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TROUBLED WATERS: CITIZENSHIP AND COLONIAL ZIONISM IN NAZARETH

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2015

Leena Dallasheh
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Abstract

Focused on the contest over water management in Nazareth during the early years of Israeli statehood (1948–56), this article traces the negotiations that took place between Palestinian residents of Nazareth and Israeli state authorities. I argue that the struggle over this vital natural resource, in a region where it is in short supply was in some measure a matter of fulfilling practical needs, but it was also part of the process of negotiating citizenship. The story of Nazareth's water in the early Israeli period is thus a microcosm of the incorporation of Palestinians as undesired and marginalized citizens into a self-defined Jewish state. Challenging the Palestinian resistance/collaboration dichotomy and the notion of a monolithic Israeli state, I show how both Palestinian citizens and Israeli authorities adopted wide-ranging positions on water management and its broad political implications. Although Palestinian citizens were able to use the space made available through citizenship to further their collective interests, they were ultimately unable to overcome the exclusions inherent to a political system that maintained the dominance of a Jewish majority over a Palestinian minority.

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Articles
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International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 47 , Issue 3 , August 2015, pp. 467 - 487
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

In early 1953, a few months shy of Israel's fifth anniversary, Naʿman Stavy, the Israeli military governor in the Palestinian Arab city of Nazareth, summarized the protracted contest over Nazareth's water project for his fellow Israeli officials:

You should understand that the municipality will demand ownership over the water project. Some elements have tried to turn this problem into a political issue. The Church [representatives of the Vatican] has tried to undertake the project. There has been a proposal to fund the project by tapping Nazareth émigrés in the United States. McDaniel's people [from the US Point Four Program] have also shown interest. I made sure that all of these attempts failed.Footnote 1

During these early years of Israeli sovereignty, water was in short supply in Nazareth and a decisive factor in local politics. Within the framework of the new state, Nazareth's residents conflicted with Israeli authorities over who should manage the city's water supply. Through this conflict, they also defined their interests as Palestinians and as citizens of Israel. Both Palestinians in Nazareth and Israeli officials insisted that the main goal of water management was to serve the good of the public (i.e., residents of Nazareth). However, whereas local activists sought control over the city's water resources to establish autonomy, officials viewed water management as part of the apparatus of state control. Over the first decade of Israeli statehood, therefore, water was a vessel for the constant, unspoken negotiation of citizenship. The latter was characterized in part by the expectation and deliverance of services, but also encompassed contestations over identity.

The stakes of the local water dispute were high for other reasons as well. Nazareth was home to the largest Palestinian community to remain within the borders of the Jewish state after 1948. This community was relatively educated and included a core of veteran trade unionists. The city thus posed a threat to the government's plan to colonize the Galilee with Jewish settlers. In the summer of 1954, prompted by the outcome of democratic local elections in the city, the army's land experts chose Nazareth to be the site of the state's first major Jewish colony in the region. Jewish settlers were granted free access to confiscated Palestinian land and a host of legal and economic privileges denied to their indigenous Arab neighbors. Control over water management was a significant factor in these efforts.

This article traces the struggle over water management in Nazareth from the late Mandate to the early Israeli period. While doing so, it challenges a tendency in historiography on Palestine to characterize the transition from the British Mandate to Israeli statehood as one of rupture, with 1948 as the borderline. I argue that viewed through the lens of the Palestinian experience of colonialism, the Mandate and early Israeli periods appear as part of a singular history. Although the transition from one to the other brought dramatically different economic, political, and social structures, significant colonial features remained, with Palestinians continuing to be excluded from power in the new, self-defined Jewish state. My article thus offers a nuanced understanding of the colonial transition as characterized by both change and continuity. On the one hand, the physical structures of the water project remained and fiscal challenges continued to plague city attempts to provide adequate water to its residents and to fully control its resources. On the other hand, Israel's fundamental goal of developing Jewish control over land and resources and advancing Jewish settlement in the Galilee gave water management a significantly more political meaning than during the British era. Similar continuities and discontinuities can be perceived in Palestinian reactions to the colonial transition. Nazareth's residents built on their experiences under British colonial rule to cope with their new reality under Israeli control. I highlight how Palestinian citizens were able to use the space made available through citizenship to negotiate their rights, but were unable to overcome the exclusions inherent to a political system that maintained the dominance of a Jewish majority over a Palestinian minority.

By tracing Palestinian interactions with the new state, I stress the range of strategies that Nazareth's residents used to maintain their water rights. While local Palestinian activists in the Communist Party of Israel (ha-Miflagah ha-Komunistit ha-Yisraʾelit, or al-Hizb al-Shuyuʿi al-Israʾili; hereafter MAKI)—the only legal political organization open equally to Palestinians and Jews after the war—sought to confront the Israeli state directly, other Palestinians opted to negotiate with or accommodate the authorities to achieve what they viewed was in Nazareth's best interests. The article thus challenges the dichotomy of resistance and collaboration so common in analyses of Palestinian responses to the founding of the Israeli state.Footnote 2 Situating this history very clearly in the context of oppressive state control, I show that, even when taking actions regularly attributed as “collaboration,” including engaging with Israeli officials and playing by their rules, Palestinian citizens were neither duped nor helpless, and their actions did not always constitute betrayal. Rather, they were conscious agents who sought to advance their individual and collective interests as best they could under a military government and an exclusionary state.

Through an analysis of the contest over water management, this article also calls for a rethinking of our understanding of the Israeli state. I show that while the Israeli state excluded Palestinians, the latter could nevertheless make specific claims in the arena provided by citizenship. The article thus highlights the agency of Palestinians who, acting under a set of constraints, attempted to preserve a place—both physical and political—in their land. In this sense, it departs from a previous literature that focused exclusively on Israeli state dominance of and control over Palestinians, while contributing to a growing body of work on Palestinian citizens in Israel that has shed light on their economic, political, and social conditions.Footnote 3 This new historical literature has complicated our understanding of the relationship between Palestinians in Israel and the Israeli state during the Military Government period (1948–66).Footnote 4 However, work still needs to be done on Palestinian experiences and actions. In presenting a microhistory of the water negotiations in Nazareth, this article highlights Palestinian discourse and actions in confronting state control and their effects on state policies.

My analysis also highlights another aspect of the Israeli state during this period. Rather than a bilateral confrontation between the colonized and the colonial state, the conflict over water management involved a series of confrontations, including among Israeli government offices. While traditional historiography on Palestine (and other colonies) treated the state as a monolithic coercive entity, here I argue that it was far more complex.Footnote 5 Drawing on Shira Robinson's recent work in which she characterizes the Israeli state as a “liberal settler state,” I show how this settler-colonial state had to contend not only with Palestinian opposition but also with internal fissures that were the result of some Israeli officials' desire to promote a liberal self-image.Footnote 6 By leveraging various aspects of their reality (e.g., citizenship in the new state, Nazareth as a holy Christian city that attracted international attention, MAKI's opposition, and the state's interest in limiting that opposition), Nazareth's residents exploited these fissures to resist the state's plan. They were able to maintain a level of autonomy until the country's 1955 parliamentary elections forced Israeli officials to forsake the liberal image that they, as representatives of state, sought to project at home and abroad. Thus, while in the long run Nazareth city officials could not compete with the resources and political influence of the state water company Mekerot, it took the firm years to get its way.Footnote 7 This is partly because Israeli state officials struggled to resolve the crisis without appearing to impose a decision from above, while Palestinians refused to accept the state's dictated solution. It must be recalled that the contest over water took place in a context in which Israel had agreed to extend citizenship rights (including suffrage) to Palestinian Arabs who had remained within its borders after the 1948 war, while imposing a draconian military regime that severely restricted their social, economic, and political rights. However, Nazareth was no ordinary town; due to its status as a holy city to Christians around the world, Israeli policies toward Nazareth were subject to heightened international scrutiny. Nazareth's residents capitalized on this scrutiny to counter what they viewed as an unfair and marginalizing project.

