Water Scarcity, Conflict and Compensatory Mechanisms: A Case Study of Israel and Egypt

A primary explanation for the lack of water-based conflict in the Middle East— despite a notably conducive set of circumstances for fostering this type of clash—can be understood by examining infrastructural and economic mechanisms in Israel and Egypt. From the two countries’ foundings to the present, this duo of strikingly different sovereign nations has increasingly used compensatory, patchwork infrastructural and economic mechanisms to prevent what might otherwise be—or perhaps, could long ago have been—a violent battleground for the planet’s most important resource. Without the piecemeal policies, trade agreements, government building initiatives, and drives in innovation, these two Middle Eastern countries might have already been in the midst of a bloody and rapidly deteriorating scourge of water-based conflict. Though water-based conflict does indeed seem imminent, if not for the deliberate efforts like those made by Israel and Egypt, the Middle East today would likely be in a much greater state of disarray.Bachelor of Art