-
ate principled innovation.
The history of hydropolitics in the Middle East during the
second half of the twentieth century has been characterized by in-
tense, occasionally armed, hostility. In the late 1940s, the econo-
mies of the region could be regarded as water secure, with enough
water to meet both domestic and industrial needs as well as food
production requirements. Since then, however, the population of
the basin has increased from about three million to over fifteen
million today. Accordingly, the use of freshwater increased about
six-fold in half a century. While the region’s water endowment has
remained the same, heavy technical interventions have taken place
to divert water for various purposes, radically altering the levels
and patterns of use. Initiatives like Israel’s urban wastewater reuse
program have not contributed significantly to increasing water
resources. Clearly, the water resources of the Jordan Basin coun-
tries have been very seriously tested, and in these intense demo-
graphic and economic circumstances, it is remarkable that there
has been so little conflict over water.
The Jordan Basin is also a useful laboratory in which to ob-
serve the miraculous workings of economically invisible and po-
litically silent “virtual water,” accessible primarily through the in-
ternational grain market.13 Given the current population of the
basin, the region would need about fifteen billion cubic meters of
water to be self-sufficient. However, there are less than three bil-
lion cubic meters of freshwater available annually, not counting
additional soil water in the northern part of the basin, which is

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 HYDRO-PEACE IN THE MIDDLE EAST 261
Figure 1: The Jordan River Basin

Source: L. Ohlsson, Hydropolitics: Conflict over Water as a Development Constraint

(London: Zed Books, 1995); British Geological Survey, A Brief Summary of
the Hydrogeology of the West Bank (Wallingford, UK: BGS, 2002).

estimated at one to two billion cubic meters, but which is not fun-
gible. Yet this annual deficit of ten to twelve billion cubic meters,
which has existed since the 1950s, is not publicly discussed. Nor
is the fact that neither Israel, Palestine, nor Jordan can meet their
food needs relying solely on their freshwater resources. Instead,
policymakers speak of running out of water in the future. The con-

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262 SAIS Review Summer–FALL 2002
structed discourse about the tractability of the water supply prob-
lem overwhelms any attempt to introduce the politically unwel-
come statistics of stark deficits.
Finally, there has not been a significant amount of negotia-
tion over water issues either. The only agreements reached came
toward the end of the period. In 1994, Jordan and Israel signed a
peace agreement with articles specifically addressing water.14 In
this sense too, the Jordan Basin provides a useful case study be-
cause negotiations over water, albeit strongly linked to other highly
politicized issues, have already been initiated, though only long
after water shortages became acute.15

Political Ecology in the Jordan Basin

The political ecology of water resources and management in the
Jordan Basin countries in the last half of the twentieth century can
be considered by decade. The 1940s were a period of massive so-
cial and political disruption. The armistice, which marked the end
of the Arab-Israeli conflict of 1947-48 and the establishment of a
Jewish state, left Israel and Jordan with borders different from
those during the period of British administration and different
from the boundaries recommended by the UN Partition plan.16
The new territorial boundaries guaranteed that access to water re-
sources would be contentious.
From 1952 to 1955, the United States tried to devise a ratio-
nal division of water resources among the Jordan Basin riparian
states. The U.S. government sent a special diplomatic mission—the
Johnston Mission—to negotiate a basinwide arrangement for op-
timizing water allocation between Jordan, Israel, and Syria.17 The
U.S. mission’s approach to water resource management was im-
bued by two ideas. First, U.S. water experts were convinced that
science and engineering, backed by substantial government fund-
ing, guaranteed the success of such ambitious projects. Second, the
Johnston Mission was determined to avoid the detrimental con-
sequences of environmental mismanagement. Their model was the
Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), which was set up to address
environmental, economic, and social challenges in a poor region
of the United States during the 1930s. The lessons from the TVA
showed that to reverse resource depletion, both careful planning
and strict regulation of resource use were necessary, whereas state-
of-the art engineering could minimize the environmental damage
of large-scale water development projects.

