Introduction

"The State of Israel cannot tolerate a desert within its borders. Should the state not eliminate the desert, the desert might eliminate the state".

David Ben-Gurion, the first Prime Minister of the State of Israel in a 1955 paper titled "The Significance of the Negev"Footnote 1

On a warm evening in April 2016, dozens of guests gathered at the central conference hall in the Arava, an arid region in southern Israel characterized by intensive agriculture and harsh living conditions (see Fig. 1). The conference honored Arik Dor, one of the founding fathers of the hityashvut (settlement)Footnote 2 in the Arava, who was retiring from his position as the coordinator of regional water development. In an impressive ceremony, scores of locals and guests of honor paid tribute to a figure whose striking contributions had shaped the local landscape. Dor, known by locals as "The wizard", was a master of rallying the requisite political forces to local causes. Thanks to his charisma, dedication and personal network of connections, Dor defied the scientific, technological and human constraints imposed on local water and land development for agriculture, and pushed the capacity well beyond the previously set limits.

Fig. 1
figure 1

Map of the Central Arava Regional Council

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The Arava region receives almost no supplemental water from the national water system or any other external sources. The water in the area originates from rare floods in the arid valley, following heavy rain in the surrounding mountains. This water seeps into underground water reservoirs (aquifers) and feeds the groundwater and springs in the area. Therefore, water development, alongside the development of land for agriculture, is a principal mission for the state, its institutions, and the Arava residents.

As young adults in the early 1960s, Dor and his friends were inspired by Ben Gurion, Israel's first prime minister, who famously called upon the nation's youth to "make the desert bloom”. They came together to form groups of local communities in the Arava region, the most arid part of the Israeli Negev desert, based on the Zionist movement's approach of battling the desert and transforming it into a green, blooming oasis.

This desire to transform the desert and make it bloom lies at many colonial national projects (Zerubavel 2018; Blackbourn 2007; Rouhana and Sabbagh-Khoury 2015; Weizman and Sheikh 2015). In this effort, water and land are the principal means of subsistence, particularly with respect to agriculture. The Zionist movement, which incorporates national concepts together with elements of settler colonialism (Busbridge 2018; Bashir and Busbridge 2019; Zreik 2016; Rouhana 2018), viewed the desert as a threat to be addressed, as well as an empty, open space for settlement and land tenure (Tal 2007; Weizman and Sheikh 2015; Gutkowski 2024).

Since the early days of their arrival, agriculture has been the main practice employed by the people of the Arava to realize Ben-Gurion’s and others’ vision of fighting the desert and making it green, while also demarcating internal and external national boundaries. Water and land were fundamental elements of this "agricultural infrastructure" (Shani 2023), especially after the Bedouins – the previous inhabitants of the area – were denied the right to return after the 1948 war (Bailey 2006; Kedar et al 2020; Kaminer 2022b). However, the relentless realization of such imaginations in the Anthropocene era comes with a devastating environmental price (Chakrabarty 2009; Weizman and Sheikh 2015; Tesdell 2017; Salih and Corry 2022).

Six decades later, after the sun and time have left their marks on the faces of Dor and his friends, they celebrated the flourishing agriculture in the Arava and the success of subjugation of the desert. But the greetings and lavished praises hid an underlying anxiety: The prospect of collapse looming over agriculture in the region. The various concerns – scarcity of topsoil sands, fluctuating global markets, flood decrease and climate change, as well as the state’s fading support – were all outweighed by the dual crisis of water and land shortage. Off-the-record exchanges during the event echoed this sentiment: Dor was retiring while his and his peers' lifework was under threat. His magic and political skills might no longer be enough. Amidst receding floodwater, the strain exerted by the Arava agriculture on the "system", the environment, was taking its toll.

This paper lays out the dynamics that motivated Dor and his friends to 'bloom the desert' while at the same time destroying it and their place in it. By integrating water into the analogy of land, we gain insight into the dynamics of the cultural, political and material dimensions propelling activities in the Arava region. The connection between water and land is examined through the imagination that drives it and the infrastructures that make it possible. The importance of examining the multiple meanings of land–water connections is increasing in an age of climate change and desertification, population growth, and a surge in climate refugee migration, alongside efforts to provide food security and solve food crises (Cortesi 2021; Gagné and Rasmussen 2016; Skinner et al. 2023).

Dealing with these multiple dimensions, the current paper explores the following questions: What are the different imaginaries that enable the various dimensions of water-land connections? When and why efforts are made to expand or severe these connections? How are these imaginaries translated into infrastructures and operations in space? And how does the political context influence and is influenced by attempts to connect or disconnect water and land?

In order to analyze the land–water connections, I weave together contemporary writing about infrastructure (Barnes 2017; Hommes et al. 2022; Barua 2021), and the critical writing about imagination (Sippel and Visser 2021; Davis 2016). Using this dual theoretical framework, I draw the multi-dimensional connections between land and water and the attempts to disconnect them, while distinguishing between three different dimensions: the political, cultural-economic, and the environmental-technological dimension. The distinction between the dimensions is, of course, analytical, while in practice they exhibit continuities and interconnectivity. Thus they allow us a broader view of the different meanings and effects of the connections between land and water as well as their disconnection. But first, I will describe the theoretical framework, the methodology and the Arava region.

