Introduction: Water, Conflict and the Land of Israel

The first book of the Bible is full of quarreling between the Israelite patriarchs and the surrounding communities (Audu 2013). Water was undoubtedly a critical resource for survival in an agrarian society, and apparently there was not always enough to go around. Indeed, it was lack of rains and famine that forced the children of Israel into an Egyptian exile which lasted 430 years, much of it enslaved. While a source of tension and intermittent conflicts, control of water resources appears in retrospect to have been largely amenable to reconciliation, giving rise to occasional covenants for water sharing and cooperation. In a region where recent climate change and reduced precipitation along with rapid population growth makes water scarcity more acute than ever (Mariotti 2015), is the underlying optimism of the Biblical narrative still valid?

While pervasive water scarcity does seem to have changed in the Middle East during the Holocene era, technologically, there is little that remains the same. In this context, this chapter evaluates Israel's experience in water management and its ongoing quest for water security. Although control over water resources has rarely, if ever, been the sole casus belli in modern war between nations, it has certainly exacerbated tensions (Wolf 1998). Israel along with its neighbors is often given as an example of such dynamics. Water management for most of Israel's history was driven by an underlying sense that water resources were limited and critical for survival and that ensuring their availability was a paramount policy objective. This contributed to making the country's hydrological history a particularly unique story where local water managers took a path less traveled. In many cases, solutions were pursued that at the time were altogether unexplored in other countries. Israel's ensuing water management strategy has certainly generated interest internationally. But is it sustainable?

Most retrospective chronologies of water management in Israel present the narrative essentially in a favorable light (Teschner 2013; Tal 2006a). At a time when demographic proliferation in countries surrounding Israel has compromised the regularity of water supplies and crisis-like hydrological dynamics are pervasive, Israel has largely managed to increase the reliability and quality of its water supply.