Power and Water in the Middle East

Mark Zeitoun is a water engineer with more than a decade of experience in conflict and post conflict zones, including the Palestine, Iraq, Lebanon, Chad and the Republic of Congo.

Illustrations ix
Acknowledgements xi
Preface xiii
1 Water Wars or Water Conflicts? 1
Why no Water Wars? 2
Water and Conflicts 4
Water ‘Cooperation’ 7
The Role of Power in Water Conflicts 8
Why the Palestinian–Israeli Water Conflict? 13
Box: Hydrological apartheid in Madama 15
2 Understanding Power and Water 19
Water Conflict Analysis 20
Power and Compliance 24
Three Dimensions of Power 26
Hegemony and Compliance-Producing Mechanisms 30
Power and International Water Law 34
Power and Discourse: Re-writing Reality 38
3 An Asymmetrically Distributed Resource 45
Overview of the Transboundary Water Flows 45
Control Over Water Resources in the West Bank 49
Inequitable Transboundary Water Allocations 57
Why all the Fuss? 59
4 Highly Politicised Hydropolitics 63
The Broader Political Context Post-Oslo 64
A Brief History of the Water Conflict: 1904–2004 65
Internal Israeli Tensions – the Agricultural Lobby 72
Internal Palestinian Tensions – Challenged Legitimacy 73
Contending Hydropolitical Discourses 75
Israeli Hydrostrategic Discourse 75
Israeli Needs, not Rights Discourse 77
viii POWER AND WATER
Palestinian Cooperation Discourse 79
Palestinian Rights First Discourse 80
Donors’ Cooperation, not Rights Discourse 80
Accumulation Through Dispossession or a Broader Strategy of Asymmetry? 83
5 Hard Power – Coercing the Outcome 87
Damaged Water Infrastructure, Jenin April 2002 88
The Wall 93
6 Bargaining Power – The Joint Water Committee 99
Power Assymetry Structured into the JWC 99
Coerced Compliance 102
‘Utilitarian’ Compliance 103
Normative Compliance 106
Israeli ‘Agenda Setting’ 107
Conclusion - the Elephant and the Fly 109
7 Ideational Power – Imposing Ideas 111
Securitisation and the Hasbani River 111
Master-Planning for Palestine 114
The case of the ‘Extra 78’ and the Eastern Basin 115
Desalination for the land-locked West Bank? 117
Sanctioning the Discourse 120
Conclusion 122
8 Hydraulic Power – Dominance of Production 125
Israeli Water Production 1948–2003 126
Israeli and Palestinian Water Consumption 1948–2003 132
Box: On the data of the Israel Water Commission 137
Summary Analysis of Water Production and Consumption 138
9 Israeli Hydro-Hegemony 145
Power Asymmetry Measured 146
The Evolution of Control 148
Maintaining the Hegemonic Apparatus 151
Evaluation of the Form of Hydro-Hegemony 153
The Effects of Hydro-Hegemony 155
Box: Still dry in Madama 160
The Future 162
Appendices
A. Diagrams and Photographs 166
B. Supporting Documents for Damaged Water Infrastructure of Jenin 169
C. Israeli and Palestinian Water Production and Consumption Data 174
Notes 179
Bibliography 191
Index 209