Water and the Middle East Peace Process

Abstract

In the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, the issue of water is presented as an issue for technical cooperation that must be attended to in negotiations independent of other aspects of final settlement. To sustain such a framework for negotiation, each party must come to the table supported by domestic discourse, which is compatible with the envisioned settlement. While the Israeli public is primed to accept a settlement on water characterized by joint or cooperative management, the Palestinian public is not prepared to recognize such an agreement. Due to factors emanating from territorial dispossession and experience with the peace process, the discourse on the Palestinian side, however, has not undergone such a shift. In contrast, the Palestinians operate parallel discourses: one on the international stage of cooperation and another on the domestic stage of dispossession and rights-driven calls for “water sovereignty”. As it stands, this dual discourse renders unlikely the possibility of a negotiated settlement over a scarce resource. Based on this analysis, it may be necessary for third parties engaged in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process to develop strategies to address divergent discourse and accommodate Palestinian concerns into the negotiating framework.