The oldest threat: water in the Middle East.

From: Middle East Policy | Date: June 1, 1998| Author: | Copyright information

The availability of potable water continues to be the single most important and least understood issue facing countries in the Middle East. Water is the focus of most of the disputes between Ethiopia, the Sudan and Egypt. Israel is also involved in a series of disputes over water between Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority.

Former U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, while still a deputy minister in Cairo in 1985, said that the next war in the Near East would not be about politics, but over water. Talking to Joyce Shira Starr, a senior associate at the Center ...

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