The History of Water in the Land Once Called Palestine: Scarcity, Conflict and Loss in Middle East Water Resources by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Human Geography, Natural Resources, Social Science, Middle Eastern, Peace, Political Science, World, Nature, Security (National & International)
ISBN: 9780755618057
Google: -sVKEAAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 58587478
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2021-11-04T09:54:50+00:00

Source: Sosland 2007: 102.

Jordan’s development ambitions were once again caught between Syrian and Israeli interests – but now the quantum of water under discussion was shrinking fast. Jordan moved to meet this new challenge by proposing a new, smaller dam project very favourable to Syria. To secure Yarmouk water before Syrian development was complete, Jordan entered into a treaty with Syria in September 1987 for a Unity Dam (al Wehda in Arabic). This treaty provided considerable benefits to Syria. The 100-metre dam was to be a dual-purpose structure – irrigation water and hydropower. Syria was to get 75 per cent of the hydropower together with 140 million cubic metres of water, considerably more than the 90 million cubic metres allocated to it in the Johnston Plan. Jordan was to pay all the capital and operating and maintenance costs. In addition, Syria was to be able to build twenty-four more small dams upstream.

The agreement seemed to promise peaceful cooperation and the United States supported it, working with the World Bank to put together a $440 million financing package. The project looked set to go ahead – and then Israel once again raised objections. The US secretary of state James Baker sent out a senior official, Richard Armitage, who shuttled back and forth between the capitals for an entire year, from September 1989 to August 1990, at the end of which Israel informed the United States and the World Bank that it needed additional ‘project detail’.

Israel claimed Yarmouk winter water which it had been using but to which it had no entitlement. The particular claim was that Israel needed to be ‘no worse off’ as a result of the Unity Dam. This, as we have seen, represented a claim way beyond Israel’s ‘entitlements’ under the Johnston Plan as Israel had been for years pumping 60–70 million cubic metres annually from the Yarmouk winter flood flows up to Lake Tiberias, well in excess of its 25 million cubic metres allocation under the Johnston Plan.51 In fact, according to the Johnston Plan, all of Yarmouk winter water belonged to Jordan. The US ambassador wrote: ‘the winter flow of the Yarmouk to which Israel has access and has made use of in the past is not an allocation to which it has a legal right.’ Nonetheless, Israel demanded a guaranteed winter water allocation of 50–70 million cubic metres and a guaranteed 25 million cubic metres in the summer. Later the Israelis reduced their winter demand somewhat – but only to 42.5 million cubic metres.

The Americans concluded that, in fact, Israel had benefited from the status quo of a river without a dam and had little reason to make major concessions on the issue. They also recorded that Israel acknowledged ‘as a point of fact that [it] controls 100 million m3 of Jordan water beyond that originally allocated to it’ under the Johnston Plan. Essentially, Israel was negotiating from a position in which it was getting an extra 100 million cubic met res of Jordan water,

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