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| Israel: Heading for a Strategic Precipice |
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Israel controls the Kinneret Sea of Galilee and this remains the source of one third of its water consumption. The remainder it pumps from rivers in the region, to the vocal dismay of Syria, Lebanon and Jordan. Despite decades of indoctrination, Israelis are water-guzzlers according to Sam Vaknin who wrote an article titled ‘Emerging Water Wars.’ He argues that the Israelis quaff 4-6 times the water consumption of their Palestinian and Arab neighbours. Vaknin also cites "The Economist" as claiming ‘The argument over Syria's water rights to the Sea of Galilee is now the only real stumbling-block to a peace treaty between Syria and Israel. Negotiations broke down last time, after the two sides appeared to agree on everything save the future of a sliver of territory on the north-east coast of the sea. Israel had insisted on keeping control of that, since the Sea of Galilee supplies more than 40% of its drinking water.’ According to Zavlasky if the Syrian border came closer to the 1967 border or the international 1923 border, and all of the Golan Heights was handed over to Syria, the chances are high that Israel would have to surrender its claim to approximately 1/3 of its fresh water. The Syrian plan to inhabit the Golan Heights by half a million people would in his opinion undoubtedly turn the Sea of Galilee into a polluted, sewage-infested pool.
Whatever the claims, it is clear that Israel cannot simply exclusively follow the strategy of building more desalination plants or rely on the Sea of Galilee forever. Though it has made initial and limited steps to purchase water from Turkey, this obviously carries a strategic risk of building dependency on a Muslim country for a key resource, a path Israeli security planners are reluctant to take but may be forced to by the exceptional circumstances they are faced with.
In conclusion, Israel has significant challenges in the years ahead, a crisis of demography, increasing animosity and threat in the Muslim world, proliferation of nuclear and chemical weapons and finally a huge dependence on water in an arid neighbourhood. Yet despite these Israel faces a crisis of confidence internally where different sections of Israel can no longer agree on what is the right way forward for the Jewish state. These differences transcend the stereotypes of a hawk dove split or between a religious orthodoxy and a secular class. A society where Ariel Sharon can be equally labelled a war criminal and an appeaser by large sections of the public is symptomatic of an increasingly schizophrenic society. Israelis are not just bitterly divided about the Gaza withdrawal or the Roadmap (see a recent book by Dr Rosemary Hollis of Chatham House and Mark Heller articulating these differences), these are mere emblems of more fundamental issues. No the chasms are far deeper and surround the very nature of what the Jewish state should be and how it can survive going forward. These internal chasms combined with a losing PR battle not just in the Muslim world but also in the western and developing world means that Israel is fast running out of steam and legitimacy. As the chair of the Democratic Choice faction in the Yahad party Roman Bronfman recently wrote
Without open borders and regional-economic integration, Israel will cease to exist. A continuation of the present socioeconomic order of priorities, which is dictated by the occupation and the creeping accumulation of arms, guarantees the widening of the gaps within society and the weakening of Israel's economy in the international arena. Social solidarity, which is an existential necessity for the survival of society and of the nation, will weaken even further.
Whether Israel at age 57 can prove Bronfman wrong will be the defining issue of the Middle East for some years to come.
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