The
Jordan River: breaking down defenses.
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River flows
Jordan
Length: 322
km
Source: Mount Hermon
Mouth: Dead Sea
Countries: Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestinian Territories, Syria
Yarmouk
Length: 80
km
Source: Jordan-Syria border
Mouth: Confluence with the Jordan River
Countries: Israel, Jordan, Syria
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An
insider’s view on one of the most historic water agreements ever signed–the deal
between Israel and Jordan
By parking his purple
1979 Caprice further upstream he diverted the attention of the Israeli patrols on
the opposite bank of the Yarmouk. Slowly he made his way along the Jordanian side
of the river, until he reached a large eucalyptus tree where a dozen men waited with
ropes, axes and spades. Barely speaking, they lowered him down the six metres to
the water’s edge, before following him, one by one. “Give me that axe,” he told the
crew leader. “In the name of God, the Merciful and Most compassionate,” he said in
a low voice, before striking deep into the enemy–a sandbar over 20 metres wide which
had been diverting part of Jordan’s water share to Israel. It was 1984, ten years
before the two states would sign a peace treaty that included one of the world’s
most famous water-sharing agreements. The man who played a key role in masterminding
it also led that expedition.
“Whenever I think back on it, I choke,” says Munther Haddadin, former water minister
of Jordan. While clearly proud of his axe-wielding adventure, Haddadin doesn’t recommend
it as a standard negotiating technique. Instead, the civil engineer with a penchant
for international law offers more subtle, yet no less demanding lessons learned from
hammering out the historic water treaty with Israel.
“The trick is to try to transform the entire show into a positive sum game, so that
both sides view themselves as winners,” he says. For example, “a major concession
on our part was the recognition of Israel. I had to make the Israelis feel secure
but at the same time use this weakness as a card in my sleeve.”
Tales
of poisoning
As
Haddadin explains, all of the states along the Jordan River had agreed to their rightful
share of water in a plan drawn up with the assistance of an American diplomat in
1955. However, the technical resolution wasn’t translated into a political accord
because it would entail tacit Arab recognition of the state of Israel. Once Egypt
broke this taboo in 1979, Israel was anxious to continue the peace process and turned
to Jordan. To some extent, water served as a bridge in opening discussions between
the two states: a drought-stricken Jordan was losing part of its rightful share of
the Yarmouk River to Syria and Israel.
At first, Haddadin kept contact to a minimum, only discussing immediate technical
problems, like the famous sandbar, under the auspices of the United Nations Truce
Supervision Organization. With military escorts looking on, Haddadin and his Israeli
counterpart would meet midstream, standing in two feet of the river’s water. Slowly,
they got in the habit of pulling up sandbags to talk at a makeshift picnic table
along the Yarmouk. But it wasn’t until 1991 that the formal peace process began and
Haddadin began hammering out major water-sharing proposals.
Whether meeting in a hotel lobby in a foreign capital or the garden of Jordan’s Crown
Prince, “always avoid a stand-off,” says Haddadin. When Israelis balked at his demands
for more water, he would “beat around the bush” on economic grounds. “Let us see
who can afford to increase their supply by pumping or desalinating water,” he would
ask in order to highlight the gap in per capita income between the two countries.
“Do you think you will live in peace when your neighbour is starving?”
During the three years it took to forge a deal, Haddadin earned a reputation as a
staunch negotiator and a hothead capable of exploding unexpectedly, which he laughs
off as a “skill” to destabilize his opponents. But as he notes, you cannot just seal
a deal, you have to sell it. With kid gloves, he informed his fellow officials that
they didn’t own the country’s namesake and would have to share the water of the Jordan
River Basin. Despite personal attacks (namely false rumours that his American wife
was Jewish), Haddadin proudly watched the signing of the peace treaty with its water
annex in 1994 and later became minister of water and irrigation.
But Haddadin would pay for this glory in 1998, when residents of West Amman found
cloudy water running through their taps after a treatment plant failed to handle
high levels of algae. The water didn’t pose a serious health threat but it did spread
a noxious mix of nationalism and fear, as tales of Israeli poisoning spread through
the media and ordinary grapevines. “The panic was orchestrated from within Jordan
to bring down the government,” says Haddadin, who decided to resign as minister.
Since then, he has gone on to set the record straight in his new book.* While highlighting
his own role, the real heroes are the Yarmouk and Jordan Rivers. In the words of
Haddadin: “Water by its very nature, is used to extinguish fires, not to ignite them.”
* Diplomacy
on the Jordan–International Conflict and Peaceful Resolution (Kluwer Academic
Publishers, Oct. 2001) |