NAZARETH's WATER TROUBLES

The dual challenge of supplying sufficient water to the residents of Nazareth while financing the regular upkeep of the water provision system predated Israel's birth. However, after 1948 this dual challenge became entangled with the national conflict. Within months of Nazareth's occupation by the Israeli military, a political battle emerged over which grid should carry the city's water. Would it be a local grid owned and managed by the municipality of the only all-Arab town in Israel to survive the mass dispossession of Palestine's Arabs? Or would it be a regional one managed by Mekorot, a semipublic company that sought to advance the colonization of the still largely Palestinian Galilee region by Jewish settlers?Footnote 8 Nazareth municipal representatives fought hard to prevent the new government in Jerusalem from imposing the regional grid on their city, insisting on connecting Nazareth to a well drilled in 1947 on the outskirts of the city. Local activists from the non-Zionist MAKI enthusiastically joined them in this effort. Footnote 9 However, before long the mayor and his colleagues on the city council discovered a set of constraints on their power.Footnote 10 First, the state had granted only limited decision-making authority to the municipality. Second, the municipality had neither the capital to upgrade and expand the old water grid nor the technical means to connect the city to the municipal well drilled during the Mandate period.Footnote 11 Third, like all Palestinian institutions in Israel after 1948, the municipality needed the approval of the military government to implement its decisions and to acquire the necessary equipment.Footnote 12 As a result, the water problem dragged on for years. Faced with impending parliamentary elections and the need to guarantee a water supply to a new Jewish colony (Upper Nazareth) established within the municipal boundaries of Nazareth, in 1955 the Israeli government finally enforced its water project while granting minor concessions to Nazareth's residents related to the cost of the project and the price of water.

During the Mandate period, Nazareth, with a population of approximately fifteen thousand Muslims and Christians,Footnote 13 was the administrative center of northern Palestine and the social and economic center of the region. Its municipal council was formally charged with managing the city's services, including water provision, as well as its administration and finances. Established in 1927, Nazareth's water system was funded by the municipality and executed by the Public Works Department (PWD), the Mandate government agency in charge of carrying out public projects. The system piped water from ʿAyn al-Bassah spring in the nearby village of al-Rayna into about half of the city's homes. The remaining homes, located mainly in the older quarters, continued to receive water from public standpipes and Mary's Well.Footnote 14 However, the system was inadequate, and from the early 1930s Nazareth suffered severe annual water shortages.Footnote 15 These shortages stemmed from insufficient supply, inadequate storage space, and pipe leaks.

At the outset of World War II, Mandate authorities became increasingly concerned about the availability of water in Nazareth. This concern likely related to the military hospital and army units that the British maintained in the city, since Palestine served as an Allied Forces regional headquarter during the war.Footnote 16 In 1946, after an unusually dry winter, the water shortage in Nazareth was particularly acute. In light of residents’ urgent need for water, the municipality and British officials proposed several new water sources. One option was to obtain water from a newly drilled Mekorot well intended to provision the nearby Jewish settlements. The city council rejected this option due to increased tension between Arabs and Jews throughout Palestine.Footnote 17 Instead, the council members explored the possibility of drilling a new well near that of Mekorot. In January 1947, the district commissioner recruited the PWD to begin drilling for water, and the municipality took private and government loans to fund it.Footnote 18 By early November, a well was successfully drilled on the outskirts of Nazareth.Footnote 19 However, after the British announced plans to withdraw from Palestine in May 1948, the PWD ended its involvement in the water project.Footnote 20 Nevertheless, owing to Nazareth's religious importance, Mandate authorities stationed in Palestine attempted to help raise additional funding to support the project. The limited sum that they collected arrived late, however, leaving the municipality insufficient time to connect the city's water grid to the well before Israeli forces occupied Nazareth on 17 July 1948.Footnote 21

Throughout the Mandate period, the Nazareth municipality spent significant portions of its budget on the water project,Footnote 22 but its attempt to solve the problem of water shortages was crippled by tight Mandate control and limited financial resourcesFootnote 23 due to the high number of tax-exempt religious institutions in the city.Footnote 24 Ultimately, the municipality was unable to solve the water problem before the end of the Mandate. Moreover, the restrictions imposed on it by the Mandate government would limit its ability to negotiate with the Israeli government in the years to come.

The water situation in Nazareth worsened after the city's incorporation into Israel in July 1948.Footnote 25 The city encountered an influx of refugees from its hinterland and other Palestinian areas, which put increasing pressure on the water supply.Footnote 26 Israel's plans to use the state apparatus to further Jewish colonization of Arab lands, particularly in Nazareth, put furthur constraints on the city's resources. Within a few months of Israel's establishment, an essentially Nazareth-owned project came to be contested by the Nazareth municipal council, represented by its mayor Yusuf Fahum, the military government, Mekorot, and various government ministries.Footnote 27 Government authorities sought to implement a plan prepared by Mekorot in which the water company would assume control of water management. The municipality, seeking to maintain ownership over the water and the ability to run the system, revived its Mandate-era water project.Footnote 28 However, it faced two roadblocks in trying to connect the well drilled in 1947 to the city's water grid: insufficient funds and lack of authorization from the military government. Regardless of the fate of the Mandate-era water project, the municipality still rejected Mekorot's project for its high cost. The municipality argued that its best interests and those of the city would be served by maintaining municipal ownership of the water project. The revenue stemming from the project, it claimed, would provide the municipality a financial boost and “improve the town's general situation.”Footnote 29

The responsible government offices disagreed over the correct policy toward the city, showing that the state's position was not uniform. The Ministry of Interior, in accordance with its general policy of allowing local autonomy, stressed the importance of the municipality's ownership of the water project, which would guarantee that residents’ interests were served. In addition, the ministry argued in favor of municipal control over and supervision of local municipal services, including water supply. By contrast, the Ministry of Labor, which was deeply involved in the Jewish colonization project in the region, stressed the importance of Mekorot's regional project to the government's policy of centralizing water management.Footnote 30 Different stances on this issue also existed across government offices: while government representatives in Nazareth tended to support the municipality's position, officials in Tel Aviv pushed for centralization.

Unlike the British, who had allowed private ownership of water sources, in the 1950s Israel shifted toward centralized control of water as part of a more general centralization policy, culminating in the 1959 Water Law granting the state control over all water resources.Footnote 31 This law was the outcome of a contest between the two official bodies responsible for water issues. While the Water Department of the Ministry of Agriculture generally supported continued local control over water, Mekorot claimed that local water systems were wasteful and advocated instead for centralizing water management.Footnote 32 However, with regard to Nazareth's water resources in particular, both entities consistently favored regional management and central control through Mekorot. This tacit agreement likely stemmed from their shared understanding of resource control as critical to the Jewish national project, which sought to increase Jewish settlement in the Galilee. Building settlements and attracting Jews to live in them demanded allocation of resources, one outcome of which was the exclusion of Palestinian citizens from the control and management of the water supply.

The water project also became a locus of confrontation between MAKI, the municipality, and state officials. In the early Israeli period, MAKI was the only framework through which Palestinians could participate in political activity, which explains why so many Palestinians who sought to be politically active found a home in it.Footnote 33 While MAKI had no representation on the Mandate-appointed municipality, during the early Israeli period it was the main opposition force in the city, repeatedly calling for city ownership of the water system. It also accused the municipality of not doing enough to maintain this vital project for Nazareth, leading campaigns against the government's attempts to deprive the city of its resources and to assert control over them.Footnote 34

In July 1948, less than two weeks after Israeli forces occupied Nazareth, the municipality decided to finish its Mandate-era water project.Footnote 35 The speedy execution of this plan not only would have allowed a greater supply of much-needed water, but also would have partially alleviated the unemployment crisis by providing jobs to local workers. For these reasons, Elishaʿ Solts, Nazareth's first military governor, initially supported the municipal plan, showing again that the state position was not uniform. He also believed that executing the project would strengthen Palestinian citizens’ “loyalty” to the state.Footnote 36 On 16 September 1948, a ministerial committee agreed with Solts and decided that the government would guarantee an immediate loan to cover expenses associated with the project.Footnote 37

The next day, in an attempt to prevent the execution of the Mandate project, Mekorot sent a letter to the prime minister protesting this decision. The company claimed that it had reviewed the Mandate project and deemed it unacceptable because it would render the municipality completely dependent upon a single water source. Mekorot also cited high water salinity in the municipal well, which it claimed was “bent.” The company argued that its own plan would connect the city to multiple sources (three existing wells and two others then being drilled), guaranteeing regularity and decreasing the salinity of the well water by mixing it with the other sources—all without increasing the municipality's costs. This argumentation disregarded the issue of the municipality's ownership of its water. In questioning the technical validity of the project, Mekorot suggested that the motives of Mandate officials in choosing the project were political, namely to prevent connecting Nazareth to a “Jewish-public-national company” (emphasis added). Annexing Nazareth's water well, Mekorot argued, would “solve the water problem of the [Jewish] agricultural settlements in the area.”Footnote 38

Mekorot's letter elucidates important aspects of the water struggle. The juxtaposition of Jewish national and Palestinian local interests became an important factor for the authorities in deciding which plan to pursue. Viewing Nazareth's water supply in national terms, they came to see the municipality's rejection of the Mekerot plan as a Palestinian rejection of the Jewish institution that would control it. The eventual subordination of Arab interests can be better understood through this lens. In the settler-colonial state, Mekorot represented the interests of the dominant group by expanding Jewish settlements in the area; the interests of the dominant group conflicted with those of Nazareth's municipality, which sought to maintain its control over resources and to use them for the benefit of Nazareth's Palestinian residents.

