INTRODUCTION

“Water” and “war” are topics being assessed together with increasing frequency. Articles in the academic literature (Cooley 1984; Gleick 1993; Starr 1991; and others) and the popular press (Bulloch
and Darwish 1993; World Press Review 1995) point to water not only as a cause of historic armed conflict, but as the resource which will bring combatants to the battlefield in the 21st century. Invariably, writings on “water wars” point to the arid and hostile Middle East as an example of a worst-case scenario, where armies have in fact been mobilized and shots fired over this precious resource. Elaborate “hydraulic imperative” theories have been developed for the region which cite water as the prime motivator for military strategy and territorial conquest.

The argument is thus: water is a resource vital to a nation’s survival, from its inhabitants’ biology to their economy; the scarcity of water in an arid environment, often referred to as “water stress,”
leads to intense political pressures; the Middle East is a region not only of extreme political conflict, but also one in which states are reaching the limits of their annual freshwater supply; therefore,
Middle East warfare and territorial acquisition must be related to the region’s “water stress.”

This paper examines in detail the link between water and land—the nature of “hydrostrategic territory”—in this “worst-case” water conflict between Arabs and Israelis. The central question is: in the absence of any other compelling strategic or legal rationale, does territory exist (a) over which sovereignty has been sought politically or militarily, or (b) which would be insisted upon in the course of current territorial negotiations, solely because of its access to water sources?

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