Issue No. 610
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31 Oct. - 6 Nov. 2002 Issue No. 610 Region |
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Beyond baseless threats
Sharif Elmusa* on the Israel and Lebanon face off over the Wazzani springs pumping project
The face off between Israel and Lebanon over the waters of the Wazzani River underscores the need to put the Israeli charges against Lebanon in perspective. The amount of water Lebanon anticipates drawing from this tributary of the Hasbani River, which in turn feeds the Jordan, is estimated at 4 million cubic metres annually (1 mcm are sufficient for the domestic consumption of 10,000 modern households). This is miniscule compared to Israel's yearly water budget of two billion cubic metres. Yet Israel issued repeated warnings that it would blow up the water intake structures, prompting the United States and the EU to dispatch intermediaries to diffuse the tension.
Israeli officials and analysts offered various reasons for the threats, including claims that Israel was facing a water crisis, that the Lebanese action is illegal and that Lebanon cannot divert the water unilaterally, but must negotiate with Israel. None of these claims stands scrutiny.
True, Israel is not awash with water, but to say that it is in the midst of a water crisis is highly questionable. Unfortunately, often the word "crisis" is casually summoned up by many, not just Israelis, to describe the water situation in the Middle East. But what could "crisis" in the Israeli context really mean? On the average, an Israeli uses yearly more than 300 cubic metres for all purposes. Of these, domestic consumption is a comfortable 100 cubic metres. Even more, this average hides the unequal water distribution between Israel's Arab and Jewish citizens. The Arab citizen consumes one-third that of the Jewish counterpart, thus Jewish Israeli domestic water use exceeds the preceding figures.
Israeli agriculture, although it has been the shock absorber in drought years, is not lagging. Israel boasts about its highly productive agricultural technology and has marketed it successfully in Third World countries. The technology enables it to produce a substantial portion of the food commodities it consumes and to export others, such as flowers, citrus and tomatoes. Further, the value of agricultural production represents less than 3 per cent of Israel's GDP, and the sector contributes a similar fraction to employment. Seen in this light, Lebanon's 4 mcm from the Wazzani, or less than 0.2 per cent of Israel's water use, cannot even begin to be felt in the Israeli economy.
Further, Israel can augment its water supply significantly from desalination, which is not more expensive than extracting groundwater or pumping Jordan water from the low-lying Sea of Galilee. Israel has a broad seafront on the Mediterranean and a tremendous nonrenewable brackish (semi-salty) aquifer under the Negev desert. In fact, Israel has made desalination a central part of its strategy to augment its water supply. Clearly, the term "crisis" must not be employed indiscriminately; it ought to be carefully assessed in the context of economic and technological capabilities.
Whether Israel confronts a water crisis also must be viewed in relative terms, and an apt comparison for Israel is the Palestinian water conditions. Palestinian per-capita consumption in the West Bank, before Israel's siege of the areas under the Palestinian Authority and disruption of water supply system, was less than one-third of Israel's. The main reason is the occupying power's strict control over the last 30 years of Palestinian water extraction from the sources that lie beneath the West Bank. Israel appropriates the bulk of the water of these resources to maintain its advantage and for the benefit of the Jewish settlements that also have dispossessed Palestinians of extensive areas of land. Gaza's water supply is hopelessly low, lower than the West Bank's, and dangerously contaminated. The per-capita food import bill of Palestinians is several times that of the Israelis. So, if we must speak of a water crisis it is in the Palestinian territories, largely made by Israel.
What about the alleged illegality of the Lebanese diversion? The only agreement over the Jordan River's water involving Lebanon was the Johnston plan. That plan was brokered in 1953-1955 by the American special Ambassador Eric Johnston, in what was perhaps the first American shuttle diplomacy between the Arab states and Israel. The Arab countries that were parties to the conflict --Jordan, Lebanon and Syria -- negotiated under the umbrella of the Arab League. Both the Arabs and Israel accepted the plan's allocation formula. The plan, however, was not ratified because the Arabs tied their signature on a resolution of the Palestinian problem.
Although the plan was not ratified, the United States at the time linked its aid to Jordanian and Israeli water works on the Jordan River on their adherence to Johnston's distribution formula. Israel viewed the plan as an achievement, for it gave it more than 30 per cent of the estimated average yearly flow of the Jordan River of 1,287 mcm. (The distribution was made according to the area that could be irrigated inside the river basin's boundaries.) Thus in 1964, when Israel diverted the water of the Jordan River via the National Water Carrier from the Sea of Galilee to the coastal plain and the Negev desert, its prime minister, Levi Eshkol, invoked the authority of the plan to counter the Arab opposition. He noted in a press conference, "There are commitments in the world toward us in the wake of the Johnston Plan."
The Arabs opposed the diversion on the grounds that international law did not permit the transfer of water outside the basin area of a river without the consent of the co-riparians. When in response Syria and Lebanon attempted to divert the Hasbani and Banyas rivers to stem their flow into the Jordan River, the Israeli air force aborted the undertaking by bombing the construction sites. Then, after it gained control in 1967 of the upper reaches of the Jordan in the Golan Heights, Israel consistently exceeded its quota under the plan.
Lebanon's share in the plan was 35 mcm a year, or about one-tenth of Israel's. Its current project only would raise its use to only about one-third of that quantity. Thus if the Johnston plan was taken as the yardstick, and there is no other legitimate referent, Lebanon still should be able to harness greater amounts of water from the Wazzani (and/or Hasbani) without any objections.
One would expect that the US would stand by the plan it had brokered. It has not; instead, it reportedly advised Lebanon to refrain from operating the project, implicitly endorsing Israel's position. The Johnston plan is not passé. Nonetheless, it is time for the Arab countries and the Arab League to re-examine it and clarify where they stand.
The new source of international law that could be brought to bear on the division of the water resources in the Jordan River is the 1997 UN Convention on the Non-Navigational Uses of International Water Courses. Admittedly, the principles of division of water in the Convention are rather elastic, but in no way would a division based on these principles offer more water to Israel than did the Johnston plan or less to Lebanon.
When it comes to adherence to international law and unilateralism, Israel is hardly the state to point a finger at others. Even Tony Blair, in a transparent bid to placate the Arabs in the campaign against Iraq, had to remind Israel that it too, not only Iraq, owed the world the implementation of UN resolutions.
In the Jordan River itself, Israel in the 1950s dried up Lake Al- Hula and its marshlands against Syria's objections that the river was an international watercourse and its natural attributes could not be changed without approval by other co-riparians. In 1964, apart from the diversion of the Jordan outside the river's basin, Israel stealthily re-channelled several saline springs that terminated in the Sea of Galilee to the lower segment of the river that was used by Palestinian and Jordanian farmers. It exceeded its Johnston's quota when its hydrostrategic position allowed it to do that after the 1967 War, as I have mentioned above. At any rate, Lebanon has announced more than once that it was willing to negotiate under the UN umbrella and allowed international mediators to visit the Wazzani project site.
For the moment, while the US pursues its crusade against Iraq, the Lebanese villagers will enjoy the fresh potable water delivered from the Wazzani. Whether Israel subsequently will carry out its warnings to sabotage this minor project is hard to tell. What is certain is that the baseless threat could be deployed in the future to pressure Hizbullah to tone down its militancy, as well as up the ante for any future Lebanese schemes on this river.
* The writer is director of the Middle East Studies Programme and associate professor of Political Science at the American University in Cairo.
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