The Mekerot letter raises two additional issues. The first relates to its framing of the question of water management as one of expertise. The letter portrays Mekorot and the Water Department as the experts and the Nazareth municipality and its residents as receivers of expertise whose rejection of Mekorot is political and irrational. That the Mandate project had been devised initially by British experts was ignored.Footnote 39 With the water management question framed in this way, the municipality had no possibility of winning. The second issue is that Mekorot posed the municipal well as a solution to water shortages in the area, as Mekorot was struggling to supply the Jewish settlements with adequate amounts of water. Seeking to support the settlements, Mekerot no longer saw the aforementioned flaws of the municipal well to be significant.Footnote 40 Affirming technical superiority and Jewish national interests, Mekorot and government officials favored state centralization and using Nazareth's water for neighboring Jewish settlements, as well Israeli control over the Palestinian population.

The letter from Mekorot achieved its desired effect. On 17 September 1948, a ministerial committee decided that Mekorot, the Ministry of Minorities, and the Ministry of Labor had to “bring the Nazareth municipality to accept the Mekorot project.”Footnote 41 However, tensions remained among Israeli governmental bodies. The minister of minorities, Behor Shitrit, who only begrudgingly agreed to the policy change, threatened his colleagues that he would allow the revival of the Mandate project. Shitrit's support for the latter can be explained by his conviction that Palestinian citizens should have equal rights in Israel. The minister's position toward Palestinian citizens, however, differed from that of the majority of government officials, particularly Prime Minister David Ben Gurion.Footnote 42

NEGOTIATING HEGEMONY

In November 1948, the Israeli government informed Nazareth's municipality that it would not continue with the Mandate project. Under pressure, the municipality agreed to reconsider its plan and to reexamine the government proposal, which it soon after rejected once more.Footnote 43 Although government authorities continued to differ over the Nazareth water project, they began to place increased pressure on the municipality to accept the Mekorot project.Footnote 44 In order to increase residents’ pressure on the municipality, a ministerial committee appointed to resolve Nazareth's water issue decided to prolong the existing water shortage.Footnote 45 The committee also prevented execution of the Mandate project by refusing to grant needed loans to the municipality and denying it access to foreign currency, which was controlled by the government in the early years of the state and was needed for ordering equipment from abroad.Footnote 46

In attempt to apply even greater pressure on the municipality, government authorities met with municipal representatives in June 1951. Although the meeting's decisions were prepared in advance, the minister of interior insisted to his colleagues that the government needed the municipality's consent to move ahead with the Mekorot project. The municipality, however, continued to reject any project that failed to guarantee its control. In response, the authorities decided that Mekorot should immediately begin a regional water project for Nazareth and its surrounding area.Footnote 47 Meanwhile, Nazareth continued to suffer from a water shortage.Footnote 48

Despite the authorities' decision, discussions continued about the best solution for Nazareth's water project. Core differences remained among those involved. Although the municipality did not articulate its project in these terms, the government saw the municipality's interests as coinciding with Palestinian national interests, meaning it assumed that the municipality was resisting Mekorot's project because it anticipated Nazareth's annexation to an Arab state in accordance with the UN partition plan.Footnote 49 The mayor, a Palestinian resident of Nazareth appointed by the Mandate and directly accountable to Israeli authorities, defied government dictates but felt obligated to adhere to some extent to the Israeli sovereign regime. For its part, MAKI intervened in the water issue as part of resisting the primacy of Jewish control. In fact, it made the water crisis part of its campaign for the second Knesset elections, scheduled for July 1951.Footnote 50 To manage this situation, Nazareth's military governor appointed an “emergency water commissioner.”Footnote 51 The commissioner regulated water distribution and tapped into an old municipal water source in Saffuriya, a nearby and by then depopulated village, to provide relief to the city, easing the water shortage.Footnote 52

At this point, the Jewish settlement also became a factor in swaying officials to enforce the Mekorot project. Government authorities first began discussing the idea of establishing a Jewish presence in Nazareth in 1951, but the project was not initiated until 1954.Footnote 53 The settlement, later called Upper Nazareth, was built on lands confiscated from Nazareth, the main urban center of Palestinians in Israel. Part of the government's attempt to “Judaize the Galilee,” its purpose was to control the city of Nazareth and prevent its expansion. The government had conceived of the policy of colonizing the Galilee with Jewish settlers two years earlier to combat the perceived overpopulation of Palestinians in that region.Footnote 54 Since Upper Nazareth was a cornerstone of this policy, officials had a vested interest in ensuring that the new settlement had a proper water supply. When in October 1951 negotiations over the water project failed to produce an agreement, Mekorot stepped up its pressure on the government by threatening not to supply water to Upper Nazareth until its plan was adopted.Footnote 55

In January 1952, still unwilling to enforce the Mekorot plan, the Water Department, in consultation with the military governor, decided abruptly to allow Nazareth to continue with the Mandate project, knowing that the municipality would fail to execute it.Footnote 56 Although the available documents offer no explanation for this change of position, later developments suggest that it may have been tactical. The ministry sought to demonstrate to the municipality that it was unable to continue the project on its own. The municipality did indeed initiate attempts to move ahead, but the military regime refused to approve the funds necessary for the project's execution.Footnote 57 Monsignor Vergani, the Vatican's representative to Nazareth and an influential figure in the city, suggested to the municipality that it request funding from the US Point Four program, an American government program that shared aid and expertise with the underdeveloped world, which had a mission in Israel.Footnote 58 However, before the municipality attempted to do so, the military governor informed it that such assistance was possible only through a request from the central government, and he later took credit for causing the attempt to fail.Footnote 59 The municipality also sought to solicit donations from Nazarenes living in the United States, but the military government curtailed these attempts as well.Footnote 60

In light of the city's inability to execute the project and due to the urgent need for water, the municipal council decided it had no choice but to concede to the government. In November 1952, it agreed to hand the project over to the Ministry of Labor, but not to Mekorot.Footnote 61 Representatives of the military government, the Ministry of Labor, and the Ministry of Interior met and approved this decision. They determined that the Public Works Department would carry out the project, with half of the cost to be raised by the municipality from city residents and the other half provided by a government grant or loan.Footnote 62 Although this decision was never enforced, it revealed an interesting division: while the central government, including the heads of the military government and the Water Department, and the advisor for Arab affairs, sought to continue with the Mekorot project, Nazareth's military governor and Ministry of Labor representatives supported the municipal plan. In other words, unlike their counterparts, the officials who were closest and most familiar with the situation in Nazareth supported the city's demand to maintain ownership of its water project over Mekorot's regional plan, now espoused by most government authorities.

