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Dr. David Newman, founder and chair of the Politics and Government Department at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, addressed three major components of the geopolitical discourse in Israel and the West Bank. Dr. Newman began his lecture by asserting that discussions of security, water, and settlement issues must be prefaced with a determination for conflict-resolution, and with a resolve to establish two states, with two territories determined by a strong border.

Dr. Newman defined the Green Line, a boundary that separated Israel from the West Bank between 1949 and 1967, as the starting point for the discourse. The Green Line, what he described as a “socially poor” boundary that divided Palestinians into both residents of the West Bank and Israeli citizens, resulted in the “creation of different social and demographic structures amongst a people who were once a single ethnic and national group.” This boundary, declared in the Rhodes Agreements after Israel’s War of Independence in 1948 and 1949, exists today as an informal 35-year-old administrative line, separating civilian Israel from occupied territories in the West Bank, and delineating between two different legal and structural systems. No official Israeli map shows the Green Line boundary, although Israel’s municipal maps stop at the Green Line. The Green Line remains today as the “default image” of the region. The 1993 Oslo Accords’ use of “West Bank” and “Gaza Strip” gave it a formality, which it no longer officially possesses.

Israel’s security discussions, until recently, focused on retaining control of the Jordan Valley and the Golan Heights. The Jordan Valley, Israel’s eastern border, provided Israel with a defense from incursions of petty armaments and allowed more control of the West Bank. Israel perceived that the loss of control of the uplands would impart Palestinians with the military advantage of stationing weaponry that would overlook Israeli cities. During former Prime Minister Barak’s administration, Barak surprised his army by saying that Israel no longer needed the Jordan Valley to ensure security in the region. Today, the security threat is nuclear, rather than a military threat directed at micro-territories; thus, the security discourse is no longer the prevalent issue in Israel’s geopolitical discussions.

Dr. Newman presented the water issue to be as conflict-inducing as both the security discourse and settlement concerns. Water in Israel and the West Bank is scarce. The population is growing, and consumption habits are increasingly more “domestic and Western.” A single aquifer provides water to the two areas, underlying the coastal plain of Israel and the greater part of the West Bank. The aquifer is beginning to show signs of salinity, and tensions are increasing about rights of exploitation and drilling of new wells. Water continues to be piped into all Israeli settlements in the West Bank, while growing Palestinian communities are not always allowed to drill new wells to obtain the water for their domestic needs. The international community proposed a Tennessee Valley-type approach involving Israel, the West Bank, Jordan, and an outside mediator to negotiate the issue; however, both Israel and the Palestinians expressed that they want independent and unilateral control of the resource. The Israelis and Palestinians foresee sharing the aquifer as detrimental to their potential efforts in a conflict or war. The international community sees their reluctance to destroy an aquifer that they share with an enemy as a possible facilitator of peace. Recent approaches to the issue include technical solutions for desalination, equal access plans, and increase of the water supply by importing from Turkey.

Settlements vis-à-vis the boundary between Israel and the West Bank constitute the final component of the geopolitical discourse of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Not including east Jerusalem, 200,000 settlers reside in the West Bank. 65% of the settlers live in clusters close to the Green Line boundary, and 35% live in more upland areas of the West Bank. The more ideologically committed settlers of the interior parts of the region believe that the land was given by God, liberated in 1967, and cannot be conceded in the future. The majority of the settlers, on the border of the West Bank, participated in suburban colonization driven primarily by economic incentives, including low mortgage rates and cheaper land. The challenge of settlements with regard to agreeing upon a boundary necessitates consideration of territorial compensation and territorial exchange, both previously taboo. The 35% of settlers in the interior region will, once an agreement on a border is reached, have to evacuate. Proposals such as expanding and enlarging the Gaza Strip have been suggested in response to the potential evacuation of settlers.

Dr. Newman concluded by reiterating his point that any resolution must be reached through the agreement for continuous, compact territories on both sides of the Green Line. In past negotiations, 85% of the fine points of these issues were addressed, and approximately 80% were resolved. Dr. Newman explained that the absence of the “big issues,” a willingness for discussion and mutual efforts toward peace, are hindering the development of the smaller problems’ solutions.