Syria Euphrates River is Drying Up
If given the opportunity, Syria will ruin our main water source
The Drying up of the Euphrates
River is a biblical endtime sign --
Opening the way for the kings of the East to attack Israel.
Revelation 16:12 And the sixth angel poured out his vial upon the great river
Euphrates; and the water thereof was dried up, that the way of the kings of the
east might be prepared.
For all those that sleep in Zion, -- It is later than
you think. The day of repentence is quickly passing,
the time of harvest is coming to a close. The day of the gentiles is at its end.
Jeremiah 8:20-22 The harvest
is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved. For the hurt of the
daughter of my people am I (Jeremiah) hurt; (Unsheltered) I am (Under the
withering heat of the sun I am burned) black; astonishment (The
Fear and Terror) hath taken hold on me. Is
there no balm in Gilead; is there no physician
there? why then is not the health (Stricken and diseased with fornication, adultery and all
manner of filthiness) of the daughter of my people recovered?
Guy Bechor
Syria is experiencing an economic holocaust. There is no other way
to describe what the Syrian regime is so much trying to hide. The country is
drying up, and no less than 250,000 farmers were forced in the past three years
to abandon their land and migrate to the large cities. They live in tents
there, completely neglected by the regime. These figures appeared in a special
study undertaken by the United Nations and published on the al-Arabiya website.
The immense Euphrates
River, Syria’s
main source of water, is drying up. The Turks are
stopping its water in their territory, so that Syria
and Iraq
are receiving a declining portion of the water. Within about 10 years, the
river is expected to dry up completely outside Turkish territory. Today
already, it reaches Syria
with contaminated water and therefore its fish, an important source of
livelihood, is becoming extinct.
As result of the drought that had been plaguing Syria for several years now, another important
Syrian water source, the Aasi (Orontes) River,
is drying up as well. Its water is becoming saltier and increasingly
contaminated, and its fish are dying off. And without fish, there is no
livelihood. Entire villages fed by its waters for hundreds of years are simply
being deserted.
Ground water in
the country had reached such nadir that it is no longer possible to use the
roughly 420,000 illegal wells dug by residents over the years. If there is no
water, there is no agriculture; people proceed to leave the village and move to
the city. As there is no work there either, the distress is terrible and
political pressures builds up.
Many of the
farmers leaving their villages are Kurd, which makes the problem an ethnic one.
The Kurdish refugees accuse the regime of doing nothing for them. For several
years now they have been living in thousands of tents near the big cities
without being addressed.
Should Israel pay for
Syrian failures?
It turns out
that the ruling Baath party is at fault for everything. During the 1960s, the
party decided to turn Syria
into a grain-exporting state. They viewed it as a victory of the Syrian
agrarian revolution. For that reason, they forced the farmers to shift from
herding, on semi-arid land, to growing grain. The regime turned a blind eye to
the hundreds of thousands of wells that were dug in order to water the grain.
Any economist who dared to speak out against this policy was jailed.
Now, with the
terrible drought, the grim results are overwhelming this land of 20 million
people, half of them farmers. Instead of the 1.9 million tons of grains they
expected to produce this year, the farmers managed to supply only 892,000 tons.
Ruin in Syrian terms. The implication is that Syria is importing its grains today
and has no money.
Syria has an existential interest in getting
its hands on the Sea of Galilee in order to
get the water needed for its agricultural land. Meanwhile, the water of our
poor Kinneret reaches both Israel
and Jordan
at this time (we provide a fixed amount every year in line with our peace
treaty.) Should Syria
touch the Kinneret, the amounts of water pumped out of it will be huge. As it
ruined its own rivers and ground water, Syria will also ruin our main water
source. It has its sights on it, even though it is uninterested in peace with Israel.
Should Israel pay for the failures and mediocrity of the
Syrian Baath party? Moreover, when one realizes how badly Turkey robs Syria,
should we choose Turkey
as the mediator between us and the Syrians? After all, Turkey has an
existential interest in seeing the Syrians get the Kinneret. It will take the
pressure off.
Ahead of the possible
resumption of negotiations with Syria,
we should know these figures and be cautious. We should hope that the
Americans, who wish to advance talks on the Syrian track, will also be aware of
this information.