In October 1953, the minister of interior Israel Rokah succumbed to the pressure of his colleagues and decided to support pursuing the Mekorot project.Footnote 63 However, electoral considerations prevented him from acting immediately. During a visit to Nazareth four months later, the minister announced he was investigating a solution to the water shortage that involved water being “brought to the city . . . through a government loan given out of good will to help the residents of the city.”Footnote 64 The ambiguous language he used to respond to the municipal council's follow-up inquiries raises questions about his real intentions, especially since the government had assigned him to convince the municipality to accept the Mekorot project. The timing of his visit, two months before the first municipal council elections in Nazareth since 1948, is significant.Footnote 65 Set for April 1954, municipal elections had been a contested issue in Nazareth since 1949, when the city's residents, led by MAKI, began a campaign to replace the unelected, Mandate-appointed council. The central government sought to avoid elections for fear that MAKI would prevail. It was thought that once in power, the party could challenge government control of the municipality and hinder Upper Nazareth's development.Footnote 66 Thus, although the minister had agreed to the Mekorot project, announcing his decision before the municipal elections would have alienated government-backed candidates and almost certainly provided ammunition to MAKI. The water issue nevertheless featured in the elections, appearing in the pamphlets of several candidate lists. MAKI, for example, supported the Mandate water project as part of its campaign.Footnote 67 But even some of the government-supported lists, including the Popular List (al-Kutla al-Ahliyya, an apolitical list that defined itself as a representative of the Christian sects in the city), favored the municipal project.Footnote 68

The authorities, while having reached the decision to award the water project to Mekorot months earlier, followed through on it only in August 1954.Footnote 69 A central consideration in the timing of this move was the election of a new mayor in Nazareth. In the elections, MAKI had won the popular vote, but the authorities pressed all non-MAKI sectarian and family lists that had received government support in the elections to join in a coalition headed by Amin Jarjura, a Greek Orthodox dignitary and a member of the first Israeli Knesset from a MAPAI-affiliated list, as mayor. Officials viewed Jarjura and his coalition as easier to deal with than the previous council—hence their announcement of the water project after Jarjura and his coalition's ascendency.Footnote 70 Another significant effect of MAKI's success in the elections was the government's decision to execute the plan for a Jewish settlement in Nazareth. Within three months of the elections, the state appropriated 1,200 dunams of land in Nazareth to create Upper Nazareth. The need to guarantee a water supply for the settlement played an important role in the decision to enforce the Mekorot project.Footnote 71

In September 1954, the Ministry of Interior notified the mayor, without first consulting the municipality, that Mekorot would execute the water project with government funding.Footnote 72 MAKI's six representatives on the council strongly objected to the decision and demanded that they be permitted to direct the municipal water committee that would explore the issue. However, the nine non-MAKI coalition members rejected this idea. The water project nevertheless faced further delay when the military governor objected to the planned pipeline route, which was supposed to pass under Nazareth's main street. He demanded that the water line bypass the city, presumably to avoid sabotage by the city's residents, and instead run under the streets of the planned Upper Nazareth.Footnote 73 In May 1955, as the city suffered from a particularly severe water shortage, the government agreed to this route change and proceeded with the Mekorot project.Footnote 74 The move to execute the water project was connected to the Knesset elections scheduled for 26 July 1955. Rokah made use of the issue on his campaign visit to Nazareth, during which he emphasized his role in supplying water to the city.Footnote 75

But it was mainly MAKI that stressed the water issue, using it to oppose Rokah's party, the General Zionists.Footnote 76 In May 1955, MAKI sought to expand public involvement in this seemingly technical issue by publishing the minutes of the municipal council discussion mentioned above as well as a detailed account of the historical development of the water project. In its publication, MAKI framed itself as the representative of the interests of Nazareth's residents, as opposed to the “reactionary coalition” dominating the municipality as well as the military and central civilian authorities. It argued that the government's project was an attempt to takeover the water market in Nazareth, which would have the effect of increasing the city's subjugation and furthering its impoverishment. MAKI also claimed that this project would put the city at the mercy of Mekorot since the company would be able to control the prices and available quantity of water. In place of the government plan, MAKI called for reinstating the Mandate project.Footnote 77 Through this publication, MAKI placed the water issue at the center of its confrontation with government authorities. In appealing to the public over the water project, it connected it to the military government and the struggle for Palestinian rights: “thus Nazareth's workers . . . realized that their thirst stems from the military regime . . . the protection of the water project . . . is connected to our struggle against the military government and national oppression policies.” Drawing a connection between local welfare, economic interests, and oppressive governmental policies, MAKI turned water into an issue of local and national importance. From this perspective, the failure of the municipal coalition to protect Nazareth's water became “treason against the public interest.”Footnote 78 Nazareth's residents continued to protest and to petition the government to complete the Mandate project.Footnote 79 Demanding water, delegations made up of various sectors of the city, whether a particular neighborhood, refugees, or women, pressured the municipality to renew negotiations.

SPECTACLES OF CONTROL

The effect of the elections on the water project in Nazareth is seen most clearly in the story behind the project's inauguration. The government hastily finished the project by installing temporary pipes so as to allow the ceremony to be held two days before the elections.Footnote 80 The event, which occurred on 24 July 1955, was carefully planned to be “grandiose” and required significant funding.Footnote 81 Thousands were in attendance, from high government officials, to consular representatives, to religious leaders, to Arab dignitaries from around the country, to city residents. Among those to make an appearance were Monsignor Antonio Vergani, the Greek Catholic Archbishop George Hakim, and the Nazareth Muslim qadi Tahir al-Tabari. The lengths that government authorities went to produce this extravagant event are clear from the list of attendees, the artistic performances by Jewish music groups, and the hundreds of Nazareth school children and scouts who were present.Footnote 82 The goal of creating a spectacle of state presence was achieved, and for that day the state, its flag, and its anthem were seen and heard around the city and beyond.

In this impressive production, the speeches about the water project were particularly significant. Addressing the crowd in Arabic, Prime Minister Moshe Sharett repeatedly emphasized Nazareth's international importance as a holy Christian city and the government's role in solving its water problem, “which has weighed heavily on this city from time immemorial.” He also issued vague warnings to MAKI representatives, who boycotted the ceremony and “try . . . to poison the atmosphere by distorting the obvious goal of this project.” Sharett expressed his conviction that “the good people of Nazareth will not lend their ears to this mischievous nonsense, but will easily discern the motives of those ill-wishers.”Footnote 83 In the context of the approaching elections, his emphasis on the government's role in this project and his attack on MAKI should be seen as attempts to characterize the government, and mainly MAPAI, as the guardians of local Palestinians’ interests. MAKI was depicted as the enemy of these interests, seeking to stir up trouble without contributing to the welfare of local residents.

Minister of Interior Rokah, in his speech, stressed Jews’ apparent historical connection to the land, which he linked to the Israeli state and government, while mentioning Arabs only as residents of towns with no real important connection to it. “The Israeli government strengthens its ties with the city's residents,” he declared, “and contributes to building peace in this land.” He promised that the project would “bring the city financial relief [and] health . . . and increase its appeal to tourists. It would serve as yet another catalyst for the city's development.” The minister expressed his hope that “this project will increase and reinforce the connection and loyalty of Nazareth's residents to the state of Israel.”Footnote 84 As a member of a coalition party, the minister sought to assert his role in the process in order to gain the support of residents, while claiming the value of such a project in advancing relations between the state and its Palestinian citizens. At the same time, he demanded Palestinian citizens’ loyalty to the state. Explicitly connecting the latter to the water project, the minister alluded to a specific understanding of citizenship characterized by a quid pro quo of services for allegiance. This understanding betrayed a complicated relationship to identity: while Jewish identity was highlighted in his speech as a central component of citizenship, whether through an emphasis on Jews’ supposed historical connection to the land or the Jewishness of the state, the identity of Palestinian citizens was not a component of their citizenship. Palestinians were only mentioned as residents of towns.

If the election's role as a catalyst to concluding the struggle over water and to the spectacle that followed were not sufficiently evident in these speeches, it can also be seen in its subsequent official evaluations. Soon after the event, officials from the Ministry of Interior expressed frustration that their efforts on the water project were not acknowledged, and lamented that the event appeared more like a demonstration than a celebration of water.Footnote 85 They still believed, however, that providing water to the city before the elections was “important to counter and weaken incitement and propaganda claims of Arab national and anti-government parties.”Footnote 86 This political investment on the part of state officials allowed MAKI to play a significant role in breaking the impasse over the water issue. MAKI used the water issue to express its oppositional positions through protest and repeated appeals to the public. By connecting the water issue to general national politics, MAKI used Palestinians’ right to vote to compel the government to act. Palestinians’ weaker position ultimately meant, however, that the outcome would not be the one that MAKI had originally sought.Footnote 87

HEGEMONY AND RESISTANCE AFTER DEFEAT

Over the following years, Mekorot repeatedly cut off or refused to supply adequate amounts of water to Nazareth, exerting pressure on the municipality to capitulate on two main points of dispute: the municipal well and the price of water.Footnote 88 Mekorot demanded access to the Nazareth well in order to supply the city with water through its regional water project.Footnote 89 Although government offices held different positions on this demand, particularly its timing, they all at least pressured the municipality to negotiate with Mekorot and eventually to lease its well.Footnote 90 Contestation over water prices and water rights centered on the nature of the government's investment in the water project.Footnote 91 The municipality continually insisted that it was responsible only for the direct cost of water supply and, relying on earlier government promises, not the cost of the water project.Footnote 92 In contrast, Mekorot demanded that the municipality either purchase water rights from it or allow an increase in water prices to repay the government for its investment in the project.Footnote 93

In deciding how to handle the water crisis, government authorities leaned toward imposing a decision on the municipality that would benefit the development of Jewish Upper Nazareth.Footnote 94 These considerations clearly show how the Nazareth water project became a political tool. It was used to reaffirm state control, force the city's integration into the state, and prevent it from maintaining independent resources. Although Nazareth was requested to pay for water rights, these water rights would not grant it control over its water supply. Instead, “for political reasons,” government bodies decided that “Arab Nazareth should not be granted ownership of water rights,”Footnote 95 while Upper Nazareth enjoyed the fruits of the water project without having to carry any financial responsibility for it.

