WAZZANI, LEBANON — President Emile Lahoud ignored Israeli threats and US mediation in a water-rights dispute when he turned on the tap Wednesday at a Wazzani River pumping station, taking water from the river that Israel believes Lebanon is not entitled to.
According to the Associated Press (AP), at a ceremony just a mile from the Israeli border Lahoud turned on the tap, washed his hands and drank from the water of the Wazzani.
Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres said the unilateral Lebanese action was likely to bring "a great escalation" between Lebanon and Israel, according to AP.
"We won't, can't agree to such unilateral actions and we reserve the right to protect our water according to law, to international law," Peres said, according to the news service.
Yoni Peled, an Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman, told AP that the water dispute should be resolved through dialogue and called on Lebanon to stop work and pumping "pending a mutually acceptable solution."
Behind Israeli army lines, dozens of people stood along the fence at the village of Ghajar, located in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, to watch the ceremony in the distance, AP reported, but with the exception of the routine Israeli military patrol, there was little movement.
The Wazzani spring is in Lebanon, about 100 yards from Syria's Golan Heights, which Israel occupied in the 1967 Mideast war and still holds, the article said.
The two countries have been debating water rights for months, and an US mediators were trying to prevent a major international conflict, AP said.
The River flows about two miles inside Lebanon then streams south into the Jordan River and the Sea of Galilee, Israel's main reserve of fresh water.
According to AP, Lebanon has based subsequent claims on a 1955 US proposal that said Lebanon should get 1.2 billion cubic feet from the Hasbani and Wazzani.
But Peled, the Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman, said Lebanon had refused to accept the proposals in 1955 and they never formed the basis of an agreement, the article reported.
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