Israel resolute on 'water war' Financial Times
September 18, 2002
By Harvey Morris in JerusalemIsraeli jets swooped over south Lebanon on Wednesday, underscoring the growing threat of a second Middle East conflict that Washington would like to avert as it pursues its strategy of confrontation with Iraq.
Israeli F-16s regularly overfly the northern frontier and, as happened on Wednesday, Hizbollah guerrillas regularly try but fail to shoot them down with anti-aircraft fire.
The latest encounter coincides, however, with the latest round of a "water war" between the two countries. It involves a Lebanese project to pipe supplies to frontier villages from the Wazzani tributary that flows into Lebanon's Hasbani river and ultimately to the Sea of Galilee, Israel's main natural reservoir.
The dispute has erupted at a time when Israeli officials claim they are maintaining a deliberately low profile over the prospects of war in Iraq.
Washington is keen for Israel to remain on the sidelines, as it did in the 1991 Gulf war, in the event of military action against Iraq. "We don't want this misinterpreted as a Zionist-imperialist war on Islam," said a US official.
The US is equally eager to avoid a simultaneous confrontation on the Lebanese-Israel border and has therefore rushed officials to the region to try to resolve the water dispute by diplomatic means.
Washington has dispatched water experts to the area to study the extent of the Lebanese project and determine whether it is consistent with existing regulations. A State Department official is due to follow.
Colin Powell, US secretary of state, said this week: "We understand the sensitivity of the issue but we don't want to see a new crisis developing over the diversion of water out of the river."
Israel has nevertheless warned that the present cold war with Lebanon could turn hot. Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, defence minister, warned this week: "Israel cannot tolerate the diversion of the waters of the Hasbani ... I trust the Americans to stop it."
The Lebanese government has so far proved equally intractable. President Emile Lahoud said: "Lebanon's decision to benefit from the Wazzani River's waters to irrigate its parched land and villages in the south is final and irreversible."
Although the project is an official Lebanese government scheme, the Israelis are suspicious about the timing of the latest dispute, coinciding as it does with mounting tension over Iraq. They detect the hand of Syria and Hizbollah.
The Israeli theory is that Syria and its Lebanese guerrilla allies know that Washington wants quiet in the region while it focuses on Iraq. Therefore, it is claimed, they are trying to stir up trouble in order to confront Israel with the choice of taking military action that would upset the US or backing down on the water issue.
Contrary suspicions have been expressed in the Arab world that Israel is using the water dispute to justify a conflict in south Lebanon. from which its last forces withdrew in May 2000.
Israel has gone to war before over water rights. In 1964, it shelled constructions sites that were part of a Syrian-Lebanese scheme to dam the waters of the Hasbani.
The dispute erupted again last year, when Lebanon first started pumping water from the Wazzani, but was peacefully resolved. While Lebanon argues that the current larger, but still relatively modest project is legitimate, Israeli officials say it is a unilateral contravention of the status quo regarding water sharing.
The officials have assured Washington that Israel will keep a low profile in the present dispute, pending the outcome of US diplomatic moves.
But the government of Ariel Sharon, prime minister, is understood not to have ruled out a military response, even before the Iraq crisis is resolved, if those efforts are unsuccessful.