ZoneFlood

Syria has said that any Middle East Ceasefire must include discussion of the occupied Golan Heights. From the NYTimes:

Syria, one of Hezbollah’s main backers, said it will press for a cease-fire to end the fighting — but only in the framework of a broader Middle East peace initiative that would include the return of the Golan Heights. Israel was unlikely to accept such terms but the remarks were the first indication of Syria’s willingness to be involved in international efforts to defuse the Lebanese crisis.

Israel said it would accept a NATO-led international force to keep the peace along the border.

From the Moshe Dayan Center:

Following a brief period of calm on Israel’s northern border, the drums of war have begun to beat again in recent weeks. This time, the background to what thus far remains only verbal escalation is not Hizbullah actions against Israel. Instead, it is the Lebanese Government’s intention to begin pumping water from the Wazzani River, one of the tributaries of the Jordan.

Israel has warned Beirut that if it goes ahead with its plans, Israel will treat the project as a casus belli. And Hizbullah has predictably weighed in with its own demands that the Government of Lebanon proceed as planned and ignore Israeli warnings. Hizbullah spokesmen have added that if Israel acts against Lebanon, Hizbullah will respond by attacking targets in Israel.

An article from 2003 discusses the Israeli threat to invade Lebanon over the Hasbani and Wazzani Rivers project, which was defended by PM Hariri, who was later assassinated.

A water-pumping station in southern Lebanon that Israel said could be grounds for war has been supplying parched villages near the border with Israel for three months…

…Lebanon, Mr. Hariri said, also wants to protect its water rights. “We asked the U.N., U.S., EU and Russia to help us in defining the quantity of water” that Lebanon can obtain from the Wazzani according to the international laws, Mr. Hariri said.

He told UPI he believes the status quo will continue. “Maybe the political situation in the region does not allow peace, but it does not mean that the alternative is war,” Mr. Hariri said. The Wazzani River flows for about two miles inside Lebanon before entering Israel.

A fascinating book entitled Watershed is available in its entirity online, with many references to the history of Israel and its desire to posess the Litani River of Lebanon. Even in the earliest days of the state, the Litani was considered highly important. From Chapter 8:

It has been apparent to Zionist planners since the early 1900s that water was crucial to the economic vitality of Palestine. For example, Chaim Weizmann pleaded with the British and others to have the Litani River included within the boundaries of Palestine, because he understood the vital nature of this resource to the future of any Jewish state (see Chapter 6 and Figure 11, p. 126). As noted earlier, he was unsuccessful and later complained bitterly that his position was totally undermined by the British (Hof 1985).

From the Independent:

Israeli aircraft dropped leaflets over southern Lebanon yesterday warning civilians to leave border villages for areas north of the Litani river, about 13 miles from the frontier. The area south of the river is normally inhabited by around 300,000 people

From a paper written in 1997:

In the Middle East, the supply of water is much less than its demand, thereby resulting in conflict over it. This is true for Israel and Lebanon, where there have been struggles, although not always armed, for the waters of the Litani River. At this point, Israel occupies southern Lebanon. Part of the Litani is located in this region. There are conflicting reports and conclusions over whether or not Israel is using the Litani. There is also a verbal struggle over which country needs the Litani more, could make best use of it, and who, therefore, should develop their use of the Litani. Although there is not an armed struggle over it now, it has been involved in armed struggles in the past (in the 1967 war, and in 1982) and it is conceivable that in the future the struggles over it may become armed.

From CNN:

Lebanon’s lack of wealth is matched by the Palestinians — three out of every four Palestinians live below the poverty line. Yet the vast majority of our giving in the region flows to Israel. This kind of geopolitical inconsistency and shortsightedness has contributed to the Arab-Israeli conflict that the Western world seems content to allow to perpetuate endlessly.

After a week of escalating violence, around two dozen Israelis and roughly 200 Lebanese have died. That has been sufficient bloodshed for United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan and British Prime Minister Tony Blair to join in the call for an international security force, ignoring the fact that a U.N. force is already in Southern Lebanon, having failed to secure the border against Hezbollah’s incursions and attacks and the murder and kidnapping of Israeli soldiers.

From WorldNetDaily:

When Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert unleashed his navy and air force on Lebanon, accusing that tiny nation of an “act of war,” the last pillar of Bush’s Middle East policy collapsed.

First came capitulation on the Bush Doctrine, as Pyongyang and Tehran defied Bush’s dictum: The world’s worst regimes will not be allowed to acquire the world’s worst weapons. Then came suspension of the democracy crusade as Islamic militants exploited free elections to advance to power and office in Egypt, Lebanon, Gaza, the West Bank, Iraq and Iran.

From the NY Times:

Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki of Iraq on Wednesday forcefully denounced the Israeli attacks on Lebanon, marking a sharp break with President Bush’s position and highlighting the growing power of a Shiite Muslim identity across the Middle East.

“The Israeli attacks and airstrikes are completely destroying Lebanon’s infrastructure,” Mr. Maliki said at an afternoon news conference inside the fortified Green Zone, which houses the American embassy and the seat of the Iraqi government. “I condemn these aggressions and call on the Arab League foreign ministers’ meeting in Cairo to take quick action to stop these aggressions. We call on the world to take quick stands to stop the Israeli aggression.”

From ThinkProgress:

In 1996, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith and David Wurmser (all later senior officials in the Bush administration) had a plan for how to destroy Hezbollah: Invade Iraq. They wrote a report to the newly elected Likud government in Israel calling for “a clean break” with the policies of negotiating with the Palestinians and trading land for peace.

The problem could be solved “if Israel seized the strategic initiative along it northern borders by engaging Hizballah (sic), Syria, and Iran, as the principal agents of aggression in Lebanon.” The key, they said, was to “focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq — an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right — as a means of foiling Syria’s regional ambitions.” They called for “reestablishing the principle of preemption.” They promised that the successes of these wars could be used to launch campaigns against Iran, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, reshaping “the strategic balance in the Middle East profoundly.”

Bush: Yo Blair How are you doing?
Blair: I’m just…
Bush: You’re leaving?
Blair: No, no, no not yet. On this trade thingy…[inaudible]
Bush: yeah I told that to the man
Blair: Are you planning to say that here or not?
Bush: If you want me to
Blair: Well, it’s just that if the discussion arises…
Bush: I just want some movement.
Blair: Yeah
Bush: Yesterday we didn’t see much movement
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