Initially the municipality appealed for government support in the face of Mekorot's inadequate water supply.Footnote 96 In June 1956, almost one year into the crisis, the municipality escalated its demands and its language.Footnote 97 It is reasonable to assume that the municipal council faced rising public pressure, especially as the claims that MAKI had previously made in opposition to the new project seemed to be coming true: water prices were prohibitive, and dependency on Mekorot jeopardized local supply. The municipality now demanded the return of its municipal well, and threatened to appeal to public opinion—both local and national—and to turn to the judicial system. With these moves, it thought it could embarrass the government. Clearly in the weaker position, the municipality exploited the government's sensitivity to its public image, especially in light of Nazareth's unique status. The Nazareth municipal council's refusal to purchase water rights should be seen in light of its marginalization from water management, where its only role was to manage water delivery within the city and collect dues from residents. Also important were the cost of water to the consumer and budgetary considerations.Footnote 98 Residents of Nazareth paid high prices for their water compared to residents of Jewish towns and cities, and the increase in price proposed to cover water rights would have made the burden even more significant, especially in a poor city that suffered from high unemployment.Footnote 99

In August 1958, faced with water shortages and government pressure to increase water prices, the municipality decided to revive its old water project in Saffuriya. Lacking funding, however, it had to seek support from the Ministry of Interior.Footnote 100 The mayor used the only card left in his hand: the approaching municipal elections. He was aware of the weak position of the municipal coalition, the role of the Ministry of Interior in consolidating the existing coalition, and the threat of increased MAKI power in the municipality (partly due to the water shortage). In order to play on the government's vested interest in the existing council and the council's public image, he asserted the centrality of the water issue in the elections (since residents would be evaluating the current municipal council's handling of this issue). MAKI, for its part, persisted in its opposition to government control and in demanding that the municipality and government restrain Mekorot and prevent the price increase. In a pamphlet about the municipality, it stressed the connection between water, municipal management, and national politics. MAKI presented a strong belief in the power of the public, appealing to Nazareth's residents to pressure the municipality to rectify the water situation.Footnote 101

Given the looming elections and that the municipality would not, and probably could not, fold, the government had to respond. In September 1958 it agreed to fund the Mekorot project as an investment rather than a loan, which covered water rights for both Nazareth and Upper Nazareth, each being granted 420,000 cubic meters a year.Footnote 102 However, water troubles were not over in Nazareth; they continued to be contested over the following decade.

CONCLUSION

From the earliest days of the Israeli state, the Nazareth municipality fought to develop a locally owned water project, while the Israeli government sought to implement a regionally controlled water system. In light of the municipality's persistent rejection of the Mekorot project, and the government's initial hesitation to impose its plan on the municipality, Nazareth's water question remained unsolved until 1955, when the Mekorot project was eventually executed. The decision to impose the Mekorot project on the municipality, after years of negotiations, was a result of struggles over water policy and contemporary political interests. After the creation of the State of Israel, Nazareth's residents, the Nazareth municipal council, and MAKI leaders all insisted on maintaining local ownership of Nazareth's water project, though for different reasons. The municipality feared that its cooperation with a Jewish company would be perceived as treason, while MAKI insisted on Palestinian ownership of this local resource and rejected Mekorot's monopoly. In all cases, the residents of Nazareth stood behind MAKI's position. Given that MAKI made the water issue central to its campaign against Israeli policies towards Palestinians in general, MAKI's success in the 1954 municipal elections suggests that the residents supported water autonomy.

The government had strong reservations about a Nazareth-controlled water project, and attributed great importance to controlling the water supply. While there were differences in opinion among the various governmental bodies, they consistently agreed on the Jewish character of the state and on favoring the interests of its Jewish citizens as well as government control over the land and population. Once confronted with the desires and interests of Nazareth's residents, the various authorities declared their unanimity, in the face of which Nazareth had little chance to maintain local autonomy with regard to water. Nevertheless, despite losing the initial struggle over the structure of the water project, the city continued to assert a degree of independence and authority over the issue. The first elected municipality made recourse to available methods of protest: it rejected the debt incurred after constructing a project it did not own; it threatened to involve the local and international public; and ultimately it used the omnipresent threat of MAKI's influence in the city. MAKI, for its part, used public opinion as well: it repeatedly publicized the issue, both in its newspapers and leaflets, turning it into a central point of contestation in both local and national elections. MAKI also sought to mobilize the public to respond to water issues. In so doing, it connected the water issue with broader questions of Palestinian rights within the new state. Water was no longer just a local issue; it was a matter of national importance—namely, protecting residents’ ownership of a natural resource and countering national oppression and the military regime. MAKI also acted within the municipal council as a significant minority fighting to prevent the coalition from succumbing to the government and struggling to involve the public in the discussions and decisions of the municipal council.

By applying such tactics, exploiting government fears that they could resonate with the public, and understanding their potential to translate these tactics into electoral success, MAKI's intervention gained Nazareth small achievements in the water question. The government was aware of the residents’ expectation that the provision of water was part of its duty to the city. MAKI and other Nazareth actors were keen to utilize this awareness to advance their agendas, both by demanding regular provision as a right and by utilizing the issue as a tool to protest government control and oppression. A constant, unspoken negotiation of citizenship between the government and Palestinians was taking place. Through these negotiations, MAKI tied the national issue—mainly, opposition to Israeli policies towards Palestinians—to demands for civil rights. The Israeli government had to respond to such demands, and although it disregarded MAKI's national-based claims of citizenship, it responded to a certain extent to claims for rights. The conflict over water thus served to fracture Israeli hegemony in ways that would later allow Palestinians to continue to negotiate their relationship with the state and to define their status as a collective.

Footnotes

Ibid.

References

NOTES

Author's note: Research for this article was supported by generous grants from the Social Science Research Council and the Palestinian American Research Center. I thank the participants of a workshop at the Center for Palestine Studies at Columbia University for their useful comments on a much earlier version of this essay. I am grateful to Fred Cooper, Zachary Lockman, Ussama Makdisi, Asma al-Naser, Jason Parker, Shira Robinson, and Shareah Taleghani for their valuable feedback.

1 Memo by the Israeli Ministry of Interior (MoI) on a meeting about Nazareth water, 22 January 1953, Israeli State Archives (ISA), Jerusalem, RG50/1932/10.

2 For example, see the interview with ʿAdel Manaʿa and the response, Hadith al-Nas, 30 November 1948; and Ahmad Saʿdi's comments on the panel “The Left in Palestine/The Palestinian Left,” School of Oriental and African Studies, and the responses to them, accessed 25 May 2015, http://vimeo.com/25845651. Cohen has warned against oversimplification of these categories, but even his book became a part of the populist controversy over resistance/collaboration. Cohen, Hillel, ʿArvim Tovim: Ha-Modiʾin ha-Yisraʾeli ve-ha-ʿArvim be-Yisraʾel (Jerusalem: ʿIvrit Publishing House, 2006)Google Scholar.

3 For example, see Falah, Ghazi, “The 1948 Israeli–Palestinian War: The Transformation and De-Signification of Palestine's Cultural Landscape,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 86 (1996): 256–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lustick, Ian, Arabs in the Jewish State: Israel's Control of a National Minority (Austin, Tex.: University of Texas Press, 1980)Google Scholar; Sa’di, Ahmad, “The Incorporation of the Palestinian Minority by the Israeli State, 1948–1970: On the Nature, Transformation and Constraints of Collaboration,” Social Text 21 (2003): 75–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Zureik, Elia, The Palestinians in Israel: A Study in Internal Colonialism (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979)Google Scholar.

4 Especially noteworthy is Robinson, Shira, Citizen Strangers: Palestinians and the Birth of Israel's Liberal Settler State (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2013)Google Scholar. See also Hillel Cohen, ʿArvim Tovim; and Pappé, Ilan, The Forgotten Palestinians: A History of the Palestinians in Israel (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2011)Google Scholar.

