JULY 2000, page 9

Special Report

“Three Strikes and You’re Out”: The End of Israel’s Grab for the Litani River

By Andrew I. Killgore

At the 1919 Paris Peace Conference ending World War I, the World Zionist Organization presented a map delineating what it argued should be the boundaries of Palestine, “the national home for the Jewish people” promised in Britain’s Balfour Declaration of Nov. 2, 1917. The map encompassed Lebanon’s Litani River.

The Zionists’ case was argued by the brilliantly persuasive Chaim Weizmann, destined to be the first president of Israel, and by politically “street smart” David Ben-Gurion, who became Israel’s first prime minister. But they lost the case because in a secret deal in 1916 among Britain, France and Russia, called the Sykes-Picot Treaty, the boundaries of Palestine and Lebanon (containing the Litani River) had already been fixed. Thus Strike Number One failed.

Strike Number Two came in 1953, and afterward, over U.S.-initiated negotiations to divide Jordan River waters between Israel and the Arabs. The U.S. negotiator, president Eric Johnston of the Motion Picture Producers Association, selected for the diplomatic assignment because the Israel Lobby in the United States trusted him, eventually recognized that Israel was claiming solely for itself more cubic meters per second (CUSECS) of Jordan waters than in fact existed in toto.

Israel “buttressed” its claim that such an immense amount of water was available with a “study” called the “Cotton Plan.” It soon became evident, however, that Cotton, supposedly an American hydrologist whom no one could ever quite identify, had in fact combined the flow of the Jordan River with that of the Litani, to which Israel had no claim since it was in Lebanon. The eventual disappearance of Israel’s bizarre “virtual reality” Cotton Plan represented the failure of Strike Number Two in Israeli attempts to secure Litani waters.

Strike Number Three was Israel’s 1982 aggression against Lebanon. That invasion, which ousted Palestine Liberation Organization fighters from Lebanon, and also cost 20,000 Lebanese lives, eventually linked Israeli forces with Maronite Christian militias in Beirut. But in 1983 a relentless campaign of suicide bombings and other actions against Israeli positions by Lebanese Shi’i guerrillas drove Israeli forces back to their self-proclaimed “security zone,” which they had occupied continuously ever since 1978. The northern boundary of some of that Israeli-occupied enclave in southern Lebanon controlled access to the Litani River.

Now Israel has vacated south Lebanon and, apparently, its long-standing attempt to control the Litani River. Is it strike three, or just an attempt to pursue Israel’s nearly century-old bid for the Litani waters according to a different set of rules?

Andrew I. Killgore is the publisher of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.