Last month, Friends of the Earth-Middle East, [FEME]a cross-border environmental organization with representation in Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority, offered a new model for joint management of shared water resources by Israelis and Palestinians.

The model suggests moving to shared management of joint water resources, like the Jordan River, the mountain aquifer and streams running through the West Bank and Israel, based on a mediated approach to solving water disputes.

The model was s originally drafted with the intention of being included in the Geneva Initiative by Dr. David B Brooks, a Canadian water expert living in Ottawa and Julie Trottier in 2007-8. and has gone through several permutations before reaching its current form.

In 2009, I had the opportunity to interview David Brooks  who said then that there is no question that under any future peace agreement, “large volumes of water  will be transferred from Israel to the Palestinians.”

According to Brooks, about 2/3 of the water that exists in the land that comprises Israel  and an eventual Palestinian state is “trans-border water”   from  “the Mountain Aquifer” that would have to be “sharable.” This is the case because most of the “intake” locations of the water [where the rain falls]   are in the West Bank but most of   the “out take” locations [where the water comes out in the form of natural springs ] are in Israel.

 “The tough question to be answered is whether water will be [transferred by Israel to the Palestinians] under an Israeli managed system or  whether there will be joint- management of water [by Israel and a future Palestinian State] ?” said Brooks. 

Brooks added that he favoured “joint-management”, which is currently not the case under the Oslo Accords.

Currently, under the Oslo Accords, Israel allocates a fixed amount of water to the Palestinians, occasionally adding to it if it is felt to be necessary.. A Joint Water Committee run by Israel approves Palestinian water projects, such as drilling wells, on the eastern part of the mountain aquifer but only acts in reference to Palestinian needs, with no authority over Israeli projects.

Brooks rejected the idea of a fixed-pie approach to water management where each side gets a finite “piece.” The model he and Triotier developed is a more fluid and dynamic one that takes into account the changing nature of the water supply. For example, the model would account for factors such as less rain and climate change that would reduce water supply, just as rising standards of living on both sides of the future border would mean an increase in demand.

The  main premise of  the proposal is the notion of shared management with a conflict resolution mechanism to resolve disputes through mediation.

As Brooks said, his proposal for water management is based on “an ongoing negotiations strategy between Israel and Palestine, meaning every year you work out a process and decide who gets how much water…It is based on an ongoing relationship of good faith, and isn’t something you do once and forever but you have to do it on an ongoing basis.”

The idea, he said, is that “water isn’t like real estate….it can’t be divided once and for all…because water moves… it can be used many times and re-cycled, it changes in quality, so a different management regime must be considered.”

Brooks is a natural resource economist, recently retired from Canada’s International Development Research Centre. He was the founding director of the Canadian Office of Energy Conservation and is now senior adviser on fresh water for Friends of the Earth Canada.

Trottier is a research professor at France’s National Center for Scientific Research, who has formally studied chemistry, politics and Islamic studies.She has focused her research for the last 15 years on the politics of water in Israel and the Palestinian territories.

The goal of the Brooks-Trotier  model is to take water out of the realm of a “national security” issue in order to help the sides make progress on negotiating this issue.

The model rests on three general principles that say, “Management must be economically efficient, socially and politically equitable, and ecologically sustainable.”

The Brooks/Trottier model calls for the creation of three governing bodies: A bilateral water commission, a water mediation board and a local water management board.

The bilateral commission would set policy, the mediation board would resolve disputes and the local board would enable the players on the ground to have a say. The bilateral board would be comprised of three representatives from each country plus a seventh member from any other country in the world chosen by the other six. To avoid a situation in which one side plus the adviser could gang up on the other side, decisions would have to be accepted by at least two members of that party as well.

 In 2009, Brooks said that his discussions about water resources “have been mediated by the Czechoslovakian government. They have acted as a kind of go between…They brought me together with the Palestinian Water Authority at a conference in Prague in [2008].”

