The Middle East

THE danger of war over the Jordan River is remote. From unexpected quarter, Middle Eastern doves have begun to challenge some traditional hawks. Within the Arab world the great debate between the activists and the moderates has taken on a new note of realism. At the moment, those who want an “Algerian solution” to the Palestine struggle have lost to the gradualists.

Meanwhile, an actual partitioning of the river is taking place in a no-peace no-war atmosphere. Israel’s long-heralded water carrier began nearly a year ago to lift water from Lake Tiberias and pipe it to the coastal plain. By the end of 1965, withdrawals from Tiberias are expected to he at the rate of 250 million cubic meters a year. Nearly all this must be used to Water tables along the coast, where seepage from the Mediterranean already threatens this fertile belt. Water for the Negev cannot be spared now.

Across the long, uneasy armistice line, Jordan is taking about 140 million cubic meters a year from the Yarmuk, the Jordan’s principal tributary, channeling it southward to irrigate Jordan valley lands. This water moves through the forty-threemile open East Ghor Carnal, built since 1958, almost parallel to the Israeli carrier. Jordan’s next stage of withdrawals is centered on construction of a dam on the Yarmuk at Mukeiba, southeast of Tiberias. The new dam will store winter floodwaters and release them into the East Ghor Canal, which is being expanded and lengthened to carry irrigation water down both sides of the potentially fertile Jordan valley within Jordan.

Dividing the waters

The Jordan system’s other riparians, Syria and Lebanon, have much-advertised plans to take off shares of the headwater streams which rise in their countries, it is these proposed withdrawals which are most controversial, since any major diversions upstream would eventually reduce the amount of water flowing toward the Jordan in Israel.

Under any rational division of a river system, adorations are agreed on between the countries concerned. In the Middle East, agreements exist between Egypt and Sudan on sharing the Nile, and between Iraq and Turkey over their uses of the Tigris and Euphrates. The Jordan, however, remains freighted with the heavy emotional cargo of the whole Palestine struggle. All efforts to rationalize its use have failed. United Nations and United States negotiations carried on ten years ago by the late Eric Johnston aimed at agreement on regional development. Political objections blocked the plan, but the negotiations did establish a pattern of sharing based on the right of the upstream countries, the Arabs, to all the water they could actually use, with the remainder, about 39 percent, to go to Israel.

Without any formal agreement, Israel has based its recent water program on this so-called Johnston formula. Its plans call for taking eventually about 39 percent of the waters of the river. It is only on this basis that Israel has had political support in Washington for its carrier.

Jordan, with its equally great need of irrigation water, has not proclaimed openly its apparently tacit observance of the Johnston formula. But on this basis it has received considerable United States financial aid in building the East Ghor Canal. Its next project, the Mukeiba Dam, is to be financed with Arab League money, much of it from Kuwait. Jordan’s right to build a dam on the Yarmuk is not today challenged by Israel (as it was in the 1950s), It is accepted for what it is a part of the partitioning process along the river. As a riparian along eight miles of the Yarmuk, Israel does claim a disputed share from it. This point is still at issue.

Much of the tension which threatened to explode into a water war has been dissipated as the actual limitations of the Jordan have become evident. These are quantitative and qualitative. Israel’s use of Tiberias as its main reservoir turns out to be less rewarding than was expected. The lake’s salinity exceeds all previous” calculations. As a result all the water being pumped southward through the carrier must be diluted with scarce well water before farmers can use it. At the same time great effort is being made to cap or divert the salt springs under and around the edge of Tiberias. Both measures are expensive. And Israel has had to face the fact that it must seek alternatives to the Jordan for future water needs.

Seawater desalinization appears today as the obvious answer. The American-Israeli joint studies which are now going on envision a nuclear desalting plant for Israel to cost about $200 million and go into production in the 1970s. To produce water at a price which is economic for agriculture, this plant will have to achieve a breakthrough below the estimated cost of 35 cents to 50 cents per thousand gallons. Such a price is more than double the cost of water now available in Israel. Even so, Israel’s economic future depends on developing this plant.

Alternatives to war

While Israel has been having long second thoughts about the Jordan, the Arabs have begun to face the implications of headwaters diversions. The stages by which this phase of the water contest has been defused arc instructive. The process began with the Arab “summit” meetings in January, 1964, called by Gainal Abdel Nasser to deal with the river question. He outlined the alternatives to war over the headwaters. The facts were, he said, that the Arabs were not prepared to meet Israeli attacks on headwaters projects and that they therefore must not overbid. They must prepare, first by agreeing on a plan for water appropriations in Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan, and second by forming a unified defense system.

At the same time, the political activists, the would-be hawks, were given a role in setting up a Palestine Liberation Organization to mobilize the Palestine political entity. In all these measures, Nasser was challenging the Arabs to unite (under Egyptian leadership) and prepare before plunging into hopeless encounters with Israel.

By the spring of 1965 the inherent difficulties in setting up a unified force had become apparent. Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan still rejected tinidea of deploying Egyptian-led troops within their countries except in dire emergencies. Not all the pledges of financial support through the Arab League materialized. Moreover, a subversive notion of possible eventual accommodation instead of war with Israel began to emanate from several capitals.

President Habib Bourguiba sent up the first balloon, suggesting that seventeen years of Arab passive resistance to Israel had not helped the Palestinian exiles, and that there should he a settlement on the basis of the 1947 UN partition plan. From Beirut, Pierre Gemayel, Minister of Public Works, proposed the idea of a binational Palestinian state. In Israel, General Moshe Dayan, a representative of the younger generation of activists in Israel, remarked in public that he could envisage a confederation between Israel and “those regions of Jordan that were formerly part of Palestine.”