5 This historiography is best represented by Landau, Jacob, The Arabs in Israel: A Political Study (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969)Google Scholar; Rekhess, Eli, ha-Miʿut ha-ʿAravi be-Yisraʾel: Bein Komunizm le-Leʾmiut ʿAravit, 1965–1991 (Tel Aviv: ha-Kibbutz ha-Meuhad, 1993)Google Scholar; and Stendel, Ori, The Minorities in Israel: Trends in the Development of the Arab and Druze Communities, 1948–1973 (Jerusalem: Israel Economist, 1973)Google Scholar.

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7 Mekorot Water Company Ltd. was founded in 1937 by the Histadrut, the Jewish Agency, and the Jewish National Fund. Alatout, Samer, “Bringing Abundance Back into Environmental Politics: Constructing a Zionist Network of Abundance, Immigration, and Colonization, 1918–1948,” Social Studies of Science 39 (2009): 369–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Although much has been written on Israel's water policies, the literature tends to focus on the larger Arab–Israeli conflict and the international dimension of this question. Investigating the internal struggle over water management in Israel, Alatout connects water management to issues of identity, nationalism, and colonialism in Israel. Alatout, , “Locating the Fragments of the State and Their Limits: Water Policymaking in Israel during the 1950s,” Israel Studies Forum 23 (2008): 40–65Google Scholar. By exploring the contest between Nazareth residents and the state over water, my article further considers the significance of water beyond its role in the Arab–Israeli conflict, shedding light on how it fits into Palestinians’ negotiation of citizenship.

8 In 1949 less than 7 percent of the Galilee population was Jewish. Forman, Geremy, “Law and the Historical Geography of the Galilee: Israel's Litigatory Advantages during the Special Operation of Land Settlement,” Journal of Historical Geography 32 (2006): 796–817CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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10 Nazareth's municipality was established in 1875 under Ottoman rule. During the Mandate period, its members were elected by a small segment of male property owners in Nazareth. In 1948, immediately before the end of the Mandate, the mayor and municipal council were appointed by the British District Commissioner after a prolonged legal and public conflict over who would fill these roles. This municipal council served, with minor changes, until 1954, when the first universal municipal elections were held in the city. Leena Dallasheh, “Nazarenes in the Turbulent Tide of Citizenships: Nazareth from 1940 to 1966” (PhD diss., New York University, 2012).

11 The municipality was charged with providing local services to the city, but its authority was greatly restricted by close supervision of the central authority, whether Mandate or Israeli. See al-Ittihad, 7 July 1946; PWD to DC, 4 November 1947, ISA/RG27/2654/N/36 (Jacket 12); Forman, Geremy, “Military Rule, Political Manipulation, and Jewish Settlement: Israeli Mechanisms for Controlling Nazareth in the 1950s,” Journal of Israeli History 25 (2006): 335–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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13 Kamen, Charles, “After the Catastrophe I: The Arabs in Israel, 1948–51,” Middle Eastern Studies 23 (1987): 475CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 A Report to Nazareth District Officer, March 1932, ISA/RG27/2654/N/36 (Jacket 1).

15 On water shortage and attempts to solve it between 1932 and 1939, see ISA/RG27/2654/N/36 (Jackets 1 through 5).

16 Telegraph from High Commissioner to the Colonial Government, 23 December 1940, The British National Archives (hereafter TNA) C.O.-733/432; Galilee District Commissioner (DC) to Chief Secretary (CS), 9 February 1946, ISA/RG2.23/505/48.

17 Galilee DC to CS, 9 February 1946, ISA/RG2.23/505/48.

18 DC Notes, 28 January 1947; Financial Secretary to DC, 31 July 1947, ISA/RG2.23/505/48.

19 PWD report, 4 November 1947, ISA/RG27/2654/N/36 (Jacket 12).

20 PWD to DC, ISA/RG27/2654/N/36 (Jacket 12). By that point, the water project had already been halted by the fighting that erupted between Arabs and Jews throughout the country after the UN adopted the Partition Plan for Palestine in November 1947. On the Partition Plan and its aftermath, see Pappé, Ilan, A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21 The High Commissioner for Palestine appealed to the British Secretary of State: “[I]n view of the special character of Nazareth.. . . it would be most undesirable to leave Palestine after a British occupation of 30 years without ensuring . . . an adequate water supply.” Telegraph, 1 March 1948, ISA/RG2.23/505/48. This request was rejected due to British financial considerations. Telegraph to High Commissioner for Palestine, 9 March 1948, ISA/RG2.23/505/48. Nazareth was eventually granted LP 5,000. Letter from CS to DC, 2 April 1948, ISA/RG27/2654/N/36 (Jacket 12).

22 For example, during the fiscal years 1941–43 the municipality spent almost half of its revenue on the water project. Abstract of Estimates 1941–42, March 1943, ISA/RG2.7/217/37. In 1947–48, almost twice the city's revenue was spent on the water project. Abstract of Estimates 1947–48, March 1947, ISA/RG2.6/196/44.

23 The high commissioner had complete control over the municipal budgets. Haj, Majid Al and Rosenfeld, Henry, Arab Local Government in Israel (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1990), 12Google Scholar.

24 Almost a quarter of the buildings in Nazareth belonged to tax-exempt religious institutions. Letter of the District Officer, 7 July 1933, ISA/RG27/2654/N/36 (Jacket 2).

25 See, for example, Davar, 8 July 1951; and al-Yawm, 6 August 1951.

26 On the first day after its conquest in July 1948, Nazareth had about 15,000 inhabitants and 20,000 refugees. By the beginning of January 1949, there were 5,200 refugees in the city, about a third of the city's population. See Charles Kamen, “After the Catastrophe I,” 475. On the situation in Nazareth in 1948, see Abbasi, Mustafa, “Nazareth in the War for Palestine,” Holy Land Studies 9 (2010): 185–207Google Scholar; and Abbasi, “ʿIr be-Mtsukah: Natseret ve-Baʿayat ha-Plitim ha-ʿAravim ha-Pnimiyim 1948–1949,” Katedra 146 (2013): 117–46Google Scholar.

27 These offices included the MoI, the Ministry of Labor (MoL), the Ministry of Agriculture (MoA), represented mainly by the Water Department, the Ministry of Minorities (MoM), and the Prime Minister's office (PM), represented by the advisor for Arab affairs.

28 Nazareth Municipality to MG, 28 July 1948, Israeli Defense Forces Archives (hereafter IDFA), Tel-Aviv, Israel, 1952/922–114.

29 Municipality to MG, 14 August 1948, IDFA-1952/922–114.

30 Report by the MoI about a meeting between its representatives, the MoL, and the Water Department, 10 September 1950, ISA/RG50/1932/10.

31 The main water authorities, namely Mekorot and Tahal, were partially owned by Zionist institutions, and as such, they were primarily concerned with advancing the interests of Jews rather than of all citizens of the state. Tahal Water Planning, a government-established company in charge of planning Israel's water development project, was partially controlled by the Jewish National Fund and the Jewish Agency. Mekorot, founded in 1937 by the Jewish Agency, continued after the establishment of Israel as a national company and semiofficial body with close ties to the state, which partially owned it. Davis, Uri, Maks, Antonia E. L., and Richardson, John, “Israel's Water Policies,” Journal of Palestine Studies 9 (1980): 3–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Raphaeli, Nimrod, “Israel's Water Economy,” Land Economics 41 (1965): 361–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For more on the water centralization process, see Alatout, Samer, “State-ing Natural Resources through Law: The Codification and Articulation of Water Scarcity and Citizenship in Israel,” Arab World Geographers 10 (2007): 16–37Google Scholar.

32 Alatout argues that this struggle concluded in late 1953 with the victory of the centralization policy, as proponents of centralization justified it as efficient by constucting water as “Scarce” in Israel. See “‘States’ of Scarcity: Water, Space, and Identity politics in Israel, 1948–59,” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 26 (2008): 976.

33 Political activity was otherwise limited to the Arab “satellite parties,” promoted by the government-affiliated, Jewish nationalist MAPAI (Land of Israel Workers’ Party). MAPAI promoted these parties to ensure cooperation in the Knesset, even though it did not accept Palestinians among its membership. Some Palestinians also participated in MAPAM (United Workers’ Party), which was initially a leftist opposition party. On Palestinian political involvement, see Ghanem, As‘ad, The Palestinian-Arab Minority in Israel, 1948–2000: A Political Study (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 2001)Google Scholar.

