Chapter One: Politics of the Jordan Watershed

Table of Contents

When World War I broke out in 1914, the territory of what was to become Palestine Syria and Egypt had been under the control of the Ottomans for four centuries. [1] The Ottoman Empire entered the side of Germany during war, a decision that proved to be fatal. As it became clear that the empire was crumbling, the British and the French began to stake out their territorial claims over the region in order to define their spheres of influence. The French began to work with the Christians of Lebanon and the Syrians, while the British sought out the Arabs and the Jews of Palestine. In 1916, the British and the French signed the secret Sykes-Picot agreement, which divided the Middle East into two regions. The status of Palestine was left unclear. [2]

During this time, the modern political Zionist movement, which was seeking a Jewish state in Palestine, was voicing concern to Britain over the future of Palestine. Modern Zionism had already become a well-established movement emerging at the end of the 19^th Century, with the first Zionist Congress held in Basle in 1897. At this conference, Theodore Herzl, a journalist and playwright from Austria, who is considered the father of modern Zionism, articulated the desire for the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine. From the beginning, the Zionist movement focused on historical, strategic and economic considerations to determine a suitable territory for Israel. [3] In a region that is mostly desert (Jordan is 85%, Israel and the West Bank is 60%) and is subject to infrequent rain, access to water was recognized from the outset by the Zionists as being both strategically and economically important for the viability of their new state.  

In November 1917, the British Cabinet approved the Balfour Declaration which stated, “His Majesty’s Government views with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object….” [4] Although the Balfour Declaration didn’t explicitly call for Palestine to be turned into an Israeli state, the Zionists interpreted it as a promise.  The ambiguous language used in the declaration sowed the seeds of conflicting claims to Palestine from both Zionists and Arabs. By the end of World War I, a series of negotiations were instigated in 1918 about the fate of the conquered areas, which would give rise to the creation of the mandate system. This system would divide the conquered areas of the former Turkish and German empires among the so-called “advanced nations,” which included Britain and France, who would act as guardians on behalf of the newly formed League of Nations. [5] Jewish immigration had been underway in Palestine since the turn of the century, and Zionist leaders worked on a strategy for their boundary proposal at the Paris Peace Conference. The leading figure on this issue was Aaron Aaronsohn, an agriculturalist who early on identified the importance of water supply in negotiating boundaries.

Aaronsohn’s recommendations were brought to the Paris Peace Conference by the official Zionist delegate, Chaim Weizmann. Their proposal sought boundaries for Palestine which included the headwaters of the Jordan River, the lower Litani River which began in Lebanon, and the Yarmuk River. [6]   In 1923, after years of negotiations, the French and the British came to an agreement upon the boundaries delineating their mandates. The British-Palestine mandate was built upon the Balfour declaration and in doing so was the first international official recognition of a historical connection between the Jewish people with the territory of Palestine. [7] However, the agreement was regarded as a disappointment to the Zionists. Both Weizmann and Aaronsohn had strongly believed that access to the water resources of the Litani River were essential for the economic independence of Palestine. [8] Although the agreement created boundaries for Palestine containing the majority of the Upper Jordan in Palestine, the boundaries excluded the headwaters of the Litani and the Hasbani Rivers. [9]

During the following years, Jewish immigration into Palestine continued creating severe tensions between the Jews and the Arabs. The British responded to this situation by handing out a series of White Papers (a formal policy statement) which were intended to provide an interpretation of the Balfour Declaration. The first White Paper known as the Churchill White Paper discussed numerical limitations on future immigration based on “economic capacity of the country.” [10] Continued skirmishes between Arabs and Jewish immigrants led to a second White Paper in 1930 known as the Passfield White Paper. The Passfield White Paper concluded that little land was available for immigrants and called for a more clearly defined Jewish immigration policy. This paper was strongly criticized by the Zionists who argued that the paper did not take into consideration a hydrological analysis of the region or the possibility for transferring water. [11]

The rise of the Nationalist Socialists in Germany led by Adolph Hitler in 1933 spurred European Jewish immigration to Palestine. In Hitler’s first year of power, one quarter of the immigrants coming to Palestine was from Germany. Tensions continued to mount between the two groups and in 1936, a strike organized by the Arab Higher Committee protesting Jewish immigration turned into a rebellion which left over 300 people dead. [12] During this time, a number of plans were put forward which addressed the water resource component of the absorptive capacity issue for Palestine. The Ionides Plan commissioned by the British government in 1939 claimed that Palestine did not have the water resource’s necessary for continued Jewish immigration. The main components of the plan included the recommendation that the Jordan River be used to irrigate the area within the watershed and that stormwater from the Yarmuk River be diverted and stored in the Lake Tiberias. [13] Five years later, as World War II was coming to an end, the realization of the evils inflicted upon the European Jewish population by the Nazis lead to open resistance by the Zionists to British immigration policies. In contrast to the Ionides Plan, the Zionists looked to a plan published by Walter Clay Lowdermilk, the director of the US Soil Conservation Service, who claimed that the water resources of the region, if properly managed, could accommodate an additional four million Jewish refugees and 1.8 million Arabs. [14] The Lowdermilk management plan, which was modeled from the Tennessee Valley Authority, called for diverting unused water from the Yarmuk River to irrigate the Jordan Valley and the Negev, and building a Mediterranean Sea-Dead Sea Canal. [15] The plan was largely based on ideology rather than engineering, but was highly influential to Israel’s future water resource development planning. [16]  

