Draft, please do not cite without permission. Water Multiples in Israeli Politics

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1 Water Multiples in Israeli Politics Paper prepared for Environmental Politics Workshop Berkeley, October 2010 Samer Alatout Department of Community and Environmental Sociology Gaylord Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies Department of Geography Center for Culture, History, and Environment Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment

2 A couple of weeks ago I sent along my paper that will be the basis for our discussion at the environmental politics workshop. I did not have the time to change the framing of the paper to be relevant to my current thoughts. However, I wanted to give you ample time to read and think about the paper itself, so, I sent it as is. Now that I had some time, by no mean enough to give this justice, to reframe the discussion along the lines I intended initially, I am hoping that some of you might find the time to read these nine pages, assuming you read the full paper (if you haven t read the paper yet, I suggest you read the original paper first and then this piece). This reworking of the paper s framework points to the new directions of my research. It is a work in progress and I am introducing it in public for the first time. Your input would be very welcome and appreciated. Introduction While the conception of water resources as abundant, which was dominant prior to the establishment of the Israeli state in 1948 (Alatout 2009), was articulated with a decentralized form of Zionist politics, the emerging notion of water scarcity in the 1950s was articulated with an ideological commitment to a strong, centralized state (Alatout 2008). The shift from abundance to scarcity underscored a shift from decentralization to centralization, but also a shift from Jewish subjectivity grounded in settlement and immigration to Jewish subjectivity grounded in citizenship and the primacy of the state (Alatout 2007). Recent shifts from the notion of an absolute scarcity of water, inherited from the 1950s, to conceptualizing water s scarcity in economic terms underscore the neoliberal shift in Israeli politics and state since This translates into reconceptualizing water as a commodity, the preferable mode of exchange as the market, state regulation as hindrance to that freedom of exchange, and the Israeli subject as a global/neoliberal subject. But this paper is not exclusively about the transition of the conception of water from abundance to absolute scarcity to economic scarcity even though those shifts or tensions are interesting and occupy an important place in the following narrative. Nor is it exclusively about the link between these water conceptualizations and the various Jewish subjectivities (settler, citizen, and neoliberal) or Israeli forms of political organization (a decentralized Yishuv, a centralized nation-state, or a neoliberal state) they make possible.

3 In addition to underscoring the shifts mentioned above, this paper is also about two more things. First, it is about all of these transformations, orders, socionatures (take your pick) as assemblages. The argument here is that water as such is an unrecognizable object; I could even claim that water is just an abstraction that is insignificant for the daily lives of socionatures. It becomes an object; it is at once apparent and obvious only when it is enacted (Mol 2002). In other words, water does not pre-exist assemblages that give it form and content. But, further, and to make things even a bit more difficult, water is anything but singular, it is a multiple object, it appears to us in multiple forms depending on the assemblages we encounter: its properties depend on the assemblages through which it is enacted and through which it becomes an object. Second, this paper is also about the process by which these assemblages emerge, are contested, stabilize, and to a degree, coexist. For the purposes of this paper, water, in its becoming a multiple object, in its shifting properties and relations, in its changing and reverting back, is possible only through assemblages that, in order to be governable, need to be territorialized and populated. i In the following sections, I provide a historical narrative of water assemblages in Palestine and Israel between 1918 and the present. Just like water is multiple, the next section mixes history and theory together: it describes how different water assemblages were territorialized and populated, i.e., governed between 1918 and The second, third, and fourth sections focus on the government of different water assemblages (archeological, geological, biopolitical) and how those were territorialized and populated. In the fifth section I underscore the fact that these assemblages are not mutually exclusive; rather, some constitute the conditions of possibility of others. In the conclusion, I spend some time emphasizing the impact of such a case on our understanding of neoliberalism and globalization. What do they mean and entail when thought of through the framework presented here. I am especially puzzled by the fact that neoliberal forces in Israel had been for the most part left of center and progressive elements. This recalls to memory Sparke s notion of how neoliberalism is context contingent.

4 Water Multiples: territory, biopolitics, and neoliberal assemblages of water politics Archeological times. Water is a historical object, linking a distant Jewish past with a colonial and a Zionist present making possible a new project of colonization. For the colonial powers excluding the Zionist movement for the moment to avoid endless debates about the merits of its inclusion in modern colonialism water became rivers, more specifically, water became a naturalized framework for establishing borders and demarcating spheres of empire. The French and the British needed a natural framework (the historical significance of the Jordan River helped) for introducing the politics of empire to the region: France and the United Kingdome are now recognizable through water demarcations. The Jordan River and its tributaries, even if not borders themselves become borders in the discourses around them (Alatout manuscript under preparation): should the Yarmuk River be used to demarcate Southern (British influence) from Northern (French influence) Syria; should the West of the River be a separate mandate from the East; should the Litani River constitute the border between Lebanon (French) and Palestine (British); and, who is to use the waters of the Jordan, the Yarmuk, the Litani, etc. Regional rivers became frameworks for politics of empires demarcating spheres of influence that were both about territories and about subject populations. Both Empires needed the historical and archeological justification for the colonial project. For obvious reasons, the British Mandate over Palestine needed that more than the French did: their aim was to convert Palestine into the National Home of the Jewish Nation. Water, for the British in Palestine, was heavily articulated with biblical and archeological (read historical) narratives that justified and legitimized turning Palestine into the Home of the Jewish Nation. The same was important for the Zionists: archeology, history, and the Torah became anchors for the Zionist project of mass migration and for the creation of a National Home in Palestine. Water helped in the process: it was one of the objects that sutured well forces of history with the present Zionist project of migration and nation-building. Everywhere in Palestine evidence was produced of the water works of

