Blood and Water: The Elusive Search for Peace in the Middle East

A gunshot to the head kills a Palestinian child.

Innocent worshipers lie dead or injured after clashes at the Temple Mount.

The United States government issues statements urging the parties to conduct "peace talks", but peace evades these efforts.

Why do these scenes occur? What guides the Palestinians and Israelis into cycles of armed conflict and quasi-peace?

Religion is of course one answer, but it is only part of the complexity of Middle East politics. An equally important aspect of the situation is the issue of water rights.

This aspect is much less discussed and often overlooked by Western observers of Middle East conflicts. Most of the terrain of the Middle East is desert; scarce water resources cause prolific problems. The ruler who controls the rights to the precious water supply therefore controls a commodity his neighboring rulers also want to possess. The ruler who controls the water can sell his neighbors user rights at exorbitant prices, or if he denies them access, he must defend his water supply on the battlefield. The Israeli occupied and annexed territories such as East Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, and the Golan Heights are located near bodies of water. If these territories are lost, Israel would be essentially a lland locked state whose neighbors would likely restrict its access to water resources.

Enter here the religion and politics components. In the Middle East, inter-communal bitterness runs deep, and memory is long for Arabs and Israelis. Many Western leaders have made many promises to both groups, and few of those promises were kept. After the first world war the region was known as the thrice promised land. The McMann/Hussein correspondence promised Arabs the land as an independent homeland. The Balfour Declaration promised Jews the same land as their independent homeland. The Sykes/Picot agreement promised France control of part of the same land promised the Arabs and Jews. When the Versailles Treaty adopted the Balfour Declaration, many European Jews settled in Palestine. Conflicts with the indigenous Palestinians soon erupted. The activities of extremists and populists on both sides led Britain to establish several Royal Commissions to explore partition of Palestine. Neither Jews nor Arabs were receptive to proposed population transfers. Jewish and Arab owned farmland and wells were intermingled. The two groups were of almost equal population. Sites sacred to the Jewish religion were located at or near sites sacred to the Islamic religion. Neither group seemed willing to co-operate to develop effective local governments. Each group feared the loss of its land, homes, and access to those valuable water rights. Thus the Royal Commissions concluded that partition was not possible.

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