Israel’s historic ambitions with the Litani river

As a general rule, analyses grounded in resource scarcity posit that states experiencing actual or perceived resource constraints are inclined to extend their strategic behavior beyond their territorial boundaries. When access to external resources is restricted or denied, states possessing superior material capabilities tend to pursue alternative means of securing such access, employing strategies that range from cooperative mechanisms, such as trade agreements, to coercive measures and military pressure (North 1977, Gurr 1985).

In Lebanon, a country known for its rich water sources amidst a dry region, one river remains sought after by Israeli imperial ambitions. The Litani river stretches 170 kilometres in length and its entire basin is located within the borders of Lebanon. It originates in Lebanon’s fertile Bekaa Valley and flows westward and then southward to its mouth on the Mediterranean coast near Tyre, linking the inland zone to the southern coastal plains. Along its course, it serves as a vital water resource and, in places, functions as a significant geographical and political boundary.

Israeli’s first attempts at the Litani

Israeli interest in the Litani predates the establishment of the state itself. As early as 1905, Zionist planners proposed diverting the river southward, motivated by concerns that the Jordan River basin would be insufficient to meet the future water needs of Jewish settlement in Palestine (Khazen 2004). This early proposal embedded water into the logic of territorial expansion and economic viability, framing the Litani not as a foreign river but as a potential component of a broader hydrological system serving the Jewish national project.

Official Israeli claims to the Litani were first recorded during the Paris Peace Conference of 1919. The head of the World Zionist Organization (WZO), Chaim Weizmann sent a letter to the British Prime Minister David Lloyd George that Lebanon has other water sources and that the Litani river was “valueless to the territory north of the proposed frontiers. They can be used beneficially in the country much further south” (Weisgal 1977; Soffer, 1995). Weizmann concluded that the WZO regarded control over the Litani Valley, specifically the stretch extending approximately 25 miles above the river bend, as essential to the future viability of the Jewish national home. This view reflects the early Zionist emphasis on securing strategic water resources as a fundamental component of territorial planning and state building.

The claim was that the river was a key component to ensure the survival of the Jewish people and was a clear attempt to push the southern borders upwards and have the Litani river be a natural border. The League of Nations rejected the proposal and officially made the Litani river Lebanese (Amery, 1993). Halwani (2007) claims that Israeli interest in the Litani is not merely due to its valued resources, but its acquirement falls in line with the greater ideological ambition of establishing greater Zion that stretches from Sinai to ancient Babylon.

In 1941, an international commission convened in the context of British Mandate deliberations examined proposals that would have reallocated regional water resources, recommending that up to seven-eighths of Lebanon’s Litani River waters be leased to a prospective Jewish state to support irrigation and economic development (Saleh 1988). Arab representatives categorically rejected the proposal, viewing it as an illegitimate encroachment on Lebanese sovereignty and natural resources.

These discussions reflected broader Zionist strategic thinking on water security. David Ben-Gurion had earlier argued that the Litani River, extending as far as twenty-five miles north of its southern bend, should be incorporated into the borders of a future Jewish state, emphasizing what he described as Lebanon’s underutilization of the river in contrast to Jewish agricultural needs. The commission’s leasing proposal sought to accommodate these ambitions without formal territorial annexation, yet it ultimately failed amid Arab opposition and the insistence of the mandate authorities that the Litani basin remain within Lebanese territory.

The years following the Second World War saw renewed attempts to integrate the Litani into regional water planning. In 1945, American engineer Walter Lowdermilk proposed a comprehensive development scheme that would have diverted the Litani toward the Jordan River to irrigate the Jordan Valley and central Palestine, while exporting hydroelectric power to Lebanon (Stauffer, 1996). Once again, the plan collapsed due to Arab opposition and refusal to cooperate with Israel. By 1947, David Ben-Gurion was openly asserting that the Litani should form Israel’s northern border, signaling that water considerations were becoming inseparable from territorial claims (Amery 1993).

Israeli independence to expansion

During the 1948 Arab–Israeli War and its aftermath, Israeli forces advanced as far as the Litani River but did not cross it, leaving the river as a de facto military and symbolic boundary. Yet Israeli leaders did not abandon their interest. Water increasingly became central to Israel’s national security thinking, especially as agricultural expansion and population growth strained domestic supplies.

Israeli interest in the Litani did not dissipate after 1948. Ben-Gurion and Moshe Dayan, chief of staff and defense minister, advanced more overtly coercive solutions and advocated military control up to the Litani River. As documented in their diaries, these proposals were linked to plans for large-scale water diversion projects, such as the Litani–Jordan–Huleh–Negev scheme, intended to supply Israel’s arid southern regions (Rabinovich 1985). Furthermore, these documents revealed that annexing southern Lebanon was an objective for the Jewish state. Following the six-day war, Dayan stated that Israel achieved "provisionally satisfying frontiers, with the exception of those with Lebanon".

The 1967 Arab–Israeli War marked a turning point in the regional water balance. Israeli strategic planning during the war placed heavy emphasis on securing water resources, resulting in the occupation of the Golan Heights and the West Bank, both critical to Israel’s water supply (al-Bargouthi 1986, Saleh 1988).

In 1978, Israel invaded southern Lebanon in what became known as Operation Litani. While officially justified on security grounds, the operation was widely interpreted as part of a broader effort to establish control over territory adjacent to the river (Amery, 1993). U.S. opposition ultimately prevented Israel from consolidating such control or implementing water diversion projects.

A second Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 further fueled suspicions regarding Israeli intentions toward the Litani. Although Israel succeeded in occupying large portions of southern Lebanon, it failed to secure lasting control over the river or to implement diversion schemes. Local resistance, particularly among Shi‘a communities, combined with political and logistical constraints, rendered such plans unfeasible. Nevertheless, Israel continued to occupy parts of southern Lebanon for years afterward, sustaining Lebanese and regional concerns over the river’s fate.

By the early 1990s, accusations emerged that Israel was covertly diverting Litani waters through underground channels into northern Israel. These claims intensified around 1994, with allegations of tunneling and siphoning operations. Israel and the United States categorically denied such accusations, and no conclusive evidence was produced. Independent analysts suggested that if diversion were occurring, it was limited in scale and did not measurably affect the river’s flow (Amery, 1993). Nonetheless, Israeli military control over parts of southern Lebanon at the time prevented independent verification, sustaining Lebanese suspicions.

By this point, the conflict over the Litani had evolved into a largely non-armed struggle centered on competing narratives of need, efficiency, and sovereignty. Israel argued that its acute water scarcity and technological capacity justified access to the river, while Lebanon maintained that it required the Litani for its own agricultural, industrial, and social development (Serageldin, 1995). International water law, which discourages the diversion of water outside its catchment area before local needs are met, consistently supported Lebanon’s legal position, though enforcement mechanisms remained weak (World Bank, 1994).

Ultimately, the Litani exemplifies how water scarcity intersects with territorial ambition, security doctrine, and state-building projects, rendering natural resources not merely objects of development, but enduring sources of political contestation in the Middle East (Suffer, 1996).