Martin Sherman

Diasporic transnational financial flows and their impact on national identity

Financial transfers from diasporic community to recipients in the homeland have long been a prime vehicle for fostering changes in identity ‐ usually consonant with the world‐view of the provider of the funds. A conceptual framework is proposed for the analysis of these identity‐related flows. It identifies the components of national identity, specifies the major channels for the exertion of diaspora influence, and describes the fluctuation of this influence over time as the nation status of the homeland becomes more secure and established. Diasporic communities may not only be the result of international volatility but, through financial flows, may be an important stimulus for identity shifts and the changing role of the state in the international system. The case of Israel and the Jewish‐American diaspora illustrates the validity of the suggested framework and its implications for international relations.

The Dual Menace to Israel’s Water Resources: Deteriorating Quantity and Quality

Insufficient quantities of naturally occurring water to satisfy demand is not the only obstacle to sustainable rational management of the Israeli water system. An additional — albeit causally related phenomenon — represents perhaps an even greater and more urgent cause for alarm.1

The Waters of the Mountain Aquifer: an Inevitable Source of Conflict

The viability of any political settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute will necessarily hinge on the question of how authority over various resources and activities affected by that settlement is to be distributed and administered. Obviously water resources, their utilization and their preservation, are a particularly acute case in point. Indeed, in the view of not a few analysts, this is seen as one of the most crucial and intractable of all issues on the agenda. For example, Shuval designates ‘the shared use of the mountain aquifer’ as ‘[o]ne of the main issues under dispute between Israelis and Palestinians’,1 while — somewhat more ominously — Kliot warns that the ‘water and land resources of the West Bank present the most important obstacle to any possible political solution for the conflict situation in the [Middle East]’.2

Will Water Quench or Fuel the Flames of Animosity

The potential for violent conflict over water in the Middle East has been noted by various students of the hydro-politics of the region. Although different shades of emphasis have been attributed to the problem, a widely pervasive consensus as to the gravity of the impending threat seems to prevail among most analysts.

The Kinneret: A Vital, Volatile and Vulnerable Water Source

The issue of control and authority regarding the Mountain Aquifer raised by former agriculture minister Katz-Oz and discussed in the preceding chapter is no less relevant with respect to the Kinneret, which is Israel’s only major surface-water reservoir. The long-term annual average output of the lake — which is approximately 8 km wide and 20 km long — provides roughly one third of the supply to the NWS via the National Water Carrier. However, as has been stressed in previous chapters, this supply is highly variable and volatile.

Middle Eastern Realities: Stable Geology and Volatile Politics

Politics in the Middle East are among the most volatile world wide. Indeed few areas can claim the dubious honour of being more turbulent and tumultuous. The nature of this innate regional instability is aptly conveyed by Hillel who, in his comprehensive and erudite survey of the water situation in the region, observes that: The troubles besetting the nations of the Middle East are many and varied. Among them are wide disparities of wealth between an affluent few and an impoverished multitude, thwarted national aspirations, disputed borders, religious fanaticism, indiscriminate terrorism, ethnic civil wars, and megalomaniac dictators. These afflictions and more combine to make the Middle East one of the world’s most unstable regions.1

Resolving Conflict over Water: Separating Fact from Fantasy

It is common practice for many works dealing with the water issue in the Middle East to devote attention to a discussion of the possibility of resolving the problem in an overall regional context.1 There appears, however, to be no real consensus as to how best to go about defusing the region’s potential for conflict over water. Yet no matter what the eventual details of such a solution may be, one thing seems reasonably certain: given (a) the overall physical shortage of water in the region, and (b) the dependency of supply on natural precipitation in a climatically arid part of the world, any effective attempt at resolving the problem will have to involve the long-term development of enterprises aimed at increasing the overall supply of water to the area by means which are independent of the vagaries of the weather.

The Hydro-Political Significance of the Oslo Accords and ‘Peace Process’: Policy Options and Imperatives

In the Introduction to this book, I stated that I would endeavor to restrict the meaning of the word ‘politics’ to David Easton’s definition of it as the `authoritative allocation of social values’ (p. xii).1 Accordingly, hydro-politics would be defined as that branch of politics which deals with the authoritative allocation of social values that pertain to hydrological resources. In this sense, the hydro-political implications of what has come to be called the ‘peace process’ would refer to the effects of this process on the allocative authority and control of the various participants in the Israeli—Arab conflict over the hydrological resources in the region. In this regard it is important to remember that, as argued in the preceding chapter, under existing geopolitical conditions in the Middle East, synergetic inter-state cooperation remains a remote possibility. In such circumstances, the hydrological context is to a large measure a zero-sum one. As one Israeli water specialist put it: ‘If I have it, then you don’t have it.’ This is an assessment of the situation that has been made by several other analysts. For example, Kliot concurs with Naff’s description of the situation as a`highly contagious, aggregated, intense, salient, complicated zero-sum power and prestige-packed crisis issue, highly prone to conflict and extremely difficult to resolve’.3

Water: A Vital and Scarce Strategic Resource

Ever since the latter part of the 1980s, there has been a growing awareness of Israel’s dire water shortage. Today, although there may be considerable dissension as to the nature of the appropriate solution, there does seems to be an ever-widening consensus as to the severity of the situation — at least in terms of the physical deficiencies involved.1 Indeed, in many respects, the crisis is already so serious that it has exceeded the limits of an economic problem, in which an appropriate pricing system may serve as an adequate device for long-term allocation, and has assumed the dimensions of a strategic one, which impinges upon the very physical survival of the country.2

Supply and Demand for Water in Israel

At present, the overwhelmingly predominant proportion of Israel’s urban water demand is supplied from three major sources which comprise what is known as the National Water System (hereinafter the NWS):1 1. Lake Kinneret (or The Sea of Galilee) — which is the country’s only major surface water source and whose drainage basin comprises the northern portion of the Jordan and its; principal tributaries. As seen in Map 2.1, the major portion of this drainage area falls within the Golan Heights. 2. The Coastal Aquifer2 — which extends eastwards along almost the entire length of Israel’s Mediterranean shore-line between the southern approaches of Haifa in the north and Gaza in the south. See Map 2.1. 3. The Mountain Aquifer — in particular the western portion thereof, the Yarkon-Taninim aquifer (named after the two rivers which discharge from it into the Mediterranean Sea). The Mountain Aquifer extends from the eastern fringes of the coastal aquifer under the hills of Judea and Samaria (the ‘West Bank’).