November 8, 2002	Friday	Ramazan 2,1423

WAZZANI (Lebanon): Amid the parched landscape of this southern Lebanese hamlet, Ahmad al-Ahmad poured thick Turkish coffee from an aluminium pot and reflected on the source of his water.

“We sacrificed a lot for this water,” he said, motioning downhill toward the spring that provided the water for his coffee. “Many people died, and many went to prison and lost their homes.”

Wazzani Spring is a tranquil stretch of shallow water about 20 yards wide, strewn with black basalt boulders and shaded by oleander and eucalyptus trees. For 22 years, Israeli troops who occupied much of southern Lebanon barred local villagers from the creek. After a long guerrilla war against Lebanese militias, the Israelis withdrew in May 2000, and villagers once again had access to the water.

On Oct 16, the Lebanese government began pumping water from the spring to quench the thirst of villages like al-Ahmad’s. But water is one of the most sensitive issues in the Middle East, where arid countries must share overtaxed sources. The Wazzani’s water eventually flows south to the Sea of Galilee, Israel’s largest source of fresh water.

Lebanon’s construction of pipelines and a pumping station at Wazzani Spring has raised new tensions with Israel — and threats of war. A few days before Lebanon started the pumps, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon warned that the project could become grounds for war because it would deprive his country of water.

The United States, worried that tensions over the Wazzani could spark a war that would distract from its focus on Iraq, sent a State Department water expert to Lebanon and Israel. A European Union water expert and the United Nations’ special Middle East envoy also are trying to mediate.

Lebanon’s government says it is well within its rights. “The water is on Lebanese land and we are using it to meet our needs,” said Kabalan Kabalan, president of the Council for the South, which oversees development in the area.

The rhetoric has calmed in recent days, but Sharon continues to say he may be forced to act if the dispute is not resolved diplomatically. Israeli officials say Lebanon should have negotiated an agreement with them about sharing the Wazzani. “This is not a matter of supplying water to south Lebanon. It’s a matter of political hostility,” said Uri Shamir, director of the Water Research Institute at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa.

Chronically short of water, Israel has had to undertake a massive desalinization programme and buy billions of cubic feet of water from Turkey over the next 20 years.

Shamir noted that Israel reached water-sharing agreements with neighbouring Jordan in the 1980s, well before the two countries signed a peace treaty in 1994.

Lebanese officials say the Wazzani project eventually will raise Lebanon’s consumption from the spring and the Hasbani River, just downstream, to 350 million cubic feet a year, far below the Lebanese annual share of 1.2 billion cubic feet set in a 1955 agreement drafted by a US commission. But the agreement was never signed by the countries involved, including Lebanon and Israel.

The $3.5-million Wazzani project will supply drinking water to about 60 villages being repopulated and rebuilt after the Israeli occupation. Officials say the project is not intended to provide water for farming. No one doubts that southern Lebanon needs water for irrigation and to drink. Along the Wazzani, fields are barren, with only a few scattered lots of tomato vines and olive orchards. Across the border, Israeli orchards produce apples and apricots, and houses have lush lawns.

Some analysts say Israel is most concerned about the precedent that the project sets.—Dawn/LAT-WP News Service (c) Newsday