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Designing a New Water Future for Israelis and Palestinians

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Transboundary Water Issues in Israel, Palestine, and the Jordan River Basin

Part of the book series: SpringerBriefs on Case Studies of Sustainable Development ((BRIEFSCSSD))

Abstract

This chapter begins with what a brief description of water management and water governance in each Israel, Palestine, and Jordan, as well as a review of non-governmental and of private organizations involved with water management in the region. It then shifts attention toward a new approach for managing and governing shared water both from a conceptual perspective and then from a specific approach known as the EcoPeace Proposal, which could be applied now, in advance of a Final Status Agreement between Israel and Palestine. It is no surprise that such a proposal has come in for review and critique, the most important of which are presented and then critiqued in this chapter.

… it is safe to suggest that the number of words written about water in the Israeli–Arab context, per unit of water, is significantly higher than for any other water conflict.

Feitelson (2017, p. 15)

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Notes

  1. 1.

    As will also be detailed in Annex B, David Brooks, principal author of this book, attended most of the meetings of both the Environment and the Water Resources Working Group as technical support to diplomats from Canada’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

  2. 2.

    Water Authority, Long-term Master Plan for the Water Sector: Part 1—Policy Paper, 4th Edition, August 2012 [Hebrew].

  3. 3.

    https://www.timesofisrael.com/plan-to-pump-desalinated-water-to-sea-of-galilee-may-open-diplomatic-floodgates/.

  4. 4.

    http://www.pwa.ps/page.aspx?id=mV69sHa1941576120amV69sH.

  5. 5.

    http://www.jordantimes.com/news/local/minister-hails-desalination-strategic-solution-water-scarcity-problem.

  6. 6.

    http://www.oecd.org/agriculture/never-waste-a-good-water-crisis/

    OECD (21 March 2019) by Guillaume Grure.

  7. 7.

    We wish to thank Robin Twite of the Arava Institute at Kibbutz Ketura for assistance with the material on non-governmental organizations.

  8. 8.

    See the film Sea, Sun, and Peace? by an American reporter named Naomi Zeveloff that came out in 2019.

  9. 9.

    http://www.civilsociety-jo.net/en/organizations/12/environmental-organizations.

  10. 10.

    This subsection focuses on the role of the private sector in agriculture and agribusiness. For a broader review of the private sector in Palestine, see Khalidi et al (2019).

  11. 11.

    https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/MEP_programsandprojects.pdf.

  12. 12.

    https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/.premium-in-bahrain-air-of-israeli-arab-normalization-and-a-message-to-iran-1.7410754.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Victoria, Ottawa, ON, Canada

    David B. Brooks

  2. ART-Dev, Site Saint-Charle, Directrice de Recherche CNRS, Montpellier, France

    Julie Trottier

  3. EcoPeace Middle East, Tel Aviv, Israel

    Giulia Giordano

Authors
  1. David B. Brooks
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  2. Julie Trottier
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  3. Giulia Giordano
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to David B. Brooks .

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Brooks, D.B., Trottier, J., Giordano, G. (2020). Designing a New Water Future for Israelis and Palestinians. In: Transboundary Water Issues in Israel, Palestine, and the Jordan River Basin. SpringerBriefs on Case Studies of Sustainable Development. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-0252-1_4

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