Toward a New Foreign Policy.

Key Recommendations

* Rather than spending billions of dollars preparing Israel for conflict, the U.S. should focus on addressing the causes of conflict.

* To restore confidence in negotiated peace, Washington must emphasize regional security and reject both Israel's illegal land occupations and the economic interests of the U.S. arms industry.

* As part of a new approach to Israeli security issues, Congress should earmark a small amount of FMF assistance to finance Israeli water projects, with an eye toward increasing Palestinian access and supply.

Israel's overwhelming military strength ensures its national security and affords the U.S. the luxury of exploring new strategies to address Israeli personal security concerns. One scenario involves designating a small portion of current FMF monies as nonmilitary security assistance to address the underlying causes of rancor rather than preparing for armed conflict.

The worsening economic conditions in the Occupied Territories can in part be traced to restrictive Israeli water policies. Israeli expropriation of Palestinian ground water (and continued restrictions on Palestinian access to it) guarantees sufficient water for Jewish settlers, who consume five to six times as much water per capita as Palestinians. The meager amount of water left for Palestinians has a higher salt content, increasing soil salinity and reducing Palestinian crop yields, despite improvements in agricultural technology.

Given the importance of water to a Palestinian economy heavily dependent on agricultural production, the insufficient quantity and poor quality of water available to Palestinians represents a potentially dangerous source of conflict. Without an increase in water quotas, Palestinian economic development is severely hampered. Hydrologists estimate that 1,000 cubic meters per person per year is the lowest level at which agricultural and industrial development is still viable. Per capita water consumption for Palestinians in the Gaza Strip is a mere 137 cubic meters per person per year. Without more equitable water distribution policies, high Palestinian birth and immigration rates will further lower Palestinian living standards, already among the worst in the world. In such an event, popular Palestinian support--critical for a negotiated final peace with Israel will quickly evaporate.

Both Israel and the Palestinians have long understood water's security importance, designating it as a final-status issue on a par with Jerusalem, borders, settlements, and refugee rights. The geographical extent of Israeli occupation in Lebanon, the Golan Heights, and the West Bank was in part determined by access to water resources. As recently as March, three Israeli officials--Israel's minister for infrastructure, a former military chief, and an aide to Israeli President Ariel Sharon--mentioned the prospect of "a water war" in connection with a Lebanese village's decision to extract water from a local river.

Fortunately, water availability, unlike other final-status issues, can be addressed through U.S. assistance. Earmarking $250 million annually in FMF assistance to finance Israeli water projects--such as the development of the recently identified Negev aquifer, wastewater recycling and desalination plants, and new irrigation technology--would release an additional 400 million cubic meters per year of water for Israeli use. Congressional approval of this money should be linked to an equal reduction of Israeli water extraction from nonindigenous sources, providing Palestinians with an additional 170 cubic meters per person per year and greatly expanding the prospects for Palestinian agricultural and industrial growth.

Over the next six years this water initiative would cost $1.5 billion, less than 3% of projected levels of U.S. assistance to Israel. Projects to promote regional cooperation could also be financed through this shift, including a planned wastewater recycling and desalination plant in the Eilat/Aqaba/Taba region and the development of the Jordan River Valley, Dead Sea, and Arawa regions.

These types of projects would bolster Israel's security and enable the U.S. to realign its policies with its stated foreign aid objectives, which include poverty reduction, promoting sustainable economic growth, increasing agricultural productivity, and contributing to a higher quality of life through environmental health. Future uses of U.S. security assistance could include promoting economic interaction in the region through increased trade, joint development projects, and integrated energy generation and distribution projects, thus encouraging peaceful cooperation by increasing interdependence among the states in the region and thereby heightening the costs of conflict.

Originally designed to promote Israel's security, the FMF assistance program has become antiquated and counterproductive, based on an overly narrow view of Israeli security. A modest, FMF-financed water initiative is one way that the U.S. could refocus its efforts toward a more comprehensive and effective security strategy while avoiding the pitfalls of armament and helping to secure a stable and prosperous peace.

Joseph Yackley <[e-mail]> is a recent graduate from the University of Chicago, with master's degrees in Middle Eastern Studies and Public Policy Studies. He is currently preparing for a year in Germany as a Robert Bosch Foundation Fellow with a focus on economic development issues in the Middle East.