Water politics in the Middle East

As with the other major Middle Eastern river systems, political agreements over access to the water of the Nile have been few and far between. The first such accord was the 1929 Nile Agreement. However, this was an agreement that largely represented the nature of world geopolitical realities at that time, rather than being a mutual expression of accord between the participating parties of the region.

This, it is argued, is because it was essentially a product of British national interest. The priority of the United Kingdom, as part of its strategy as the dominant contemporary political and economic power in the Middle East, was maintaining secure supplies of water to Egypt, and this was what the agreement primarily provided for.[7]

The next agreement on water use in the Nile did not come for exactly three more decades. The new 1959 Nile Agreement was signed by Egypt and Sudan, and was at this point free from political influence by the UK. However, the limitation of this agreement was that it was not more than a bilateral treaty between the two participant countries and, as such, it provided solely for an agreement on the sharing of water between the two nations. The 1959 Nile Agreement has not been granted recognition by the other states through which the Nile also runs.[8]

Countries that rely on the Tigris-Euphrates water system remain at the first stage of claiming their rights to water. However, the key player in terms of water politics in this area is Turkey, who Allan reports as having "gone a substantial way to[wards]… what it regards as its water rights by its construction programs on the Euphrates without having them recognized by downstream Syria and Iraq".[9] This refers to the dams built by Turkey from the 1970s, partially funded by World Bank loans.[10]

Flood waters exiting from the Yarmuk reservoir to the Yarmuk river, 1933

Sea of Galilee, Israel

The Syria-Lebanon-Palestine boundary was a product of the post–World War I Anglo-French partition of Ottoman Syria.[11][12] British forces had advanced to a position at Tel Hazor against Turkish troops in 1918 and wished to incorporate all the sources of the river Jordan within the British controlled Palestine. Due to the French inability to establish administrative control, the frontier between Syria and Palestine was fluid until 1934, when the French managed to assert authority over the Arab nationalist movement and King Faisal had been deposed.[13] In the unratified Treaty of Sèvres from the San Remo conference, the 1920 boundary extended the British controlled area to north of the Sykes Picot line (straight line between the midpoint of the Sea of Galilee and Nahariya). The international boundary between Palestine and Syria was finally agreed by Great Britain and France in 1923 with the Treaty of Lausanne after Britain had been given a League of Nations mandate for Palestine in 1922. Banyas (on the Quneitre/Tyre road) was within the French Mandate of Syria. The border was set 750 metres south of the spring.[12][14]

In 1941 Australian forces occupied Banyas in the advance to the Litani during the Syria-Lebanon Campaign. When Free French and Indian forces invaded Syria in the Battle of Kissoué[15] In 1946, France and Britain signed a bilateral agreement to hand over control of the Banias to the British Mandate authorities although the Syrian government declared France's signature invalid.[16] British Mandate projects to drain the marshland for cultivation angered the Arab villagers.

After the establishment of the State of Israel, Syria offered to adjust the armistice lines, and cede to Israel's 70% of the DMZ, in exchange for a return to the pre-1946 border in the Jordan basin area, with Banias water resources returning uncontested to Syrian sovereignty. On 26 April, the Israeli cabinet met to consider the Syrian suggestions; with head of Israel's Water Planning Authority, Simha Blass, in attendance. Blass noted that while the land to be ceded to Syria was not suitable for cultivation, the Syrian map did not suit Israel's water development plan. Blass explained that the movement of the International boundary in the area of Banias would affect Israel's water rights.

On 13 April, the Syrian delegates seemed very anxious to move forward and offered Israel around 70% of the DMZ's. Significant results were achieved and a number of suggestions and summaries put in writing, but they required decisions by the two governments. The Israeli cabinet convened on 26 April to consider the Syrian proposals. Simha Blass, head of Israel's Water Planning Authority, was invited to the meeting. Dayan showed Blass the Syrian suggestions on the map. Blass told Dayan that although most of the lands that Israel was expected to relinquish were not suitable for cultivation, the map did not suit Israel's irrigation and water development plans. On 4 and 27 May, Israel presented its new conditions. These were rejected by Syria, and the negotiations ended without agreement.[17]

In 1951 Israel started the Hula Valley Swamps drainage works. In 1953, Israel unilaterally started a water diversion project within the Jordan River basin by the Israeli National Water Carrier. In September 1953 Israel advanced plans to divert water to help irrigate the coastal Sharon Plain and eventually the Negev desert by launching a diversion project on a nine-mile (14 km) channel midway between the Huleh Marshes and Lake Galilee (Lake Tiberias) in the central DMZ to be rapidly constructed. Syria claimed that it would dry up 12,000 acres (49 km²) of Syrian land. The UNTSO Chief of Staff Major General Vagn Bennike of Denmark claimed the project would divert water to two Palestinian water mills and dry up Palestinian farmland. UN Security Council Resolution 100[18] deemed it desirable for Israel to suspend work started on 2 September "pending urgent examination of the question by the Council". The Security Council ultimately rejected Syrian claims that the work was a violation of the Armistice Agreements. Hula Valley Swamps drainage works were resumed and the work was completed in 1957.[19]

National Water Carrier of Israel

On 1964 Israel completed its National Water Carrier, which siphoned water (within the limits of the Johnston Plan) from the Sea of Galilee. The water was used for irrigation of the southern Negev desert.

In January 1964 an Arab League summit meeting convened in Cairo. The main item on the agenda was Israel's diversion of water from the north to irrigate the south and the expected reduction in the water supplies available to Syria and Jordan. The preamble to its decision stated that "the establishment of Israel is the basic threat that the Arab nation in its entirety has agreed to forestall. And since the existence of Israel is a danger that threatens the Arab nation, the diversion of the Jordan waters by it multiplies the dangers to Arab existence. Accordingly, the Arab states have to prepare the plans necessary for dealing with the political, economic and social aspects, so that if necessary results are not achieved, collective Arab military preparations, when they are not completed, will constitute the ultimate practical means for the final liquidation of Israel."

The project was to divert 20 to 30 million cubic metres of water from the river Jordan tributaries to Syria and Jordan for the development of Syria and Jordan.[20] This led to military intervention from Israel, first with tank fire and then, as the Syrians shifted the works further eastward, with airstrikes.[21]

On 10 June 1967, the last day of the Six Day War, Golani Brigade forces invaded the village of Banyas where a Syrian fort stood. Eshkol's priority on the Syrian front was control of the water sources.[22]

Jordan claims it has riparian rights to water from the Jordan basin and upper Jordan tributaries. Due to the water diversion projects, the flow to the river Jordan was reduced from 1,300/1,500 million cubic metres to 250/300 million cubic metres. Water quality was further reduced as the flow of the river Jordan consists run-off from agricultural irrigation and saline springs.[23]

The agreement between Jordan and Israel is the only one in the Middle East region to lead to recognition of water rights on both sides. The water agreement forms a part of the broader political treaty that Israel and Jordan signed in 1994.[3] In 1999, when the treaty's limitations were revealed by events concerning water shortages in the Jordan basin. A reduced supply of water to Israel due to drought meant that Israel, which is responsible for providing water to Jordan, decreased its water provisions to the country, provoking a diplomatic disagreement between the two and bringing the water component of the treaty back into question.[24]

Israel's complaints about the reduction in water from the tributaries to the river Jordan caused by the Jordan/Syrian dam have gone unheeded.[25]