Comment on Munther J. Haddadin’s Diplomacy on the Jordan: International Conflict and Negotiated Resolution

Dr Uri Shamir is Director of the Stephen and Nancy Grand Water Research Institute, Technion — Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel. 1 Published in October 2001 by Kluwer Academic Publishers, Boston/ Dordrecht/London. A fascinating book, no doubt! Dr Haddadin recounts the history of ideas and plans for allocating the waters of the region to the various riparians, and of the conflicts, negotiations and agreements on the Jordan River, one of the world’s most famous international rivers. The story is told from the author’s personal perspective. Dr Haddadin became involved with the Jordan and its management in 1973, when he was made “second in command” of a government agency responsible for development of the Jordan Valley. He was Vice President of the Jordan Valley Authority (JVA) (1973–1982) and then its President (1982–1987), over a period of 14 years. Dr Haddadin participated from 1991 as a senior member of the Jordanian delegation to the Middle East peace negotiations, leading up to the Jordan-Israel Peace Treaty in October 1995. In 1997 he was appointed Minister of Water and Irrigation, and served until August 1998. During those years he participated in many bilateral and multilateral discussions on water and other matters, between Jordan and Syria, Israel and the Palestinian Authority. It is thus from a position of intimate familiarity with the events of some 25 years that he tells about “Diplomacy on the Jordan”. It remains to be seen whether other parties to the talks will agree with the details of his account, since some of it is quite definitely a personal interpretation of the events and what was behind them. Those facts that are included in the book may be accurate, but the story as a whole is quite certainly open to scrutiny by others. And from my perspective, as member of the Israeli water team during part of the period of negotiations, I find that my recollections, aided by my own notes, differ in some respects from those in the book. Further down I will return to this point, but first let me tell about the book itself. The book opens with a chapter on the history of plans for the Jordan River (some interesting details are relegated to Appendix 1). The geography and hydrology of the river could have been presented with some more detail, since they appear many times throughout the book. The map of the basin (Figure I.1) does not even show its boundaries, and tributaries on the west of the Jordan are largely missing. This comment relates to most of the maps in the book. In fact, while some are replicas of historical maps (for example Bourcart’s maps in Figures I.4 and I.5) these should not be expected to be proper geographical maps. However, other maps should have been improved, if they are to serve as a source of information. See, for example, Figure I.7 where it looks as if the border between Israel and Egypt in the Sinai is part of the Jordanian border, or Figure II.2, where the Arab Plan of 1954 is depicted, but cannot be read nor understood. The other sections of Chapter I cover the early plans for utilization of the Jordan and other rivers in the region (e.g., the Litany), put forth by a number of people. The chapter continues to the creation of Israel in 1948 and implementation of some of the plans. Chapter II is devoted to diplomatic efforts, starting with the first mission of Eric Johnston in 1953, through the Chas T Main/TVA Plan, the Arab Plan in 1954, and the Cotton plan proposed by Israel (1954). Figures II.1 and II.2 are hardly legible and not very useful. The total annual water allocations according to the three plans are summarized in Table 2.2. The figures should be viewed with caution, since the total amount allocated is not the same in the three proposals, as they consider different water sources. Johnston’s second round of shuttle diplomacy began in June 1954. From this point on, the account begins to draw on records and notes made by the participants. Sixty pages are devoted to a detailed account of the various meetings, including some direct quotations from the participants, drawn from minutes and memoranda. This is an interesting record of the meetings that can be verified by access to the original documents. There are some interesting points regarding the principles for allocation of international waters which were relevant at the time: for example, the position taken by Israel on “absolute sovereignty” (the Harmon Doctrine), on the one hand, and the Jordanian position on “absolute integrity” of the river basin, which were brought by Johnston to a compromise containing elements of both positions: water should be allocated according to the irrigation needs of the arable land in the basin that belong to each riparian (page 86). The allocations proposed by