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 HYDRO-PEACE IN THE MIDDLE EAST 263
The Johnston mission was successful in the technical aspects
of resource evaluation. It even came up with numbers that satis-
fied the water professionals of the three riparian states. But by
1955, it was clear that an agreement for sharing freshwater re-
sources contradicted the polarized politics of Arabs versus Israe-
lis. The ministers of the Arab countries rejected the Johnston Plan.
Despite this political failure, the water allocation proposal outlined
in the plan still provided a reasonable basis for eventually negoti-
ating a basinwide agreement. Johnston recommended that Syria
receive thirty-five million cubic meters per year from the upper
Yarmuk tributaries.
Nevertheless, following the Johnston Mission, each riparian
state adopted unilateral water policies, which only exacerbated al-
ready tense interstate relations. There was even some evidence that
armed conflict could occur over water. Israeli policy was geared
toward moving what it regarded as its share of Jordan water from
the Jordan Valley to the coastal plain. As a result, the 1950s saw
the most rapid development of groundwater resources in the his-
tory of the area as Israel increased water abstraction from coastal
aquifers. Israel managed to mobilize over one billion cubic meters
per year of additional water for irrigation. Syria had also extensively
developed its irrigation infrastructure, diverting, since the 1960s,
roughly two hundred million cubic meters of water annually from
the Yarmuk River. Jordan, meanwhile, had expected to use up to
80 percent of the water siphoned off by its two neighbors. One
project Jordan had been particularly keen about was the construc-
tion of a dam on the lower Yarkmuk to control the flow to Jordan’s
benefit. Proposals to build this dam surfaced periodically, but the
annual water flow of the Yarmuk eventually became too unreliable
for a dam structure to be economically or environmentally viable.
As a result, serious contention over the waters of the upper
Jordan Basin arose throughout the 1960s. Water-related armed
conflict took place as both Syria and Israel were successful in frus-
trating their neighbor’s intent to divert water. Syria abandoned its
plan to divert water from the Banias to the Yarmuk. Israel was
forced to opt for the very expensive policy of building a water car-
rier from the lower-level Lake Tiberias-Kinneret rather than divert-
ing water from the higher levels of the upper Jordan Basin. In June
1967, war broke out, eventually leaving Israel victorious and in
control of the entire upper Jordan Basin as well as the West Bank
aquifers. Water was neither the trigger for the war nor the main
goal of any of its adversaries. The outcome of the war did, however,

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264 SAIS Review Summer–FALL 2002
determine regional hydropolitics for the next two decades. In the
absence of formal agreements, Israel and Jordan had continuous
informal meetings and arrangements that enabled them to allo-
cate water during the twenty-five years following the 1967 War.
Both countries have tended to take the numbers produced by
Johnston in the 1950s as a basis for their discussions.
Between 1986 and 1993, the politics of water allocation in
Israel swung dramatically from a precautionary to an opportunis-
tic approach. An environmentalist campaign to reduce water to
irrigation gained purchase during the drought of 1986. At the same
time, the United States put pressure on Israel to improve its eco-
nomic efficiency, including the agricultural sector, by threatening
to withhold a $10 billion financial arrangement. The 1991 drought
reinforced the policy of economic and environmental consider-
ation. However, two events brought a swift reversal of policy. First,
there were unusually heavy rains in 1992, which restored the West
Bank groundwater levels and Lake Tiberias-Kinneret to pre-1967
levels in the space of a few weeks. Second, the peace talks started.
The coalition of environmentalists, water professionals, and poli-
ticians, which had succeeded in introducing and sustaining the
cautious water management policy since 1986, lost influence. A
coalition focused on security and agricultural interests gained the
upper hand. Levels of water withdrawal, which had fallen from two
billion cubic meters per year in 1985 to 1.6 billion cubic meters in
1992, rose within three years to 1985 levels.
Israel had demonstrated that it could run its economy effec-
tively with 1.6 billion cubic meters of water per year—less than the
peak usage of two billion cubic meters per year, a significant vol-
ume of water in a water-scarce region. Palestinians in Gaza and the
West Bank only use about two hundred million cubic meters per
year. All of Israel’s nonagricultural livelihoods, those in industry
and services, which produce over 97 percent of the GDP, use only
about one hundred million cubic meters per year. Why did Israel
reverse its policy? Why did the security concerns take precedence
over environmental risks after 1992? The heavy rains certainly fa-
cilitated the policy change, but the new risk presented by the newly
launched comprehensive peace negotiations led some elements of
the Israeli political elite to argue for an increase in water use to
improve their bargaining position at the negotiation table.18 In-
deed, since Israel is a downstream state with regard to the western
and northeastern aquifers (called the “Mountain Aquifer in Is-
rael”), Israeli negotiators would have more leverage over their coun-

