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There is no supranational authority that can solve international water disputes; thus, the UN Convention on the Law of the Non-Navigational Uses of International Watercourses (UN Watercourse Convention) may be the answer. However, as is shown in this article, when it comes to the Eastern Nile water dispute, namely between Egypt and Ethiopia, both sides can use different articles of the UN Watercourse Convention to support their legal arguments. As a result, there is little that the UN Watercourse Convention can offer to solve this dispute. This article summarizes the relevant articles of the UN Watercourse Convention and discusses the contentious, historical treaties that allocated the rights to the Nile River water over the past century. The paper also discusses how both Egypt and Ethiopia can use principles from the international water law to support their legal position rendering the dispute difficult to be solved legally. Thus, we turn to a discussion of the current state of the recent initiatives to solve the ongoing water dispute between the riparian countries in the Nile River Basin. The article concludes with the current state of dispute after the construction of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam on the Blue Nile.

What motivates an authoritarian system, or more precisely, its leadership, which tailors legislation to its needs, violates it at will, usurps powers and combines them as it wishes, to support the existence of a seemingly "formal" independent judiciary? Moreover, how does it allow this judiciary to challenge it by limiting its authorities and narrowing its interests? The study revisits this perennial yet contemporary question, employing the Palestinian experience as a case study. It adopts a comprehensive analytical approach, examining the orientations of the Palestinian Constitutional Judiciary (PCJ), represented by the Supreme Constitutional Court and its predecessor, the Supreme Court as a temporary constitutional court, over two decades (2002 - 2022). The study originated from the assumption that the PCJ undertakes a "dual function" akin to experiences observed in authoritarian regimes, where there is a propensity for the existence of a judiciary that allows the sacrifice of some of its non-essential interests. This sacrifice is made in exchange for its utilization in legitimizing the regime and/or reassuring investors and/or controlling the administrative apparatus. However, the study concluded that the sole central and substantive interest is the support of the alleged legitimacy of the regime, and there is no corresponding sacrifice of non- essential interests. Instead, there is an abandonment of human rights.

This study addresses the intricate issues posed by the State of Palestine's legislation concerning the redefinition of the Palestinian. Despite the fact that these laws seem to be regulatory for particular situations, they propose a fragmented and different definition of that which is proposed by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) charters. One of its manifestations was the controversy surrounding who the Palestinian is during the postponed general elections of 2021. This contributed to the creation of the current practical framework for the legal text that categorizes Palestinians according to where they live; allowing one group to exercise their right to self-determination and not others. It also had an impact on how the definition of two concepts—the Palestinian and the right to self-determination—were altered, and the extent to which the effects of the legislation may impact the legal basis of the PLO. The PLO enjoys an international legal personality recognized by the international community as the sole representative of all Palestinians, regardless of their place of residence.

This section monitors the most prominent political documents related to the democratic transition in the Arab world. In this issue, we publish a collection of documents from Tunisia, Sudan, Iraq, and Syria, covering the period from March 1 to April 30, 2023.

This study addresses the vital importance of the Litani River in Lebanon and tackles the environmental challenges resulting from severe pollution in the river, where approximately 40 million cubic meters of untreated sewage are dumped annually. The study argues that political fragility and inadequate governmental response in Lebanon, along with the sectarian system, civil war, and extreme poverty, have contributed to the failure to resolve Lebanon's water crisis. The study emphasizes the urgent need for sustainable development and balanced reconstruction in Lebanon, through the implementation of integrated solutions and effective governance of water and land. The study highlights the importance of efficiency in using natural resources and the adoption of innovative technologies to build resilience against climate change, such as remote sensing services, improving rainwater collection, and enhancing soil moisture.

Antoine Nasri Messarra (b. 1938), a pioneer of Constitutional and Political Science in Lebanon and the Arab region, outlines a selection of the fundamental political ideas he developed over the course of his academic career. Messarra focuses on his critique of Arab political science in its reliance on a diasporic political culture that adopts European theories of nation building and applies them to Middle Eastern societies, without bringing to bear Arab-Islamic heritage in dealing with pluralism in those societies. Messarra argues that Arab production in political science has been dominated by two approaches. The first are diaspora approaches that draw on European Jacobite models , which have consequently failed to understand the Arab social dynamics. These include sectarianism studies that overlook ethnoreligious diversity and secularization research that rejects the Islamic constitutional tradition. The second (smaller) group are authentic approaches, which Messarra argues are grounded in reality and draw on the region’s heritage.

This study investigates the causes beneath the absence of non-Western theorizing efforts in the field of International Relations (IR), aiming to shed light on intellectually and politically defectiveness of the Arab World in the field, as manifested since the outbreak of the Arab Spring revolutions. To this end, the study discusses the position of the Arab World in IR and illustrates how the North (the Centre) deliberately ignores knowledge production on international relations from the South (the Periphery) through abstraction, reductionism, and exclusion. Finally, the study scrutinizes how the situation in the Arab World reflects the continuation of colonialism in two evident forms: epistemologically through the knowledge-power nexus; and by subjugation or keeping states, even those that are nominally independent, subservient to the Great Powers in international politics.

Although the academic study of International Relations (IR) in the Arab world has been ongoing for almost seventy years, there remains a dearth of information regarding its origins that can be attributed, in part, to a lack of research on the state of the field. The present study seeks to address this gap by conducting an examination of the state of IR in the Arab World over the course of a century. Additionally, this study proposes a novel method for evaluating the current state of the field and assessing its scientific output. To achieve these objectives, the study applies sociological generational analysis to three generations of Arab IR scholars, then examines their contributions to four key aspects of the field: the scientific production cycle, the formation of the scientific community, the development of its institutional structure, and relative autonomy from political science.

This section lists the most prominent political documents related to the democratic transition in the Arab world. In this issue, we publish a number of documents from Tunisia, and Sudan for the period Septemper–October 2022.

This text is considered foundational to international relations, in defence of the theoretical model of realism, which was subjected - after the end of the Cold War, the collapse of the Berlin Wall, and the disintegration of the Soviet Union - to heavy criticism, glorifying what they described as "the triumph of Western liberalism" and beginning an academic debate on the value of realist theory to the field. The value of this text comes from its author, Kenneth Waltz, who is considered the founder of structural realism and who established this theory through his formative book Theory of International Politics (1979), which is considered the most influential IR work of the Cold War era. In this text, Waltz responds to the criticism levelled at realism, demonstrating its capacity to interpret in spite of changes in the structure of the international system.