Israel has tried (sometimes unsuccessfully) to divert water from its neighbors for years....the 1967 war began this way.
Hmmm... Revisionist history?
I recall that it was the other way around, where the Syrians were engaged in a large water diversion project which would have diverted significant quantities of water from reaching Israel (or Jordan, for that matter)..
And now it's the other way around as the Turks are building huge hydro projects which have threatened Syrias water supply...
Good thing Turkey and Israel are allies, or else Syria could find itself even more of a desert.
But you bring up a very good point.. Israel has drained significant water from the underground aquifer in order to irrigate their fields. But they have made what was formally an arid waste into a garden spot. Unfortunately, once that fresh water is pumped out, it is replaced by salinated water from the Med Sea, and cannot be recharged. That means all countries in the area will have to rely upon Turkey's good graces, or upon extensive (and expensive) desalination plants.
The Israelis DID divert water from the Sea of Galilee to the Negev, but as this map indicates, it hardly suggests that Syria possesses more right to use that water than Israel. The Syrians attempted to divert the water flowing INTO Galillee, farther north along their border with the Jordan River. It's one thing to exploit the resources of a lake or sea, and quite another to divert the sources of water that fill that body of water in the first place.
You can read this link, but one has to look past it and review a map of the region to better understand the issue and who is more in the wrong:
abunimah.org
Map links:
lib.utexas.edu
lib.utexas.edu
lib.utexas.edu
I've often thought that Israel may be in more danger from it's grandiose vision of itself than from its Arab neighbors. It has an artificial, always fragile, debt-burdened economy that is dependant on foreign aid, preferential trade agreements, and guaranteed loans.
Well, I don't quite agree since the Israelis feel they are forced to spend an inordinate amount of their GDP on their military. And any Palestinian state will be even MORE dependent upon foreign aid and subsidized markets.
But let's face some facts, we're buying peace between Israel and Egypt, so what's a few billion more to smooth over the rough feelings between them and the Palestinians??
The only caveat we should require is that it is not given to Arafat or any of their institutions. Any aid should be doled out by NGOs and US governmental institutions.
Hawk |
