ZoneFlood

From ya Libnan:

Officials in Beirut said Siniora has instructed the foreign ministry to submit a protest to the United Nations (UN) Security Council over Israeli violations of Lebanese airspace along the border and alleged Israel was pumping water from the Wazzani river in the south.

“The Lebanese authorities have informed us about allegations on Israeli pumping of the Wazzani and we are currently investigating,” said Alexander Ivanko, spokesman for the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (Unifil).

As predicted, Israel is using the last days of the re-occupation of Lebanon to divert water from Lebanese sources. From Beirut’s Daily Star:

Meanwhile, an Israeli bulldozer carried out digging work on Tuesday before laying water pipes in the Wazzani River in Marjayoun in a bid to funnel water to the town of Ghajar

From AP:

Hezbollah guerrillas fired more 100 rockets at Israeli towns on Wednesday - raising the total since the start of the conflict to 3,333 - including several medium-range missiles that landed near the West Bank town of Jenin and south of the Israeli city of Afula, police said.

By mid-afternoon, the guerrillas had fired 132 rockets, but no casualties were immediately reported, said police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld.

Five of the rockets landed near a Palestinian town in the West Bank on Wednesday, Palestinian security officials said. There were no casualties.

From the Jerusalem Post:

A US Navy sailor, Ariel J. Weinmann, is suspected of spying for Israel and has been held in prison for four months, according to an article published Monday in the Saudi daily Al-Watan. It reported that Weinmann is being held at a military base in Virginia on suspicion of espionage and desertion.

From the Los Angeles Times:

As the Bush administration seeks to negotiate a diplomatic end to the fighting in the Middle East, it finds it has a strikingly weak hand.

The war in Iraq, a halting U.S. response to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and now the prolonged fighting in Lebanon and Israel have led to intense anti-Americanism in the Arab world. Alliances with longtime Arab friends are strained. And the U.S. lacks relations with two key regional players: Iran and Syria.

From the Independent:

Hezbollah fired a barrage of rockets at towns across northern Israel on Sunday killing 10 reserve soldiers, according to reports.

The raid is the worst rocket attack on Israel since the violence began on July 12, rescue services said. Reports coming out of Israel indicate that those killed in the raid were reserve soldiers.

Germany’s Der Spiegal have more on the environmental disaster in Lebanon:

In an interview with the BBC, the ministry’s director general, Berj Hatjian, compared the oil slick to that caused by the Exxon Valdez tanker, “with 20,000 to 30,000 tons reaching the shoreline.” When the tanker sank off the coast of Alaska in 1989, 40,000 tons of oil were released into the sea. The result was the worst ever maritime environmental disaster. Hundreds of thousands of animals died, and because the oil spill could not be completely cleaned up animals are still being poisoned today.

The environmental impact of the current oil slick is not confined to Lebanon and risks spreading through the Mediterranean. The Regional Marine Pollution Emergency Response Center (Rempec), based in Malta, has already recorded the first traces of oil on the Syrian coast — confirming reports of contamination made by the port authority at Syria’s coastal town of Tartus. Environmental groups in Lebanon are also warning that the pollution could reach the coasts of Turkey and Cyprus.

The MyLeftWing website has done some good background research on the Wazzani Springs, including this nugget from DEBKAfile, which is written by former (and current?) Israeli intelligence officers:

Perhaps the most important gain from the crisis is Israel’s recovery of control over its main sources of water, the Wazzani springs in the divided Ghajar village.

Extremely large but instructive image map showing just how complete the destruction of Lebanese infrastructure has been. Click on the image.

The Bush administration may have badly miscalculated in insisting that any Mideast cease-fire be tied to long-term objectives. As the toll on Lebanese civilians has soared, even moderate Arab governments have turned into U.S. critics, and Hezbollah’s support has climbed across the region.

Bush’s most steadfast ally, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, joined the ranks of those expressing frustration after Israel’s Sunday bombing in the village of Qana that killed many civilians, most of them women and children. “We have to speed this whole process up,” Blair said. “This has got to stop and stop on both sides.”

Anger was brewing all across the Arab world as the U.N. Security Council prepared to take up the issue. Calls for an immediate cease-fire were coming from traditional U.S. allies in the region, including Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan.

Even the democratically elected prime minister of Lebanon, Fuad Saniora — whose leadership Bush often salutes — insisted that talk of a larger peace package must wait until the firing stops. “We will not negotiate until the Israeli war stops shedding the blood of innocent people,” said Saniora. 

And where Saniora initially was critical of Hezbollah, he is now praising the militant group and its leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, for helping to defend Lebanon.

These haven’t been good days for Bush’s goal of spreading democracy through the Middle East.

[Associated Press | July 31, 2006]