The inauguration of the National Water Carrier in 1964 symbolized the end of a decades-long conflict over the future of Israel’s water infrastructure. Controversy surrounding the National Water Carrier is most famously remembered in Israel’s historical memory by the disputes over international riparian borders that erupted between Israel and its neighbors throughout the planning and construction of the NWC. However, these debates mark a single locus in the complex debates that resulted in the construction of Israel’s water infrastructure. This paper will explore the way in which the project of the National Water Carrier negotiated the boundaries of the inchoate Israeli state by examining the debates between local and existing water systems with the national planning committee for the National Water Carrier to integrate local waters or replace them with the national water system. In particular it will look at a number of localities which disputed the legitimacy of Israel’s water company, Mekorot, and water planning company, TAHAL, to take over their water systems in order to further the planning and execution of the national water project. From the inception of the National Water Carrier plan, there was never a monolithic vision for the project, but rather, similar to other development projects, it was co-constitutive of other competing state objectives, which included inter alia, land settlement, national economic policies, and efforts to “Judaize” land bloc settlements. This study will be part of my larger dissertation on the role of the National Water Carrier as a techno-political tool in reimagining Israeli land and waterscapes and the ways in which technology and nature served in this case to promote a specific vision of an Israeli state.