The Resource Politics of Cold Peace: Israel’s Relations with Jordan, Egypt

For decades, one of the main assumptions underpinning Arab–Israeli diplomacy was that critical resource interdependence could help stabilise cold peace, particularly for countries below the level of the Abraham Accords. Far from being simply technical arrangements, pipelines, power grids and water agreements were intended to make peace materially useful and politically sustainable.

Within this logic, Israeli gas exported to Egypt and Israeli water supplied to Jordan became part of a wider model of pragmatic cooperation in a region where formal peace agreements often remained politically and socially unpopular. That model has not collapsed. The peace treaties between Israel, Jordan and Egypt remain intact, and security cooperation continues in important ways. Yet, a new resource politics is emerging across Israel’s relationships with both its Southern neighbours.

Jordan’s Reducing Vulnerabilities

Jordan’s chronic water insecurity has long made cooperation with Israel a strategic necessity. But by refusing to renew a key water agreement, Israel may be pushing one of its closest regional partners towards greater self-sufficiency and further straining an already fragile relationship.

On 7 July 2026, Jordanian media began reporting Israel’s decision not to renew a 2021 US-brokered agreement to supply the Kingdom with an additional 50 million cubic metres of water annually. The agreement supplemented the 50 million cubic metres Israel already provides each year under the 1994 peace treaty. While the immediate impact will be felt in Jordan’s water sector, the decision is about far more than water. It signals a willingness to use one of Jordan’s most acute vulnerabilities as political leverage. In doing so, Israel risks straining relations with a key regional security partner and accelerating Jordan’s efforts to reduce its long-term dependence on Israeli supplies altogether.

For Jordan, water insecurity is not simply an environmental challenge but a strategic one. The Kingdom is one of the world’s most water-scarce countries, with just 61 cubic metres of renewable freshwater available per person each year – far below the internationally recognised threshold of 500 cubic metres for absolute water scarcity. Population growth, climate change and successive refugee inflows have placed ever greater pressure on already limited resources. Rainfall is becoming increasingly erratic, while 10 of Jordan’s 12 major aquifers are being depleted faster than they can naturally recharge. Like other US allies in the region, the Kingdom’s critical national infrastructure has also come under attack from Iranian ballistic and cyber attacks. As a result, Jordan has little choice but to rely increasingly on desalination, imported water and the continued exploitation of finite groundwater reserves.

Against this backdrop, the additional Israeli water supplies agreed in 2021 were more than a temporary technical arrangement. They helped ease pressure on Jordan’s water system while the Kingdom pursued longer-term solutions, most notably the National Water Carrier project, a flagship desalination project designed to strengthen the Kingdom’s long-term water security. Although the project promises to significantly strengthen Jordan’s long-term water resilience, it remains several years from full operation. Losing the additional Israeli supplies before then would place further strain on an already overstretched water system.

Israel has reportedly informed Jordan that renewing the additional water agreement would require Amman to restore fuller diplomatic engagement and moderate its public criticism of Israel, although neither government has confirmed these conditions publicly. Jordan has yet to respond officially. The current dispute is not about whether Israel will honour the 1994 peace treaty’s basic water allocation, but over whether the additional water supplied since 2021 should be treated as a humanitarian and strategic necessity for Jordan or as political leverage in a deteriorating bilateral relationship. The current impasse shows how climate stress, Gaza-related political anger and regional diplomacy are converging around the most sensitive resource in the Jordanian–Israeli relationship.

Asking Jordan to soften its rhetoric over Gaza in return for water, however, ignores the Kingdom’s domestic political realities. Jordan is home to millions of Palestinians and people of Palestinian origin, while King Abdullah II serves as custodian of Jerusalem’s Muslim and Christian holy sites. Images from Gaza have generated ;profound public anger, leaving the Jordanian government with little political space to publicly align more closely with Israel. Expecting Amman to recalibrate its position in exchange for water misunderstands the domestic pressures under which Jordanian policymakers operate.

The timing is striking. Despite mounting diplomatic tensions over Gaza, Jordan remains one of Israel’s most important security partners and a cornerstone of the US’s regional security architecture. During Iran’s missile and drone attacks in April 2024, Jordanian forces intercepted projectiles crossing its airspace as part of a broader multinational defensive effort. Jordan has also continued to facilitate intelligence cooperation and support regional security initiatives. The contradiction is difficult to ignore: Israel continues to rely on Jordan’s security cooperation while simultaneously applying pressure through one of the Kingdom’s most acute structural vulnerabilities.

Ironically, Israel’s decision may ultimately reduce rather than strengthen its influence. Jordan has already accelerated investment in the Aqaba-Amman National Water Carrier. Although the transition will be costly and take years to complete, once alternative supplies come online, Israel’s water exports will become less strategically indispensable. What begins as a source of political leverage today could ultimately become a catalyst for Jordanian self-sufficiency.

