April 20, 2009
By Damian LataanI wrote part one of ‘Instant Greater Israel: just add water’ in July of last year to demonstrate how important water is to the Zionist dream of a Greater Israel. The aim of this follow-up piece is to emphasise the importance of water to the Israeli dream of a Greater Israel in order to show the reasons why Israel is so intent on keeping the West Bank for itself and why Israel continues to covet south Lebanon up to the Litani River using the existence of Hezbollah as an excuse to continually attack Lebanon and eventually manipulate affairs in such a way that, one way or another, it will have access to the Litani River.
The Zionist dream of a Greater Israel that stretched from the Nile in Egypt to the Euphrates in Iraq wasn’t so much the land promised by God to Jews but the dream of the far more down to earth aspirations of early Zionist leaders who saw a Greater Israel more as a geographical entity bounded by the convenience of abundant supplies of water; a resource that in this part of the world is even more important than oil.
Modern Zionists, however, have modified their aspirations somewhat. They realise that actually occupying the land between the Nile and the Euphrates is probably a bit too ambitious; the land between the Mediterranean Sea in the west and the Jordan River in the east and from the Sinai to the south and the Litani River in Lebanon to the north is today a far more realistic though still risky ambition.
While today’s Zionists know they’ll never occupy the lands dreamed of by Zionism’s founding fathers, at least one of the rivers that were to bound the Promised Land, the Nile, is still in modern Zionists sights as a much needed resource of water for Israel’s southern deserts.
Back in the late 1970s Egyptian President Anwar Sadat proposed a pipeline to take water from the Nile to the Negev desert in southern Israel as a peace gesture. The idea didn’t go down too well with Egyptian planners who reminded the President that there was barely enough Nile water as it was to supply Egypt’s needs let alone giving some away to Israel just as a gesture. While many Israeli’s thought it was a great idea, the hardliners among them didn’t feel happy having to rely on water being supplied to them by a former enemy.
But that was back in the 1970s and Egypt and Israel, or at least their respective governments, still enjoy a peaceful though occasionally strained relationship. Since then Egypt has built a tunnel under the Suez Canal to feed water up to the Northern Sinai and within 50 kilometres of the Gaza Strip. However, the project seems to be headed for disaster as was prophesised some three decades ago and, while the Israelis are desperate for water, they would be unlikely to pursue Nile waters knowing that it could be cut off at any given time.
Israel’s biggest source of water supply at the moment, some 40%, is from two giant aquifers that are located in the West Bank, but which extend into pre-1967 Israel. It is this that explains why Israel is so reluctant to give up the West Bank to the Palestinians as part of a sovereign Palestinian state and is so determined to build settlements in so many places where the aquifers are more easily accessible inside the West Bank.
Israel’s other main source of water, around 35%, comes from the Jordan River which has headwaters originating in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Israel. However, Israel is slowly using up more water than the river can supply annually diminishing it by an unsustainable estimated 15%. Israel’s desalination plants don’t go anywhere near making up for the lost water.
These resources then are not enough for Israel’s growing demands for water especially as they have become so acutely aware of how valuable water as a resource is during this current drought period in the region.
Over the years there has always been one water source that Israel has coveted more than any other for its quality and abundance and that is the Litani River in southern Lebanon. The entire flow of the Litani river is within Lebanon from its rising in the northern Biqa’a Valley, south toward Beaufort Castle and then west to where it flows into the Mediterranean in south Lebanon north of Tyre. The nearest it gets to Israel is where it turns westward in south-east Lebanon just four kilometres away from the Israeli border and five kilometres from the Hasbani River in north-east Israel.
Successive Zionist leaders have always had an eye toward having its waters. Chaim Weizmann, head of the World Zionist Organisation (WZO) wrote to the British government in 1919 and 1920 arguing that Lebanon was only using the Litani waters in the north of Lebanon and that much of south Lebanon should be considered as part of the new frontier for the proposed state of Israel. Weizmann said that the WZO considered the Litani Valley for a distance of 25 miles above the bend of the river toward the west essential to the future of the Jewish ‘national home’.(1) The British and French mandate powers were not impressed by Weizmann’s plea.
