This commentary is an excerpt taken from a new CSIS Middle East Program report, The Thirst for Power: Overcoming the Politics of Water in the Middle East.
The Middle East is no stranger to water scarcity and violence. For centuries, conflict has exacerbated water insecurity and vice versa. But the region is now at a tipping point. Groundwater aquifers are running dry or becoming contaminated, populations are exploding, and borders are more hardened than ever, making resettlement—a time-tested survival strategy—impossible.
Nowhere are these issues more evident than in the Palestinian territories. In initial plans for the CSIS edited volume: The Thirst for Power: Overcoming the Politics of Water in the Middle East, the Palestinian territories were meant to be among the case studies. But the events of 2023 and 2024 swept away any notion that CSIS could conduct a timely, forward-looking study of what was possible there. Even before the most recent conflict, conditions in the West Bank and Gaza exemplified the danger of applying an apolitical lens to a political problem. As is the case across much of the region, water security fell prey to the lack of political progress on resolving underlying conflicts. Without that political progress, donor governments and aid agencies have resorted to applying technical fixes to political problems. But in the Palestinian territories, as in much of the world, water insecurity has been a sign of deeper dysfunction.
A Palestinian boy carries a water-filled jerrycan in the West Bank village of Qarawat Bani Zeid on August 7, 2009, after international and Israeli human rights organizations brought a truck carrying water to the village as a sign of protest to Israel against water shortages.
Photo: Menahem Kahana/AFP via Getty Images
For decades, Israel has restricted West Bank Palestinians’ freedom to cultivate land, rehabilitate infrastructure, or build wells and desalination plants, while simultaneously being very permissive of Israeli Jewish citizens—including settlers’—requests to do the same. As a result, around 180 Palestinian communities in rural areas of the occupied West Bank have no access to running water, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). In Gaza, even before the current hostilities, it was difficult for Palestinians and donors to build adequate desalination facilities to treat enough contaminated and brackish groundwater to rescue the endangered Coastal Aquifer, upon which the 2.3 million people living in Gaza depend for water. For political and security reasons, Israel has also wanted to develop Palestinians’ reliance on Israeli supplies of water and energy, which the Israeli government has sometimes interrupted. The recent conflict has laid bare this asymmetry. At the start of the conflict, the Israeli government immediately cut almost all of Gaza’s access to water, energy, and food. As the conflict in Gaza has raged for months, clean water has become scarce, and polio has reemerged after 25 years, when untreated sewage flowed into the streets.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a particularly egregious example of what happens when donors, mediators, and communities are unable to resolve political challenges to water security. Political issues constrain both sustainability and equity in all case studies evaluated in this volume, as well as all over the world. Governments decide how and where to spend money, and vested interests (e.g., polluting industries, warlords, and farmers) can play an outsized role as well. Even in the United States, local tax revenues—and the associated political and financial power—often dictate where infrastructure will be rehabilitated or built. Flint, Michigan, is a case in point.
Flint, a predominantly Black and poor community, will forever be synonymous in the United States with its water crisis. Local authorities dismissed concerns of high lead levels in the water in order to cut costs. But much like the Middle East, water insecurity was present both before and after Flint’s lead-laden water became headline news. Flint’s woes stemmed from historic marginalization, not local authorities’ inability to provide safe water for residents.
Given these difficulties in the world’s richest and most powerful democracy, it may seem quixotic to prioritize water security within the existing disorder of the Middle East. But despite the challenges, water can no longer be put on hold in the region. Countries have been living beyond their means to avoid war and instability. But equating the absence of a direct water war with cooperation or peace has been dangerous.
Palestinians cross a street flooded with sewage water in Deir el-Balah in the central Gaza Strip on July 23, 2024, as municipal infrastructure collapses as a result of Israeli bombardment of the besieged Palestinian territory amid the ongoing conflict with Hamas.
