Oil is not the ONLY resource in the Middle East .. people and water are resources, obviously. The Green Party has been on about this for a loooong time and got quite a bit of media coverage about water rights in the Middle East during the first Gulf War. This is a great FACTUAL article about it all.


[Mess of Pottage News]

Birthrights for Sale!

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http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Middle_East/Lebanon_water_war.html

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Iraq isn't the only war shaping up in the Middle East
by Marc Sirois

YellowTimes.org Columnist (Lebanon),
October 14, 2002

A new crisis is brewing along the border between Israel and Lebanon,
but this one is not about Lebanese guerrillas fighting the occupation
of Lebanese land or even about Palestinian guerrillas crossing
the frontier to fight the occupation of Palestinian land.

It is about water.

The Council for the South, an official Lebanese body tasked with helping
spread development to impoverished southern Lebanon, has installed
a pump at the Wazzani Springs, which feed into the Hasbani River,
itself a tributary of the Jordan, which empties into the Sea of Galilee
(aka to Israelis as the Kinneret, and to Arabs as Lake Tiberias).

In response, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has threatened
military action to prevent what he and other officials in the Jewish state
ludicrously describe as the theft of their water.

The facts of the case are clear.

The water source in question is part of the Jordan system,
which is an international one, so Israel has every right to ensure
that its rights are not abrogated.


But what Lebanon proposes to do is entirely within its own rights,
as laid down by the 1955 Johnston Agreement.


- That pact was never ratified by the governments in question

- those of Lebanon, Israel, Syria, and Jordan - but it was signed
by technical teams from all four and actually granted
the lion's share of the water to the Jewish state.


Lebanon was accorded an annual take of 35 million cubic meters (mcm).
Seeing as how the Lebanese government had no access to the area
between 1978 and 2000 owing to Israeli occupation, the amount of water
its citizens were able to draw was strictly limited.


Today it stands at just 7 mcm, and the new facility will increase
that to just 10 mcm.

An Israeli academic recently inflated the figure to 15 mcm,
but even that would be well within the limits established by the
Johnston deal.


The U.S. government has sent experts to examine the site,
and their findings have led the State Department to counsel
"restraint" by both sides. The problem, of course,
is that for Lebanon, "restraint" means refraining from
legitimate efforts to provide water to parched villages.


For Israel, it means not bombing the property of a neighboring state
as punishment for simply making use of its own resources.
As usual, an unfair status quo that benefits Israel is regarded
as sacrosanct by Washington. Imagine what the State Department's
message would have been if the experts had concluded that Lebanon
was acting improperly.


I would let this particular manifestation of the usual double standard
speak for itself, but Israeli temerity and American duplicity
go even further in this instance than is usually the case.
The Israelis, you see, do not simply wait for Wazzani water to find its way
to them via the Hasbani and the Jordan: They actually still have a pump
on Lebanon's side of the border, within spitting distance
of the equipment installed by the Council for the South.


Some say that if and when the Lebanese facility starts running,
its location will dry up the pool from which the Israeli pump draws water.
That would certainly inconvenience Israel, but it is hardly,
as Sharon and others have claimed, a casus belli.
The Israeli installation is a relic of the occupation
and has no business being there in the first place.


The last thing Washington wants is a flareup on Israel's northern border
just as George W. Bush tries to gain at least a modicum of Arab
acceptance for a war against Iraq. The past few months
have taught that Bush lacks the brass to keep Sharon in line,
so even a minor skirmish over Wazzani threatens to explode
into a full-blown clash that might rival or even surpass the infamous
bloodletting sparked by Israel's 1996 "Grapes of Wrath" offensive.


Hizbullah, the organization that dogged Israeli occupation forces
until they finally left in 2000, has warned in no uncertain terms
that if the Israelis knock out the Wazzani site, retaliation will ensue. For example, an Israeli juice plant sits within a few hundred yards
of the border, well within the range of even Hizbullah's smaller weapons.
It has been mentioned as a possible target if Israel destroys the new pump.


If experience were any guide, such a move would then prompt Israel
to up the ante by launching air strikes against bridges, power stations,
and possibly major water facilities in other parts of Lebanon.
Israeli warplanes can operate with impunity in Lebanon, whose air force
consists of a few antiquated Iroquois helicopters (yes, the "Hueys"
that were so ubiquitous in Vietnam). The government that sends them
to wreak havoc on this tiny nation should not fool itself, however,
into thinking that it can do so without paying some sort of price itself.


Hizbullah has a crude but effective arsenal of Katyusha rockets which,
when launched in mass salvos, can inflict significant damage.
What Sharon would do in response after a shower of fifty
to two hundred of these projectiles is anybody's guess,
but it is reasonable to assume that he would not be
overly concerned about civilian casualties on this side of the border.


There might then be yet another Hizbullah riposte, etc., etc., ad nauseam.
All of this is to say that whatever "loss" Israel claims it would sustain
by "allowing" Lebanon to exercise its legal rights, it can only be multiplied
by taking military action. The Lebanese will undoubtedly suffer more,
but that will not alter the fact that Israelis will be subjected
to wholly unnecessary hardships brought about solely
by their own government's refusal to behave in a civilized manner.


Critics of Beirut's position complain that its timing was calculated
to box the Israelis in, i.e. to take advantage of U.S. pressure
on the Jewish state to avoid hostilities during the run-up to Iraq.


Frankly, that is entirely possible.

It is also, however, utterly irrelevant. When and how a particular
nation-state chooses to avail itself more fully of its own under-utilized
resources is a matter for its own government to decide.
That process should not have to take place
under ominous threat from an aggressive neighbor.


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[Marc Sirois is a Canadian journalist who lives in Beirut, Lebanon,
where he serves as managing editor of The Daily Star.
The proud and fanatically protective father of three beautiful princesses,
his opinionated writing style owes to the fact that he is never wrong
along with his holding monopolies on wisdom, logic, morality, and justice.
He is also exceedingly modest.]
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