Between imagination and infrastructure– a theoretical framework

Water-land imaginaries

Studies that examined the connections between water and land have mostly focused on specific dimensions of these connections, such as political sovereignty and power relations (Gasteyer et al 2012; Tejada and Rist 2018; McKee 2021), water and land as an economic and social resource (Camargo 2017; Sharmina et al. 2016), their ecological-social meaning (Krause 2017; Muehlmann 2013) or their material and non-human meaning (Helmreich 2011; Ogden et al. 2013). But actually, examining one of the central factors in creating the connection between these two resources, the imagination, has been somewhat neglected (Hommes et al. 2022). Inspired by Janowski and Ingold (2016), I characterize imagination as an organized field of social practice. Social imaginaries are not mere reflections of how we perceive the world in our minds; they actively shape reality, influencing life, landscapes, and the environment (Janowski and Ingold 2016, p. 3; See also Taylor 2002; Sneath et al. 2009).

Sarah Ruth Sippel and Oane Visser (2021) introduce the concept of "land imaginaries" as a pivotal lens for studying contemporary land transformations, posing the question, "What is land?" (271). They bridge two significant bodies of literature on imagination: Sociotechnical Imaginaries (Jasanoff 2015) and Environmental Imaginaries (McGregor 2004; Davis 2011). According to Sippel and Visser (2021), land imaginaries encapsulate two distinct dimensions. While environmental imagination focuses on how societies collectively construct, interpret, and communicate nature, socio-technical imagination delves into the dynamics of social change embedded in the notion of imaginaries, emphasizing the capacity of individuals and groups to envision and conceptualize things differently from previous perspectives. Their discussion on "land imaginaries" offers a nuanced understanding of land-related processes, grounded in a multitude of imaginaries (Sippel and Visser 2021: 278–9). Yet, the primary focus on land, rather than considering land as an essential part of a larger context, overlooks a crucial similarity between land and water in this respect (Cortesi 2021).

Simultaneously, a substantial body of literature explores diverse conceptualizations of water and spatial design (Fry & Murphy 2021; Hommes et al. 2022; Helmreich 2011), demonstrating their capacity to drive real-world actions and reshape both nature and societal frameworks. However, the significant yet underexplored driving force lies in the parallels and disconnections between land and water.

By incorporating water into the land analogy, we illuminate the multifaceted national, economic-cultural, and environmental dynamics propelling activities within the Arava region. The conceptualization of their connection fuels a deeper understanding of the sociotechnical imaginaries and environmental imagination at play, revealing alternative pathways amid the climate crisis and the evolving global consciousness.

The tangible manifestation of Water-Land Imaginaries finds expression in agricultural infrastructure, serving as a conduit for ideas, perceptions, and ideologies to enact tangible spatial changes. The entwining of agricultural infrastructure with water-land imaginaries unveils diverse dimensions of land–water interconnections and elucidates the practices of individuals and organizations within the desert landscape of the Anthropocene.

Agricultural infrastructure

While Water-Land Imaginaries outline the perceptions, beliefs, and cultural constructs, their actual realization is often embodied in infrastructure. As a conceptual tool, ‘infrastructure’ offers us a possible lens to allow several heterogeneous elements to be brought together. In the vernacular, ‘infrastructure’ often refers to objects built of concrete and steel – the ‘hard’ technical systems that facilitate the distribution of people, energy, water, waste, or information. However, the term infrastructures has recently expanded rapidly and become revealing sites for ethnographic research on negotiation, struggle and meaning (Boelens et al. 2016; Barua 2021; Hommes et al. 2022). In other words, infrastructures are not only the things themselves, but also the relationships between them.

Scholars have characterized infrastructure as an extensive technical system, an ecological entity, a locus of political contentions, and a nexus bridging nature and culture—a pivotal concept in environmental management (Jensen and Morita 2015; Carse 2012; Scaramelli 2019; Alatout 2009). However, the environmental metamorphosis intrinsic to agriculture, particularly intensive practices in desert regions, begets a distinct degree of environmental and political transformation.

Some of the intriguing theoretical frameworks that have emerged in recent decades in critical water infrastructure research include the hydrosocial circle (Budds and Hinojosa 2012; Linton and Budds 2014), particularly its evolution into hydrosocial territories (Boelens et al. 2016; Hommes et al. 2022). Hydrosocial territories underscore the dynamic interplay between human societies and water systems, encompassing not only the physical distribution and management of water but also the social, cultural, economic, and political processes that influence its utilization and governance within a specific geographic area. These processes encompass imagination, cultural disparities, social perceptions, as well as the infrastructural components such as pipelines, drilling, and associated political forces. It presents a holistic and comprehensive descriptive framework, facilitating broad and multi-layered analyses within a specific locale. However, some argue that it becomes overly encompassing, diluting the precision of its analysis in an attempt to explain diverse phenomena (Flaminio et al. 2022; Boyer et al. 2024). Moreover, despite the territorial focus, the emphasis remains primarily on water and its various interconnections, overlooking the intrinsic connection to land itself, with its symbolic, material, and political significance (Camargo and Cortesi 2019).

The concept of agricultural infrastructure extends beyond water-centric analyses, offering a broader lens to explore the intricate interplay between agriculture, culture, and the environment. It enables discussions on emerging agricultural technologies like biological control, solar energy, and genetic editing, while considering their connections with water and land, as elaborated in this study. Unlike water-centric frameworks, agricultural infrastructure does not inherently encapsulate the imaginative processes that drive its creation, thus providing analytical space for multiple imaginations. Consequently, this article analytically disentangles imaginations from their materialization, delineating between water-land imaginaries and the tangible agricultural infrastructure.

In the Arava region, water and land form integral components of the "agricultural infrastructure," comprising physical elements such as wells, pipelines, plants, and socio-economic networks that underpin agricultural practices. This infrastructure operates on dual planes (Shani 2023). Firstly, it embodies political and material efforts towards human segregation, facilitating the establishment of Jewish-Zionist communities and serving as a barrier against perceived threats, including Bedouin populations within Israel's borders. Secondly, it enables the manipulation and transformation of nature, converting arid landscapes into green, productive zones, albeit with attendant environmental consequences.