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 HYDRO-PEACE IN THE MIDDLE EAST 265
terparts if Israeli water policy advocated a high level of water ab-
straction. Since any water-sharing agreement would likely allocate
water resources based on the amount consumed rather than ab-
solute estimates of water availability, Israel stood to gain a larger
share if it consumed more prior to the settlement.
In 1994, Jordan and Israel reached an agreement over water,
and Palestine and Israel launched the Oslo peace process.19 Water
need not be a significant impediment to peace between Syria and
Israel either, nor between Lebanon and Israel once a deal with Syria
is in place. Such circumstances were impossible to imagine even
as recently as 1990.

“Virtual Water”
Advocates of political ecology theories contend that the environ-
ment, including water resources, is managed in the interests of the
powerful. In the Jordan Basin, power relations have been explicit.
Since 1948, Israel has achieved a hegemonic position in military
terms. Without explicitly aiming to take control of the basin’s wa-
ter resources, Israel has nonetheless gained sovereignty over these
resources in the upper Jordan Basin as a result of territorial expan-
sion and military supremacy.20 Integral to the politics of natural
resources is the construction of knowledge to reinforce the posi-
tion of the more powerful riparian state.
There is a long tradition of constructing knowledge about the
water resources in the Jordan Basin countries. Political ecology
theory explains the approaches taken by authors of the thirty or
more books about water in the Jordan Basin. Lowdermilk’s 1944
study had the clear agenda of justifying a Jewish claim for the re-
gional water resources.21 That of Ionides in 1953 was inspired by
concern for the sustainable
use of the limited water re-
sources for economic and
social purposes.22
Armed conflict was pre-
In the Jordan Basin, sumed to be an unavoidable
as elsewhere, there has been
a tendency to assume that
element in riparian relations.
water resources would de-
termine economic outcomes
and would have a significant and predictable impact on the inter-
national relations of riparian states. Armed conflict was presumed
to be an unavoidable element in riparian relations. Yet toward the
end of the century, the economic experience of the Jordan Basin has

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266 SAIS Review Summer–FALL 2002
been a spectacular demonstration that natural resources such as wa-
ter do not determine socio-economic development; on the contary,
socio-economic development determines water management options.
The assumption that local water would be the basis of economic
and strategic security has underpinned hydropolitcal discourses in all
of the riparian states. They ignored growing real water deficits be-
cause recognizing such acute water shortages was politically too risky.
Awareness of rising grain imports, which were the obvious indica-
tors of increasing water deficits, could be kept out of the debate
on water policy because they arrived invisibly and silently. By 2000,
grain imports to Israel (including Palestine) and Jordan exceeded
five million tons annually.23 Had all available freshwater resources
in the three territories been exclusively earmarked for grain pro-
duction, the combined efforts of the Jordan Basin riparian states
would only have yielded roughly three million tons of grain.
The international market for grain is immensely flexible and
an extraordinary phenomenon of political economy. Yet it is by no
means an optimizing market system. In fact, its workings are ex-
tremely irrational economically.24 The Jordan Basin countries ben-
efit from the low world grain prices, which are a direct result of
years of subsidized agriculture in Europe and North America.
Though branded as perverse by economists, agricultural policies
in the West nonetheless enjoy broad political support. More im-
portantly, these subsidized grain exports enable Middle Eastern
governments to continue preaching “sanctioned discourses,”
namely that serious water deficits have yet to occur. The growing
water deficits over the course of four decades are conspicuously
absent from public debate, and the urgency posed by increasing
water scarcity in the region has consistently been downplayed.
These perceptions of water in the region, conditioned by the
international trade in virtual water, have adversely affected the
prospect of successful water negotiations. Indeed, the complex eco-
nomic processes that enable virtual water to meet local water defi-
cits have been ignored, even though it allows for equitable use of
limited freshwater advocated by international lawyers.25 But the
political imperative of maintaining familiar approaches based on
conventional constructed knowledge continue to dominate nego-
tiating agendas.

