The Hydro-Political Significance of the Oslo Accords and ‘Peace Process’: Policy Options and Imperatives

Abstract

In the Introduction to this book, I stated that I would endeavor to restrict the meaning of the word ‘politics’ to David Easton’s definition of it as the `authoritative allocation of social values’ (p. xii).<sup>1</sup> Accordingly, hydro-politics would be defined as that branch of politics which deals with the authoritative allocation of social values that pertain to hydrological resources. In this sense, the hydro-political implications of what has come to be called the ‘peace process’ would refer to the effects of this process on the allocative authority and control of the various participants in the Israeli—Arab conflict over the hydrological resources in the region. In this regard it is important to remember that, as argued in the preceding chapter, under existing geopolitical conditions in the Middle East, synergetic inter-state cooperation remains a remote possibility. In such circumstances, the hydrological context is to a large measure a zero-sum one. As one Israeli water specialist put it: ‘If I have it, then you don’t have it.’ This is an assessment of the situation that has been made by several other analysts. For example, Kliot concurs with Naff’s description of the situation as a`highly contagious, aggregated, intense, salient, complicated zero-sum power and prestige-packed crisis issue, highly prone to conflict and extremely difficult to resolve’.³