However, the construction and upkeep of agricultural infrastructure are profoundly shaped by underlying social imaginaries, particularly the Water-Land Imaginaries in our context. Despite its significance, agricultural infrastructure remains dynamic, evolving in response to economic, geopolitical, technological, and social dynamics over time (Barnes 2017). This dynamic adaptation underscores the resilience and malleability of agricultural infrastructure, reflecting broader shifts in societal and environmental paradigms.

Research site and methodology

The ethnographic research at the heart of this project was conducted between 2012 and 2018 and was based on a research array, which included multi-sited ethnography, in-depth interviews, and the analysis of various textual, digital, quantitative, and visual materials. As someone born and raised in the Arava, I had access to many of the people and sites in the area. The fieldwork included 48 in-depth interviews with local farmers and other Arava residents, as well as environmentalists, state officials, scientists, and other stakeholders. Each interview contained a life-story format and lasted between 50 min and two hours, which were recorded and fully transcribed.

Alongside interviews, observations help demonstrate how insights inform group members practices in situ. Several scholars have already pointed to the potential disjoint between individuals' words and their actions (Jerolmack and Khan 2014). Since the different dimensions of water and land are present in multiple and varied sites, I used a multi-sited research approach, which included observations over dozens of meetings of residents, the executive committee of the local council, informal meetings of farmers, professional conferences in the area, work meetings of environmental activists, and accompanying farmers, environmental activists and residents in the area in their daily routine. To expand the research scope, I also collected and analyzed dozens of relevant documents, creating a broad ethnography.

The Arava region

The Arava valley, in southern Israel, is an extreme example of the human effort of making the wilderness bloom through technology, faith and financial investment, and a fascinating case study for understanding the dynamics between agricultural infrastructure and water-land imaginaries. Spanning around 1.5 million dunams (approximately 625 square miles), the Central Arava Regional Council covers 13% of Israel’s total area (within its pre-1967 borders). Some 3,500 Jewish Israelis (constituting 0.03% of the Israeli population) reside in seven rural communities (moshavim)Footnote 3 that stretch along the Jordanian border and rely primarily on agriculture — exporting bell peppers and other vegetables. The Arava is an arid desert area, which is characterized by a lack of precipitation and relative geographical isolation.

The relationship between humans, water, and land in the Arava dates back to the earliest settlers of the region, thousands of years ago, that there was mainly nomads and merchants who passed through the area. During the sixteenth century, the Saidiyin Bedouin tribe migrated to the area from the Sinai and Arabian peninsulas, in search of new grazing grounds, which they found on both sides of the Arava Creek (Bailey 2006). Elsewhere in the Negev, north of the Arava, 20th-century battles for Israeli statehood led to the flight and forcible expulsion of Bedouin inhabitants, as well as to protracted territorial struggles between the Bedouins and Israel (McKee 2016; Abu-Rabia 2008; Nasasra 2017; Kedar et al. 2020). While no significant battle took place in the Arava itself, after drawing the border between Israel and Jordan in Wadi Arabah, Bedouin tribes were denied the right to return to the western Arava Creek.

Consequently, there are almost no Bedouins in the central Arava region. Thus, unlike other parts of the Negev, there is almost no friction between them and the Jewish mityashvim (residents) of the region. Yet, the Jewish residents are still afraid for their future in the Arava, despite the fact that in terms of power in Israel, the Bedouins are a minority lacking political power, limited in access to resources and under close supervision (Weizman and Sheikh 2015; Tatour 2019). The threat by those who are perceived as their national competitors, the Bedouins, is cited time and again in the conversations and practices of local farmers, despite the relative absence of Bedouins from the region. As many of the Jewish settlers in Arava told me, “If we’re not here, someone else will grab hold of the land.” The imagined presence of the Bedouins, as well as the proximity to the border with Jordan, bred a desire to establish communities in the area, as part of a national project of protecting the land and borders (Tzfadia and Yacobi 2011; Shnider 2014; Kaminer 2022a; Shani 2018a); and under the settler colonialism logic of occupying the territory and marking the borders (Tzfadia and Yacobi 2011; Busbridge 2018; Shani 2023).

Israeli efforts to strike roots in the Arava immediately after the state’s establishment in 1948 succumbed to the harsh environmental conditions. During the 1950s, many questioned the prospect of maintaining agriculture in the area. The dearth of water, challenging land, and harsh climate deemed the Arava unfit for agriculture by many experts. Only in the early 1960s, when the Israeli military began establishing semi-civilian outposts along the border, did a cadre of young Zionists manage to realize their ideals of cultivating the desert's land. Eventually, those outposts became permanent civilian agricultural communities.

These young farmers who were seen in the eyes of many in the Jewish public as pioneers, realizing the values of Zionism, enjoyed considerable moral and financial support (Shani 2018a). The state invested huge amounts of capital in the development of agricultural infrastructure, which included, among other things, deep-water drilling, cultivating agricultural areas, workers, the deployment of irrigation infrastructure, road paving, the construction of dams, and encouragement of financial investment, all backing the boundary drawn between Israel and Jordan.

Overall, the Arava region epitomizes the fusion of national ideologies and settler colonialism in Israel (Busbridge 2018; Bashir and Busbridge 2019; Zreik 2016, Rouhana 2018), when national imaginaries (Taylor 2002; Tal 2007; Zerubavel 2018) are incorporated into the practices of settler colonialism (Gasteyer et al 2012; Weizman and Sheikh 2015; Davis 2016). But beyond that, the Arava region is a prime example of what happens when politics collides with nature (Underhill et al 2023; Braverman 2023; Shani 2018b), when technological optimism and ideological adherence fail to prevent the exploitation of land and water resources, the land–water nexus is broken, and environmental crisis ensues.

