Joint mismanagement: reappraising the Oslo water regime

This chapter offers a critique of the Oslo II regime for the joint management of the West Bank’s water resources, systems and supplies, arguing that this regime should more accurately be thought of as evidence of ‘joint mismanagement’. The argument is threefold. First, that the Oslo II regime was premised on a chimera of ‘cooperation’, which differed in little more than name from the occupation regime that predated it. Second, that the Oslo II regime was a license for environmental destruction, especially of the West Bank’s Eastern Aquifer. And third, that the structure of the Oslo process as a whole militated against the development of effective institutions and against ‘good governance’, in the water sector as elsewhere. The collapse of Oslo should not blind us to the fact that the Oslo II regime does not represent a good model for joint Israeli-Palestinian water management