WATER ISSUES
IN THE ARAB-ISRAELI CONFLICT
Prepared by David Paul*
A) HISTORICAL BACKGROUND-
1) Israeli Designs on Lebanon and Syria:
Chaim Weizman wrote David Lloyd George, Britain’s Prime Minister, in 1919 stating the minimum requirements essential to the realization of the Jewish National Home promised in the Balfour Declaration two years previously:
though the boundaries cannot be drawn exclusively on historic [biblical] lines … our claims to the north are imperatively demanded by the requirements of modern economic life.
The whole economic future of Palestine is dependent upon its water supply for irrigation and for electric power, and the water supply must mainly be derived from the slopes of Mount Hermon, from the headwaters of the Jordan and from the Litany [sic] river [of Lebanon]… [We] consider it essential that the Northern Frontier of Palestine should include the Valley of the Litany, for a distance of 25 miles above the bend, and the Western and Southern slopes of Mount Hermon…
The very areas presently occupied by Israel in Lebanon and Syria!
Moshe Sharett, Israeli Prime Minister, wrote in the 1950s:
According to him [Dayan] the only thing that’s necessary is to find an officer, even just a major. We should either win his heart or buy him with money, to make him agree to declare himself the savior of the Maronite population. Then the Israeli army will enter Lebanon, will occupy the necessary territory, and create a Christian regime which will ally itself with Israel. The territory from the Litani southward will be totally annexed to Israel and everything will be all right.
David Ben-Gurion, Israeli Prime Minister felt it was wise to
push Lebanon, that is, the Maronites in that country, to proclaim a Christian state.
2) Syria & Israel: The Struggle for Water
1951-1956: The DMZs
1. When the war ended in 1948 the only parts of the northern sector of Mandate Palestine not occupied by Israel were the areas along the Jordan River controlled by Syria.
2. Israel insisted on retaining all the territory it had seized that was designated for the Palestinian state. However, it demanded that Syria not be allowed to remain in the areas that it occupied.
3. UN mediator Ralph Bunche convinced Syria to withdraw on the understanding that the sovereignty of the 3 demilitarized zones (DMZs) thus created (totalling 66.5 sq. miles) would remain undetermined until a peace settlement.
4. The DMZs:
• The smallest was uninhabited and in the northeast salient of the Israeli-Syrian frontier near Baniyas Spring. Its land was used for farming and grazing.
• The central DMZ was a narrow strip that stretched from the southern edge of Lake Huleh to the northern tip of Lake Tiberias straddling the Jordan River with a triangular budge in the middle. there was one Jewish settlement, Mishmar HaYarden, and 4 Palestinian villages: Kirad al-Baqqara, Kirad al-Ghannama, Mansura al-Khayt and Yarda.
• The largest was the southern sector which began about halfway on the eastern shore of Lake Tiberias and ran south to the tip of the lake and then jutted east to meet the Yarmak River where the borders of Syria, Israel and Jordan meet. There was one Jewish settlement, Ein Gev, and three Palestinian villages: al-Hamma, Nuqayb and al-Samra.
5. Each DMZ represented two concentric circles: the DMZ (a completely demilitarized inner core) and an outer shell limited to defense forces.
6. The DMZs were monitored by the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO).
7. Mixed Armistice Commissions (MAC) were set up to ensure the full implemention of the agreements.
8. Tensions built as Jews in increasing numbers moved into the Upper Galilee establishing settlements and farms on Palestinian property.
UNTSO Chief of Staff Carl von Horn of Sweden:
In 1950, the Israelis had established a new kibbutz at Beit Katzir in the [southern] demilitarized zone. Like most of their kibbutzim in troubled areas, it was fortified with trenches and a double-apron barbed-wire fence from behind which its settlers sallied out to cultivate the surrounding land, digging irrigation canals to channel the water from Lake Tiberias with such vigour that before long no Arab farmer in the area was allowed into the stretch of land between the kibbutz and the lake.
From here they soon extended their activities so that the inhabitants of the two neighboring Arab villages, Lower and Upper Tawafiq observed the kibbutznik tractor-drivers with alarm as they speeded up each turn at the eastern boundaries of their fields, making the ploughs swerve out, thus slowly but surely extending their ‘previous’ cultivation eastward into Arab [Palestinian] land.
This was, of course, part of a premeditated Israeli policy to edge east through the demilitarized zone towards the old Palestine border (as shown on their maps) and to get all Arabs out of the way by fair means of foul.