In the following sections, I will explain the different dimensions of water-land entanglement in the array of the agricultural infrastructure in the Arava. First, I will describe the political dimension through the imagination and practice of Desert bloom; then I will outline the cultural-economic dimension through a focus on Allocation; and I will end with an analysis of the attempts to untie the connection between water and land through technology and environmental impact.

“This is the Real Zionism”: Water-land entanglement as a political creation

In February 2014, Yair Shamir, then the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development in the government of Israel, wrote on his official Facebook page:

...Yesterday, I participated in a tour of the Arava... I was happy for the opportunity to inspect the complex challenges faced by local residents, who are realizing the triple objectives which characterized the Zionist movement from its earliest days in the Land of Israel: Defending of the homeland, hityashvut, and making the desert bloom.... However, they deal with many difficult problems such as the lack of land for agricultural development, but mainly the lack of water... Despite the drastic lack of water, the area is blooming, agricultural communities flourish... This is real Zionism…

Like many visitors who visited the Arava, Shamir expressed his appreciation for the people and farmers of the Arava. Shamir's words represent the widespread perception among many in Israeli society, as well as among the people of the Arava themselves: Their pride in their incredible success of “making the desert bloom”, and thus the fulfilment of the central goals of Zionism and the State of Israel (Tal 2007; Zerubavel 2018; Shani 2018a). At the same time, Shamir also points out the difficulties, one of which is the lack of water – a key resource for the development of living communities and agriculture in the Arava.

In Zionism, like many projects of changing the space, there are elements of settler colonialism such as taking over resources, appropriating and repressing the previous inhabitants (Gasteyer et al. 2012; Grosglik et al. 2021; Salih and Corry 2022). But as many researchers claim recently, it would be a mistake to ignore national aspects of the conflict that are integrated within the case of Israel/Palestine (Busbridge 2018; Bashir and Busbridge 2019; Zreik 2016, Shani 2023).

Land is a central concept in the attempt to achieve the highest level of control and sovereignty over the space at stake by various state apparatuses (Alatout 2006; Gutkowski 2018; Dromi and Shani 2020). However, the control over the territory itself does not guarantee full control of the land, without the control of water beneath and above the surface (Alatout 2009; Gasteyer et al 2012; Prieto 2016). This is particularly true in arid areas like the Arava. The double control of territory and water facilitates the efforts of fighting the desert and making it bloom. Thus, in the Arava, agriculture is one of the main practices of land control, only made possible through the control of water.

For the Jewish farmers who have made their home in the central Arava since the mid-1960s, not only did these perceptions seek to address the harsh and cruel environment. They also aspired to transform this environment, as did anyone who had been there before. Memoirs and poems written by the first Jewish mityashvim in the central Arava recount the struggle to make the desert green amidst the surrounding "arid" yellow desert, as the fulfillment of their national ideal, as a destination that motivated them to stay in place despite the many difficulties.These texts suggest admiration and fear at the intensity of the desolate, empty surroundings. The connection between water and land was a key practice in satisfying the mityashvim’s agricultural infrastructure, in the fulfilment of the desire for making the desert bloom, and in the political project of controlling space in the current neo-liberal world and the age of Anthropocene (see Fig. 2).

Fig. 2
figure 2

A sign at the entrance to one of the communities: Without agriculture there is no Arava

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The driving force behind this approach is the imagination that connected water and land, as part of an "environmental imaginary" (Davis 2011), which aspired to carry out a radical transformation of the space. Since the early days of hityashvut in the Arava, Israeli leaders and the local young farmers shared a common environmental imagination of how the desert should be changed, with the link between land and water as a central part in this imagination. Thus, the Zionist "environmental imagination", which upholds the power of technology, science, and initiative – coupled with the political and ideological support by state agencies – allows an ever-growing increase in available water and land for agriculture, and facilitates the effort to subdue the desert.

Arik Dor, who was mentioned at the beginning of this paper, was one of the first farmers in the region and the person who, over the years, led the development of water resources in the Arava. During one of our encounters, Dor told me about his efforts to stretch the limits of water resources: "…In the early days of hityashvut in the Arava, it seemed water was the only limitation. Today, the amount of water extracted in the Arava is growing all the time”. The interview was held in 2013 in the Arava Drainage Authority office, an agency he was heading at the time. Dor further told me: “The first reports, when we started the practice of agriculture here, talked about 12–13 cubic meters that can be pumped through the aquifers… this year [2013] they produced 36 million cubic meters from the Arava drills…”.

Thus, even though experts and others claimed that there is not enough water and fertile land to support agriculture in the region, the water-land imaginaries of Dor and his friends, above and below the ground, allowed them to imagine different "environmental futures" (Mathews and Barnes 2016), leading the design of the agricultural infrastructure according to their imagination and vision. With the massive state investment and donations from US Jewry, who viewed "making the desert bloom" as the Zionist ideal incarnated, Arik Dor pushed to launch large infrastructure projects, building reservoirs and levees, as well as sand mining for agricultural topsoil, which also included further drillings. In the interviews I conducted with him, he described how water and land resources were developed to expand agriculture.

Following the first state-commissioned drillings in the 1950s and 1960s, the national water company began setting up a system of bores and other water supply infrastructure for the local communities and agriculture, what was defined as a national mission. Like other large infrastructure projects, which are seen as part of a national nation-building project (Blackbourn 2007; Barnes 2017) or as part of a settlement colonialism project (Davis 2016; Kohlbry 2022), the creation of water in the Arabah received priority and political glorification. The infrastructures that Dor and others developed capture the rare floodwater and store it in a network of reservoirs and dams. Water seeps into aquifers (and are even injected into them using advanced technology), from which they are pumped for agricultural use. It is an example of water-land imaginaries that connect water and land. But the desire to develop agriculture meant increased pumping from aquifers, as well as searches for more abundant water sources. This, in turn, led many springs to run dry and caused the pollution and drying of aquifers.

