Students propose water accord
|
|
|
|
|
Overlooking the Sea of Galilee, juniors Manan Shah (l), Mara Zusman, Nawal Atwan and Mazen Awais (Photo by Mara Zusman) |
Wilson School majors who studied Water Rights in the Jordan Valley this past semester are hoping their work will have a positive effect on something much greater than their grades: the Arab-Israeli peace talks.
After a semester of study, a week-long fact-finding trip to Israel and many personal debates among classmates, the class proposed an agreement for settling the contentious issue of how Israelis and Palestinians are going to divide up the precious supply of water in their region. And they have forwarded their findings to officials and water experts involved in the peace talks.
The class, one of several junior-year policy task forces that are required for Woodrow Wilson School majors, seeks to apply academic research to real-world policy-making. But for members of the class--seven juniors, two seniors and one graduate student acting as an adviser--the experience went beyond that, challenging them to wrestle with deeply divisive issues on a personal level and even forging friendships across cultural boundaries.
"It was amazing," said junior Mara Zusman. "People ask, What's so great about going to Princeton? For me, it'sthe chance to go abroad and study something you would otherwise only read in a book."
"It's an unparalleled way to learn," said task force director Hal Feiveson, who is a senior research policy analyst at the Princeton Environmental Institute and lecturer in public and international affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School. "It's also a very satisfying way to teach."
Seeing through others' eyes
The issue of water rights is among the principal subjects to be addressed in the Israeli-Palestinian talks, Feiveson said. The others are borders, security, refugees, settlements and the status of Jerusalem. In the arid country Israelis and Palestinians share, water resources are a crucial commodity for both sides. "It shouldn't be the most intractable issue, but it probably will be significant," said Feiveson.
Even in a class with just nine students, reaching agreement was not a trivial matter. Aside from mastering many technical issues having to do with the availability and distribution of water, the task force members had to reconcile sometimes strongly differing viewpoints among themselves. Among the group were three Jewish students and two Muslims (one from a Palestinian family, one a Canadian with Indian parents); one student was a Christian with Egyptian and Jordanian parents, and another a Hindu whose parents are from India.
"They really understood, I think, conflicting points of view, both among themselves and, in a broader sense, among the Israelis and Palestinians," said Feiveson. "They got a good sense of how to see things through others' eyes."
From the students' perspective, that reconciling of views was an extraordinary outcome of the class and, particularly, the trip. For the week they spent in Israel, from October 29 to November 6, the students were immersed in the issues. They met with academic experts and water resource officials from both sides and then talked among themselves for hours outside the scheduled activities.
One day, for example, the group met with Palestinians "who said things that some members of the group felt were offensive and even incendiary," said Zusman. "Then we were stuck on the bus for a couple hours and had to talk about it. Getting off the bus, you thought none of us would ever speak to each other again."
But the result was far otherwise. "All seven of us juniors are now really close friends," said Zusman. Zusman, who is Jewish and spent last spring studying in Israel, noted that she is now especially close to classmate Nawal Atwan, whose father is Palestinian. The group visited Atwan's grandmother in a village near Hebron.
|
|
|
|
A well in the Judean Desert outside Jerusalem (Photo by Mara Zusman) |
|
The trip also was valuable, according to Baum, because seeing the dryness of the land and visiting the wells and rivers themselves gave students a concrete sense of the problem. "It brings it all home, how important water is," he said.
Each class member wrote a paper, then the group pulled the papers together into a final report. "They were able to get a pretty sharp consensus about what could be done," said Feiveson.
300 million cubic meters
The final report presents a broad outline for how to divide up the two billion cubic meters of water that are currently available in the region per average-rainfall year. As a first step, the task force agreed that both sides should have enough water for human consumption and personal use based on established United Nations guidelines.
The remaining water, for industrial and agricultural use, would be divided based on the percentage of water that comes from the respective territories. The end result would be a shift of about 300 million cubic meters of water per year from the Israelis to the Palestinians.
The proposed accord also suggests a mechanism for trading water if either side does not need its entire share. And it proposes a joint authority to oversee a variety of issues including water quality and conservation.
Feiveson said that while other issues in the peace talks tend to be a matter of political tradeoffs, the water issue seemed to lend itself to cooperation, which made it an attractive subject for the task force.
He and the students acknowledged that their solution is somewhat idealistic. The proposal seems fair but may not hold up to the inevitable compromise of actual negotiations. Nonetheless, students said that one reason the task force was so effective is that their ideas will soon be tested and may even, in a small way, be heeded.
"We don't pretend to have definitive answers," concluded Baum. "But it was a fun thing to study; the trip was a great experience; we certainly learned a lot; and hopefully someone will take a look at our work."
Anyone who is interested can consult www.wws.princeton.edu/~wws401c/ for details of the proposed accord.
top