The Life Aquatic: The Israeli-Palestinian Water Narrative of the West Bank
From its immediate availability for consumption, to the aquifers and watersheds where it gets stored and flows―water is a determining factor for the streams of life. In the context of Israel and Palestine, this biological need for water is growing increasingly important in determining societal organization in the West Bank region. Water access grants those who control it an avenue for political and economic power. The avenues that this water narrative will focus upon are (1) the political power derived from different conceptions of sovereignty and (2) the market mechanism that creates a dependency between those with and without water. Thus, it should be noted that this article approaches the water narrative from the perspective that Israel is far less concerned with territorial sovereignty than Palestine, but rather is focused on the protection of Israeli community sovereignty regardless of their location[1]. For Israeli-Palestinian power relations, this means that the Israeli state has a more flexible conception of power than the Palestinian state because their power is directly derived from their people and less limited by physical territorial delineations[2]. Through this narrative, the material basis that organizes society is examined in the context of Israeli water dominance organizing Palestinian society.
The Narrative
A dry tap, a dry shower head, and parched agricultural lands are familiar sights in the Israeli occupied Palestinian territory of the West Bank[3]. Mekorot, the Israeli national water company, has restricted the supply of water to villages in the northern West Bank in years leading to 2016[4]. A similar occurrence happened in March 2019 and there are no signs of them stopping any time soon. As reported by the Ma’an News Agency, “Israeli forces and the Israeli Civil Administration cut off water supply for dozens of Palestinians living in communities in Bardala village in the Jordan Valley in the northern occupied West Bank.”[5] At the same time, the Israelis constructed wells for themselves in the region[6]. Justification for shutting down Palestinian water supplies and implementing Israeli water infrastructure is reflected in Israeli news. Framed as crackdowns on illegal activities and protection of Israeli farms, Israeli state agencies produce a narrative that defends Israeli communities in the West Bank[7]. With their settling, Israeli parties gain control over the water resources within Palestinian regions and erode the physical expression of Palestinian territorial sovereignty. But what is the deeper sociological and material context behind this water narrative?
To regard the sociological and material context of the water disputes between Israel and Palestine requires an understanding of how Israel connects its sovereignty to political power. As alluded to previously, the Israeli conception of power has shifted from being based upon territorial possession to bio-power, that is, power defined by the quality of life of a population[8]. This also shifts the conception of sovereignty from one based on territory to one based on the presence of Israelis. With this conception of power, Israeli parties can argue for the right to protect their settlers through the complex legal system which has been developed to accommodate the development of water infrastructure in the West Bank. In this case, Israeli actions in the West Bank are portrayed as legal under Israeli-Palestinian agreements, which consequently legitimizes the demolishing of Palestinian implemented structures that enable the alleged thefts of water.
Observing how states derive power with the narrative presented by the news, the two groups involved in this issue are the Israelis and the Palestinians. Both groups and their governing forces are concerned about survival, political dominance, and legitimacy to be in the region. Some of these interests have historically been zero-sum, in which one group benefits at the expense of the other. But there are also instances of cooperation for mutual benefit, along with instances of loss for both sides. For example, to some, the demise of the Palestinian state is viewed as a gain for Israelis and their power over water because there is no longer another regional government to challenge the legitimacy over water rights. An example of cooperation and loss was the Israeli-Palestinian Joint Water Committee aimed at managing water in the West Bank. The equal representation from Palestinians and Israelis signifies an attempt to cooperate[9]. But, such an effort was eventually considered a failure due to the Committee’s use by Israel to control the approval process of Palestinian water projects, which effectively increased hostility between the two parties[10]. Considering these interactions, the instances of zero-sum thinking and possible cooperation must be examined in relation to the political and economic interests and pressures pertaining to both parties. In this context, the narrative of water management and/or control can be viewed as an organizational technology stemming from political and economic interests between Israeli and Palestinian societies in the West Bank.