Based on knowledge gained during the first years in the Arava about water sources in the region, and alongside the expansion of local communities, a gross water quota of 36,000 cubic meters per farmstead was introduced. At the same time, it was determined that each household unit would encompass 40 dunams (9.88 acres), in an early water-land connection, which has been integral to agriculture in the Arava, and has since grown to about 70 dunams (17.2 acres) and 70,000 cubic meter per household.

But while water is scarce in the Arava, it seems to suffer no shortage of land. Its vast expanses await development, the blooming redemption of the desert desolation. Similarly, according to the Israeli perception of early Zionists, the desert is perceived as an empty wasteland left to man’s mercy (Tesdell 2017; Zerubavel 2018; Braverman 2023). Here, too, the political, symbolic importance of water and land is key, but the physical connection is also present (Braverman 2020; Kohlbry 2022; Novick 2014). The sand swept away by the rare floods in the area, as detailed below, is a central source of fill material, used to create arable land. Like water drills in the Arava, this practice becomes more complicated with time, and even causes pollution and water-land mixing. Yet, residents still view their practices as vital for carrying out their mission. The water-land imaginaries, therefore, allow residents to see themselves as agents of the state, making the desert bloom and guarding the nation's external and internal borders.

These days, Arava farmers feel compelled to remind the nation of their importance to the state’s economy and security. The environmental and economic crisis, coupled with changing Israeli attitudes toward agriculture, make them feel abandoned by the state (Or and Shohamy 2020; Shnider 2014; Shani 2018a). Nitzan Mor, a second-generation Arava farmer, commented during a discussion about the economic situation: "In the past, they saw us, the Arava people, as pioneers, but today they see us as land grabbers, water thieves, and worker exploiters." The Arava people still perceive themselves as pioneers, sent by the state to make the desert bloom. But they also understand that the global world and Israeli society are changing. As one of the young farmers told me: "It's all very well being a pioneer, but I'm more worried about the price of peppers tomorrow."

And yet, their self-perception as pioneers who need to fight and make the desert bloom remains prevalent, alongside agriculture itself. The effort to expand agriculture by increasing the use of water and land remains central to residents and decision-makers, as I show in the next section, "Allocation", which traces the cultural norms surrounding the imaginaries of the connection between water and land in the current economic crisis in the Arava. I focus on conflicts around alluvial lands and water quotas as well as on efforts to tackle the threat of severing these imagined and the physical connection between land and water.

Allocations: Water-land entanglement as an economic-cultural dimension

On a cold 2015 winter night, Raffi Gonen entertained me at the "parliament" held in the backyard of his packing house. Every evening, at 6:30PM sharp, a group of older male farmers would come together to keep up with the latest news and discuss some burning issues at the office shared by Raffi and one of his sons. Over hot soup and coffee, an animated discussion was held on the pros and cons of various bell pepper varieties, the price of water, and recent struggles against environmental organizations that challenged the region’s agricultural sprawl. One of the hottest recent issues in the parliament was the threatened link between allocations of water and farmlands.

Beyond the political meaning of controlling the space and changing the desert, the land–water Entanglement also carries an economic-cultural meaning. Land and water embody property relations and means of production, showing that modern agriculture is also an economic business in a competitive capitalist system (Tejada and Rist 2018; Grosglik 2021). But water-land imaginaries in the Arava are also part of the agricultural culture, and are embodied in norms, social arrangements, sanctions, and values.

The most exasperating thing for Raffi Gonen's parliament, as well as for most people around the Arava, was the Israeli government’s intentions of breaking this link between water and land as part of neoliberal imaginaries, which are currently central to Israeli society and policy. The government's initiative was to prohibit the linkage between water quota and land. For the Arava people, this initiative was yet another reflection of agriculture’s declining national-social significance.

Gidi, one of the region’s veteran farmers, became animated during one of the parliament's debates, when he tried to explain the land–water connection to me:

You cannot separate the water from the land. You can’t grow anything unless you have enough water, it's not like other regions. For us, this connection is necessary, it’s the basis for agriculture here and for our existence in this place.

Rafi Gonen himself burst in, saying:

They [government officials] don’t understand what agriculture means here, and how we depend on water and land. For them, it’s only about the financial value, but for us it’s much more, it’s a way of life. This decision is part of their attempt to change us.

While the Ministry of Finance and others act based on financial logic when it comes to modern agriculture, the Arava people challenge this notion, suggesting agriculture has an added value that cannot be monetized, but they also explain that it is related to damage to their livelihoods and lifestyles.

Allocation of the land and water quota features prominently in the lives of farmers around the Arava. Land and water are allocated to the moshav, which, in turn, allocates equal quotas of land and water to each household. Local residents refer to the regulation of water consumption in peak times as "water rotation". In order to maintain consistent water pressure levels, each farmer must adhere to their set irrigation schedule. Even during periods of increased consumption, water supply remains unchanged, hence rotation is critical for ensuring sufficient irrigation. Ami Goodman, representative of the government-owned water corporation in the Arava, describes the process:

Consumption varies throughout the year, and there is a tremendous seasonal difference. This is a homogenous area, with everyone growing bell peppers, so when bell peppers must be irrigated, everyone needs their water at the same time. We can’t meet this massive requirement. So, every moshav has a system in place where each plot stops irrigating for a few hours, to control consumption and distribute water supply…

One of the young farmers tried to explain the problematic nature of the water quotas and the pressure entailed by this restriction:

The bell pepper doesn’t care about our water quota. It doesn’t care that it’s forbidden to irrigate during some hours because it reduces the pressure in the system. It needs water now, not when it's my turn, and it needs a lot of it.

