Women gather to collect water at the Yusuf Batil refugee camp in Upper Nile, South Sudan, 4 July 2012. (Photo: Reuters - Adriane Ohanesian)
By: Jomana Farhat | Published Monday, July 30, 2012
Egyptian and Sudanese policy failures have lead to a looming strategic threat to both countries’ most important resources -the Nile. Israel has now signed an agreement with the South Sudanese authorities over rights to the country’s precious water source.
There was an outcry in Egypt and Sudan over last week’s signing of a cooperation agreement between Israel and South Sudan on water infrastructure and technology development. Warnings abounded that the pact between the government in Juba and Israeli Military Industries Ltd posed a threat to the water security of the two downstream countries and should be countered. Largely overlooked was the fact that their own inaction was mostly to blame for it.
Israeli designs on the waters of the Nile and on the resources of the African continent are hardly new. For years Israel has striven hard to forge ties with a number of African states and strengthen its presence in the continent, for both economic and security reasons.
In South Sudan, Israel has flaunted its ties with the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) – now the new country’s absolute ruler – and other southern faction leaders ever since the first southern rebellion began in Sudan in the 1950s. This was in line with a longstanding strategic doctrine, which was revisited in a 2008 lecture on Israel’s regional strategy by former Israeli security minister Avi Dichter.
Read More | 30 July 2012
