another possible factor in the Israel/Lebanon crisis: water
As soon as I heard Israel had told the Lebanese to evacuate to north of the Litani River, I wondered, based on reading some of Shiva's Water Wars, if access to the river might not be part of Israel's objective. Reading on in the book, it seems like it may be:
"It is necessary that the water sources upon which the future of the Land depends, should not be outside the borders of the future Jewish homeland," wrote Israel's former prime minister David Ben-Gurion in 1973. "For this reason we have always demanded that the Land of Israel include the southern banks of the Litani River, the headwaters of the Jordan, and the Hauran Region from the El Auja spring south of Damascus." (Shiva, Vandana. Water Wars: Privatization, Pollution, and Profit. Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2002, p. 73. Emphasis mine.)
Water is not something the comes up a lot in discussion of the region. Oil, land, religious hatreds, tribal tensions, historical grievances, political maneuvering, these are the usual underlying reasons given as the sources of conflicts.
The 1967 war, which led to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Golan Heights, was in effect an occupation of the freshwater resources from the Golan Heights, the Sea of Galilee, the Jordan River, and the West Bank. As Middle-Eastern scholar Ewan Anderson, notes, "The West Bank has become a critical source of water for Israel, and it could be argued that this consideration outweighs other political and strategic factors." (ibid., pp. 73-74.)
As reasons for war go, at first glance, access to water sounds like a better reason than, say, control over oil, or imperial ambitions for more land, or destroying a potential economic rival's economy. Everyone needs water to in order to live. On the other hand, Israel already has access to water resources, and uses the lion's share of the water it has access to. It controls all the Palestinians' access to water, limiting their use to only 2% of Israel's total in 2000 (ibid., p. 73) and allowing them to dig very few and shallower wells than Israelis can (ibid., p. 74). It's not hard to see how such constricted water use limits any possibility of agricultural or industrial economic development for the Palestinians.
As drought and overuse aggravate the water scarcity, water conflicts are bound to intensify. The water level of the Sea of Galiliee is at a 100-year low; since 1993, it has fallen 13 feet. Because of drought, Israel had to reduce its water use in agriculture by 10% in 1999. It is predicted that Israel will have to cut water use further, cease its cultivation of cotton and oranges, and shift to drought resistance crops." (ibid., p. 74.)
Or, rather than take these unpalatable steps, they could go get control over more water.
Water Wars was published in 2002, and I don't know how Shiva would characterize the current conflict. For access to the Litani's waters to be a goal of Israel's offensive, a re-occupation of southern Lebanon would have to occur, and it sounds like that's a step for which the Israeli public has little stomach. Still, it's an added layer of both the Israel/Lebanon and Iraeli/Palestinian conflicts to consider.
"It is necessary that the water sources upon which the future of the Land depends, should not be outside the borders of the future Jewish homeland," wrote Israel's former prime minister David Ben-Gurion in 1973. "For this reason we have always demanded that the Land of Israel include the southern banks of the Litani River, the headwaters of the Jordan, and the Hauran Region from the El Auja spring south of Damascus." (Shiva, Vandana. Water Wars: Privatization, Pollution, and Profit. Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2002, p. 73. Emphasis mine.)
Water is not something the comes up a lot in discussion of the region. Oil, land, religious hatreds, tribal tensions, historical grievances, political maneuvering, these are the usual underlying reasons given as the sources of conflicts.
The 1967 war, which led to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Golan Heights, was in effect an occupation of the freshwater resources from the Golan Heights, the Sea of Galilee, the Jordan River, and the West Bank. As Middle-Eastern scholar Ewan Anderson, notes, "The West Bank has become a critical source of water for Israel, and it could be argued that this consideration outweighs other political and strategic factors." (ibid., pp. 73-74.)
As reasons for war go, at first glance, access to water sounds like a better reason than, say, control over oil, or imperial ambitions for more land, or destroying a potential economic rival's economy. Everyone needs water to in order to live. On the other hand, Israel already has access to water resources, and uses the lion's share of the water it has access to. It controls all the Palestinians' access to water, limiting their use to only 2% of Israel's total in 2000 (ibid., p. 73) and allowing them to dig very few and shallower wells than Israelis can (ibid., p. 74). It's not hard to see how such constricted water use limits any possibility of agricultural or industrial economic development for the Palestinians.
As drought and overuse aggravate the water scarcity, water conflicts are bound to intensify. The water level of the Sea of Galiliee is at a 100-year low; since 1993, it has fallen 13 feet. Because of drought, Israel had to reduce its water use in agriculture by 10% in 1999. It is predicted that Israel will have to cut water use further, cease its cultivation of cotton and oranges, and shift to drought resistance crops." (ibid., p. 74.)
Or, rather than take these unpalatable steps, they could go get control over more water.
Water Wars was published in 2002, and I don't know how Shiva would characterize the current conflict. For access to the Litani's waters to be a goal of Israel's offensive, a re-occupation of southern Lebanon would have to occur, and it sounds like that's a step for which the Israeli public has little stomach. Still, it's an added layer of both the Israel/Lebanon and Iraeli/Palestinian conflicts to consider.