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High and dry: Palestinians have accused Israel of using the security wall to annex water supplies. (S. Nackstrand/AFP)

Water and the wall

When it comes to juggling science and politics, the hydrologists of the Middle East are experts. In this arid environment, deciding how to allocate the freshwater of the Jordan River and the aquifers below the West Bank will be a vital component of any peace agreement.

"Water in Palestine is not hydrogen and oxygen," says Abdel Rahman Tamimi, director of the Palestinian Hydrology Group, based in Ramalla. "It's politics." The sensitivity of the issue is highlighted by the fact that data on the amount of water extracted from aquifers by Israeli settlements on the West Bank have been declared a military secret.

Yet despite such obstacles to cooperation, Israeli and Palestinian hydrologists have a surprisingly good record of working together — producing reports that may prove invaluable in future political negotiations. Funding from abroad, meanwhile, has enabled new monitoring stations to be set up, improving knowledge of seasonal river flows and sources of pollution.

Today, however, there is a new problem: the 'security wall', now partly constructed, that will separate the West Bank from Israel. Palestinian hydrologists claim that it is designed partly to annex key water resources. The barrier, which the Israeli government says is necessary to restrict the movement of terrorists, at some points snakes several kilometres beyond the pre-1967 Israeli border, and has left some Palestinian farmers unable to reach their land. On the edge of Jerusalem, it slices through the campus of Al-Quds University, forcing staff and students to take detours lasting several hours to get to work.

The wall has also separated some Palestinians from their water supplies. When a World Bank-led team visited the initial section that had been built on the northwest border of the West Bank in May, it found a handful of sites where the barrier comes between Palestinian communities and the wells that they had used for irrigating their crops.

The Israeli authorities say that the wall's path is determined by the need to protect vulnerable Israeli settlements. They argue that problems with access to water will be resolved by putting gates in the wall, and by issuing permits to cross it.

But Palestinian hydrologists reject this explanation, and are convinced that the appropriation of water resources is one of the primary goals behind the wall's construction. "This will finalize the status of water rights before negotiations begin," Tamimi complains.

So far, only around 150 kilometres of wall have been built, and the Israeli authorities have not released details of its future direction. But by talking to villagers who say they have been approached by the Israeli army about requisitioning their land, Tamimi's hydrology group and other Palestinian non-governmental organizations have drawn a map of the course they believe the wall will take. This suggests that it will leave some 50 wells used by Palestinians on the Israeli side.

Israeli hydrologists see things differently. "The basic reason for the wall is security," argues Hillel Shuvel, professor emeritus at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and one of Israel's most prominent hydrologists. "I realize that injustices are being done, and these need to be corrected. But I don't accept that the goal is to steal water resources. That is paranoia."

Despite the proud record of cooperation between Israeli and Palestinian hydrologists, it seems some subjects are just too politically sensitive for the two sides to reach agreement.

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Know the enemy

Ariel Merari: seeking to discover what motivates armed militants

In May 2000, Ariel Merari persuaded an extraordinary group of people to sit around the same table. Several armed organizations, responsible for kidnappings, killings and bombings, sent representatives to Paris. There, away from the world's media, a group of academics probed the attitudes of people who have been vilified by their opponents as heartless terrorists.

In what Merari describes as a "cosy and informal setting", political scientists and psychologists met with members of groups including the Basque separatist organization ETA, the left-wing Colombian guerrilla group FARC, and armed militants associated with Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization. Through various role-plays, the militants were asked to act out the side of governments and armed rebels involved in confrontations.

Merari has made a career out of trying to understand people involved in armed uprisings. Trained as a psychologist at the University of California, Berkeley, his career trajectory changed dramatically after the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Then a reserve paratrooper, Merari was sent to the Golan Heights. His unit was trying to rescue colleagues pinned down by Syrian fire. "We were running towards the Syrians when I got a bullet in the chest," says Merari. "I was evacuated. If I had got to hospital two minutes later, I wouldn't be sitting talking to you now."

After this experience, Merari felt incapable of returning to his research on hormones and behaviour. "This ivory tower suddenly seemed too detached from the reality of Israel," he says. In the mid-1970s, his expertise as a psychologist earned him a place on an army hostage-negotiation team. Around the same time, he began to trawl the literature for work on terrorism — a direction that ultimately led him to Tel Aviv University to study the subject full-time.

Merari began to focus on suicide bombers in the early 1980s. One of his methods is the psychological autopsy. Through a trusted third party, Merari has conducted interviews with friends and families of most of the 36 shaheeds — the Arab word for martyr — who struck Israeli targets up until 1998. By combining these interviews with studies of bombers who were apprehended before they detonated their devices, he has been able to build up psychological profiles of the attackers.

None of the bombers seemed to need psychiatric help, nor were they feeling suicidal in the normal sense of the word. They came from a broad cross-section of Palestinian society. "There was no single psychological profile," says Merari.

More important than individual characteristics, Merari claims, is the role of the group that helps to organize the bombings. Many suicide bombers, Merari believes, volunteer in the heat of the moment, and are then placed under a 'contract of honour' from which they may find it difficult to back out. "Shortly before they are sent on their mission, most shaheeds are filmed declaring that they wish to be a martyr," he says. "It's hard to break something like that."

Equally important, Merari argues, is the role of a society that idolizes suicide bombers — posters depicting shaheeds are a common sight in Palestinian towns. "In this kind of atmosphere, many people say: 'I want to become a shaheed too'," says Merari.

Eyad El-Sarraj, director of the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme, argues that such attitudes are borne of a desperation to be free from Israeli rule. He says that many Palestinian youths feel that they should sacrifice their lives for the good of their people — a view that is strengthened by the belief that they will be rewarded for their actions in heaven.