It remained for Gamal Abdel Nasser to say again in public what had been said more often in private. In an interview with Réaltés he said in April that if Israel would observe the UN Resolution of 1948 calling for repatriation and compensation to Palestine refugees, peace could be established. A few weeks later Nasser went further to damp down talk of war with Israel.

Speaking to a meeting of the Palestine Liberation Organization in Cairo, he suggested that since there was no real progress toward a unified Arab army or its free movement, the Arabs were in no position to defend themselves, let alone attack Israel. The Palestine entity is useful, he said, to maintain the polilical claims of the exiles, hut the Arabs must not overbid; they must choose the time for any confrontation. Today it is impossible. There are big differences between local engagements such as those on the Syrian and Jordan frontiers — and comprehensive war, with the enemy fixing the date.

Therefore, since the Arabs cannot now protect any headwater diversions, it is better to postpone these works too. What is needed. Gamal Abdel Nasser said, is to carry on the socialist revolution, maintain the Palestine entity, and build for the future.

Arab turning point

No one else could have said so bluntly these home truths of the Arab situation in 1965. Nasser’s open rejection of any Algerian-style war and his advocacy of gradualism mark a significant turning point in Arab affairs.

Behind this decision to answer the contradictions between policy and performance in relation to Israel are several assumptions. One is the belief among Arab leaders in Israel’s deterrent power and its ability to make nuclear weapons. The secret Israeli nuclear plant at Dimona, known to operate with European scientific help, haunts Arab defense ministries. Egypt’s prompt signing of the nuelcar-test-ban treaty in 1963 indicated a preoccupation in Cairo with this potential danger from Israel.

A more immediate reason for postponing a confrontation with Israel is the knowledge gained by intensive study of the headwaters diversion schemes. The porosity of the soil in southern Lebanon and northern Israel makes the containment of any floodwaters there extremely difficult.

In Syria there are other technical difficulties to damand canal-building. Yet the How of the headwaters in both countries is from floods in winter rather than in constant quantities. Thus any diversion works would be expensive and only partly effective in keeping water from flowing into Israel.

Aside from all this is the prospect that Israel will achieve a supply of desalinated seawater by the time any Arab diversions could be built. Thus the effort would probably be wasted. For these reasons it has been necessary to hall the projects while the Arabs take stock of their actual position vis-a-vis Israel. This is what the blunt policy statements by Carnal Abdel Nasser have achieved.

The pressures on Egypt

The exigencies of Egypt’s own internal situation must also have had a strong moderating effect on Nasser, The momentum of the revolution is slowing down in its second aecade. Egypt’s problem of overpopulation is as great as ever, with an increase of nearly 800,000 a year. Even though construction is well ahead of schedule, the Aswan Dam cannot irrigate enough lands to feed this swelling population.

Food therefore remains an acute problem. Since 1962 about half of Egyprhf grain supply has come from PL 480 agreements with Washington sales of surplus grain for Egyptian pounds. Political tension between Washington and Cairo has been high, however, since the burning of the USES library in Cairo and the arms-running to the Congo from Egypt last winter, liven though the Egyptian government has offered a substitute building for the library and arms have ceased to go to the Congo, the unhappy memory of these episodes lingers on, particularly in the U.S. Congress.

Meanwhile, Egypt’s sources of credit have been cut off at a time when the country needs between $400 million and $500 million a year to become a going concern. Rupture of relations with Bonn, after the latter’s recognition of Israel last spring, came at a poor time for Egypt’s economy. Even though Nasser refrained from carrying out his threat to recognize East Germany, it will take time to restore Egypt as a creditworthy state in Bonn’s view.

French assistance and wheat are available, but in limited quantities. U.S. economic aid has not been forthcoming for two years. Nasser’s great problem of avoiding total dependence on Moscow and Peking — his best cotton customers —is more acute than ever.

The American stance

The United States position in this summer of Middle Eastern discontent is equivocal. Several pending decisions can set the tone for our relations in the area. One is the kind fof arms made available to Israel. If Washington becomes for the first time a supplier of significant arms to Israel, it will be taken as a signal for the Arabs to turn to the East.

The Administration’s recent decision to supply arms in the area on a case-by-case basis to help certain countries modernize their forces has obvious dangers. Yet the policy offers an alternative to Sovietization of all Arab armies.

A second crucial Washington decision involves continuance of food for Egypt. Even Egypt’s rivals in the area are watching to see whether the lessons of Suez have been forgotten. It is pointed out by those who do remember that the attempt to starve Nasser out by withholding food and medicine failed. But it did drive him further to the East.

The United States is heavily involved in a third issue, due to arise at the UN this year. This is the question of Arab refugees. The U.S. position is crea. If Supports genuine refugees in need of relief, but it asks that a head count be taken to determine actual status.

The Arab host governments continue to resist a census of refugees. They suggest, however, that refugee owners of properties now held by the Israeli government be paid incomes from those properties. It is just possible that this demand may offer a way to break the present stalemate, for payments of income to former holders of property would help them to become self-supporting. This would automatically remove them from UNRWA relief rolls. The preservation of the recipients’ political status could be assured by issuance of United Nations identity cards in place of the ration cards to which so many cling. They would then remain political refugees but cease to be UNRWA dependents.

The United States, as a member of the Conciliation Commission for Palestine, charged with helping to further peaceful settlement, has chosen recently to avoid the political difficulties of innovation in this bitter dispute. If, however, the commission’s French or Turkish members should move to break the stalemate, Washington’s reaction would he decisive for the future of this intractable issue, and for its own relationships with all the governments involved.