Israeli Occupation and water service policy making in the Occupied West Bank, Palestine

ABSTRACT The public policy field generally answers the question as to what a government should or should not do. In the case of Palestine, the Water Reform Process has however been characterized by a gap between the design of policies and their implementation that reinforced a status quo and has severe negative impacts on water service policymaking. This gap derives from geopolitical realities created by the Israeli Occupation including the full control of Area C and of 85% of the water resources along with restrictions on Palestinian extraction and transport of their own water resources. A consequence and cause of this formulation–implementation gap is a fragile water governance structure and an undermining of the two-state solution.