In the long run, Merari believes that countering the wave of suicide bombings will require a sea change in Palestinian public opinion. He suggests that the Israeli army might become involved in distributing food and medical care in Palestinian towns, so that residents' experiences of the security forces are less uniformly negative.

For many Israelis, however, Merari's ideas are unpalatable. Following the recent upsurge in violence, security clampdowns are the order of the day. And for most Palestinians, Merari's suggestions simply miss the point — they want the Israeli army to withdraw from their towns, not to act like an aid agency.

For all of his desire to make a practical contribution towards peace, Merari is forced to admit that he has yet to reach out beyond the confines of academia. Asked whether politicians listen to his arguments, he responds: "Unfortunately, very little."

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Touched by terror

For almost a year, the unpainted door of Michael Beenstock's office in the Department of Economics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem served as a terrible reminder of the darkest day in Israel's academic history.

In July last year, builders were busy renovating Beenstock's department and other buildings on the university's Mount Scopus campus. On the final day of that month, one of the workers left a bomb in a cafeteria, close to Beenstock's office. Nine people — staff, students and visitors — were killed, and more than 80 injured. "Every day, that unfinished door reminded me of what happened," says Beenstock.

For academics who believe that research collaboration can help to defuse Israeli–Palestinian tension, the targeting of the Hebrew University was especially painful. Of all the universities in Israel, it has the strongest tradition of organizing joint projects. More than 20 collaborations with Palestinian researchers are still ongoing, and 45 new Palestinian students have enrolled for courses this autumn.

Memories of the bombing are still vivid. Beenstock was in his office at the time, talking with some of his students. "We heard a bang and thought the builders had caused an accident," he says. "Then we heard ambulances and knew it was a bomb."

Yousef Najajreh, a Palestinian researcher at the university who works on methods for drug delivery, was having lunch in a cafeteria on another of the university's campuses when the bomb went off. "My wife didn't realize there were different cafeterias," he says. "She knew I would be eating at that time. She was going crazy trying to call me, but the telephone network was down."

Najajreh condemns the attack on an institution that has tried to build links between Israelis and Palestinians, but says that he nevertheless found it difficult to approach Israeli colleagues in its immediate aftermath. "It's not easy for a Jew to see a Palestinian after people have been killed," he says.

Beenstock remains angry about the muted reaction from many of the Hebrew University's Palestinian students. On the day of the bombing, he had spoken to an Arab postgraduate whose PhD thesis he had supervised. "People from all over the world called that night," recalls Beenstock. "But my student never bothered to pick up the phone."

Clearly, the bombing has scarred relationships between Israelis and Palestinians at the university. But officials remain determined to continue the tradition of joint projects. Hervé Bercovier, the university's vice-president for research, notes that a contract to collaborate with An-Najah National University in Nablus — which has been accused by the Israeli army of harbouring terrorists — was signed earlier this year. "There are no restrictions on who we work with," he says.

That sentiment is shared by some of those most severely affected by the bombing. Inna Zusman, then a first-year Israeli student in computing and cognitive science, suffered a spinal-cord injury in the blast. Now in a wheelchair, she will resume her studies this autumn. "People look more at your face and your race than before," she admits. "But the attack won't change the way we interact."

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A campus under siege

Up in smoke: in recent weeks, the Israeli military has targeted buildings suspected of housing Palestinian militants in Hebron. (Nayef Haslamoun/Reuters)

Radwan Barakat waves his hand towards the olive groves and low-rise buildings that blanket the hills opposite Hebron University. "They call this the martyrs' neighbourhood," he says. The area's association with suicide bombings — or 'martyrdom operations', in the lexicon of Hamas and other militant Palestinian groups — has left its mark. Across the valley, a single apartment has been blown out of the side of a building. This is the usual response when the Israeli army identifies the home of a suicide bomber.

The dusty campus of Hebron University, which hosts some 4,500 students, also bears the scars of conflict. Barakat takes me in through a side entrance — the only one that is not welded shut. The university was shut down in January, after students from the area were linked with suicide bombings. This single gate was broken open a few months later.

During the closure order, which lasted until shortly after my visit, the university's activities were in disarray. Barakat is a plant pathologist, and needed to care for his plants and fungi to avoid losing data. He points to a low roof below the windows of his laboratory, which allowed his support staff to enter without attracting the attention of soldiers who were watching the building's main entrance. "I really have to respect my technicians and graduate students for doing this," Barakat says.

Other areas of Barakat's work have not survived, however. He used to divide his time between the university and an agricultural research station at Al-Arroub, a few kilometres outside Hebron. But this station sits opposite a refugee camp that is closely monitored by the Israeli army. When the latest Palestinian uprising began in September 2000, Israeli forces moved into the station. A watchtower now stands where Barakat's experimental crops once grew, and access to the area is prohibited.

Work at Hebron University continued despite the official closure. Nearby school halls were recruited for lectures, and students moved in as the schoolchildren left each afternoon. Teaching hours were cut back, however, to allow students to travel home in daylight hours and so avoid problems with the Israeli security forces.

On the day of my visit to the university, administrators are rehearsing for a graduation ceremony, laying out chairs and setting up a public-address system. But the next day, the Israeli army intervenes, making it clear that the ceremony should not go ahead.

When I call in September to see if the event would be rescheduled, the outlook is grim. "Listen," says Naim Daour, Hebron University's director of public relations. "Can you hear the sirens? The army has destroyed a building near the university." Later, I speak to Maher Al-Jabari, a chemist and trustee of the university. "The purpose of the celebration was to add happiness," he says. "But this now contradicts the feeling of sadness in Palestine."

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