Lebanon: Fallouts from the Arab Spring
MAROUN EL RAS, Lebanon, Sept. 2011 – From the cliff top at this Lebanese border town anyone can see the lush fields of the Israeli Galilee roll like a green carpet right up to the wire fence dividing the two countries. On the Lebanese side of the fence the soil is dry, barren and the landscape is desolate.
The Arabs say the Israeli settlements, clustered in the valley below and the high plain above, have siphoned off all the available water resources leaving the Arab side bone dry. Of course the Israelis argue the Arab side was always bone dry and it was Jewish ingenuity and diligence that turned the barren High Galilee into a vegetable garden with orchards as far as the Golan Heights on the edge of the horizon. The Heights were snatched from Syria in the 1964 war.
The contrast in the look of the land is like a festering wound for Palestinians and Lebanese. It is also a constant reminder to the Jewish-Russian immigrants who the Israelis settled along the contentious border that their Arab neighbors believe the settlers have stolen the water from their wells. Read…
Tags: arab neighbors, arab side, egypt, gaza, Hitzbollah, Human Rights, israel, maroun el ras, Middle East, palestine, russian immigrants
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