Comments on “Confronting water in the Israeli–Palestinian peace agreement” by David Brooks and Julie Trottier [Journal of Hydrology 382/1–4, pp. 103–114]

These comments deal only with the Brooks–Trottier proposals for the formulation of an Israel–Palestine peace agreement on water. It is felt that their proposal of breaking with conventional approaches in the allocation of water in the frame work of the Israel–Palestine peace agreement with specific volumes or percentages of the shared water resources going to Party A and to Party B will be unacceptable to the parties and will prevent the parties to the agreement from knowing at the signing of the peace agreement how much their water resources have been increased and or how much their resources will be reduced. Such matters are vital to each partner and must be settled at the political level. Their proposal to choose an ongoing management process that will empower an untried and almost independent Bilateral Water Commission to allocate and reallocate water between the partners over time will be unworkable and lead to endless disputes disagreements and appeals which could deadlock the process. These issues should be settled at the political level as part of the final status peace agreement.