For European governments, particularly the UK, there is an important lesson to learn from this. Water cooperation has long been one of the few areas insulated from wider political tensions between Israel and Jordan. Allowing it to become another instrument of coercive diplomacy risks eroding one of the Middle East’s most successful examples of pragmatic cross-border cooperation. If a new Israeli government emerges after October’s elections, European partners should encourage it to view water not as a bargaining chip, but as a strategic investment in the stability of one of its most valuable regional partners. In an increasingly volatile Middle East, preserving that partnership may prove far more valuable than the short-term diplomatic concessions Israel hopes to secure.

Egypt’s Energy Hedge

Egypt’s relationship with Israeli gas reflects a different version of the same sovereignty recalibration. As with Amman, Cairo is increasingly treating energy as a matter of strategic resilience rather than political symbolism. It is willing to import Israeli gas when economically or operationally necessary, but is simultaneously diversifying its wider energy portfolio to avoid dependence on any single supplier. Sovereignty, in this context, lies not in rejecting interdependence, but in ensuring that no external partner can exercise undue leverage.

Egypt’s gas imports from Israel are now commercially and strategically significant. The Leviathan partners have advanced a major export agreement to supply Egypt with around 130 billion cubic metres of gas until 2040, in a deal widely reported at around $35 billion. Israeli gas helps Egypt meet domestic demand, manage summer electricity pressures and sustain its ambition to remain a regional gas hub through liquefaction and re-export infrastructure.

Yet, this does not mean Egypt is comfortable with deepening dependence. Domestic gas production has come under pressure, including from declining output at key fields, while regional disruptions have exposed the vulnerability of relying too heavily on cross-border energy flows. Egypt’s response has been to widen its options – to increase domestic exploration, seek new production, maintain alternative supply routes and preserve the ability to bargain with multiple partners.

This is where Egypt’s approach diverges from Jordan’s. Amman’s vulnerability is acute, structural and politically sensitive because its water scarcity is existential and its alternatives are limited. Cairo, by contrast, has greater room for manoeuvre: its infrastructure, market size, regional partnerships and potential for increased domestic production allow it to diversify gradually rather than sever cooperation outright. Yet the underlying strategic logic is the same. Cooperation with Israel may remain useful – and at times necessary – but it must not harden into a dependency that gives Israel enduring leverage.

This is the central shift. In earlier phases of regional diplomacy, economic interdependence with Israel was often presented as a means of consolidating peace and encouraging deeper political normalisation. Today, Jordan and Egypt assess such ties through a more defensive lens: not according to whether they transform political relations, but whether they strengthen national resilience without creating strategic dependence. Interdependence is no longer treated as an end in itself, but as a tool whose value depends on the autonomy it preserves.

Israel’s Changing Leverage

For Israel, resource interdependence with Jordan and Egypt was meant to serve both economic and strategic purposes. Yet, the same relationships that have increased Israel’s regional importance have also heightened Jordanian and Egyptian awareness of the risks of dependence. This creates a central paradox for Israeli policy. The more resource flows are perceived as instruments of political pressure, the stronger the incentive for neighbouring states to reduce Israel’s future leverage. Dependence may therefore produce influence in the short term, while simultaneously encouraging efforts to escape it over the longer term.

The implication is not that Israel’s influence is disappearing. In the near term, its water and gas infrastructure will continue to matter, and both Jordan and Egypt will retain strong incentives to preserve these relationships. But leverage rooted primarily in dependence is inherently unstable. Once interdependence is experienced as vulnerability rather than mutual benefit, it begins to generate the political and economic investments required to dilute it.

Resource Politics of Cold Peace

The emerging pattern across Israel, Jordan and Egypt reflects not the collapse of cold peace, but its adaptation to a more volatile strategic environment. The relationships forged by peace treaties continue to endure, yet the assumptions underpinning them are changing. Rather than deepening mutual dependence, each state is seeking to preserve cooperation while reducing its own strategic vulnerabilities.

The practical foundations of these relationships remain intact. Jordan still relies on treaty-based water supplies from Israel and remains an important security partner. Egypt continues to import Israeli gas while maintaining close coordination with Israel on core security interests. Israel, in turn, continues to benefit economically and strategically from its integration into regional water and energy networks. The logic of cooperation has therefore not disappeared, but it is increasingly shaped by concerns over resilience rather than confidence in ever-deeper interdependence.

This shift should not be interpreted as an argument against regional infrastructure cooperation. On the contrary, shared water and energy systems will remain indispensable in a region confronting intensifying climate pressures, rapid population growth, fiscal constraints and recurrent conflict. The greater risk lies in the politicisation of these essential networks. When critical infrastructure is increasingly viewed as a source of political leverage, states have stronger incentives to duplicate capacity, diversify supply and reduce interdependence, potentially undermining the very resilience that regional cooperation is intended to provide.

For the UK, this has important policy implications. Supporting regional resilience should mean reinforcing, rather than replacing, cooperative infrastructure. This includes helping to sustain cross-border water and energy projects, mobilising investment in resilient infrastructure and creating forums in which politically sensitive forms of cooperation can continue despite wider geopolitical tensions. In an era of strategic competition, the durability of cold peace may depend less on expanding interdependence than on ensuring that cooperation remains mutually beneficial, credible and insulated from political coercion.

© RUSI, 2026.

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