Water quotas and inadequate pressure have meant strict constraints upon the region’s farmers, at times affecting crops. Such issues have, in turn, led some to exceed quotas, culminating in water theft. But it seems that the Arava people are more forgiving these days toward water irregularities and thefts. Perhaps because they feel that there will always be more water and land, and that the state will always find solutions. They believe Arik Dor and his colleagues will always perform magic and provide more water. Water is still counted, measured and given value to (Krause 2021), and even limits the absorption of new families, but in another sense, it is still transparent to the locals, a "black box" (Latour 1993) that reaches everywhere and appears out of nowhere. Farmers who make sure not to exceed their quotas do not do so because of fear of water shortage, but out of community solidarity and social control.

Since the 1970s, water quotas have been tied to land allocations. Accordingly, when a farmer leases out land (in itself on a long-term lease from the state) to a neighbor, they in fact lease out the water quota that comes with it. In some cases, as water quotas could not be negotiated, farmers rented additional farmland with the sole purpose of augmenting their water allocation, i.e., the water quotas that come with plots. This practice of leasing water quotas through land, which is illegal, is what Michael Taussig (1999) called "a public secret" – a well-known secret that everyone is aware of but continues to act as if it does not exist. Here, again, the imaginaries of the connection between water and land becomes an actual practice and shapes the space as well as the culture.

As in other rural areas, agriculture in the Arava pulls together politics and social norms. It reveals the close connections shared by agriculture on the one hand, and cultural meanings and identities on the other (Muehlmann 2013; Prieto 2016; Sanderson et al. 2018; Cortesi 2021). Most farmers in the Arava view their land and water leases as part of their relationship with the state. Formally, the agricultural lands are state-owned or "national lands", leased to the farmers for a negligible sum. By their own reckoning, however, Arava farmers have paid their dues to the state by realizing the national mission of settling the frontier and protecting the borders. Their state-granted land and water have therefore been paid for. According to them, the notion of "leasing" is no more than a token in this context, while for all intents and purposes, farmers view land and water quotas as their own. In their view, land and water interchangeably constitute property and income support (in the sense that even when, for different reasons, they do not cultivate their land, they can still enjoy a secure income by renting it out, with its attendant water quota).

In May 2015, the Arava Regional Council plenum convened for a special meeting. The plenum, composed of senior officials and representatives from each community, convened to discuss problems encountered in the effort to absorb new farming families in the Arava, which all revolved around water and land. First, a long, exhausting discussion was chaired by Arik Dor, about the issue of water shortage, quotas and pressures. Then, the director of the development department presented a review about the obstacles (imposed by environmental organizations and the state) for obtaining and developing additional farmlands. Finally, the issue of sand shortage was raised as well.

Beyond their importance to the Arava’s water supply, floods are also a major source of fertile soil. Most of the northern Arava comprises Reg lands (locally known as Hamadah), which are unfit for agriculture, largely due to their high salinity and clay content. But unlike them, the sandy soils that are swept away in the creeks during the floods proved an excellent substrate for agriculture. Such soils were mostly found in estuaries of seasonal streambeds and dunes. With the expanding agriculture and population growth, more farmland was required, but sandy soil was in short supply. Regional developers found a solution, by adding a 30-50 cm layer of sandy soil above the infertile local land (the Reg land). This sand was collected from the reservoirs and dams of the region’s streams. With every flood, farmers would mine the sediments collected by the reservoirs or "sand traps" and add them to the infertile land, thus steadily expanding available farmland, and making the sand and its mining part of the agricultural infrastructure of the region. And so, the making of the Arava as a "place" for agriculture has, in fact, entailed significant changes to the region’s natural environment, echoed in accusations from environmentalists that the region’s farmers pollute the water and rob the land.

The dearth of floods in recent years created a severe shortage of water in the aquifers, reducing available topsoil sand and hindering the expansion of farmlands. During the regional council plenum meeting in May 2015, and following the shortage of sand in the area, the high economic cost of importing sand from northern Israel was presented, precipitating a storm in the crowd. While in the past, the state would shoulder most of the cost, now it falls to the local council, farmers themselves, and donations from Diaspora Jews. Which can cause, since the cost is very high, the inability to qualify more agricultural areas and lack of ability to absorb new agricultural families. Again, the fear of severing the land–water (or floods-sand) connection undermines the very existence of the agricultural community in the Arava, while highlighting the importance of the imagination that connects water and land.

For the Arava people, agriculture is more than just their livelihood. It is their culture, their way of life. Undoing the land–water connection, which forms the basis for local agricultural infrastructure, poses danger for its ongoing existence in the Arava. And without agriculture, as they see it, there is no justification for their presence there. In this respect, challenging the imaginaries that connect water and land means undermining the "agricultural infrastructure" and jeopardizing their entire lifelong enterprise, as well as the fabric of their culture and society.

But sometimes, the locals are the ones trying to break the connection between land and water, specifically to halt the expansion of agricultural areas, as I show in the next section. This section offers an account of how the effort to expand agriculture generates an environmental transformation that overstretches the water-land imaginaries.

“Technology will fix everything"—water-land disengagement as the environmental-material dimension

On June 2, 2012, an explosion occurred at an Arava drilling site, where contract workers had been performing hydrochloric acid cleaning works. Nine workers were injured, and one was killed. Hitting a deep borehole, the explosion unveiled the tremendous efforts invested in water development around the region. It revealed the all-too-real process for local residents to behold. The toll exacted by the land–water connections and the effort to ensure its continuity were visibly unfolded.