34 Residents of Nazareth, led by MAKI, challenged the legitimacy and representativeness of the municipal council from the earliest days of the state. In the 1954 elections, MAKI was the only political party to successfully field candidates (all other elected council members ran in sectarian and family lists). Dallasheh, Leena, “Making Citizenship Count: Nazareth in the Transition between the Mandate and Israel,” in Nazareth: Archeology, History and Cultural Heritage, ed. Yazbak, Mahmoud and Sharif, Sharif (Nazareth, Israel: The Municipality of Nazareth Academic Publication, 2013), 253–69Google Scholar.

35 Nazareth municipality to MG, 28 July 1948, IDFA 1952/922–114.

36 Solts stated that the municipal plan will “land a serious blow to those circles that see the military government in Nazareth . . . only as temporary . . . [and] strengthen the circles that now collaborate with us and see us as a permanent state authority [shilton medini].” Letter to MG Headquarters MG, 9 September 1948, ISA/RG49/308/48.

37 MoM to Ministry of Finance (MoF), 15 September 1948, ISA/RG49/308/48.

38 Mekorot to PM, 16 September 1948, ISA/RG49/308/48.

39 Also ignored was a report prepared at the municipality's request by a Jewish engineer, Perez Etkes, which recommended the Mandate project for its lower cost and higher quality water. Little information is available on the expert or the report. Located in an MoI file, it includes no details about its source, date, or function. ISA/RG50/1932/10. A 1955 MAKI pamphlet asserts that it was prepared on 4 March 1951 by a “prominent Israeli water engineer.” See ISA/RG50/2062/40. On the authorities’ view of the municipality, see, for example, Water Department to MoA, 17 September 1953, ISA/RG97/2043/12.

40 Mekorot to MoL, 26 November 1950, ISA/RG95/6183/11. See also Mekorot and Water Department, 8 and 25 May 1951, ISA/RG97/2043/12; ʿAfula Mayor to Ministry of Interior, 12 February 1953; and an exchange between the MoI, the MoL, and the Water Department and Mekorot which took place in April–June 1953, ISA/RG50/1932/10.

41 Ministerial Committee Decision, 17 September 1948, IDFA-1952/922–114.

42 MoM to MoD, 29 September and 11 October 1948, ISA/RG49/308/48. On the minister's positions, see MoM to Minister of Foreign Affairs, undated, ISA/RG130/2420/29. Kamen argues that although the minister gave priority to military and political considerations, he sought “compromises which would reduce the degree of suffering . . . [of] the Arab populations.” He further states that the ministry was “perhaps the single high-ranking official body which attempted consistently to carry out an approach marked by fairness regarding the claims of the Arabs in Israel.” Kamen, “After the Catastrophe I,” 486. The Ministry of Minorities was created to deal with the Arab population in the country. Tom Segev suggests that the cabinet created it as a ministry to include Shitrit as the “Sephardic minister,” and the position seemed important to Ben Gurion only insofar as it could be used to appease the Sephardim. However, in July 1949, when the Cabinet realized the position's importance in setting policy toward Palestinian citizens, the government dissolved it. Segev, Tom, 1949: The First Israelis (New York: Owl Books by Henry Holt and Company, 1998)Google Scholar. On the weak position of the MoM and Shitrit, see Ozacky-Lazar, Sarah, ha-ʿAravim ba-ʿEsor ha-Rishon (Raʿanana: The Open University of Israel, 2006), 16–20Google Scholar; and Peled, Alisa, “The Other Side of 1948: The Forgotten Benevolence of Behor Shitrit and the Ministry of Minority Affairs,” Israel Affairs 8 (2002), 84–103CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

43 Minutes of Meeting in Nazareth Municipality, 7 November 1948, ISA/RG49/308/48 and 12 December 1948, IDFA-1952/922–1337.

44 MoM to Nazareth Mayor, 25 November 1948, ISA/RG49/308/48. The Nazareth military governor was also instructed to use all of his powers to convince the Nazareth municipality. MG headquarters to Nazareth MG, 30 November 1948, IDFA-1952/922–114.

45 The subcommittee was appointed by a ministerial committee charged with Nazareth. MG headquarters, 12 December 1948, IDFA-1952/922–114.

46 Mayor to MG, 14 December 1949; Arab workers’ Division to MoL, 25 September 1950, ISA/RG95/ 6183/11; MoL to Mekorot, 27 December 1950, ISA/RG95/6183/11.

47 Water Department to Committee on Nazareth Water, 17 June 1951, ISA/RG97/2043/12. Representatives of Mekorot, the Water Department, the MoI, and the military government were all in attendance. Report by MoI, 20 June 1951, ISA/RG50/1932/10.

48 Due to a water shortage, residents received water only once every two weeks. Health Department in Nazareth, 15 October 1948, IDFA 1952/922–114. See also later newspaper reports about water shortages and the problems they were creating: Davar, 8 July 1951; and al-Yawm, 6 August 1951.

49 As expressed by an MoL representative, Arab Workers’ Division to MoL, 25 September 1950, ISA/RG95/6183/11. Minister Shitrit made a similar argument earlier on. Minutes of Government Meetings, 23 February 1949.

50 MG to MoI, 6 September 1951, ISA/RG50/1932/10. While the MG refers vaguely to “certain parties” using the issue for elections, a police report specifically mentions MAKI: 6 July 1951, ISA/RG79/4/19. MAKI also referenced the water issue in al-Ittihad. See, for example, 2 and 23 June 1951.

51 Another factor that contributed to the attention to the problem was the Ministry of Tourism's concern about the implication of water shortage on tourists' perception of Israel, which affected international public opinion. Exchange between Ministry of Tourism, the MG, and the MoI, 17 July 1951, 13, 18, and 30 August 1951, ISA/RG50/1932/10.

52 Report by Nazareth MG, 11 September 1951, ISA/RG97/2043/12. Saffuriya was depopulated during the 1948 war. In October 1949, its houses were demolished to prevent people from returning. Hoffman, Adina, My Happiness Bears No Relation to Happiness: A Poet's Life in the Palestinian Century (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2009)Google Scholar.

53 See discussions of the Committee on Nazareth, 14 November 1951, ISA/RG95/6145/22.

54 Rabinowitz, Dan, Overlooking Nazareth: The Ethnography of Exclusion in Galilee (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On Israeli Judaization policies, see Falah, Ghazi, “Israeli ‘Judaization’ Policy in Galilee,” Journal of Palestine Studies 20 (1991): 69–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Yiftachel, Oren, “Ethnocracy: the Politics of Judaizing Israel/Palestine,” Constellations 6 (1999): 364–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

55 Mekorot, 25 October 1951, ISA/RG97/2043/12.

56 MoA to MG, 10 January 1952, ISA/RG97/2043/12. See in particular the letter from the Water Department to the MoI in which he repeats his expectation that Nazareth's municipal efforts will fail. Letter, 3 March 1952, ISA/RG50/1932/10.

57 Al-Yawm, 24 February 1952.

58 The Point Four Program was part of President Truman's Cold War foreign policy of extending the US sphere of influence by granting technical and financial aid to underdeveloped countries. Although Israel did not fit the program's model, there was a mission there focused on assistance for regulating the economy, though it also included technical assistance for which Nazareth sought to apply. An insider description of the program in the Middle East can be found in Halford L. Hoskins, , “Point Four with Reference to the Middle East,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 268 (1950): 85–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also an interview with Montrie, Charles, United States Foreign Assistance Oral History Program, Foreign Affairs Oral History Collection (Arlington, Va.: Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training, 1996)Google Scholar, accessed 6 December 2014, http://pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/PNACB756.pdf.

59 Letter from MG, 13 August 1952, ISA/RG50/1932/10. The MG viewed negatively Vergani's offer to help, deeming it “undesirable.” See Letter to MoA, 18 April 1952, ISA/RG97/2043/12. The American mission offered funding for a water project, but it was never advanced. See W. L. Karrer, “Water Resources and Development,” 19 January 1954, ISA/RG50/1932/10.

60 Memo from a Meeting about Nazareth Water, 22 January 1953, ISA/RG50/1932/10.

61 The council did not detail why it chose the MoL, but the latter had a representative in the city who was very involved in its affairs. Municipal Council Decision, 19 November 1952, ISA/RG95/6183/11.