The water narrative has played an integral part in the historical events between Israel and Palestine, but the conditions of its narrative lie in the independence of the Israeli state. The state of Israel declared independence in 1948 following the Arab boycotted UN decision to allocate Palestinian land — a decision that was a response to the Zionist movement’s call for a territorial Jewish state after years of antisemitism[11]. Conflicts immediately broke out with neighboring Arab states and are currently represented by the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, which marks the longest military occupation by a single power in the 20th and 21st centuries. The establishment of Israel was a symbolic transition from a period of antisemitism to an era of recognition of the Jewish people. By its establishment through the UN, the Jewish people were granted an internationally recognized state and thereby granted legitimacy in actions to defend and expand their territories[12]. Expansion and conflict with Arab and Palestinian parties was allowed and perpetuated due to international support sympathetic to the Israeli cause[13]. Presently, Israeli occupation has resulted in Israeli control over areas of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, as well as East Jerusalem in which exists the US embassy to Israel as of May 14th, 2018.
Concurrent with the establishment of Israel was the infringement of Arab and Palestinian state legitimacy. The 1948 Arab-Israeli war is evidence of the conflict of state legitimation because it occurred during the establishment of the Israeli State[14] and the consequential demise of a legitimate Palestinian Arab state. Following this war, which promoted Israel as a power in the region, was the Palestinian exodus that saw the departure of more than 700,000 Palestinian Arabs from their Palestinian homeland to neighboring Arab countries[15]. This exodus shows the breakdown of the Palestinian state due to the inability of Arab political institutions to maintain a social contract between Palestinians resulted in the loss of territorial control. Conflicts continued between the Arabs and Israelis, but tensions were not fully exposed until the 1967 Six-Day War. It is within this war where the control of water in the West Bank truly becomes a main topic of economic and political interests for the state of Israel[16], and consequently, their Palestinian counterparts.
With the Six-Day War came the expansion of Israeli power into the West Bank region of the Palestinian territories. The years after marked the expansion of Israeli settlements into areas that would grant economic productivity. Such expansion was central to the land grabbing movements of Israeli settlers because the resources obtained were not only usable land but also water resources that allowed for productive activities, such as farming or cooling processes[17]. In these scenarios of Israeli expansion, land grabbing also extends itself to include water grabbing[18]. The expansions were subjected to the counter-movements of the Palestinian ex-occupants as characterized by the Intifadas, where Palestinians rose against the Israeli parties expanding and enforcing the Israeli settlement effort. The Israeli response to these was the building of the West Bank wall and a tightening of Palestinian movement freedoms[19]. By restricting the ability of Palestinians to interact with their surrounding lands through limits to movement and physical barriers like the wall, Palestinian control over water resources was further diminished. In a manner similar to colonization[20], Israeli parties steadily claimed and developed their occupied Palestinian territories. This expansion meant that the accumulation of water resources under Israeli control also meant the direct loss of Palestinian control and essentially fragmented Palestinian lands. This fragmentation is depicted in Figure 1, which shows Israeli society’s organization around water resources fragmenting Palestinian lands and consequently reorganizing Palestinian society.
To a greater extent, the increasing Israeli control over water also impacted Palestinian affairs through the political and economic dominance attained by Israeli settlers over water resources. Through their occupation, Israelis not only gained control over immediate water resources, but also gained control over where water could flow. Initial efforts which recognized this control and attempted to curtail Israeli power are detailed by the Oslo II agreements signed in 1995 and the resulting creation of the Joint Water Committee (JWC). The Oslo II agreements were an attempt to display a show of equitable sharing of resources including water between Israeli and Palestinian parties[21]. Unfortunately, all the agreements did was formalize existing distribution structures and processes for water[22][23]. This meant that little change happened for the Palestinians because the Oslo II agreements further strengthened the power possessed by Israeli governing entities. This strengthening of Israeli water dominance is apparent in the powers of the JWC. Israeli and Palestinian presence is equal within the committee, however Israel maintains veto power over any Palestinian water projects, even when they are in Palestinian territories concerning Palestinian needs[24]. As a result, only 56% of Palestinian water and sanitation projects were permitted by the JWC as opposed to the almost 100% permittance of Israeli projects[25]. The Oslo II agreements served to further embed and legitimize Israeli water governance in the West Bank.
