Exchanges of fire actually broke out over water between Israel and Syria in the mid-1950's and 1960's. The problems were only exacerbated with the 1967 war. The West Bank overlies three major aquifers, two of which Israel has been tapping into from its side of the Green Line since 1955. In the years of Israeli occupation, a growing West Bank and Gaza population, along with burgeoning Jewish settlements, has increased the burden on the limited groundwater supply, resulting in an exacerbation of already tense political relations. Palestinians have objected strenuously to Israeli control of local water resources and to settlement development, which they see as being at their territorial and hydrologic expense.
Israeli authorities view hydrologic control in the West Bank as defensive.
It is no wonder that water was the last and most contentious issue negotiated in the Jordan-Israel Treaty of Peace of 1994, or that the question of water rights between Israel and the Palestinians has been postponed until final status talks, along with the most intricate and politically sensitive issues of Jerusalem and statehood. Nevertheless, while shared water resources have led to, and occasionally crossed, the brink of armed conflict, they have also been a catalyst for cooperation between otherwise hostile neighbors, albeit rarely and secretively. The decision to go to war, and strategic decisions made during the fighting including which territory was necessary to capture, were apparently not influenced by water scarcity or the location of water resources. Moreover, while the questions of water allocations and rights have been among the most difficult components in the Arab-Israeli peace talks, and despite the quantity of studies identifying hydrostrategic territory and advising its retention, no territory to date has been retained simply because of the location of water. Solutions in each case have focused on creative joint management of the resource, rather than insistence on sovereignty.