Water – A Catalyst for War or Peace in the Middle East
October 19, 2009
http://www.tribulationperiod.com/
Begin Excerpt from The Daily Star via World News
Turning water into peace: the miracle of hydrodiplomacy
By Karah byrns
Special to The Daily Star
Monday, October 12, 2009
By Karah Byrns
Special to The Daily Star
Monday, October 12, 2009
BEIRUT: The future threat of water scarcity in the Middle East has sparked fears that a “water war” could ignite in the region. According to hydro-diplomacy expert Hussein Amery, in his report entitled “Water Wars in the Middle East: A Looming Threat,” he writes that water could tip the already delicate political balance in the region.
“The emotion with which water is viewed aggravates already volatile situations,” said Amery. “Society sometimes responds with violence if people are denied sufficient access to a vital resource like water.”
As water becomes a powerful and undeniable source of tension between Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon in particular, this tension could also be channeled positively, towards an agreement for peace.
Regulated access to the vital resource could be a strong motivator for cooperation on other issues that have blocked progress in the past.
Director General of the Ministry of Energy and Water (MEW) in Lebanon, Fadi Comair, introduces his ideas on the subject in his recent book, “Water Management and Hydro-diplomacy in the Middle East,” suggesting that the waters of the Jordan River Basin should be equitably managed by a single, multinational water authority.
He argues that this idea, which he outlines as the “New Mass Water Concept,” could “present a solution … to reach a sustainable peace in the region.”
Comair believes “this approach of a New Water Mass will allow the restitution of the Arab countries’ occupied territories of 1967 such as the Golan Heights in Syria and the Shebaa Farms in Lebanon,” whose occupation, he says, is largely linked to the importance of the areas for Israel to secure access to water.
Access to water also has economic implications that can reverberate politically. Following the Israeli withdrawal in 2000 from Southern Lebanon, Amery writes that “capturing and delivering fresh water are, among other factors, pivotal to the re-economic development of recently liberated towns and villages of South Lebanon,” a factor that also influences stability. When Israel attacked Lebanon in 2006, the water infrastructure of the South was one of its prime targets.
If its water resources were managed with hydro-diplomacy in mind, Lebanon has the potential to put itself in a strong position for bargaining. It has more ample water resources than Israel, Palestine, and Jordan, and is the source of the Litani, which flows into the sea, and the Orontes, known by the Lebanese as Al-Assi, which flows into Syria. It shares the Al-Kabir river basin with Syria, and the Hasbani River, though a tributary of the Jordan River, flows southeast into Israel.
According to Stefan Schurig, Director of Climate and Energy for the World Future Council, Lebanon’s water is also more than just a bargaining chip on the table. Schurig suggested during a recent speech at the American University of Beirut that another way for Lebanon to leverage itself politically in the context of limited resources would be to become more energy independent.
Schurig said the country should lessen its dependence on foreign energy by exploiting wind and water: the two sources of renewable energy that it already has in abundance.
Schurig also argued that energy independence in Lebanon would translate to it being able to enjoy greater political independence in the Middle East.
“Producing [energy] means producing more political power. Alternative power is a mechanism to address many other issues … even war and peace,” he said.
According to Schurig, a transition to energy independence could come about naturally if the right mechanisms were to be put in place to begin “mobilizing the private sector with measures at the government level to self-motivate consumers and trigger market forces that will lead to new job creation.”
In light of increasing debate on the issue of water in the region, the role of water appears to be of tantamount importance for Lebanon; not only for its utility value for citizens, but for its ability to support the country’s future diplomacy efforts.
The possibility to transform water into a positive political tool through effective management of the resource is an opportunity that should not be lost, for Lebanon or for the region.
As Comair concludes optimistically in his book, through the development of greater cooperation on the basis of a mutual need for this vital fluid, “water will then be the force of understanding for the application of a ‘peace culture’ in the Middle East.”
End Excerpt from The Daily Star
Water in a dry Middle East is flowing white Gold!
Daniel Kings of the South & North both need Water!
This will be one “part” of the reason for the war to Begin,
Causing the King of the South to attack the King of the North,
In response to a rocket attack launched by the King of the North!
October 19, 2009
http://www.tribulationperiod.com/
ONE OF THE THINGS THAT WOULD MAKE THE KING OF THE SOUTH PUSH AT THE KING OF THE NORTH AND FALL INTO A PRE-JIHAD TRAP!
Water in Israel is much more valuable than oil or gold. Water is in very short supply in all of Israel, and an every increasing demand ranks it at the top of national interest. It is more than worth going to war over, because without it Israel would cease to exist. It is a constant problem for Israel with Lebanon and Syria. The five upper headwater tributaries of the Jordan have their sources in the snows of the upper Golan Heights and in the Syrian and Lebanese ranges just across the northern border of Israel. Tampering with these water sources, at some point in time after Israel has been lulled into a false peace mode, could be used as a clever ploy to get Israel to push north into Syria and Lebanon, thinking they could take care of the problem. But upon so doing they might find several divisions of Syrian, Iraqi, and Lebanese troops poised and ready to counterattack, then to drive south into Israel. I have spent time on the top of Mt.
Herman and explored all five of the upper Jordan spring-fed tributaries.
Daniel 11:40,41 – And at the time of the end shall the king of the south push at him: and the king of the north shall come against him like a whirlwind, with chariots, and with horsemen, and with many ships; and he shall enter into the countries, and shall overflow and pass over. [41] He shall enter also into the glorious land, and many countries shall be overthrown: but these shall escape out of his hand, even Edom, and Moab, and the chief of the children of Ammon.
