The title of the book In Search of the River Jordan by James Fergusson is a bit misleading. Only a small share of the book is dedicated to the Jordan River itself. The Jordan River of the title serves as a general metaphor for the waters of the region. The subtitle—A Story of Palestine, Israel and the Struggle for Water—is a more accurate description of the book’s contents. The volume largely ignores the other riparians to the Jordan River and their role in regional water balances. In fact, while shared water is ostensibly the unifying theme of the book, much of the work is not about water at all but about presenting the unbalanced power dynamics between Israel and Palestine. Water-sharing (or lack thereof) simply serves as the mechanism for highlighting this.

The book is structured as a travelogue, the first half of which is focused on Palestinian...

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