Photo: Eyad Baba/AFP via Getty Images
Local conflicts and human insecurity have increased, even as countries have not gone to war over water. For weaker parties, war has not been an option. Rather than immediately resort to violence, those most affected by water insecurity—the poor, the marginalized, and weaker states—have simply tried to cope. They have used less water as governments have begun withholding or rationing water for certain communities. As water and sanitation services have deteriorated, people have resorted to buying expensive bottled water and relying on water trucking if they can afford to. Those who cannot afford bottled water have gotten sick. Farmers lucky enough to be able to drill deeper for water have done so. Those that cannot have moved, when possible. They have sold their possessions, married off their daughters earlier than planned, and sent their sons and husbands to work in cities, where they have often been seen by urban populations as an added burden on already limited services. Weaker downstream riparians have tried to cope rather than fight, but regional tensions and violence have increased as a result.
Now, these coping mechanisms are reaching a breaking point throughout the Middle East, with some communities forced to accept emergency rations of water and falling victim to previously eradicated waterborne diseases like cholera and polio. A third of the countries in the Middle East are embroiled in active conflicts, and many others are hosting refugees or are affected in some way by neighboring conflicts. Not only is there no end in sight to these crises, but they seem to be getting worse.
Unemployment rates remain high; water is running out; the energy transition is coming, as are other great powers and regional powers, who will have their own agendas. In Jordan, youth unemployment reached as high as 50 percent in 2020. More and more Jordanians are finding illegal pathways out of the country. At the same time, every country in the Middle East and North Africa will experience extreme water stress by 2050, meaning that all will be using at least 80 percent of their available water supplies. If oil prices fall, producers like Iraq will be far less able to absorb the unemployed into the public sector or provide basic services. At the same time, global competition will allow countries to play great powers off one another, lessening the pressure from any one donor government to reform governance. Dealing with the seismic social and economic shifts of the next decade will require thoughtful planning, but the region is currently mired in crisis management, with international interest diminishing and aid budgets plummeting. And even with generous aid, problems like conflict, financial troubles, and water insecurity persist. Across the region—especially in Iraq, Lebanon, Egypt, and Palestine—the United States and other international donors have spent tens of billions of dollars on water security. It is time to reconsider how these funds are spent, not cut them off.
To achieve better outcomes, the politics that have brought the region to this inflection point cannot be ignored. For decades, Western governments, as donors and political stakeholders in the Middle East, have prioritized short-term stability over long-term sustainability and human security. Across the region, governments have feared systemic reforms would tip a delicate political balance out of their favor. Western governments have shared their concern. As a result, many reforms and regulations have either never been implemented or were weakened. Due to the political challenges of reform, governments and donors have focused on building dams, exploiting groundwater, and building desalination plants. Few of the countries covered in this volume have adequately pursued wastewater treatment and reuse, targeted water theft and leakage, enforced more moderate water usage, or negotiated fair and sustainable water-sharing agreements.
This volume does not shy away from the political challenges to water security when examining the most complex cases in the region. Rather, the authors acknowledge the many hurdles and the motivations of various stakeholders, thereby outlining feasible steps toward more sustainable and equitable water management.
Syria and Yemen are perhaps the most challenging cases. Embroiled in conflict for years, both societies struggle to invest in long-term solutions to their increasingly existential water insecurities. Donor governments and private investors are reluctant to support possible solutions, and sometimes are even legally constrained from doing so. Nonetheless, authors Lyse Mauvais and Dr. Mohammad Al-Saidi both argue that there are small steps that the international community can and must take to set both areas on a more sustainable path. Building local capacity and monitoring capabilities would allow communities to measure the extent of their water problems and advocate for solutions with authorities and donors. Connecting local experts and civil society to the wider world could also make local authorities and vested interests more accountable and build awareness of concrete solutions. In the cases of Sana’a and northeastern Syria, these solutions include diversifying and incentivizing drought-resistant crops and ensuring that water is part of peace negotiations.
International actors can also play a diplomatic role. In northeastern Syria, they can encourage Turkey to release more water and cease the destruction of vital infrastructure. In Yemen, they can encourage warring parties and diplomats to incorporate water management into negotiations, including incentives for rehabilitating and building water-related infrastructure and concessions on access, human rights, and security. Both authors argue that such steps will be vital for national and global security as these areas grow unable to absorb the unemployed or provide food and water for their people. Destabilizing internal and outward migration will be inevitable without these measures.
