Within the autonomous areas, the optimism engendered by Arafat in July 1994 gave way to a more cautious view of the future. The political freedom thought to have been promised by the agreement failed to quickly materialize and some of Arafat's actions have been perceived as autocratic and biased. He has kept his PLO patronage network firmly in place, installing formerly exiled old-guard Fatah officials in positions of power, at the expense of Gaza's younger activists. These actions have cost the PA the substantial grassroots support enjoyed by the local Fatah activists, who are seen as having paid their dues by organizing within Gaza under the pressures and dangers of the occupation, and who often served jail terms for their activities. Furthermore, many of Arafat's appointees "lack credibility or legitimacy within the community [and] are distrusted or hated, and, in some instances, even perceived as collaborators."20 The conspicuous consumption of many appointees in the face of Gaza's extreme poverty has further undermined the image of the new administration.
The most significant issue for the majority of Gazans is whether or not the PA can improve economic conditions. Since the implementation of limited autonomy, there have been visible signs of improvement - wealthy returnees have financed a construction boom. Nonetheless, unemployment has risen, and the grim living conditions of most Palestinians have not markedly improved.21 The PA has come under fire for relying on its police force to maintain control.22 Arafat himself has staked his position on the success of the peace process, yet since negotiations began, support for the process among Palestinians has fluctuated greatly, both within the Territories and in the diaspora. While most Palestinians remain supportive of Arafat, opponents of the process have been vocal: Arafat has on occasion been accused of losing sight of the goals of Palestinian nationalism, ignoring the Territories for which he is now responsible, trading away the gains of the intifadah, and tying himself to an Israeli agenda.
At first, disenchantment with the PA within Gaza was accompanied by vocal support for Islamist groups, such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad.23 In November of 1994, thousands protested at the funeral of an assassinated Islamic Jihad leader, and Arafat was roughed up by protesters and forced to leave the ceremony. The media described the protest as a reaction to declining conditions, the slow pace of reform, and Arafat's "hounding" of Islamic leaders in the Territories.24 While Hamas's leaders immediately issued an apology and called for unity, the incident illustrated increasing intra-Palestinian tensions within Gaza.
Initially, Arafat responded by adopting increasingly authoritarian measures, requiring that permits be issued for public gatherings and delaying the distribution of newspapers that allegedly exaggerated the number of people involved in pro-Hamas demonstrations. Numerous petitions for Arafat to reform his methods and increase his accountability to his constituents have had little effect. Shortly after the Accord was signed Edward Said wrote that "the leadership has so misunderstood its people that there is now simmering - and frequently open - revolt more or less everywhere that Palestinians gather and live."25
Since then, however, Palestinian support for Islamic radicals has fallen. Every time a bomb explodes in Israel - and Israel responds by closing its borders to Palestinian workers and trade - there is a popular reaction against Hamas and Islamic Jihad within Gaza. The result of Palestinian disillusionment with both the PLO and the Islamists has been rising political apathy and disengagement.
Environmental Scarcity and Violent Conflict: A Theoretical Overview
The environmental effects of human activity are a product of the total population in a region and that population's per capita physical activity. The vulnerability of the local ecosystem to this activity is also important. Both a higher population level and more intensive per capita activity lead to greater stress on the environment. The degradation of agricultural land, forests, water, and fish stocks are the critical environmental effects that contribute most to social turmoil.26 But it is important to note that it is not only degradation and depletion of these renewable resources - that is, reductions of total resource quality and supply - that causes turmoil. Rather, analysts should focus on the overall scarcity of resources.
There are three forms of "environmental scarcity." Demand-induced scarcity is caused by population growth or increased per capita activity; the resource must be divided among more people, or more intensive activity increases demand for its use. Supply-induced scarcity occurs with a drop in renewable resource supply because the resource is degraded or depleted faster than it is replenished. Structural scarcity arises from an inequitable distribution of resources - they become concentrated in the hands of a few people while the remaining population suffers resource shortages.
These three types of scarcity often occur simultaneously and interact.27 Two patterns of interaction are common: resource capture and ecological marginalization. Resource capture occurs when demand- and supply-induced scarcities interact to produce structural scarcity: anticipating future resource shortages, powerful groups within society shift resource distribution in their favor, subjecting the remaining population to scarcity. Ecological marginalization occurs when demand-induced and structural scarcities interact to produce supply-induced scarcity: marginal populations are often forced to migrate from regions where resources are scarce to regions that are ecologically fragile and extremely vulnerable to degradation.28
The links between environmental scarcity and conflict are neither inevitable nor deterministic. There are many possible "contextual" variables - from relations among ethnic groups and classes to national culture and prevailing market mechanisms - that affect the strength and kind of relationship between resource stress and violence. However, if these contextual factors prevent a society from effectively adapting to resource stress, four kinds of social effects are likely: decreased agricultural production, regional economic decline, population displacement, and disruption of legitimized and authoritative institutions and social relations.29 These effects, either singly or in combination, can in turn produce or exacerbate conflict that is generally "persistent, diffuse and sub-national."30
Theoretical Application: Water Scarcity in the Gaza Strip
Sandra Postel calls the Middle East the "region of the most concentrated water scarcity in the world," with nine out of fourteen countries facing water-scarce conditions.31 In Gaza, the water crisis is a function of population growth, an agriculturally intensive economy, a fragile water ecosystem, and a highly inequitable distribution of resources
Ecosystem Vulnerability and Overall Availability
Gaza's climate ranges from semiarid in the north to arid in the south. The warm climate causes high potential envirotranspiration,32 between 1,040 and 1,900 millimeters per year (mm/year) for Gaza as a whole.33 Of the average annual rainfall in Gaza (200-400 mm/year, which amounts to 117 million cubic meters (mcm) of total water from precipitation in Gaza's catchment area), only 40 percent is estimated to recharge the single freshwater aquifer underlying the territory, while the remainder is lost through surface runoff to the Mediterranean or to evaporation.34 Another 30 mcm of recharge comes from agricultural return flow, wastewater infiltration, and groundwater flow from the east,35 though the last may have decreased over the years due to a number of wells drawing reservoir water beyond the Green Line.
