The Aqaba paradigm: a shared oasis.

• Author: Sachs, Aaron
• Position: Gulf of Aqaba

The Middle East, as a region, is home to what historians call an "oasis civilization." Since biblical times, rich cultures have flourished along the fertile banks of the Nile, Jordan, Tigris, and Euphrates rivers. But oases are defined by the shifting sands that surround them. Only because the Arabs and Jews had wandered for decades in the dunes did their Promised Lands seem truly to flow with milk and honey. If all cultures bear the stamp of their geographical landscape, oasis civilizations reflect less the fecundity of river valleys than the dry heat and wide-open spaces of the desert. Middle Eastern culture has always been characterized by deprivation, high mobility, and explosive tensions. Promised Lands are in short supply.

The Gulf of Aqaba, a tiny inlet of clear, unexpectedly deep water, is one of the Middle East's last true oases. Lined by the sheltering cliffs of the Syrian-African rift, it lies placidly at the northeastern tip of the Red Sea. But the four countries that share its banks have never been particularly good neighbors, and the region's underlying tensions have begun to erode the fragile peace of the Gulf's landscape--despite the recent breaking of the long Arab-Israeli stalemate. A strained regional economy is driving the governments of Israel, Jordan, Egypt, and even the oil-rich Saudi Arabia, to compete more earnestly for the Gulf's precious resources. Already, new tourist resorts, mineral export facilities, and fish farms--as well as desalination plants, which are trying to turn the Gulf into an oasis in the literal sense of the word--have triggered increased sewage dumping and thermal pollution, frequent oil spills, and an influx of toxic chemicals.

Over the past two years, however, since the launching of the Middle East peace talks, diplomats have recognized the ironic truth that scarcity, while often the cause of conflict, can also be the key to cooperation. Ecologists, the prophets of interdependence, have forced them to rethink their position. While politicians busied themselves negotiating territorial exchanges and drawing lines in the sand, pollution was seeping across borders indiscriminately. Middle Easterners are suddenly confronting the fact that if one person spoils the oasis, nobody gets to drink.

While this diplomatic breakthrough might seem subtle in contrast to September's dramatic unveiling of the Gaza-Jericho plan, it is not insignificant. Progress in the bilateral Arab-Israeli negotiations was so...