The devastation of World War II on the Jewish population set the stage for the creation of the Israeli State. Millions of Jews had been killed in the war and a massive refugee problem had been created in Europe. The Zionist movement was resolute in its desire for a Jewish state. In February 1947, unable to resolve the conflict between the Zionists and the Arabs, Great Britain turned over the problem of the future of Palestine to the newly formed United Nations. A special UN committee called UNSCOP was formed to address the Palestinian problem. UNSCOP recommended that Palestine be divided into two states and for Jerusalem to come under international control. In November, the partition plan was passed in the United Nations General Assembly.  As Britain made preparations to depart Palestine, fighting between Jews and Arabs ensued. On May 15, 1948, Israel declared independence, igniting war between the new state and its Arab neighbors. [17]

The 1948 war carved up the Jordan watershed such that it now spread across four countries: Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Israel. At this time, the Middle East was in the midst of a serious refugee crisis producing massive population shifts. Hundreds of thousands of Jews from Europe and Arab countries were immigrating to Israel. At the same time, Palestinian refugees from Israel were immigrating to Jordan. [18] The overtly hostile political environment between the Arab states and the new Israeli state meant that joint efforts to manage the Jordan watershed were not possible, marking a phase of unilateral efforts to develop the water resources of the Jordan River.

Unilateral Development of the Jordan

Beginning in the early 1950s, Arabs and Israelis embarked upon unilateral plans to develop the Jordan watershed. In 1951, Jordan announced a plan to divert water from the Yarmuk River in order to irrigate the East Ghor of the Jordan Valley. This prompted Israel to begin draining the Lake Huleh and swamps, which ended up creating tensions between Israel and Syria because the swamps crossed over into demilitarized zones separating the two countries. [19] Two years later, Israel started construction of its National Water Carrier that would bring water to the coastal plain and the Negev Desert. The initial construction of the intake site at a demilitarized zone north of Lake Tiberias triggered the deployment of Syrian armed forces along the border. Shots were fired at the construction site prompting the Israelis to move the intake site to Eshed Kinrot, located on the northwest shore of Lake Tiberias. Israel defused the tensions by moving the intake of its National Water Carrier, but it had done so at a price. The water from the second intake site was more saline, and it had to be pumped up 250 meters from the intake location before it could head southward. [20]

The Johnston Negotiations

With unilateral plans for the Jordan watershed proliferating and creating tensions in an already strained political environment, it became strikingly clear that a regional solution to managing the Jordan watershed was necessary. These unilateral development plans along with pressure by Congress to address the Palestinian refugee problem, compelled President Eisenhower to send special envoy Eric Johnston to the Middle East in October 1953 to try to ease the tensions among the river’s riparian states. Over the next two years, Johnston worked to design a comprehensive development plan for the Jordan River, with the hope that such a settlement would bring stability to the region. [21]

Johnston’s primary goal in developing a plan for the Jordan River was equitable allocation of the annual flow between its riparian states. At the beginning of the negotiations, Johnston put forth a plan produced by Charles Main and the Tennessee Valley Authority that used a regional approach for determining water allocations and ignored political factors. The “Main Plan” focused only on in-basin use of the Jordan River water and did not include the Litani River. These exceptions were unacceptable to the Israelis, who desired a plan that included the Litani River and took into consideration their irrigation needs in the Negev Desert.  Israel consulted an American engineer, John Cotton, and submitted an alternative plan in February 1954. The “Cotton Plan” allotted Israel half of the flow of the Litani River, allowed for out-of basin transfer of the Jordan and recommended that the Sea of Galilee be used as the main storage facility. In response to both plans, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Egypt established a Technical Committee, which came up with an “Arab Plan.” This plan excluded out-of-basin use of the Jordan River, excluded the Litani River and rejected the Israeli proposal to use Lake Tiberias as a storage facility. Table 1 lists the water allocations proposed by the three plans as well as the final “Unified Plan.”

Table 1

Source: Wolf, Johnston Negotiations, 5.  Numbers are in mcm/yr.

