Abstract
It is common practice for many works dealing with the water issue in the Middle East to devote attention to a discussion of the possibility of resolving the problem in an overall regional context.1 There appears, however, to be no real consensus as to how best to go about defusing the region’s potential for conflict over water. Yet no matter what the eventual details of such a solution may be, one thing seems reasonably certain: given (a) the overall physical shortage of water in the region, and (b) the dependency of supply on natural precipitation in a climatically arid part of the world, any effective attempt at resolving the problem will have to involve the long-term development of enterprises aimed at increasing the overall supply of water to the area by means which are independent of the vagaries of the weather.
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Notes and References
See, for example, B. Wachtel, ‘Water: the Sad Facts and the Dire Politics’, Link, Vol. 6 (52), 1996, pp. 68–73, 1996; M. Murakami, Managing Water for Peace in the Middle East: Alternative Strategies (Tokyo, 1995); D. Hillel, Rivers of Eden: The Struggle for Water and the Quest for Peace in the Middle East (New York, 1994); E. Kally with G. Fishelson, Water and Peace: Water Resources and the Arab-Israeli Peace Process (Westport, Conn., 1993), Chs 9–10; Chs 11 & 13; A. Soffer, Rivers of Fire: The Conflict of Water in the Middle East (Tel Aviv, 1992), Ch. 7 (Hebrew).
B. Wachtel, pp. 72–3; D. Hillel, p. 250; N. Kliot, Water Resources and Conflict in the Middle East (New York, 1994), p. 240; A. Soffer, pp. 222–3.
H. Shuval, ‘Towards Resolving Conflicts over Water: The Case of the Mountain Aquifer’, Israel Affairs, 1995, pp. 228–9; Y. Schwartz and A. Zohar, Water in the Middle East: Solutions to Water Problems in the Context of Arrangements between Israel and the Arabs (Tel Aviv, 1991), p. 10.
The essence of each of these competing paradigms has been espoused separately by the last two prime ministers of Israel, the current incumbent Benjamin Netanyahu, and his predecessor, Shimon Peres. Both have expounded their views in two widely reviewed books, Netanyahu adopting the political approach in his A Place Among the Nations (New York, 1993), and Peres the economic one in his The New Middle East (New York, 1993). For additional analysis, see M. Sherman, ‘What Brings Peace: Wealth or Democracy?’ (Middle East Quarterly, Vol. 5, No. 3, pp. 13–22).
I. Kant, ‘Perpetual Peace’ (1795) in L. W. Beck (ed.), On History (New York, 1963), pp. 94–5.
J. Mueller, Retreat from Doomsday: The Obsolescence of Major War (New York, 1989).
W. S. Churchill, The Second World War, Vol. I (London: 1948), p. 163.
See, for example, P. Wallensteen, Structure and war (Stockholm, 1973); R. Rummel, ‘Libertarianism and International Violence’, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 27, No. 1, 1983, pp. 27–71, and ‘Libertarian Propositions on Violence Within and Between Nations: A Test Against Published Research Results’, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 29, No. 3, 1985, pp. 419–55; S. Chan, ‘Mirror Mirror on the Wall — Are Freer Countries More Pacific?’, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 28, No. 4, 1984, pp. 617–48; M. Doyle, ‘Liberalism and World Politics’, American Political Science Review, Vol. 80, No. 4, 1986, pp. 1151–61; Z. Maoz and N. Abdolali ‘Regime Type and International Conflict, 1816–1976’, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 33, No. 1, 1989, pp. 3–35; S. Bremer, ‘Dangerous Dyads: Conditions Affecting the Likelihood of Interstate War, 1816–1965’, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 36, No. 2, 1992, pp. 309–342; and Z. Maoz and B. Russett, ‘Alliances, Contiguity, Wealth and Political Stability: Is the Lack of Conflict among Democracies a Statistical Artifact?’, International Interactions, Vol. 17, No. 3, 1992, pp. 245–67, and ‘Normative and Structural Causes of Democratic Peace, 1946–1986’ American Political Science Review, Vol. 87, No. 3,1993, pp. 624–38.
The absence of war between democracies has frequently been attributed either to greater decisional constraints on leaders in democracies, or to the externalization of internal democratic norms of negotiation and compromise in dealing with other states. Recently, more formal models involving decision- and game-theoretic techniques have been suggested. See, for example, M. Sherman, Despots, Democrats and the Determinants of Foreign Conflict (London, 1998); M. Sherman and G. Doron, ‘War and Peace as Rational Choices in the Middle East’, Journal of Strategic Studies, Vol. 20, No. 1, 1997, pp. 72–102; G. Doron and M. Sherman, ‘Free Societies and their Enemies’, International Journal of Intelligence and Counter Intelligence, Vol. 8, No. 3, 1995, pp. 307–20; B. Bueno de Mesquita, and D. Lalman, War and Reason: Domestic and International Imperatives (New Haven, 1992).
E. Karsh, and I. Rausti, Saddam Hussein: A Political Biography (London, 1991), p. 136.
E. Kanovsky, Assessing the Mideast Peace Economic Dividend (Ramat Gan, 1994), p. 10.
E. Kanovsky, The Middle East Economies: The Impact of Domestic and International Politics (Ramat Gan, 1997b), p. 16.
E. Kanovsky, ‘Has the Peace Process Reaped Economic Dividends?’, in A. Stay (ed.) Israel at the Crossroads (Ariel, 1997a), p. 53. (This article was presented as part of a hearing before the Joint Economic Committee of the US Congress on various defense and economic trends in the Middle East held on 21.10.1997.)
P. Clawson, ‘Mideast Economies after the Israel-PLO Handshake’, Journal of International Affairs, Summer, 1994, p. 154.
H. Ben Shahar, ‘Economic Cooperation in the Middle East: From Dream to Reality’, in Gideon Fishelson (ed.), Economic Cooperation in the Middle East (Boulder, 1989), p. 7.
A. Wolf, Hydropolitics Along the Jordan River: Scarce Water and its Impact on the Arab-Israeli Conflict (New York, 1995), p. 110.
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© 1999 Martin Sherman
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Sherman, M. (1999). Resolving Conflict over Water: Separating Fact from Fantasy. In: The Politics of Water in the Middle East. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780333983706_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780333983706_9
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