Could somebody please explain?

[AusGail]

I was told yesterday that the war in the middle east (between Lebanon and Israel) has more to do with water resources than religion. Apparently, Lebanon has plenty of water and Israel wants it. Could somebody please shed some light on this situation?

[Kailassa]

1. Not knowing anything about it, I googled war water lebanon,

and this was the first article to pop up.

Published on Thursday, September 26, 2002 in the lndependent/UK
Water War Looms as Israel Tells Lebanon to Halt River Works
by Robert Fisk

It's not much of a river. It's low enough to walk across, warm from a stone bed that attracts the autumn heat, full of tadpoles and small fish, frothing merrily in a creek below the scruffy village of Ghajar. But take a closer look and you'll see an Israeli soldier standing above the creek, on the opposite side of a maze of barbed wire, watching this little river through his binoculars. For say the word Wazzani right now, and you're talking water war. Even Colin Powell, the American Secretary of State, has become involved.

There's no war yet, just a mass of piping that the Lebanese are laying along the Lebanese side of the Israeli frontier wire to carry the warm waters of the river to another bunch of dirt-poor Shia Muslim villages. The trouble is that the Wazzani flows right out of Lebanon and into Israel, where it feeds the fish-farm lakes of four Jewish kibbutzes.

To read more about it ... http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0926-08.htm

[AusGail]

2. Thankyou very much

I'll see what whatever else I can find out.

Is this a stupid idea or what? Would it not be a better idea if the US supplied equipment for water recycling plants instead of weapons?

[Kailassa]

5. It would be far better for the world, yes.

But it's not "the US" supplying arms and advocating violence any longer. That US is in a long coma. It's the traitorous cabal that staged a coup d'etat in America who are doing these things, and the question you need to consider is: "what are the people involved personally getting out of it?"

There are really 3 groups involved:
1. The Israelis who want water and territory and farmland.
2. A consortium of American and Saudi oil merchants, who want control over all the oil in the region, so that they can ration the supplies out as De Beers do with the diamonds from South Africa, keeping the price up, milking the maximum profit out of them and extending the supply for as long as possible.
3. The Palestinians, who are in the way of both.

That's the barest bones of the matter. Get into googling and there is no end to the fascinating knowledge available on the net. Since getting cable I've become unaddicted from reading novels, because the stories behind current events are so much more entertaining. ;-)

[lastknowngood]

3. Nothing lives in the desert without salt and water. the direct access

Israel has to fresh water is the river. They want to expand but Lebanon uses more water the the Israelis want them to. If they can turn Lebanon into a third world country with less need for water they win.

[bananas]

4. There have been a number of threads about this - here's one

"Connecting the dots -- this is a war about WATER"
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=364&topic_id=1698430&mesg_id=1698430