Negotiations Toward a Basinwide Agreement

Progress toward a basinwide set of water agreements appeared to
be at an advanced stage by 1995. The Israel-Jordan Peace Agree-

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 HYDRO-PEACE IN THE MIDDLE EAST 267
ment, followed by the Oslo Accord in 1995, and then by apparently
promising talks between Israel and Syria, made it appear that a new
era had dawned. However, the assassination of Israeli Prime Min-
ister Yitzhak Rabin in 1996 and the subsequent change of govern-
ment in Israel reversed the progress toward a set of comprehen-
sive agreements, including those over water. The 1996 reversal is
an emblematic example of the tendency highlighted by Mayer that
negotiators face much more trenchant, in this case lethal, opposi-
tion from the factions at home than they do from across the ne-
gotiating table:

When nations negotiate, often the toughest bargaining is not

between nations but within them. The reason is simple:
international agreements, no matter how much in the national
‘interest,’ inevitably have differential effects on the factional
concerns...experienced negotiators almost invariably insist that
the more difficult part of their job consists not in dealing with
the adversary across the table but in handling interest group,
bureaucrats, and politicians at home.26

The articles in the September 1994 Peace Agreement between

Israel and Jordan demonstrated in a classic way the significance
of linkages. Jordan apparently obtained two hundred million cu-
bic meters of water per year in tranches of fifty million cubic
meters. The first two concessions were relatively uncomplicated
and involved Israel’s release of the water to Jordan. The second
concession also involved some investment in Jordan. The last two
negotiated water transfers were severely entangled in conditions of
joint investment, which have made them difficult to realize because
Jordan was (and remains) short of financial capital for infrastruc-
ture projects.
However, the most serious deficiency in the water articles of
the Jordan-Israel Peace Agreement was the absence of any provi-
sion for drought circumstances. The recurrence of drought in the
Jordan Basin is certain. In the event of a drought, freshwater avail-
ability should be negotiated by clearly distinguishing reliable
sources of water from unreliable ones. Reliable sources of water are
those that will be available every year irrespective of drought, pro-
vided that surface water and groundwater resources have been
managed sustainably. Unreliable water resources are only available
in nondrought years. Negotiators always simplify the situation by
choosing tentative numbers as if all the water were reliable. Within
four years of the 1994 agreement, a serious drought had exposed

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268 SAIS Review Summer–FALL 2002
this unfortunate assumption. Israel’s failure to deliver the negoti-
ated volume was so highly charged politically that the issue quickly
went to the King of Jordan and senior Israeli cabinet members for
resolution.27
The most recent water negotiations occurred during the July
2000 session at Camp David and at Taba the following year. These
meetings merely emphasized the low priority given to water dis-
putes in relation to the more symbolic issues of Jerusalem and ter-
ritory. The more recent Saudi proposal of March 2002 ignored wa-
ter entirely. The Saudi proposal was to extend recognition to Is-
rael by twenty-two Arab governments in exchange for a return to
1967 borders and consideration of the position of Palestinian refu-
gees.
These recent peace plans should not be interpreted as a sign
that water has become unimportant to either side. If anything, the
establishment of the Joint Water Committee (JWC), an institution
associated with the Oslo Accord, underscores the importance each
side confers on water issues. The JWC continues to hold regular
meetings—even during the height of the second Intifada in 2001
and 2002. In January 2001, a joint statement by the Israeli Water
Commissioner and the head of the Palestinian Water Authority
called on both sides to avoid damage to the water infrastructure
and interference with water supplies.28 At the same time, the Joint
Water Committee is a source of frustration to Palestinian profes-
sionals as it is subject to the Israeli Defense Force views on secu-
rity. Nevertheless, water management throughout the 1990s is a
testament to the possibility of cooperation over this important
strategic resource, and ensures that water will remain high on the
agenda in both Palestine and Israel, despite the overwhelming so-
cial and security disruptions since September 2000.

