Water Issues in The Middle East: Israel-Palestinian Water Issues--From Conflict to Cooperation.

• Author: Orr, Peter
• Position: FURTHER READING - Book review

WATER ISSUES IN THE MIDDLE EAST: ISRAEL-PALESTINIAN WATER ISSUES--FROM CONFLICT TO COOPERATION

Hillel Shuval and Hassan Dweik, eds.

(Heidelberg, Germany: Springer, 2007), 454 pages.

The papers presented in this volume are the result of a conference on Middle East water issues held in Antalya, Turkey in 2004, only the second of its kind. The venue itself is significant: Turkey's surplus water resources are discussed as one of the potential "solutions" to Israel and Palestine's water vulnerability. That Israeli and Palestinian participants would not have been able to participate in such a symposium if it had been held in their shared but divided homelands reminds the reader that the ongoing political crisis drastically limits cooperation on water issues.

There is no escaping a certain amount of accusatory language: Some Palestinian authors insist that in addition to taking a disproportionate amount of water from the West Bank's Mountain Aquifer, Israel has drilled wells on the border of Gaza with the intention of taking water from Palestinians. Some Israeli authors counter that Palestinian water authorities have allowed citizens to drill ad hoc wells, thereby lowering the water table and...