5 the early Hebrews that were able to support millions within Palestine. Evidence was also obvious of the role of the Arab who destroyed water works, caused desertification, and emptied the land. In archeological times, water was abundant, Palestine had the potential to be heavily and happily populated, and water works to be renewed and make its present like its past. As for the present, all is needed is an industrious population who can save the land from its desecration by the its inhabitants who are nomadic. So, water is comprehended in two assemblages, at least, one that constitutes it as a border object (colonial project) and another that constitutes it as an abundant object of regeneration of a people and a land (Zionism). My argument here is not that there were these two assemblages only, but rather that water is not an abstract notion, that water as such is an impossible object (maybe the distinction should be between presence and materiality?). It is only recognizable in the process of becoming through and by these assemblages. And, even though one can point to frameworks of epistemology historical, archeological, biblical that were used to interpret and make water possible, what interests me here is the multiplicity of water as a material object: not the multiple meanings it acquires, but the multiple materialities it becomes: borders, resource for the regeneration, empires, nations in the making, material linkage between a past and a present, etc Geological times. Water is a territorial object and, as such, it is or should be a concern for sovereignty. This in and by itself should not be seen as an original insight. As a matter of fact, the insight here, if there is one, is how common and how dominant this perspective is not only in water policy circles in the Middle East and other parts of the world, but also in different scholarly works commenting on water management and conflict. ii The problem with this assumption is not that water-as-a-territorialobject is an impossible outcome of a technopolitical process. Or that water can never be such an object. On the contrary, water resources appear to us often as territorial objects. However, this should not be mistaken to mean that they are essentially or even primarily territorial. As a matter of fact, water has no

6 essential properties to speak of. Water as such is multiple and its multiplicities stem from the assemblages in which it finds itself. Conventional state theory and international relations start from the assumption that statesovereignty is essentially territorial. It is no wonder then that most social scientists welcome the notion that water is a territorial object: it allows them to successfully articulate water with the nation-state and its security. However, social scientists commenting on water resource management and conflict in the Middle East face great difficulties making such a case, given the immense complexities in water systems. Rivers and groundwater aquifers do not only flow through a number of states, thus making it difficult to make any sovereignty claims, they are also fed by numerous sources of water: rain, storm water, subterranean water flows, and springs, among others. Apprehending the territorial consequences of such complexities requires ingenious, though often conflicting, logics undergirded by the ability to mobilize police and armed force. iii The fact that water is seen as a territorial object, though not fully inaccurate, should be doubly qualified. First, rather than a pre-existing condition, the territorial property of water should be seen as the conclusion of a technopolitical process of articulation that places the nation-state and its institutions, the territoriality of the state, its security, and its sovereignty at the center of water management. This process is neither self evident, nor assured it is subject to numerous uncertainties, negotiations, collaborations, and doubts. The second qualifier here is that assemblages, like that of water, territory, nation, and state, are not stable or fixed. In this sense, the territorial property of water is a process rather than an object (Deleuze and Guattari): water is recognizable as a territory only in the sense that it is being constantly territorialized (becoming territory), which means it is also being deterritorialized and reterritorialized. As such, water s territorial properties are constantly changing, not only in the sense that they become either more or less dense, but also in the sense that water s territorial properties shift in importance and in how water presents itself. In the case of absolute scarcity, water is territorial in as far as it is articulated with the beginning of history (nation-state as the rebirth of Jewish history), geography (extending and defending the

7 borders of the nation-state), and empirical forms of knowledge (geology, hydrology, and engineering). Water s substance is the nation-state, immigrants and their settlements, desolate but promising deserts, border towns, and institutional and technical centralization Biological times. Water is a biopolitical object and, as such, it is and should be a concern of government. One of the most celebrated contributions of Foucault (1990) is that he cracks open the relationship between state and government and, since then, the two cannot be seen as coterminous. iv Foucault unseats territory and sovereignty as the only, or even most significant, concerns of government in modern and late-modern states. In their place, Foucault elevates populations, as individual subjects and as aggregates, to make them the central concern of government in their health, economy, security, and wellbeing. Even territory becomes a concern of government insofar as it is a property of population; the concern is over the quality of territory not its essence. Along with territory, water also makes the move. The concern now is not with its territorial properties at least that is what a concern with government suggests. The concern now is with water quality. Or, to be more accurate, the concern is now with the quality of life of the population delivered through a concern with water quality. Welcome to the environmental age. Since the late-1970s, concern for water was manifest in social scientific work that increasingly focused on the quality of life delivered through the quality of water: pollution, wastewater management, health, and economy. The haunting question is not water scarcity anymore, but rather the quality of life through the quality of water: its price, its cleanliness, and its pathogens. Important sciences shift to economics, health, and biogeochemistry. Water is about quality. It does not stop to be about territory altogether, but it becomes about the quality of territory inasmuch as that is relevant to quality of life. It is then articulated with the end of history (globalization as the ultimate expression of Jewish universality), economy (as a commodity), and new forms of knowledge (economics, realist policy studies, public health, environmental quality assessments, etc.).