Water Resources in the Twenty-first Century Middle East

By the year 2000, a number of phases of Israeli immigration and

natural population growth in Jordan, Gaza, and Syria had in-
creased population within the basin to over fifteen million. Fresh-
water resources have not increased beyond the three billion cubic
meters per year available in the 1950s. Soil water resources also re-
main unchanged. Water resource requirements for self-sufficiency,
including food requirements, have risen to fifteen billion cubic
meters annually. Some would regard this as a low estimate, espe-
cially as standards of living increase. Others would also correctly

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 HYDRO-PEACE IN THE MIDDLE EAST 269
argue that it would not be possible to close down all irrigated farm-
ing. Even the three billion cubic meters of freshwater available an-
nually is not, therefore, a secure level for the nonagricultural de-
mands of current and future populations. Clearly, the populations
of the basin currently need between four and five times the fresh-
water to which they have access, soil water being a negligible ele-
ment in the water balance. The significant amounts of freshwater
required to meet the growing food needs of the basin’s populations
can only be accessed via international trade in virtual water.
The relatively small amounts of water needed for domestic
and industrial use—only 10 percent of the total required for self-
sufficiency—are much less of a challenge. Indeed, desalination tech-
nology holds great potential for adequately supplying nonagricul-
tural water demand. Israel had delayed installing desalination ca-
pacity, judging that the period after a peace agreement with Pal-
estine would be the best circumstances in which to announce its
desalination program. However, with the deterioration in relations
with Palestine after the July 2000 Camp David meeting and the
onset of a drought, Israel brought forward its program and an-
nounced in November 2001 its first plant with a capacity of fifty
million cubic meters per year. A second plant was announced in
spring 2002, adding another fifty million cubic meters per year in
desalination capacity. These were part of a planned four hundred
million cubic meter capacity. Construction of two plants to pro-
duce a total of one hundred million meters of water annually be-
gan in 2002. Ariel Sharon, as Infrastructure Minister in 1998, sug-
gested that Israel would desalinate up to eight hundred million
cubic meters per year within the first decades of the twenty-first
century. The econo-
mies of the Jordan Ba-
sin are likely to be de- Many Israeli water professionals
salinating between
one billion and 1.5 have realized that manufacturing
billion cubic meters water will be much easier than
of water by 2020.
These volumes of high negotiating it.
quality water would
increase the currently
available levels of freshwater by 50 percent. Many Israeli water pro-
fessionals have realized that manufacturing water will be much
easier than negotiating it. Indeed, it will be less complicated and
more secure to manufacture water than to depend on its ongoing

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270 SAIS Review Summer–FALL 2002
provision by hostile neighbors, even if legal entitlement or a ne-
gotiated entitlement could be achieved.
The rapid changes in Israeli water management and alloca-
tion policies confirm that water can easily become a politicized is-
sue. Such shifts in national policy have a profound impact on the
negotiating positions adopted by contending riparians. Any under-
standing of national and international water in the Middle East
region can only be achieved by examining closely the driving po-
litical forces that generated particular environmental, technologi-
cal, and especially economic policies. However, it is the global trad-
ing system that provides the strongest explanation for the water
policies adopted by the Jordan Basin riparian states. Virtual water
enables serious water deficit economies to solve their water prob-
lems inexpensively, invisibly, and without political cost. More im-
portantly, global trade enables Middle Eastern political economies
to construct false but widely accepted notions of water security and
to reinforce politically comfortable but economically and environ-
mentally very suboptimal water allocation policies. The
suboptimizing role of virtual water is that its availability slows the
adoption of much needed water policy reform. Necessary but po-
litically difficult measures—especially reforms enabling more effi-
cient water allocation—which would achieve higher returns on
scarce water assets, are avoided because of the perceived political
costs of introducing them. The first decades of the twenty-first
century will be subject to the same ideas as those that shaped wa-
ter policy and negotiating positions in the previous half-century.
Politics will also continue to dominate the water sectors of indi-
vidual political economies as well as waters that are shared inter-
nationally.

Notes
1
P. Rogers and P. Lydon, Water in the Arab World (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1994). See also J. A. Allan, The Middle East Water Question: Hydro-
politics and the Global Economy (London: I. B. Tauris, 2001).
2
M. Haddadin, Diplomacy on the Jordan: International Conflict and Negotiated
Resolution (Boston and Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2001). See also
A. Medzini, The River Jordan: the Struggle for Frontiers and Water (London: SOAS
Water Issues Group, 2001).
3
E. Feitelson and M. Haddad, Management of Shared Groundwater Resources: the
Israeli-Palestinian Case with an International Perspective (Boston and Dordrecht:
Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2001). See also Haddadin, Diplomacy on the Jordan.
4
J. Waterbury, The Hydro-politics of the Nile (Syracuse: University of Syracuse Press,
1979).