A young boy stands near sheep during a sandstorm in the countryside of Tabqa on June 2, 2022.
Photo: Delil Souleiman/AFP via Getty Images
In Basra, the obstacles to reforming the agricultural sector are so wide-ranging that the authors have focused on one aspect of water insecurity that is reasonably surmountable: the provision of safe drinking water and preparation for further urbanization. Those steps will not solve all of Basra’s problems, but they are necessary and feasible in the current environment. However, the authors also outline reasonable steps that may encourage greater cooperation in agricultural and transboundary management—the greatest potential sources of water security in the country. Recommendations include linking water to other areas of concern for transboundary neighbors, like trade and security.
Regarding Jordan, Dr. Neda Zawahri argues that the government should work with civil society and local leaders to frame stewardship of water resources as a patriotic and social justice issue. Part of this effort will be enacting reforms in a transparent and universally accountable way, while providing ample investments and sufficient time to ease the transition. At the regional level, Zawahri acknowledges the need for water-stressed Jordan to develop its own water resources to overcome the long-standing political challenges to transboundary, multilateral water deals. Indeed, the data shows that Jordan will need to pursue multilateral efforts, domestic desalination capacity, and greater domestic water-use efficiency just to meet the needs of its growing population by 2035.
Even with these more limited politically feasible steps to achieving water security, conflict, broadly defined, may be necessary. Contestation—defined as the divergence of goals, objectives, expectations, methods, and behavior—does not have to amount to violence or coercive cooperation. It is the way such conflicts are approached that will define the future of water security in the region and the potential for violence. Avoiding the political realities of extreme water insecurity is leading to more crises, which could cause further instability in the future. Eminent scientists and academics briefing the UN General Assembly have already noted that disputes over shared water resources will rise due to changes brought on by climate change and growing human demands for water. In all of these areas, employment in security services or armed groups is fast becoming one of the most important and last remaining livelihoods opportunities.
Despite the bleak predictions, this new CSIS volume contends that while disagreements are inherent to the quest for equitable and sustainable water management, violence is not inevitable—provided stakeholders, including regional governments, non-state governing actors, and donor governments, take decisive action. In some cases, that action will require more financial investment. More often than not, however, it will require different strategies. The current investments of time and resources should be shifted toward endeavors in which donors, governments, and lenders consider stakeholders’ incentives and follow the projects through, ensuring that some stakeholders do not become spoilers. For example, donors and governments should work toward building civic consensus around the need for wastewater treatment plants, emphasizing the upsides and debunking negative assumptions. Governments should not simply cut farmers off from using water or cultivating all of their land; they should assist farmers in transitioning to less water-intensive crops and farming methods. At the transboundary level, more diplomatic investment is needed to open paths for solutions that are not politically feasible today. In other words, donor governments with influence over upstream countries should encourage them to prioritize equitable water sharing. Downstream countries should manage domestic water sources more carefully, but they should also strengthen their diplomatic, economic, and security cooperation with neighbors to ensure that they are diversifying their leverage.
The choice is stark. Either change course or face far greater challenges in the future. The Arab Spring and the subsequent conflicts have shown that the status quo is untenable. Those movements shook the region. As the aftershocks have continued, mistrust has increased between communities and countries, all while investment interest has decreased—yet both trust and investment will be crucial to achieving water security.
Despite these challenges, time is of the essence. Rather than sidestepping the political challenges, this volume provides concrete steps to incentivize change among actors currently benefiting from an unsustainable status quo. To do so, countries must enlist reform-minded government officials, donors and international stakeholders, warring parties, civil society, farmers, and aid agencies. Each player must play a part in leveling the field. If they do not, inequity will widen, a growing swath of territory will become unlivable, and conflict—violent conflict—will break out and spill across borders. By implementing the solutions outlined in this report, countries can avert a looming crisis and pave the way for a more stable future.
Natasha Hall is a senior fellow with the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.
This commentary is an excerpt from a full report, The Thirst for Power: Overcoming the Politics of Water in the Middle East, which was made possible through Sheikh Bahaa Hariri’s generous support for the Middle East Transformation Initiative.
