You Can't Drink Mud and Salt: Hydropolitics and the Invasion of Lebanon

You Can't Drink Mud and Salt: Hydropolitics and the Invasion of Lebanon
Reported by Marie Therese - August 7, 2006 - 69 comments

ب در کوزه و ما تشنه لبان میگردیم.
"There is water in the jug, and we're going around thirsty." - Persian proverb

אל תסתכל בקנקן, אלא במה שבתוכו
"Don't look at the jar, but at what's inside it." - Hebrew proverb

"The one who tells the stories rules the world." - Hopi proverb

NEWS HOUNDS EDITORIAL

Three weeks ago I woke up.

It was a painful experience because I had always thought of myself as an educated person, well aware of what was going on politically, even in the Middle East.

I was very, very wrong.

"There is water in the jug, and we're going around thirsty."

On July 17th, I googled the words "Israel Lebanon Water".

When the results came back, my world shifted 180 degrees. There, on my computer screen, appeared a mountain of data consisting of geological surveys, erudite articles, aquifer tables and power point presentations. Numerous other searches verifed the inescapable facts. No matter whether the studies were done by European consortiums, Palestinian experts, American think tanks or Israeli university professors, the resulting scientific conclusions were the same.

Forget all the overblown tabloid rhetoric about "terrorists", "right to defend borders", "holy war against the infidels", "oil" and "the axis of evil".

Doesn't mean a thing.

That's just pure verbal drama created by the various factions in the Middle East to avoid talking about the 5,000 pound gorilla in the room.

Water.

The Middle East is in an ecological death spiral. Period.

snip

http://www.newshounds.us/2006/08/07/you_cant_drink_mud_and_salt_hydropolitics_and_the_invasion_of_lebanon.php

Sorry. But desalination has come a long, long way.

http://www.water-technology.net/projects/israel/

Pulls together what I've been hearing in bits and pieces about the looming water wars of this century.