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 HYDRO-PEACE IN THE MIDDLE EAST 271
5
For an in-depth discussion of “virtual water,” see J. A. Allan, “The Political
Economy of Water: Reasons for Optimism but Long Term Caution,” Water and
Peace in the Middle East: Negotiating Resources in the Jordan Basin (London: Tauris
Academic Publications, 1996), 75-120.
6
M. Lowi, Water and Power: the Politics of a Scarce Resource in the Jordan River Basin
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).
7
A. Kibaroglu, Management and Allocation of the Waters of the Euphrates-Tigris Basin:
Lessons drawn from Global Experiences (Ph.D. dissertation, Bilkent University,
Department of International Relations, Ankara, 1998).
8
B. Buzan, O. Waever, and J. de Wilde, Security: A New Framework for Analysis
(London and Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1998), and B. Buzan and O. Waever,
eds., Security Complexes and Sub-complexes (London and Boulder, CO: Lynne
Riener, in press).
9
J. A. Allan, Water, Peace and the Middle East: Negotiating Resources in the Jordan Basin
(London: Tauris Academic Publications, 1996), Appendixes 1 and 2.
10
S. S. Elmusa, Negotiating Water: Israel and the Palestinians (Washington DC:
Institute of Palestinian Studies, 1996).
11
M. Douglas and A. Wildavsky, Risk and Culture: an Essay on the Selection of
Technical and Environmental Dangers (Berkley, CA and London: University of
California Press, 1982).
12
C. T. Tripp, personal communication to author, 1996, cited in Allan, The
Middle East Water Question.
13
J. A. Allan, “The Political Economy of Water: Reasons for Optimism but Long
Term Caution,” 77-80.
14
Allan, Water, Peace and the Middle East, Appendixes 1 and 2.
15
Ibid.
16
A. A. Amery and A. T. Wolf, eds., Water in the Middle East: a Geography of Peace
(Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2000), 75-76.
17
Lowi, Water and Power.
18
M. Sherman, The Politics of Water in the Middle East: an Israeli Perspective on the
Hydro-political Aspects of Conflict (London: Macmillan Press, 1999).
19
Haddadin, Diplomacy on the Jordan.
20
See Medzini, The River Jordan and A. T. Wolf, “Hydrostrategic Territory in the
Jordan Basin: Water, War and Arab-Israeli Peace Negotiations,” in Water in the
Middle East: a Geography of Peace, eds. A. A. Amery and A. T. Wolf (Austin, TX:
University of Texas Press, 2000).
21
W. Lowdermilk, Palestine: the Land of Promise (New York: Harper Row, 1944).
22
M. G. Ionides, “The Disputed Waters of the Jordan,” Middle East Tributary, no.
2 (1953): 153-164.
23
Food and Agriculture Organization, Agricultural Production and Trade Statistics
(Rome: Food and Agricultural Organization, 2002).
24
T. Dyson, World food trends and prospects to 2025, Proceedings of the National
Academy of Science of the USA, vol. 98 (Washington, DC: National Academy
of Science, 1999), 5929-5936.
25
S. McCaffrey and M. Sinjela, “The United Nations Convention on
International Water Courses,” American Journal of International Law, no. 92 (1998):
97ff and S. McCaffery, The Law of International Water Courses: Non-
navigational Uses (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).

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272 SAIS Review Summer–FALL 2002
26
F. W. Mayer, “Managing Domestic Differences in International Negotiations:
the Strategic Use of Internal Side-payments,” International Organization 46, no.
4 (autumn 1992): 793.
27
A. Cohen, “A dry Israel must cut water flow to Jordan,” Ha’aretz (Jerusalem),
15 March 1999. A. Khatib, “Jordan ‘strongly’ rejects Israeli plan to reduce water
supplies,” Jordan Times (Amman), 16 March 1999.
28
“Water Commissioner and PWA Director make joint call,” Ha’aretz, 13
February 2001.

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