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in it are somewhat tendentious. This fact carries direct implications for these
researchers’ conclusions, as a convincing outcome cannot be reached with the use
of wrong assumptions and problematic data.
This does not mean that every study of Oregon State University was without
value. Wolf’s team went a step farther when they looked for the characteristics
of the outbreak of disputes over water. They found a correlation between the
development of a dispute over water and high population density, low GDP,
low financial activity indexes, previous hostile relations between neighbors, the
presence of many minorities in the common drainage basin, and also development
and construction of waterworks in the drainage basin, including dams and water
carriers (Yoffe et al. 2003).
So not surprisingly, based on these data the semi-desert Middle East, undeveloped,
populated by tens of millions of people of scant means, locked in ethnic, religious
and communal conflict, political and geopolitical disquiet, and disdainful of good
neighborly relations, occupies a prominent place in the list of violent regions in
dispute over water.
Nor is it surprising that Israel, unique among its neighbors which possess the
most conflictual drainage basins in the world (Nile, Euphrates-Tigris, Jordan), has
won a salient place in the database due to the meticulous media surveillance of all
the country’s struggles, conflicts and wars (Map 1).
The potential for conflict exists in Africa, Asia and South America as well. But
the researchers highlight the Middle East and Israel to such a degree that the
impression is created that water wars are the business of Israel and its neighbors
alone.
The conclusions of the Oregon State University team have won extensive
international acclaim, and loud media noise, among other reasons because their
optimistic statements have fallen on ears yearning for “messages of peace,”
“fellowship of nations” and “peaceful coexistence” (Barnaly 2009; Ahituv 2014).
The questions that critique the foregoing conclusions concern the databases’
problematic nature, particularly regarding the factors that constitute them (their