The role of Civil Society in Addressing Transboundary Water Issues in the Israeli-Palestinian context / Gidon Bromberg, Iyad Burdeineh, Lucy Michaels and Na'ama Teschner
Given the differences in the political and social make-up between Israel and the Palestinians, civil society organizations focusing on water necessarily have different priorities and means to be effective. As highlighted in this chapter, several organizations have taken up the challenge of working across the border to address key transboundary issues such as pollution of groundwater and wells, wastewater management, cross-border streams and the management of shared water resources. These include both cross-border NGOs, such as IPCRI and Friends of the Earth Middle East and organizations and academic institutions working in partnership. Such connections were forged in the post-Oslo optimism of the early 1990s although many organizations have continued to show resilience in the rapidly changing political landscape. Here it is argued that such organizations can contribute towards developing creative and equitable solutions to regional environmental problems at a time when respective governments are mired in conflict and inaction. Civil society organizations can also focus on building a ‘culture of peace’ around water issues from the grassroots.
The Role of Third Parties in helping to resolve the conflicts over water issues in Israel and Palestine / Robin Twite
Water is in short supply in both Israel and Palestine and it is inevitable that there will be disputes as to how it can best be managed. These have been exacerbated by the fact that since 1967 Israel has been largely able to control the way in which water is distributed in the region. It is by now almost axiomatic that third parties might have a key role to play in resolving international conflicts. In fact, over the whole of the period since the establishment of the State of Israel third parties, individual states and international organizations, have attempted to intervene constructively but with only limited success. Since 1948 there have been two principal ways in which the international community has sought to resolve the conflict over water. The first has been the active intervention at the international level in water disputes and the second, particularly in evidence since the early 1990s, the provision of aid to assist in the development of water resources and their effective management. It is the purpose of this chapter to look at the role of third parties in relation to disputes of water resources between Israelis and Palestinians since 1994 and to analyze its motivation, scope, imitations and future contribution.
