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| Israel: Heading for a Strategic Precipice |
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Secondly the growing access to nuclear weapons in the Muslim world, first starting in Pakistan in 1998 and which may occur in Iran within the next few years also has the effect of neutralising Israel’s own nuclear advantage and therefore fundamentally altering the strategic equation. Iran especially after the invasion of Iraq now enjoys major influence both in Lebanon and Iraq and this coupled with the US inability to launch any further land attacks in the short term has meant that Israel has not enjoyed such an overwhelming gain from the invasion of Iraq as most commentators think. Pakistan as the only declared nuclear Muslim state despite the desires of its President is unlikely to go down the road of rapprochement or recognition of Israel. Her nuclear arsenal coupled with a radicalised population empathising with their co-religionists means that Pakistan as an actor in any future conflict in the Middle East cannot be ruled out especially if the current pro-western regime is ousted. If we also factor in a cooling off in the relationship with Turkey (for example Prime Minister Erdogan has called Israeli actions in the occupied territories as ‘terrorist‘ , it is clear that Israel’s relationships with the three key non Arab Muslim countries has also failed to provide her with the necessary security and strategic depth she has been seeking. After 57 years and despite notional peace agreements Israel largely remains a pariah state in the bulk of the Muslim world; a terrible indictment of Israeli public diplomacy.
Creating sustainable water security
Israel like many countries in the Middle East faces a huge challenge with respect to water; however unlike these other countries it is much more difficult for her to cooperate with other nations to resolve this problem. In 2000 in a lecture presented by Professor Emeritus Dan Zaslavsky at Bar-Ilan University entitled “Efficient Use of Limited Water Resources: Making Israel a Model State” the four major water problems Israel had to face were described:
a) Over-pumping - the use of more water than is permitted by the natural annual recharge of rain.
b) Processes of water pollution - caused by the following: over-pumping, sewage infiltration, leachates from waste piles, industrial spills and wastes, agricultural chemicals, fuel leakages, construction, transportation and urbanisation.
c) Water and our neighbours - current and future developments in the demand for water, and their management.
d) The manner and sophistication of management and decision making – presently at an all-time low, with the appreciation of high professional expertise never so lacking as today.
According to Zaslavsky the pursuit of salination by salt water intrusion, eliminates at least 10 million cubic meters per year annually, thus reducing the availability of fresh water sources. As an example, nearly 20% of the coastal aquifer cannot be utilised due to salinity.
In a recent article on the Washington Post website titled 'For Dead Sea, a Slow and Seemingly Inexorable Death', it quotes several Israeli experts on the problem. According to the Washington Post the decline in the Dead Sea has been particularly rapid since the 1970s, when the water began dropping three feet a year. This then created a complex domino effect that is now slowly destroying some of Israel's most cherished plant and wildlife reserves along the Dead Sea's shores, a key resting stop along the annual migration route for 500 million birds that fly between Europe and Africa. The receding waters have left huge mud flats with hundreds of sinkholes that threaten to collapse roads and buildings and have forced a development freeze on Israel's side of the sea, which lies on the border with Jordan. The website cites Galit Cohen, head of environmental policy at Israel's Environmental Ministry as saying ‘I'm looking at the reality, and nothing will change in the next 20 to 40 years -- the sinkholes will continue opening even more, the infrastructure will be destroyed from stream erosion, the water level will drop and affect the ecosystem. The forecast for the future is very bad.’ Cohen also believes that the problem of water shortages has still not sunk in, he states ‘The situation of the Dead Sea is something that happened because there's a water shortage and it's needed for other uses. You can say, 'Don't think of anything else. Let the Dead Sea have the water,' but no one will listen. They'll say, 'So we won't have water in Tel Aviv or the Negev or where?'
Optimists point to a new agreement signed by the Israelis, Palestinians and Jordanians to pump water from the Red Sea to the Dead Sea via a proposed 120-mile Red-Dead Canal. The canal will generate electricity, provide fresh water, and prevent the Dead Sea from drying up. According to the British Guardian newspaper this will draw water from the Red Sea at Aqaba in Jordan, raise it 170 metres above sea level and then let it fall to the Dead Sea which, at 400 metres below sea level, remains the lowest place on earth. But Israeli experts say similar proposals including a Med-Dead canal to pump water from the Mediterranean have been around for more than 30 years and are unlikely to work. According to Amos Bein of the Geological Survey of Israel, chemical and biological reactions produced by mixing Dead Sea water with seawater could change the blue colour of the Dead Sea to white or red or create deadly gases. Ariella Gotlieb, a biologist with Israel's parks authority puts is starkly when she says the traditional Zionist dream to "make the desert bloom" has to be updated to reflect the scarcity of resources in a more densely populated country.
Water has long been trailed as a source of major dispute. After signing the 1979 peace treaty with Israel, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat said his nation will never go to war again, except to protect its water resources. King Hussein of Jordan identified water as the only reason that might lead him to war with the Jewish state. Former United Nations Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali warned bluntly that the next war in the area will be over water. Adel Darwish, the prominent Middle Eastern commentator, also argues that with the Israeli army in control prohibiting Palestinians from pumping water, and settlers using much more advanced pumping equipment, Palestinians complain of "daily theft" of as much as 80% of their underground water. He also cites Ariel Sharon as saying that the Six Day War started because Syrian engineers were working on diverting part of the water flow away from Israel.
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