Gradually, beneath the glowering eyes of the Syrians, who held the high ground overlooking the zone, the area had become a network of Israeli canals and irrigation channels edging up against and always encroaching on Arab-owned property . . . For the ground was so fertile that every square foot was a gold mine in grain.
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21 January 1951-
The Jewish National Fund of the World Zionist Organization agrees to help finance a $250 million development project that includes drainage of the 15,000-acre Huleh Marshes (an integral part of the Jordan River system) and irrigation of the Negev and the Jerusalem corridor. Almost from the beginning it was obvious that the drainage channels would impinge on Syrian territory within the central DMZ. -
13 March 1951-
Israel begins digging a drainage ditch. the Syrian-Israel MAC examined Syria’s complaint and ruled that the Israeli project constitutes a flagrant violation of the armistice. -
24 March 1951-
For the first time Israel asserts that it held sovereignty over the zone and thus had a right to proceed. -
25 March 1951-
Israel resumes digging in the DMZ. Clashes between Syrian and Israeli forces ensue. -
30 March 1951-
Israel retaliates by expelling 785 Palestinians from their 3 villages in the central DMZ and bulldozing their homes. -
4 April 1951-
seven Israeli soldiers on patrol are killed in an ambush by Syrian troops. The next day the Israeli cabinet decided, in secret, that the DMZs should be cleared of Arabs [Palestinians]. On the same day Israel bombed the Al-Hamma district in the southern DMZ killing 2 Palestinian women and wounding civilians. Though the US protested that the Israeli actions were in no way justified about 1200 Palestinians in the central and southern sections were forced out. Syria’s counterattack was repulsed and in the next year the Bedouin were driven out. -
18 May 1951-
UN Security Council Resolution 92 calls on Israel to stop draining the marshes of Lake Huleh and allow the return of the Palestinians. Israel prevented all but 350 from returning. -
20 June 1951-
Israel now informs the UNTSO that it would no longer attend meetings of the Syrian-Israeli MAC as long as complaints involving the DMZs were on the agenda. Israel agrued that since it alone had sovereignty over the zones Syria had no rights and therefore, no standing to discuss the zones.
UNTSO Chief of Staff, Canadian general E.L.M. Burns:
The Israelis claimed sovereignty over the territory covered by the DMZ . . . They then proceeded, as opportunity offered, to encroach on the specific restrictions and so eventually to free themselves, on various pretexts, from all of them.
Thus, Israel immobilized the MAC. Further, Israel refused to allow UN observers to demarcate the line of the DMZs and thereby no one was ever sure exactly where the line lay.
The spring fighting resulted in Syria gaining control of the village of al-Hamma in the southern zone, all of the tiny northern zone and the uninhabited narrow stretch of land on the east side of the Jordan River in the central zone. Israel took the rest- most of the southern zone and all of the central zone west of the Jordan River.
September 1953-
Israel launches, on a crash basis, a diversion project on a nine-mile channel midway between the huleh Marshes and Lake Tiberias in the central DMZ. The plan was to divert enough water to help irrigate the coastal Sharon Plain and eventually the Negev desert. syria claimed it would dry up 12,000 acres of Syrian land. The UNTSO Chief of Staff Major General Vagn Bennike of Denmark noted that the project was denying water to two Palestinian water mills, was drying up Palestinian farm land and was a substantial militarybenefit to Israel against Syria. The US cut off aid to Israel. The Israeli response was to increase work. UN Security Council Resolution 100 asked Israel to stop work pending an investigation. Israel finally backed off and for the next three years the US kept its economic sanctions in effect bt insisting on tying aid to Israel’s behavior.
11 December 1955-
Under the command of Ariel Sharon Israel attacks Syrian military posts and the village of Kursi outside the DMZ, near the northeast shore of Lake Tiberias. 56 Syrians including 3 women were killed. Israel lost 6 killed. The US expressed shock ay Israel’s flagrant violation of the armistice agreement.
The purpose of the strike was to provoke Egypt into honoring its mutual defense pack with Syria by attacking Israel, thereby igniting the war Israel sought with Egypt. But Egypt did not take the bait and Israel had to wait almost a year for the Suez War. Israel also had in mind its long-term policy of establishing exclusive control over Lake Tiberias.
30 October 1956-
Israel attacks Egypt across the Sinai peninsula. The remainder of the Palestinians living in the DMZs were driven into Syria. Commenting on this was UNTSO Chief of Staff Odd Bull of Norway who observed:
I imagine that a number of those evicted settled somewhere in the Golan Heights and that their children have watched the land that had been in their families for hundreds of years being cultivated by Israeli farmers, From time to time they opened fire on these