NEITHER SIDE HAS USED WATER SUSTAINABLY

When interviewed in 2009, Brooks, who is a co-author of Watershed: The role of Fresh Water in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, said that “Neither Israel nor the Palestinians are using water sustainably; both sides are using too much water”

In regard to Gaza, Brooks said “the Palestinian government, not Israel, is at fault” for depleting Gaza’s water resources.

“In Gaza, water has been very badly managed… They [ both Hamas and the PA before it] have allowed everyone whose wanted to drill a well to do so. This reduces the pressure and has allowed sea water to come in… Today there is not enough water left that is drinking quality in Gaza.. But that’s the Palestinian’s own doing…There would have been enough but because it’s been [over] pumped it’s gotten salty…” he said.

However, in the West Bank, under Israeli control, Brooks says “water has been highly inequitably controlled” in  favour of Israel.

According to Brooks, one of the “greatest mistakes Israel has made is not ensuring a vigorous Palestinian agriculture.”

He says that although Israel is gradually leaving agriculture in favour of developing a high-tech economy, Palestinians “can’t go through that process instantaneously”

According to Brooks, “Israel is using West Bank Aquifers for settlements [in the West Bank] and also for Israel proper.”

Israel’s  use of more  water from West Bank aquifers  has enabled it “to rely on using too much water” to fuel

Notwithstanding their efforts, the Geneva Initiative decided not to adopt the Brooks-Trotier proposal and instead used a model one of one of Brooks and Trottier’s Israeli advisers, drafted by Prof. Hillel Shuval.

Nevertheless, Friends of the Earth Middle East decided to find funding to complete and present the model and the EU agreed to provide funding.

Already in 2009, Brooks acknowledged that although his proposal had “been well-received by social scientists,” it had not been well received but not by physical scientists (i.e. hydrologists, engineers), who he said “want something more straightforward."

The  Brooks-Trotier model can only be carried out once final borders between Israel and a future Palestinian state are established, as the model requires that water resources be classified as shared or not shared, depending on location.  The model does not address non-shared water resources such as much of the coastal aquifer or any of the desalination plants that Israel is building or has built along the Mediterranean coast.

However, Brooks and Trottier have argued that the model was one way to bring about agreements on the issue of water sooner, rather than later.

An appendix to the proposal provided two academic critiques to the model.

Prof. Nadav G. Shelef has critiqued the premise that Israelis and Palestinians will willingly adopt a joint management model based on mediation. Shelef, an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science and the Harvey M. Meyerhoff Assistant Professor of Modern Israel Studies at the University of Wisconsin– Madison, maintains that in light of the violent history of the conflict, even if peace were to be achieved it would not necessarily be based on mutual trust. He is of the view that a model which requires both sides to trust each other and would force Israel to compromise on its total control over water resources is unlikely to be approved.  Water, according to Shelef, will likely remain a national security matter, even if a  peace accord were to be signed.

According to Shuval, moving to full  joint management  of water in one fell swoop at the beginning will not work, and a gradual process has a better chance of success.

In 2009, Brooks emphasized that, as scarce as water is, both Israel and the Palestinians are much better off than Jordan.

“Jordan is so short of water and its population is growing… They are now pumping water up from aquifers near Aquaba-that’s a long way to pump water,” he says.

Regarding Syria, Brooks said the nature-of the trade off with Israel in an eventual peace agreement is clear.“Israel returns the Golan, along with the Banyas Spring, which is responsible for about one-quarter of the flow of the Jordan River; and Syria gives up its claim to the Kinneret, which it gained by conquest of the eastern shore of [the Kinneret] and held from 1948-1967. If Syria is smart, it will sell the flow of the Banias to Israel rather than trying to pump it up hill.  And, if  Israel is smart, it will sell rights of access to the Kinneret for Syrian fisherfolk and for storing high winter flows from the Yarmouk River.”