*East Bank 505 and West Bank 215.

Johnston attempted to reconcile these proposals in order to come up with a compromise that would be acceptable to all parties. In the fall of 1955, he produced the “Unified Plan,” later referred to as the Johnston Plan. The Johnston Plan gave concessions and forced compromises to both the Arabs and the Israelis. Most significantly, Israel was forced to drop its demand to include the Litani River and the Arabs agreed to allow out-of-basin transfers from the Jordan River as well as to permit storage at the Sea of Galilee and at the unbuilt Maqarin Dam. The United States provided a carrot to encourage all parties to accept the plan by offering to finance future water development projects. In the end, the Arab League was unwilling to accept an arrangement that would acknowledge Israel, and returned the plan to the Technical Committee, effectively ending the negotiations. Although the Johnston Plan was never ratified, the allocations it laid out have been used as a reference up until the present. Specifically, Israel and Jordan have met quietly every year up until the present at the confluence of the Jordan and Yarmuk rivers so-called “Picnic Table” talks to discuss allocations. 

In retrospect, a number of serious problems can be identified in the Johnston negotiations. [22] To begin with, the watershed was not looked at as a whole. Although groundwater is the main source of water for both the Israelis and the Palestinians, the negotiations and the plan ignored groundwater altogether and instead only addressed the surface water. The question of groundwater allocation and control has been the principle source of conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians ever since. 

A second fundamental problem is that the Palestinians as well as other groups with a vested interest in managing the Jordan watershed were left out of the negotiating process.   Given the level of political tensions and the precarious stage of Israel’s existence at the time, it is understandable that the negotiations focused on Israel and the recognized states that use water from the Jordan River. However, the importance of including the Palestinians at the negotiating table is simply a prerequisite to finding a solution for the Arab-Israeli conflict, which took many years for the international community and for Israel to accept. 

Finally, related to the previous point, not enough attention was paid to the political dimensions of the negotiations. As Wolf notes, the Johnston Plan was primarily a rational watershed plan. [23] In the end, it was the political aspect of the negotiations that brought them to a halt. The Arabs were unwilling to accept a plan allocating water to Israel because that would have been a de facto move legitimizing Israel’s right to exist.  Without provisions for the parties to meet face to face in these negotiations or mechanisms for promoting trust and confidence, it comes as no surprise that the political tensions, which had not been addressed, kept the plan from being implemented. 

In spite of the limited headway made between the Israelis and the Jordanians as a result of the Johnston negotiations, the following decade led to continued unilateral water resource development and was a period of intense conflict between the Palestinians and the Israelis. Israel’s construction of its National Water Carrier, which would divert water from the Jordan watershed to the Negev desert, sparked outrage from President Nasser of Egypt who called the first Arab Summit in 1964 to discuss a plan for water management. The following year, a second summit was held in which Arab states decided to embark upon their own diversion plan which would cut off water to the National Water Carrier. One year after Israel began diverting water through its National Water Carrier, the Arab states began their Headwaters Diversion Plan. [24] Both water plans incited conflict. The new Palestinian Liberation Organization attacked the National Water Carrier in December 1964. A few months later, Israel’s army attacked the Arab diversion plan in Syria. Low intensity conflict continued over the next two years without resolution leading to war.

1967: The Six Day War

In June 1967, Israel attacked Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Iraq and within six days it had captured the territory of the Golan Heights from Syria, Gaza and the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt and the West Bank from Jordan. The war radically altered Israel’s boundaries and in doing it became the dominant player controlling the majority of the water resources of the Jordan watershed. [25] Israel now had in its territory all but one of the headwaters of the Jordan River, and through its acquisition of the West Bank, had gained access to the three main aquifers of the region commonly known as Central Highland Aquifer or the Mountain Aquifer.

The occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and the nationalization process of the water resources of these regions mark the beginning of the present conflict between Israelis and Palestinians over the water resources they share. Under Israeli law, water is the property of the state. [26] To protect the Central Highland from overpumping, Israel set up strict limits on the amount of water that could be withdrawn from existing wells. Permits for new wells were granted for domestic use for Israelis and Palestinians, however restrictions were placed on Palestinian use of wells for agricultural purposes. [27] While Palestinian agricultural water usage has been capped at 1968 levels, new wells have been dug for Israeli settlements. [28] In the Gaza Strip, the situation is quite different. Less restrictions on the use of the water resources in the Gaza Strip has led to severe overpumpage of the aquifer. This dispute over the pattern of water allocation in the West Bank and Gaza continues up to the present and has been cited as a sovereignty issue for both Israelis and Palestinians, which will be addressed in the next section. [29]

In the years following the 1967 war, relations between the Israelis and the Palestinians continued to be tumultuous. A new group called the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) had been created in 1964 with the single mission of liberating Palestine. Advocating the used of armed struggle as a means to this goal, the PLO adopted a charter which stated that the partitioning of Palestine and the establishment of Israel were illegal. [30] Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip protested the control of the Israeli military government and its policies. In the late 1960s, the PLO and the Israelis were embroiled in military confrontation over settlements in the Jordan Valley. [31] The Gaza Strip had become a shelter for guerilla fighters to attack Israeli patrol.

