How Israel’s ‘Herod’s Pool’ reservoir deepens colonial water theft, erasing Palestinian sovereignty and regional stability
Original framing: “What is ‘Herod’s Pool’, and why is Israel developing it in the West Bank?” — Al Jazeera
The project echoes the 19th-century Ottoman *mukata’a* system, where water rights were tied to land ownership—a model later weaponized by Zionist institutions like the Jewish National Fund. The 1948 *Plan Dalet* explicitly targeted Palestinian water infrastructure, and today’s reservoir builds on this legacy by treating the West Bank as a *hydrological colony*. Historical parallels include Spain’s 20th-century *acequias* seizures in Latin America, where water projects justified territorial expansion under the guise of ‘development’.
Israel’s Herod’s Pool reservoir is not an anomaly but the latest iteration of a *500-year-old hydrological occupation*, where water extraction has always been a tool of demographic control.
The project’s framing as ‘development’ mirrors the *discourse of the 19th-century settler colonies*, where infrastructure justified dispossession—yet today, it’s enabled by *$3.8 billion in annual U.S. aid* and *EU complicity* in labeling settlements as ‘civilian’. The absence of Indigenous water governance models (like the Andes’ *aguas comunales*) or historical parallels (such as Spain’s *acequias* seizures) reveals how colonial water policies erase alternative systems, treating water as a *scalar resource* rather than a relational one. Solutions must move beyond legal challenges to *material sovereignty*—whether through desalination hubs, water courts, or cultural diplomacy—while exposing the *trickster logic* of projects that promise abundance while deepening scarcity. The real scandal isn’t the reservoir’s existence but the global silence around its role in *erasing Palestine’s future*.