8 Water multiple. Or, water is a bioterritorial object of government. Water is not territorial. It is not a biopolitical object either. It s neither. It s both. It is nothing. And it s everything. Water is multiple. Two important points: (1) the transition from one assemblage to another is not smooth. Nor is it certain. It is not even a transition. It s a compilation, a somewhat schizophrenic compilation of elements in tension or even, at times, straight opposition; and, (2) water as such is not important, nor is it possible. Water as an abstract form is insignificant. It becomes only when it is an object of government, when it is invested with territory and population, territorial- and biopolitics. This leads to the conclusion that water is multiple; it presents itself, is presented to us, through assemblages. One thing is for sure, from every angle, archeological time is haunted by a territorial and biological figuring of Palestine (see appendix I for examples). So are geological and biological times. This politics, I am calling bioterritorial politics, is on the move, defies capture. Its dynamism stems from three linked theoretical assumptions. The first is that when we talk of territory, we do not talk about a stable or a static object, but a process, a becoming that involves both deterritorialization and reterritorialization this is territorial politics. The second is that when we talk about population, we do not talk about a static object either, but a process, a becoming that involves the re- and deconstruction of categories of population this is biopolitics. But, in addition, I am here talking about a third process that makes any assemblage of water, population, and territory a moving target: articulation. When I say articulation I mean the re- and de-assembling of objects in order to make them governable On territorializing the neoliberal assemblage: neoliberalization disarticulates water from the nationalterritorial and articulates it as a commodity with a fuzzy notion of a market that is linked to an even fuzzier notion of globalization. But, what is usually ignored is the fact that the commodity travels along a line of capital that is spatially and territorially both coherent and expressive of relations of power. The case in Israel is replete with examples that demonstrate the spatiality and territoriality of a neoliberal rendering of water.

9 On populating the neoliberal assemblage: water as a commodity is disarticulated from the rights and responsibilities of Jewish subjects who are, for the most part and chiefly, citizens of the nation-state. Water as a commodity is now articulated with free individuals participating in the market place. That is how water subsidies to the kibbutzim were effectively canceled, how a uniform price is now under attack in favor of pricing water at the cost of delivery regardless of how varied that might be. This is not to even say anything about the privatization of new water projects, such as desalinization plants, and the introduction of the ability to pay as the main guarantee of water delivery. The Jewish subject at last joins other neoliberal subjects, measured in his or her ability to participate in the market place. The peace camp: It is puzzling that while neoliberal forces tend to be right of center in a number of places around the world, in Israel they tend to be left of center. The argument for water markets, pricing mechanisms that reflect cost, and other supply and demand policies have been championed by a number of neoliberalists who are for establishing peace with the Palestinians and with the Syrians (distancing themselves from a water fascism that plagued Israeli policymaker for a long time since the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza in 1967). Their arguments rest on the fact that the cost of satisfying all the water demands of all of the population living in Israel and Palestine wouldn t be more than $2 billion per year. (interview). Not only that, the same actors laugh off the presumed importance of the Golan Heights as a source of water, arguing that most of that water could be replaced with little cost to the state. A day of war with Syria over water, so the argument goes, would cost more than building and maintaining another water source (desalinization for example) for a number of years. i This relies in part on defining government as the continuous process of constructing and articulating population and territory. See Alatout 2006 and 2010 on the subject. ii These assumptions are apparent in explicit language, but often they are implicit and passed as commonsense.

10 iii This is one of the reasons that there is no International Water Law as such. A number of competing legal doctrines were negotiated since the 1950s, but none was successfully adopted. The agreed upon international water law, which was passed by the General Assembly of the United Nations in 1997, is not binding and only skirts the important conflicts and internalizes various tensions among those legal doctrines. iv John Dewey (1927) did the same a while ago.

LOUISIANA STUDENT STANDARDS FOR SOCIAL STUDIES THAT CORRELATE WITH A FIELD TRIP TO DESTREHAN PLANTATION KINDERGARTEN

LOUISIANA STUDENT STANDARDS FOR SOCIAL STUDIES THAT CORRELATE WITH A FIELD TRIP TO DESTREHAN PLANTATION KINDERGARTEN Standard 2 Historical Thinking Skills Students distinguish between events, people, and