Furthermore, Israeli political water dominance maintained its far-reaching powers due to the additional approval process created by the Israeli Civil Administration. The Israeli Civil Administration is the Israeli governing body in the West Bank, thus, it has the jurisdiction and duty to protect the Israeli people wherever there exists Israeli settlements regardless of the legality of the settlement[26]. Where the Oslo II agreement embedded the already existing methods of Israeli-Palestinian water distribution, the processes introduced by the Israeli Civil Administration extended the approval process needed by Palestinian authorities to pass water projects in the West Bank[27]. This gave Palestinian parties a large increase in financial and temporal costs for their water projects when they were passed, in addition to an increased rate of failure for proposed Palestinian water projects: only 1.5% of building permit applications from Palestinian parties were passed by the Civil Administration between 2010 and 2014[28].
Through the development of Israeli political institutions, the governance framework over water resources served to further embed the systems of Palestinian societal fragmentation and erosion. Intended or not, the development of these systems of social organization through water management enabled the development of economic mechanisms which enforced Israeli water dominance. The lack of available water in Palestinian areas has led to a legal environment where the only legitimate form of obtaining water for Palestinians is through entering an economically dependent relationship with Israeli water suppliers[29]. When water supplies become scarcer in Palestinian areas of the West Bank, the Israeli national water company, Mekorot, sells the water extracted from Palestinian occupied territories back to the Palestinians in need[30]. Furthermore, the most vulnerable of Palestinian households spend one-fifth of their salary on water[31]. These interactions show a relationship where Palestinians depend on an Israeli entity for their very survival. When the Palestinians run out of the means to pay for their survival, they must essentially move off their lands in search of more water sources. This results in at least two major effects in the region. One effect is the freeing up of land, in which Israelis are then enabled to occupy the lands vacated by original Palestinian inhabitants. The other effect is one of compounding demand for water because the Palestinians unable to afford water move to other Palestinian lands and then increase the strain on the water resources in those regions. The political control that Israelis have over regional water resources creates an economic mechanism pressuring Palestinians to enter a relationship of dependency or move off their property in search of more water.
While water is only one facet of the Israeli-Palestinian issue, its narrative displays how conceptions of power can be materially expressed. This culmination of political and economic frameworks shows how two closely entangled societies organize one another according to their interests and derived powers. Through political institutions and processes pertaining to water, Israeli governance frameworks were formalized and further embedded into Israel’s systemic territorial expansion. Its economic mechanism that was supported by a legal and political framework served to further expand the reach of the Israeli settlement process. By controlling the availability and attainability of an essential resource, Israeli institutions aligned their interests of political legitimacy and dominance in the region with management techniques to ensure their continued survival. Consequently, the Palestinian society in the West Bank responded with a regression of political sovereignty and economic productivity as Palestinian territories became more fragmented and indirectly regulated by Israel’s control over water. In light of these interactions, one can always make the claim of environmental injustice and ecological poverty against Palestine. However, it is also important to remember that Israel’s conception was decided by declining colonial powers and a response to centuries of anti-Semitism. Given this history of the Palestine-Israeli relationship, there are further questions of intergenerational justice issues and how such issues are influenced by generational and political information losses and ideological shifts.
So, while there are claims of environmental injustice, such claims will only reproduce the current Israeli-Palestinian relationship until the two societies seek absolute reconciliation with one another. In this respect, there is a further question of whether the political conceptions and frameworks of these two nations is adequate for the task of reconciliation. Considering how territorially and sociologically entangled Palestine and Israel are with one another, is there even a possibility of separation?
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