Pic nic table talks. By fall of 1990, agreement seemed to be taking shape, by which Israel agreed to the concept of the dam , and discussions on a formal document and winter flow allocations could continue during construction, estimated to take more than five years. Two issues held up any agreement: first, the lack of Syrian input left questions of the future of the river unresolved; second, the outbreak of the Gulf War in 1991 overwhelmed other regional issues, finally pre-empting talks on the Yarmuk. The issue was not been brought up again until the Arab-Israeli peace negotiations. A regional peace agreement was considered a prerequisite to build the Unity Dam. By 1991, several events combined to shift the emphasis on the potential for "hydroconflict" to the potential for “hydrocooperation”.24 The first event was natural. Three years of below-average rainfall in the Jordan basin caused a dramatic tightening in the water management practices of each of the riparians, including rationing, cutbacks to agriculture by as much as 30 per cent, and restructuring of water pricing and allocations. Although these steps placed short-term hardships on those affected, they also showed that, for years of normal rainfall, there was still some flexibility in the system. Most water decision makers agree that these steps, particularly regarding pricing practices and allocations to agriculture, were long overdue. The next series of events were geopolitical in nature. The Gulf War in 1990 and the collapse of the Soviet Union caused a realignment of political alliances in the Middle East that finally made possible the first public face-to-face peace talks between Arabs and Israelis, in Madrid on 30 October 1991. The end of the Cold war has been regarded as a reason for the absence of conflict over water because a single super-power had emerged “in maintaining a version of regional stability” (Xxxxx 2004) or in creating a regime of “hegemonic cooperation” (Lowi 1993). While the region was still in the throes of drought, water was mentioned as a motivating factor for the talks. Jordan was squeezed hydrologically between two neighbours attempting to reinterpret prior agreements, but otherwise had no major territorial disputes with Israel. A researcher at the Middle East Studies Center in Amman therefore suggested that “Jordan was being pushed to the peace talks because of water”.25 It was an open secret that very senior representatives of the Israeli and Jordanian governments had been meeting for so...
