Hydro-‐political Baseline of the Upper Jordan River - Ibrahim Abd El Al

PART A. BACKGROUND
1. Introduction
1.1 Why the Upper Jordan?
The conflicts that have been fought within the basin of the river are the stuff both of legend
and of current broadsheets. Rural communities living on the banks of the Jordan River have
seen their land cut up on six occasions over the last century, from a single political entity
into five separate states. Each change has been accompanied by violence, population
transfers, and the construction of water infrastructure that has altered both use of and
control over the flows.
The political changes have resulted in a number of extremes, especially in the basin’s
uppermost reaches in Lebanon, Syria and Israel, so far from Beirut, Damascus and Tel Aviv.
The livelihoods of communities in Lebanon and Syria are compromised by Israel’s near-­‐
exclusive use of and control over the flows. Since the 1967 Israeli occupation of the Syrian
Golan, Syria cannot use any of the contribution to the Jordan River that occur from its Banias
Springs. Following the exchange of prisoners between Lebanon and Israel in 2002 and 2006,
the river is one of few remaining unresolved transboundary issues. The river is also central
to all ongoing and potential political negotiations, though declared intentions to develop the
river signal heightened tensions in the future.
The extent to which the political tensions and violent conflict between ideologies and over
land in the Eastern Mediterranean are heightened by the struggle over the dwindling water
resources is not clear. This has not prevented pundits from over-­‐ascribing political
importance to the Jordan River, and raising its profile in diplomatic, media and academic
circles. An abundance of social and physical science has been applied to the flows, and the
Jordan may very well be the most heavily-­‐scrutinised rivers in the world.
Given the attention, it thus seems incredible that so little is understood about the social,
economic and political aspects of the Jordan’s upper reaches. The shallow understanding
and data gaps are due to a number of factors. First, the bulk of donor initiatives, water
infrastructure and academic and media reports have concentrated on the ‘downstream’
Lower Jordan River riparians (Jordan, Israel and the Palestinians of the West Bank). This has
been particularly the case since the signing of the 1994 Israel-­‐Jordan Peace Treaty and the
1995 Israel-­‐PLO ‘Oslo II’ Agreement. The strategic upstream position and interests of Syria
and Lebanon on the Upper Jordan River is thus over-­‐shadowed, in most diplomatic, policy,
and academic circles.
Second, there is little apparent official local or international interest in an examination of the
reasons efforts to relieve the tensions over water issues are stalling or failing. Too little
diplomatic attention is devoted to the causes of the near-­‐war over Lebanon’s Wazzani
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