Begin Excerpt from Middle East Online via World News
Why Israel occupies Lebanese Shebaa Farms
September 12, 2009
Tel Aviv’s wish to steal Arab water seen as reason behind Israel’s occupation of Lebanese farms.
BEIRUT – The politics of the Israeli-occupied Shebaa Farms, a rugged sliver of mountainside wedged between Lebanon, Israel and Syria, have long overshadowed what some Lebanese environmentalists call “the real issue” of the disputed area: its water resources.
Now activists are calling for hydro-diplomacy to take precedence over political manoeuvring as the most effective solution to one of the key stumbling blocks to Middle East peace.
Rising Temperatures Rising Tensions, a report published in June by the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), funded by the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, considers water to be a major trigger for conflict in the Middle East, the world’s most water scarce region.
Lebanon and Syria say the Shebaa Farms, measuring just 22 sq km, is Lebanese territory, though the UN has ruled it part of the Syrian Golan Heights, which lie just to the east, across water-rich Mount Hermon.
Both the Golan and Shebaa were occupied by Israel during
the Six-Day War of 1967 and the Israelis say disengagement from Shebaa can only come under a peace deal with Syria and withdrawal from the Golan.
However, Fadi Comair, director-general of Hydraulic and Electric Resources at the Lebanese Ministry of Energy and Water, argues there is more to Israel’s occupation of Shebaa than military-strategic concerns: “Israel’s occupation of the Shebaa Farms has to do with control of its water.”
Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group that fought Israel to a bloody stalemate in 2006, has the liberation of Shebaa as one of its strategic objectives.
Water scarcity
Meeting the water needs of their rapidly growing populations has long been an existential challenge for the governments of the arid Middle East.
Climate change is making that challenge more urgent and acute.
Israel, Jordan and the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) all fall well below the internationally accepted threshold of 1,000 cubic metres of water per person per year (cmwpy). According to the IISD, Israel has natural renewable water resources of 265 cmwpy, Jordan 169, and OPT just 90. Only Lebanon and Syria have water surpluses, with Lebanon having a potential of 1,220 cmwpy and Syria 1,541.
Yet supply is dwindling rapidly. By 2025 water use in Israel is estimated to fall to 310 cmwpy, while the country’s own Environment Ministry has warned that water supply may fall by 60 percent of 2000 levels by 2100.
River Jordan
The IISD report goes even further, warning that the River Jordan, which is the key supplier of water to Israel, Jordan and OPT, could shrink as much as 80 percent by the end of the century.
Such drastic scarcity makes securing water supplies vital.
The River Jordan rises in Mount Hermon, fed by tributaries in the Golan Heights and Shebaa Farms, and flows into the Sea of Galilee, also known as Lake Tiberius, before continuing south where it forms the boundary between Jordan, to the east, and the West Bank. After 320km it empties into the Dead Sea.
Major tributaries of the river include the Hasbani, which flows into Israel from Lebanon, and the Banias, which flows from Syria. The River Dan, which also supplies the River Jordan, is the only river originating in Israel.
Water wars
The absence of hydro-diplomacy reflects conflict in the region.
In 1965, Syria and Lebanon began the construction of channels to divert the Banias and Hasbani, preventing the rivers flowing into Israel.
The Israelis attacked the diversion works, the first in a series of moves that led to a regional war two years later.
In 2002, when the Lebanese constructed a pipeline on the River Wazzani intended to supply households in southern Lebanon with water, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon declared the action a causus belli. In the July War of 2006, Israeli warplanes targeted southern Lebanon’ s water network.
Bassam Jaber, a water expert at Lebanon’s Ministry of Energy and Water, argues the Shebaa is critical to Israel’s water needs, “especially because fresh water is critical when all sources within Israel are salty. The flows from the area help to regulate the saltiness of Lake Tiberius”.
And it is not just the direct overland flow that the Shebaa provides Israel. According to the Lebanese Water Ministry’s Comair, 30-40 percent of the River Dan’s water flows into it through underground supplies originating in the Shebaa. “Israel is worried that if Lebanon gains control of the Shebaa, it can then control the flow to the Dan river,” said Comair.
Hydro-diplomacy
As one of only eight states to have ratified the 1997 UN Convention on the Law
of Non-Navigational Uses of International Watercourses, Lebanon is calling on Israel to do the same.
“Israel is not a signatory to the relevant conventions on water, which is a big problem since they are at the centre of the issue of equitable use of water and reasonable sharing,” said Comair.
Israel has already shown that water can play a role in peacemaking. Its 1994 peace agreement with Jordan included a commitment to transfer 75 million cubic metres of water per year to Jordan in return for secure borders to the east.
Lebanon’s Ministry of Energy and Water is now calling for a regional water basin authority for the River Jordan, which would include Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Israel and OPT.
“How can you reach any agreements on the equitable sharing of international watercourses if there is no cooperation?” asked Comair.
Water solutions for all?
Not all are convinced Israel’s occupation of Shebaa is primarily about securing water.
“Water is no doubt one aspect of the socio-political conflict, but it is not the main driver,” said Mutasem el-Fadel, director of the Water Resources Center at the American University of Beirut.
He points to several projects currently being studied that could solve Israel’s water needs, without requiring continued occupation of the Shebaa, such as the Red Sea-Dead Sea Canal Project, the Mini-Peace pipeline from Turkey, wastewater reclamation plans and desalination projects.
“All combined they can be the water solution for all five countries in the area,” said el-Fadel.
But in the absence of hydro-diplomacy between Israel and Lebanon, the continued Israeli occupation of the Shebaa Farms will remain a key trigger to renewed conflict between the two countries.
“There will not be enough water for our generation or the next,” said Comair. “We will see social, economic, political and military conflicts – and in that order – within the next 20 years.”
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