For its freshwater supply, Gaza relies almost entirely on groundwater drawn from its aquifer, with minimal amounts obtained from other sources, such as rooftop rainwater catchments.36 Gaza's aquifer is often only a few meters from the surface. It is also shallow, ranging in thickness from 120 meters near the coast to 10 meters in the east.37 Since it is near the Mediterranean and a deeper, highly saline aquifer,38 it is vulnerable to declining water levels, saltwater intrusion, and contamination from agricultural and industrial activity. Estimates of the aquifer's renewable yield vary widely, ranging from 25 to 80 mcm per year, with around 65 mcm the most frequently quoted figure.39
Some analysts of the region suggest that the water crisis in Israel and the Occupied Territories is solely a consequence of structural scarcity rather than of demand or supply pressures.40 This argument may be valid if one considers the water inventory of Israel and the Occupied Territories as a whole. However, Gaza's aquifer is relatively self-contained, which means that its water inventory can be considered independently. Moreover, although the water resources in the entire region are sparse, on a per capita basis they are nonetheless relatively abundant compared with those in Gaza. Although there are serious distribution problems in Gaza, high population growth and years of heavy extraction have produced a crisis of absolute water availability.
Structural Scarcity
Discriminatory water allocation and pricing structures have significantly contributed to the present crisis in Gaza. Throughout the occupation, Israel practiced blatant and formalized discrimination regarding Palestinian water consumption in both Gaza and the West Bank. In 1967, Israel declared all water resources in the Territories to be state owned and under the jurisdiction of the military. Strict quotas were placed on Palestinian consumption. To preserve Gaza's aquifer under the occupation, Military Order 158 (which applied only to the Arab population of Gaza, and not to Israeli settlers) prohibited the drilling of new wells or the rehabilitation of existing wells for any purpose without a permit.41 While restrictions applied to both Territories, limits may have been more difficult to enforce in Gaza, where the aquifer is close to the surface and relatively easy to access.
With the exception of minimal allowances for increased drinking-water demand, Palestinian pumping quotas were effectively frozen at 1967 levels.42 Measures to limit Palestinian water consumption included the uprooting of thousands of citrus trees, demolition of cisterns, and the blockage of natural springs and existing wells. Throughout the intifadah, Israeli authorities reportedly cut off piped water to Gaza and the West Bank as an instrument of social control. Extended curfews often prevented Palestinians from having normal access to water for domestic and agricultural purposes.43 As a result of a one-month curfew imposed on both Gaza and the West Bank in early 1991,
...some 2,500 dunums [250 hectares] of squash and additional dunums of fava beans were lost because farmers were not able to spray their crops at the appropriate times. Greenhouse agriculture on 10,000 dunums [1,000 hectares] in the Tulkarm region and in Gaza were also severely affected. The loss of grazing, brought on by drought conditions and exacerbated by the curfew has caused in one month estimated financial losses of $6 million.44
Conversely, Israelis in the Territories and in Israel proper face fewer restrictions on water drawn from the same sources, and they consume on average eight to ten times more than the Palestinians.45 These inequities have been a persistent source of tension. A UN report quotes a Palestinian farmer in Gaza:
Israeli authorities have forbidden anyone to dig a well to irrigate his citrus groves because "Gaza has no water." But at the same time, ten meters away on the other side of the 1967 border, they will dig not one well but ten. I myself have a farm and they have prevented me from digging a well on my own land, on the pretext that there is not enough water.46
Israel has also allocated resources in its favor through the selective appropriation of agricultural land, placing settlements in the most favorable areas in terms of groundwater quantity and quality and in terms of underground flow.47 In addition, several Israeli wells have been drilled in the catchment area of the coastal aquifer, which is inside Israel but along the border of Gaza. Palestinian water experts argue that these wells have reduced the flow of groundwater to Gaza.48 This has, however, been a point of contention among hydrologists. Israeli sources argue that these wells are blocking the flow of saline water which could damage the aquifer. Others contend that these wells draw on a separate part of the coastal aquifer system and do not affect Gaza's aquifer at all.49
Uneven pricing schemes are another cause of structural scarcity. Although weak institutions and deteriorating infrastructure provide barely adequate quantity and quality of water, Gaza Palestinians pay much higher prices than do residents in Israel and Israeli settlers in the Territories. Settlers receive significant subsidies, paying $0.10 per cubic meter (/m3) for water that costs $0.34/m3; Palestinians, who receive no subsidies, can pay up to $1.20/m3 for water from local Arab authorities.50 Relative to per capita income, Palestinians pay as much as twenty times what Israeli settlers pay for water.51
This pricing system does not reflect the vulnerability of the region's water resources: the heavy subsidization of Israeli farmers, especially in the Territories, promotes waste and overconsumption. Surprisingly, a large price differential also exists between the West Bank and Gaza for both Israelis and Palestinians; water is much cheaper in Gaza, yet the crisis there is far more severe.
The net effect of Israel's policies is to buffer Israelis from the effects of declining levels of water quality and quantity, while Palestinians bear the brunt of water scarcity. This inequity has contributed to a prosperous Israeli settler economy co-existing directly alongside a stagnant Palestinian economy. The consumption restrictions imposed on Palestinians and the widening water gap generate serious friction between these communities.