Prejudices aside, there is no strategic reason Baghdad and Jerusalem shouldn’t be able to establish normal or even cordial diplomatic relations. Hussain Abdul-Hussain argues that the Jewish state’s water technology could bring the two countries together:
The top UN Development Program official in Baghdad warned that an increase in global temperature will decrease the fresh water available to Iraqis by 20 percent. Basra, Iraq’s second most populous city, which sits at the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, is already dying of thirst, its water contaminated and its population decreasing.
Israel, too, faces tremendous environmental stress on its water supply, yet has mastered the process of desalination. Its efforts are so successful, it has been pumping desalinated water into its natural reservoir, Lake Kinneret, [also known as the Sea of Galilee]. So advanced is Israeli desalination that the former Arizona governor Doug Ducey described the Jewish state as “the world’s water superpower.” Accordingly, the arid southwestern state has awarded Israel contracts to deal with Arizona’s water shortage. Azerbaijan is also an Israeli customer.
Why not Iraq? . . . Iraq desperately needs Israeli desalination technology, which in turn requires moving toward peace. Instead, Baghdad has been going in the opposite direction, passing an absurd law that punishes with death or life in prison anyone “who places a call to the Zionist entity.”
Read more on National Interest: https://nationalinterest.org/blog/can-cop28-expand-israeli-water-arab-peace-206416