The PLO began to shift its tactics toward a negotiation strategy and changed its goal by 1977 from reclaiming Palestine to the “right to establish an independent national state on their own land.” [32] The invasion of Lebanon by Israel in 1982 severely weakened the national movement, forcing the PLO to move its offices from Beirut to Tunis. Physically cut off from the majority of the Palestinian people and with little support from its Arab neighbors, the PLO became politically fragmented and demoralized. As the PLO’s position began moving away from violence toward political options for achieving its aims, the Israelis were cracking down on expressions of Palestinian nationalism. While the PLO searched for diplomatic avenues to pursue its interests, the seeds of a new kind of rebellion were about to take root.

The Intifada and the end of the Cold War

When the Intifada or uprising erupted, not only were the Israelis caught off guard, the PLO was too. On December 8, 1987, four Palestinians were killed in a car accident involving an Israeli army transport. The accident turned out to be the lever that opened the flood gaits triggering demonstrations against Israeli occupation, which spread throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip. [33] Unlike previous protests, which were led by the urban elite, these protests were organized through grassroots networks. Using a strategy of civil disobedience, participants of the intifada threw stones, staged demonstrations and were encouraged to boycott Israeli goods. The anonymity of the intifada’s leaders made it difficult for Israel to stop the uprising. Israel’s attempts to crackdown on the protests included implementing long curfews, using tear gas and rubber-coated bullets, and resorting to mass arrests. The PLO took advantage of the intifada by calling for an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel. In November 1988, the Palestinian National Council, the main political institution of the PLO, proclaimed the state of Palestine and declared that it was willing to negotiate with Israel based on the United Nations Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338. [34] Shortly thereafter, PLO executive Yasser Arafat renounced terrorism and recognized the state of Israel.

The effects of trying to contain the intifada became demoralizing for the Israelis, who had been the subject of heavy criticism from international media coverage of its tactics. Faced with both conscientious objectors and extreme nationalism from its own population, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir put forth a peace plan in 1989. The plan called for an end to the intifada and for elections to be held so that a Palestinian delegation could be established to negotiate with the Israelis during an interim period with the ultimate aim of self-rule in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Although the peace plan was initially supported by the United States, the plan fell through due to lack of support from the Palestinians and the subsequent decision by the United States to push for its own land for peace plan. [35]

While Israel struggled to find a solution to the intifada, two events were on the horizon that would change world politics and drastically alter the context of the Arab-Israeli conflict. In 1989, the Soviet Union collapsed bringing an end to the Cold War and the bipolar politics that had dominated the international system for over forty years. On a tangible level, Israel felt the end of the Cold War when it began to experience an influx of Russian Jewish immigrants. Less tangible but even more significant were the geostrategic implications of the collapse of the Soviet Union, which were felt throughout the region. Countries who had at one time been Soviet clients would have to realign themselves while U.S. allies would have to reexamine the future of their strategic importance to a country that was now the only superpower. [36]

A year after the world order evolved from a bipolar power structure to a unipolar power structure, war broke out in the Middle East. Iraq, drowning from economic and financial ruin from an eight-year war with Iran, invaded tiny Kuwait on August 2, 1990. [37] The war divided the Arab world into those countries who supported Saddam Hussein or were ambivalent, namely Libya, Sudan, Yemen and Jordan, and those who supported the coalition led by the United States, who were Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Morocco, Oman and the United Arab Emirates. The Palestinians sided with Saddam, who during the war called for the withdrawal of Israel from the Occupied Territories. The United Nations passed several resolutions calling on Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait with no avail. The day after the deadline for Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait, on January 19, 1991, the coalition launched operation Desert Storm. In response, Saddam attacked Israel and Saudi Arabia with Scud missiles. Israel did not retaliate and the coalition was able to liberate Kuwait by the end of February.

Coming off the heels of the Soviet breakup, the Gulf War revealed that the Middle East was dangerously unstable. At of the heart of this instability lied the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The situation was ripe for a new chapter in the Middle East peace process, one that would lead to unprecedented face to face negotiations with long time enemies. Water, an issue that had been a source of great tension and the subject of several military skirmishes between Israel and its neighbors since the 1940s, would now be singled out as one of five regional issues which had the potential to build trust and regional cooperation for the Middle East.

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