Abstract
All water management incorporates elements of both top-down and bottom-up authority and capacity. The latter have dominated Palestinian water management for many years. This chapter focuses on the extent to which the rural, agricultural portions of the country, which account for the great bulk of its water use, continue to use bottom-up structures despite the Oslo Agreements and despite Israel’s military rulings. The current situation is further complicated by the arrival of agri-business interests that promote large date palm plantations that, on the one hand, provide Palestine with foreign exchange, and, on the other, pull water supplies and employment opportunities away from sharecropping farmers, thereby compromising livelihoods, housing security, and food security.
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Notes
- 1.
“Virtual Water:” A long-term solution for Middle Eastern countries? Available as: https://www.soas.ac.uk/water/publications/papers/file38347.pdf.
- 2.
A water turn (as described in Trottier 1999) means that the full flow of a spring is directed to a farmer’s land for a given amount of time, every 7 or 8 days (depending on the length of the water turn). One farmer could be entitled to the full flow of the spring from midnight to 10 min past midnight; then another farmer could be entitled to the full flow of the spring from ten after midnight until three in the morning. Obviously, the second farmer would have a larger share than the first farmer.
- 3.
Examples include Ein Far’a, Ein Mishke, and Ein Shibli.
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Brooks, D.B., Trottier, J., Giordano, G. (2020). Supporting Palestinian Agriculture. In: Transboundary Water Issues in Israel, Palestine, and the Jordan River Basin. SpringerBriefs on Case Studies of Sustainable Development. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-0252-1_5
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