Middle East
Water fuels new war danger
THE SITUATION in the Middle East is more critical than for many years. Negotiations between Israel and Syria over the Golan Heights have stalled, Israel has launched another vicious attack on Lebanon, and the final stage of the Israel-Palestinian discussions looks set to lead to a sell-out which will be rejected by the majority of Palestinians. Roland Rance reports.
The increasingly close cooperation between Israel and Turkey, including an agreement to share water diverted from Syria and Iraq after the completion of the Ilisu dam, threatens further bitter resource conflicts and wars.
The Golan Heights, occupied by Israel in the course of the 1967 war, are small in area, but of immense symbolic importance for both Israel and Syria.
It would be impossible for any Syrian regime to contemplate an agreement which left Israel in occupation of Syrian territory barely 35 miles from Damascus.
For ailing President Hafez el-Assad, keen to secure a smooth transfer of power to his son, the return of the Golan is an urgent issue, and he has seemed willing to compromise on other issues. For instance, he has agreed to discuss the future of the north west bank of the Sea of Galilee, the only part of Palestine under Syrian rule after 1948, which was also seized by Israel in 1967.
Israel, on the other hand, has rejected a full withdrawal from Golan, offering at best "redeployment of forces", without any removal of Israeli settlements. Opinion polls in Israel show that 60% of voters would oppose withdrawal in the promised referendum on the question.
Meanwhile, in the course of the negotiations, Israel has been conducting a large-scale military exercise simulating war with Syria. Israel's recent attack in Lebanon, following the apparent collapse of negotiations with Syria, is the latest act in a proxy war which Lebanon's neighbours have been fighting there for over twenty years.
Since Israel first occupied South Lebanon, in 1978, several thousand Lebanese and Palestinians have been killed, and the country's infrastructure devastated over and over again. In the raids this February, Israel destroyed three major power stations, effectively cutting virtually off all electricity in Lebanon. It is not expected that power will be restored until April at the earliest.
Israel justified this attack by arguing that Hizballah forces in Lebanon had killed Israeli soldiers, thus breaching earlier agreements between the sides.
This argument was supported by US Secretary of State Madeline Albright, who referred to Hizballah as "enemies of peace". What this claim ignores is that the targets of Hizballah attacks were part of the 1000 strong Israeli force which has been in illegal occupation of South Lebanon since 1978.
DESPITE constant Israeli provocation, Hizballah has generally refrained from firing across the border at civilians in Israel's northern towns and villages. For example, on 16 December, Israel shelled a Lebanese schoolyard during break, injuring dozens of children. Under US pressure, Syria instructed Hizballah not to respond by shelling Israel.
However, Israel's casualties in Lebanon (although insignificant compared to the suffering of the Lebanese and Palestinians) are becoming domestically insupportable, and a movement is growing in Israel for withdrawal from Lebanon.
Prime Minister Ehud Barak was elected last year after pledging to bring the troops home.
In order to do this, he needs to establish that he can control the area without a direct military presence. With the growing disarray of Israel's allies in the so-called South Lebanon Army, and the death in an ambush late last year of their deputy commander, Israel will be forced to rely on continuing Syrian restraint.
But without movement in the stalled negotiations, and an Israeli commitment to return the Golan Heights, Assad has no reason to give Israel any undertakings to control Hizballah.
In this situation, Israel faces two options: negotiate with Syria and return the Golan, or go to war with Syria and force its compliance with Israel's retention of the Golan, and its control over Hizballah in Lebanon. According to some activists in Israel, all the signs are that Barak is tending towards the latter option.
During January, it was announced that scores of new homes were being built for settlers in the Golan, that several new water wells will be drilled (diverting aquifer water from Syria to Israel), and that a temporary bridge will be replaced by a permanent one - hardly the behaviour of an occupier planning to leave.
Professor Tanya Reinhart of Tel-Aviv University claims that Assad has indeed been threatened with what she terms "a Kosovo style war ... Israel will withdraw temporarily from Lebanon, and then, with the first incident or missile (that could easily be provoked), the Western world, led by the US, will stand behind the peace-seeking Israel, when it attacks Syria, and will lend its air-force umbrella to this new mission of peace" (Yediot Aharonot, 16 December 1999).
Israel, meanwhile, is seeking to augment its fleet of US-built Apache helicopters, used almost daily in its attacks in Lebanon.
According to the New York Times, "Air Force officers say their bombing raids against Hizballah guerrilla targets would be more effective and pose less risk to crews if they could use the newer Longbow Apaches" (3 February 2000).
Although Barak cultivates an image as a peace-maker, his own history belies this.
Like his mentor, former PM Yitzhak Rabin, he is close to Likud leader Ariel Sharon, Defence Minister during the 1982 invasion of Lebanon. Following the Kahan report into the massacres in the Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps, Sharon was forced to resign.
THE INQUIRY found that he had systematically lied to and misled the cabinet as to his war aims and the situation in Lebanon (though it did not ask whether the cabinet had deliberately allowed itself to be misled, in order to disclaim some responsibility).
But Sharon was not alone in his duplicity. One of his officers was Barak, then a Colonel, who not only shared Sharon's war aims but wanted to go further and to attack Syria directly.
In a memo in March 1982, he proposed that this be prepared secretly through military exercises, whose real goal should be concealed from both the government and the army high command. (This memo was published in HaAretz on 8 January 1999, and "not denied" by Barak).
Barak's 1982 proposal was not pursued at the time because the expected Israeli losses would have been heavy. But now, following the lessons of the Gulf and Kosova wars, it appears more feasible. In this light, it is ominous that the Cabinet has authorised PM Barak to order military operations personally, without consultation.
Barak has now declared an "Exceptional Situation" in northern Israel, allowing him to suspend civil rights and order residents to remain in their shelters. The alliance between Israel and Turkey puts double pressure on Syria, which still has an outstanding border dispute with Turkey over the Antioch area, carved out of Syria when it gained its independence in 1925.
Joint military manoeuvres have demonstrated that any part of Syria (and Iraq) is within reach of the combined military resources of Israel and Turkey. The controversial proposed Ilisu dam, which will control the flow of the rivers Tigris and Euphrates, threatens to leave both Syria and Iraq dependent on Turkey for their water resources.
Control of water has been responsible for previous wars in the Middle East, notably Israel's ongoing occupation of Lebanon. It is also one factor in Israel's reluctance to leave the occupied West Bank.
In addition to all the other reasons to oppose this dam (flooding of Kurdish villages, forced resettlement of Kurds, destruction of Kurdish heritage, environmental devastation), the effects on the wider Middle East situation must be considered.
Activists in Israel are beginning to mobilise against a possible war with Syria.
We must support them, and demand:
Immediate, complete and unconditional Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon;
Return of the Golan Heights to Syria and dismantlement of all Israeli settlements;
An end to military supplies to Israel and Turkey;
No British government money for the Ilisu dam.