The third dimension in water-land imaginaries is the one that tries to imagine the disconnection between them. This imagination connects ecology and technology through the materiality and inhumanity of the link, but also represents the attempt to sever the connection between land and water. In order to dive into this dimension, it is necessary to enter into the material dimension of water and earth, and rummage through the grains of sand and the water molecules that are mixed and separated in the various processes (Helmreich 2011; Ingold 2012; Ogden et al. 2013; Cortesi 2021).

The advent of Zionist mityashvim in the Arava, with their intensive brand of agriculture, left deep marks on the environment. Their yearning to subdue and harness nature, to make the desert a new place – a "home" within the great yellow – was overwhelming. As far as most locals are concerned, the environmental damage caused by their communities and agriculture is regretful yet necessary, vital for making the place, essential for progress and growth.

Communities and agriculture in the Arava have severely depleted regional water reserves, wreaking considerable environmental damage. Until the 1980s, water drillings in the region only targeted the relatively shallow aquifers along the Arava streambed. These porous layers allow seepage and replenishment, particularly by floodwater. Historically marked by a very high quality, the local bore water deteriorated over the years. Fertilizers and soil desalination by-products seeped directly into the local aquifers, pervading the entire Arava. Furthermore, excessive pumping has compromised the aquifers’ volume and pressure, thus facilitating contamination by brackish water. Excessive pumping also diminished the flow in a considerable portion of the local springs. Many water sources that once sustained local vegetation, fauna, and nomadic communities have run dry.

Erez Goodman, the manager of the national water company in the region, illustrated this situation using one particular bore as an example:

There’s this drilling here, which is a nice example, where you can actually see the cycle, how we pumped water, used it, then introduced fertilizers and brackish water, which seeped in and now we’ve ditched the operation, because water turned salty. In three years’ time, this drilling is finished…

While the impact on non-humans is of lesser concern to locals, the dearth of water has been posing a threat to the development and expansion of agriculture in the region. The key to the growing land–water connection dates back decades ago. During the 1980s and 1990s, drillings ventured into the underlying strata, and now this underground reservoir, referred to by Arik Dor as “an infinite tub of water”, experiences almost no replenishment. “You’re talking water from millions of years ago, collected in the ground during a time when there was plenty of rainfall out here in the Arava. You’re talking billions of cubic meters…” Dor recounts, only to immediately clarify that “it is very hard to produce, being very deep down and of poor quality.”

The water pumped from aquifers is warm and brackish, requiring a thorough treatment to make it agriculture worthy. It must be cooled down and iron filtered. Hydrogen sulfide is then removed by evaporation, before unique conduction systems (dilution junctions) introduce water of higher quality to reduce salinity. All these processes are complex, costly, and at times dangerous, as demonstrated by the summer 2012 explosion. On top of this extensive treatment regime, the deep water of the Arava also contains high levels of sand and other particulates, requiring intensive pipeline cleaning and maintenance (Helmreich 2011; Ingold 2012). In other words, for high-quality water for agriculture to be "created", the soil must be separated from the water, with another layer of massive infrastructure added for agriculture’s survival in the region.

But the technological process described here – venturing deep inside the land in search of water, then purifying it – is not without its price. In recent years, in light of agriculture's fall from grace, more and more voices have been challenging the demands to expand agriculture in the Arava. In their interviews, reports, and actions, environmentalists in the region have countered attempts to expand agriculture at the expense of "natural" environment. They have been pointing to the over-pumping, groundwater pollution, brackish water, increased use of creek sand, uprooting of trees, poisoning, and the destruction of many animal and plant species’ habitats. At an Arava agriculture and the environment conference in 2013, held in the shadow of the economic crisis, Yariv Dotan, one of the heads of the environmental organizations leading the struggle against the region’s agricultural sprawl, spoke to the astonished faces of the few Arava residents in attendance:

I always hear folks from the Arava whining: "There’s not enough water, not enough land, we’re at the farthest corner so we need help from the state"; that’s your motto. With all due respect to the fact that you were hard-suffering pioneers, you’ve been hogging it, see, you’ve used up all the water sources, salinizing them, after polluting them with all your chemical spraying and fertilizers – all because you’ve been hogging it, you couldn’t get enough, you expanded plots, you illegally mined sand from the streambeds, and now there’s too little of it.

Unsurprisingly, the audience rejected Dotan's admonitions. Even among the small attending crowd that was interested in agriculture’s environmental impact, his remarks were met with resentment. Arik Dor, who chaired the session, managed to calm the atmosphere and smooth over the incident. Later he told me that Dotan was one of these “radical lunatics”, who failed to grasp the full importance of agriculture. Yet, Dotan's claims, though usually taking a more moderate tone, echo in any discussion of the future of the Arava.

Almost ten years later, in December 2022, a conference on "Tamaris of the desert" was held in Arava. By that time, the discourse on the climate crisis has already become central and was also expressed by the speakers at the conference, some of whom argued that the current use of water in agriculture in the Arava is unsustainable. Unlike the conference that had been held a decade before, many more members of the audience supported these ideas. Yet, most of the farmers present at the conference, as well as the decision makers, still claimed that everything would be fine, that a technological solution to the problems would be found.

Efforts to expand farmland, alongside the ongoing damage to the environment, are a source of concern among residents as well. But the technological optimism of most of them remains key. Various technologies can facilitate above-ground agriculture, on artificial sheets, which consist purely of water or water with some soil. At the same time, advanced desalination technologies and infrastructure allow the production of water, irrespective of land, thereby severing the connection between land and water for agriculture, as a veteran farmer explained to me:

A desalination line will be introduced and then there’ll be unlimited amounts of water in the Arava. Again, it's a matter of budgets, billions of NIS. I don’t know when, but it's definitely in the offing. Optimists say five years, pessimists like Aric Dor put it at ten or fifteen years, but it will happen. Maybe not for my generation, but for your generation. Then water will no longer be the problem.