62 Memo, 22 January 1953, ISA/RG50/1932/10.

63 Meeting between the MoA, the MoI, and the Water Department, 11 October 1953, ISA/RG97/2043/12. Despite the minister's agreement, there was no unanimous commitment within his office. Engineer Zvi Leibovitz submitted a report about Nazareth water, asserting that Nazareth's well could deliver sufficient amounts of water to the city. Nazareth's independent project was also raised by the head of the Minorities Department in the MoI in a meeting with the minister, 4 January 1954, ISA/RG50/1932/10.

64 MoI Report about Minister's visit in Nazareth, 12 February 1954, ISA/RG50/1932/10.

65 Exchanges within MoI, 13 and 29 January 1954, ISA/RG50/1932/2.

66 On Nazareth municipal elections, see Dallasheh, “Nazarenes,” chap. 3.

67 MAKI Municipal Elections Manifest, undated, ISA/RG79/164/6.

68 For the most part, elections in Nazareth were not based on parties but rather on independent electoral lists. The “Popular List” Elections Manifest, undated, ISA/RG79/164/6. The local MAPAM party also mentioned water problems. Elections Manifest, undated, ISA/RG79/164/6.

69 Minutes of a Meeting in MoF, 17 August 1954, ISA/RG95/6183/11.

70 The mayor was elected by council members after intense government intervention. Dallasheh, “Nazarenes,” 218–20.

71 This was later affirmed in a report by the advisor for Arab affairs from 12 October 1955, ISA/RG95/6183/11. By establishing this settlement, authorities embarked upon a new mechanism of control—the use of space. See Forman, “Military Rule, Political Manipulation, and Jewish Settlement.” Oren Yiftachel argues that Israeli spatial policies were aimed at control over the Palestinian population. As he puts it, “these policies have worked persistently to erode the village's land resources, to contain its residential expansion, to encircle the village with Jewish settlements, [and] to impose surveillance over the life of its residents.” Yiftachel, , “The Internal Frontier: Territorial Control and Ethnic Relations in Israel,” Regional Studies 30 (1996): 501CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

72 Report by MoI, 7 September 1954, ISA/RG50/2062/40.

73 Mekorot to MoI, 28 April 1955, ISA/RG95/6183/11; Meeting about Nazareth Water Project between the MoL, the MoI, the MoF, and Mekorot, 17 May 1955, ISA/RG95/6183/11.

74 Minutes of Meeting between MoI and Municipal Representatives, 18 May 1954, ISA/RG50/2062/40.

75 Police report about Rokah's visit, 4 July 1955, ISA/RG79/164/7. MAKI's leaflet about the visit, 25 June 1955, ISA/RG79/28/34.

76 MAKI Elections Pamphlets, MAKI Archival Documents from Yad Tabenkin, Ramat Efal, Israel, YT-16-10-3-4(AJ).

77 MAKI Leaflet, 21 January 1955, ISA/RG79/164/7; and MAKI Pamphlet, undated, ISA/RG50/2062/40. A handwritten comment on the pamphlet mentions May 1955. In light of the events, this date appears to be correct.

78 Ibid.

79 Telegraph to MoI, signed by Hilmi ‘Abbas and Maryam Khuri, who claimed to speak for “hundreds of Nazareth residents gathered Saturday evening,” 5 June 1955, ISA/RG50/2062/40.

80 On the temporary nature of the project, see MoI Report, 4 July 1955, ISA/RG50/2062/40.

81 PM Office to Mekorot, 18 July 1955, ISA/RG43/5431/16; Police Report about the Ceremony, 28 July 1955, ISA/RG79/164/7.

82 Ha’aretz, 25 July 1955.

83 English Translation of the PM Speech, 24 July 1955, Central Zionist Archives (CZA), Jerusalem, A245/46/2.

84 Rokah's Speech, 24 July 1955, ISA/RG50/2062/40.

85 Report by MoI, 7 August 1955, ISA/RG50/2062/40. It is likely that these high officials were members of the General Zionist Party since such appointments tend to be political. These officials’ frustration probably stemmed from their party's loss of power in the elections, in which they received 5 percent less votes than in the previous elections. Davar, 27 July 1955. On political appointments in Israeli offices, see Sharkansky, Ira, “Israeli Civil Service Positions Open to Political Appointments,” International Journal of Public Administration 12 (1989): 731–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

86 Minorities Department to MoI Director General, 14 October 1955, ISA/RG50/2062/40.

87 Discerning the influence of the inauguration event on Nazarenes’ voting patterns in the national elections is difficult, but it seems it did exist. MAPAI and its satellite parties gained 60 percent of the votes in Nazareth, while MAKI gained 37 percent, a decrease of about 8 percent from the 1951 elections. Al-Ittihad, 29 July 1955 and 4 August 1951; al-Yawm, 24 August 1955.

88 The municipality began complaining about water shortage in September 1955. See Decision of the Municipal Water Committee, 2 September 1955, ISA/RG50/2062/40. The municipality and the opposition periodically complained about water shortage for the years to follow. See, for example, Mayor of Nazareth to MoI, 18 June 1956; MAKI Publication, August 1956, ISA/RG50/2062/40; Municipality to Mekorot, 1 March 1958; Municipality to MoI, 15 July ISA/RG50/2062/40; Minorities Department to DC, 16 January 1958; and Municipality to Mekorot and MoI, 1 March and 15 July 1958, respectively, ISA/RG50/2062/40.

89 Mekorot to Water Department, 1 July 1955, ISA/RG50/2062/40; Water Department to Nazareth Municipality, 5 July 1955; and MG to Mayor, 8 September 1955, ISA/RG97/2043/12.

90 MoI and the advisor for Arab affairs both thought that any action regarding the well should be postponed. MoI and AAA to Water Department, 7 July 1955 and 16 August 1955, respectively, ISA/RG97/2043/12. On the well lease, see Mekorot to Water Department, 15 December 1955, ISA/RG97/2043/12.

91 Water rights were part of Mekorot's general policy. In addition to the price of actual water consumed, and in order to provide water to a town, Mekorot demanded that the local council pay a bulk sum of money, which covered the municipality's investment in the water project. This sum was considered payment for providing a certain amount of water annually—what Mekorot called “water rights.”

92 MG Report about MoI Promise to Nazareth Mayor, which asserted that the government contribution was not a loan, 27 October 1954, ISA/RG102/17111/11; and Letter from Northern DC, 25 August 1957, ISA/RG50/2062/40.

93 Minutes of Meeting between Mekorot and Government Officials, 29 August 1955, ISA/RG97/2043/12.

94 The advisor for Arab affairs stressed avoiding a solution that would lead to the dependence of Upper Nazareth on the Nazareth municipality. Report, 12 October 1955, ISA/RG102/17023/7. See also Minorities Department to Director General of MoI, 14 October 1955, ISA/RG50/2062/40.

95 MoL to MoI, 16 April 1958, ISA/RG95/6183/11; Mekorot to MoF, 17 September 1956, ISA/RG50/ 2062/40. Use of the term “rights” in the documents is confusing; it is not clear what the significance of water rights would have been if the municipality did not own the purchased rights.

96 Municipal Water Committee Decision, 2 September 1955, ISA/RG50/2062/40.

97 Among other steps, the municipality threatened to launch a campaign to collect donations in the country and abroad in order to complete its water project. Letter from Mayor of Nazareth to MoI, 18 June 1956, ISA/RG50/2062/40. The municipality also acted to improve the water situation in the city by activating its other sources in Saffuriyya. Al-Ittihad, 29 May 1956.

98 Before the water project was executed, residents of Nazareth paid 240p/m3, while residents of Haifa paid 170p/m3 and residents of ‘Afula, a Jewish town near Nazareth, paid 150p/m3. Minutes of a Meeting with MoI on 22 December 1954, ISA/RG97/2043/12. Nazareth residents paid three times the price of water charged to the Jewish towns of Holon, Hadera, and Kfar Saba. MoD to MoL, 14 January 1958, ISA/RG95/6183/11. The price for water rights set by Mekorot was extremely high, even “fantastical,” as stated by the MoD in MoD to Advisor, 12 January 1956, ISA/RG102/17023/7.

99 The municipality actually suffered losses from providing water to the city. Minutes of Visit in Nazareth, 10 September 1957, ISA/RG50/2062/40.

100 Decision of Municipal Council, 5 August 1958, ISA/RG50/2062/40.

101 MAKI Publication, August 1957, ISA/RG50/2062/40.

102 Accountant General to MoF, 1 September 1958, ISA/RG95/6183/11.