Border proposals for a Jewish state, 1919–1947. Click to enlarge~
The Zionist’s tried again in 1941. In that year David Ben-Gurion who was responsible for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine from 1947 and who went on to became Israel’s first prime minister, suggested to the international commission on Palestine that the Litani be included in the borders of a future Jewish state. While the commission did not recommend that the Litani and the lands south of the river become part of Israel, it did recommend that seven-eighths of the rivers waters be leased to Israel.(2) The recommendation was not taken up by the UN in 1947 when partition conditions and lines were finally delineated.
The diaries of a later Israeli prime minister, Moshe Sharett, showed, however, that Ben-Gurion together with then Chief of Staff and Defence Minister, Moshe Dayan, remained strong advocates of Israeli occupation of south Lebanon up to the Litani River.(3) After the 1967 war Dayan, still showing ambitions on pushing Israel’s borders up to the Litani, said that Israel had achieved “provisionally satisfying frontiers, with the exception of those with Lebanon”.(4)
In March 1978 Israel launched Operation Litani by invading Lebanon ostensibly to push Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) forces located close to the border with Israel back to positions north of the Litani River. UN Security Council resolutions 425 and 426 insisted that the Israelis withdraw which they did but only after handing over power in the south of Lebanon to their allies, the South Lebanon Army (SLA) who managed to keep the PLO at bay for the Israelis. In June 1982 Israel again invaded Lebanon, this time to push the PLO out of Lebanon entirely which it eventually succeeded in doing. Israel stayed on in south Lebanon until June 2000 when it finally withdrew. While during the period of Israeli occupation it was widely surmised that Israeli engineers had or could have secretly diverted waters via a tunnel or tunnels from the Litani to the Hasbani, which goes on to feed the Jordan River it seems that this never actually occurred. This may be because Israel would unlikely take on such a project without having absolute security over its future.
In 2006 Israel once again found casus belli to invade south Lebanon, this time to destroy Hezbollah. Again, ominously, the Israelis targeted the Litani River. While Hezbollah control the south of Lebanon there will be no chance that Israel would have access to the Litani River either by seizing it or trading for it with the Lebanese government. As it turned out, the Israelis failed to defeat Hezbollah and succeeded only in exposing itself as ruthless aggressors willing to indiscriminately kill innocent civilians in a war that internet and mobile telephone technology gave the world mass exposure to. Had they defeated Hezbollah, Israel may have been able to negotiate with the Lebanese government a peace deal that could have included giving Israel access to some of the Litani’s waters.(5) The failure, however, of Israel to defeat Hezbollah has not forced Israel to give up any hope of ever having access to the Litani. Israel no doubt will at some time in the future confront Hezbollah again – preferably after Iran has been neutralised from supporting and supplying arms to Hezbollah by having had regime change in Iran thus weakening Hezbollah to the point where it will capitulate to Israeli demands.
Rather than being from the Nile to the Euphrates, Israel’s dreams now seem to be bounded by the Jordan and the Litani Rivers with Greater Israel being supplied via a vast network of piped waters from wherever its wars against the Arab and Palestinian peoples can get it from. Water is the essence of Israeli survival. It is also the essence for the survival of the other peoples of the region which is why the one state bi-national solution in the end can be the only solution for all the peoples of the region – including the Israelis.
NOTES
(1) Weisgal, M.W., (ed.), The letters and papers of Chaim Weizmann, (Jerusalem, Israel Universities Press, 1977.) p.267.
(2) Saleh, H.A., “The water wars between the Arabs and Israel”, Arab Affairs, 1988, Issue 55, pp. 55-68.
(3) Amery, Hussein A., “The Litani River of Lebanon”, The Geographical Review, Vol. 83, No. 3, July 1993. pp. 229-238.
(4) Hof, F.C., Galilee Divided: The Israeli-Lebanon Frontier, 1916-1984, (Boulder, Colorado, Westview Press, 1985.) p.36.
(5) Murphy, Kim, “Old Feud over Lebanese Waters Takes New Turn”, Los Angeles Times, 10 August 2006.
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