For the Arava people, the "environmental future" (Mathews and Barnes 2016) is quite promising, but it relies heavily on the need for other imaginations – not an imagination that connects water and land, but rather an attempt to imagine their disconnection. In their view, the solution will come; if not from deep drilling underground, then through faraway pipes; if not on the ground, then above it. The relatively simple, but energy-intensive process of desalination is an alchemical trick that upends water accounting practices by making infinity thinkable (Günel 2016). Something will be found that will enable the continued existence of agriculture in the region, the only way, so they believe, for the local hityashvut project to survive.

These imaginaries, which have characteristics of Sociotechnical Imaginaries (Jasanoff 2015; Visser 2021), connect technological optimism and social norms while trying to create cultural, environmental and economic change in order to preserve the political environmental imagination of the space. Attempts are made to imagine the upgrading of the agricultural infrastructure, thus making it possible to obtain water without the connection to the local land, or to grow agriculture using hydroponic methods, detaching ties between water and land. This new imagination contradicts the logic that imagined the connection between land and water that the people of the Arava fought for over the years, and points to the dynamism of imaginaries such as that of the agricultural infrastructure, which are adjusted to the changing reality.

But it seems that none of these solutions can truly solve the water and land crisis. Different calculations show that desalination is unlikely to replace completely the local groundwater in the next few years, while hydroponic technology, or other advanced technology such as "precision agriculture", "data-based farming" and more, have yet to constitute a substitute for extensive, intensive farming.

However, in the imagined future of the Arava people, the land–water connection no longer exists. Using their imaginaries, they created their own environment, which ventures to disengage from its real setting, with its ecological destruction; at the same time, the locals aspire to change and cultivate this environment. Here, too, the land–water connection or disconnection is a central vehicle in the imagined future.

Conclusions: connections and disconnections of water and land in the Anthropocene era

At the beginning of March 2022, a solemn and well-attended ceremony was held to mark the connection of the Arava to the national water system and the national desalination system. The head of the municipal council turned the faucet and water gushed out in celebration. As this is a connection with a relatively small water supply, it cannot replace the local water infrastructure that relies on local drilling (see Fig. 3). Nevertheless, many people in the Arava believe that the future will solve many of the region's problems. Others, however, do not see this as a solution, but instead as a long-term blindness of local leadership to the approaching climatic, environmental, and cultural crisis, when the agricultural infrastructure will no longer be able to cope.

Fig. 3
figure 3

The head of the council inaugurates the connection to the national water system, March 2022

Full size image

Life in the Anthropocene, and the growing understanding of human influence on the environment, require a re-evaluation of these relationships, beyond traditional settings, and the creation of new connections. Understanding the water-land imaginaries’ political process is part of such a move – an effort to connect two resources and areas of knowledge that are perceived as separate. The political and material meaning of the land–water connectivity allows connections to form between worlds and people, different territories, humans and nonhumans. Water and land in the Arava are two key elements of life, particularly when it comes to agriculture. They are a central part of the "agricultural infrastructure" in the region.

The theoretical interweaving between agricultural infrastructure and water-land imaginaries makes it possible to reveal the many dimensions integrated within water-land entanglements: The political-national, cultural-economic and environmental-technological dimensions.

The connectivity of water and land culminates in rare events of rainfall that causes floods, which sweep soil, reshape the landscape, and sustain life systems along the Arava creeks. Running in the normally hot and arid surrounding climate, these creeks have been fitted with dams that use advanced technology to inject water into aquifers. Water is pumped back, filtered, and supplied to local homes and fields. The entanglement is then defined as a shared economic value, linking land plots and water quotas through allocations, which shape the norms as well as the landscape. It is embedded in the local culture, which views them as a political resource and national tool in the struggle to cling to the region and make the desert bloom. Around the fields, water irrigates agricultural crops, while some of it seeps back into the ground, where it contaminates the already over-pumped groundwater, thereby preventing its ongoing use. The connections also betray an attempt to undo them, with state-of-the-art technologies and state support, and little success.

All actors in the Arava perceive the land–water connection as natural, integral to the environment and nature. But these two resources are also constitutive of politics and culture. water-land imaginaries drive the actions in the three different dimensions (political, cultural-economic and environmental-technological), but their realization in the three dimensions is reflected in the agricultural infrastructure. The first dimension is a relationship between politically binds together Land and water for the purpose of controlling the desert and territory; The second dimension relates land and water through quotas, norms, violation of, economy and culture; Whereas the third dimension—of disengagement, ties together environmental investment (over-pumping, pollution, drying, seepage, ecological damage), and technology (infrastructure, pumps, irrigation systems, hydroponics). The distinction between the dimensions is, of course, analytical, while in practice they exhibit continuities and interconnectivity, but the distinction between the various dimensions, as well as the analytical distinction between the driving force (the imagination) and their realization (the infrastructure), allows for a more nuanced understanding of the processes that exist.

More broadly speaking, agricultural infrastructure and water-land imaginaries, as an analytical framework, allow us to gain a deeper insight into the political effort of environmental-social relations, with all their cultural and material meanings. It also allows us to trace the formal and informal networks and power relations between actors in the system – between the state and its citizens, humans and nonhumans, in an age of climate change and desertification, population growth, increasing climate refugees’ migration, and efforts to address food security and food crises in a geopolitical context. This concept lays bare the potential dangers of technological optimism, when decoupled from environmental and political prudence, in a project that pulls together control over land, water, and culture.