The World Has Run Into a Ditch. Ditches Can Be Cleaned.
Hot-Take Free Thoughts on Israel, Gaza, Water and Dousing Conflicts
I have no hot takes to offer you about Israel, Hamas, Ukraine, Venezuela, China, Russia or any other geopolitical actors today. Except that I continue to find it fascinating how many people are willing to offer up rapid-response opinions regardless of how well informed (or not) they are, how little time they’ve taken to digest the news, research really critical history and context or just simply reflect on what’s happened and is continuing to happen.
I’ve been reading and watching different sources to get up to speed a little bit on the history of Israel and Palestine. I have some preliminary thoughts I won’t get into to avoid completely derailing, but I have one obvious reaction and one less obvious.
The obvious: The situation is among the messiest on the planet. I mean, damn.
The less obvious: I can’t believe people don’t talk more about the water situation in the region.
It feels a bit trivial to talk about something as seemingly mundane when there is so much ongoing violence and suffering in the region. But of course access to clean water is actually not mundane, especially in a part of the world punctuated by extremely densely populated patches of desert.
Many of Israel’s landscapes are remarkably similar to the desert southwest. Lately this has me pondering how we ended up in our little off-grid homestead, partly because it isn’t a highly valued piece of property. This is largely due to a lack of infrastructure, easy access to water and some potential issues with title to the land thanks to some tumultuous history in the area. You could say that the same characteristics apply to much of Israel and Palestine, and yet the region’s historical, cultural and religious significance make it some of the most prized and contested land on Earth to many, despite any other concerns.
The violence on the eastern edge of the Mediterranean rhymes in a way with earlier, more violent eras here in the northern New Mexico high desert (note the number of “revolt” periods in this short history). Residual resentment, distrust and ongoing inequities in our communities here still continue to this day. Rather than be fought with violence they play out in civic arguments over issues like gentrification, public lands management and, of course, water.
Earlier this year I had some involvement in a public and often heated debate around improving and expanding some local National Forest trails. As the process grew contentious, one of the most common suggestions arising from both sides was that the opponents should get together to clean ditches as a show of goodwill.
It sounds random, but water is sacred in New Mexico and the centuries-old system of locally-managed irrigation ditches, or acequias, often constitutes a community’s most important piece of infrastructure, even as agriculture continues to decline as an economic force here.
Showing reverence to water by spending a day cleaning sticks, brush, weeds and leaves from a ditch to allow it flow better through the community can be a quick way to de-escalate a heated dispute, at least on an interpersonal level.
I’m not sure there’s anything of value in these observations when it comes to the far more tragic conflicts around the world. For what it’s worth, the US Institute for Peace has suggested that cooperation on water issues could be a rare opportunity to breathe new life into the peace process between Israel and Palestine. But that was before the events of the past week.
Waging war relies on dehumanization, destruction, disruption; on fire, force, bullets and bombs. It is chaos, the willful acceleration of entropy in the hopes that greater control and order will somehow be the result.
It is all very much the opposite of standing on the bank of a humble ditch across from your neighbor on the other side, separated only by the strong and steady flow of water. Watching that primal trickle together, whether or not you like each other does not matter. Rather, what’s clear is that you’re more alike than different in the most essential and important of ways, even if you’re no closer to coming to an agreement about those trails or anything else.