“We are wholly dependent on the Nile. We have no other water sources. So, the truth is any threat against the Nile waters will result in the reduction of Egypt’s share. This would threaten us with thirst and death…We don’t have hostile intentions against anyone. We don’t go to war just for the sake of fighting. But if someone is going to stop the water, Egypt will die of thirst. Then we will fight…with all means available,”

Hussam Swailam, former Egyptian military general.

            But today, countries upstream are challenging this dominance and pushing for a greater say and greater share of the River Nile.

            “I know that some people in Egypt have old-fashioned ideas based on the assumption that the Nile water belongs to them and that Egypt has the right to decide…who gets what of the Nile water and that the upper riparian countries are unable to use the Nile water because they will be unstable and because they will be poor. These circumstances have changed and changed forever,” Melese Zenawi, Ethiopian prime minister.

            The first episode in the three-part Struggle Over the Nile series examines attitudes towards the river in a country where 95 percent of the population live along its banks and their fears that other Nile basin countries will challenge their historic control over its waters.

-english.aljazeera.net, 7 June 2011

Egypt exists because of the waters of the Nile; that is written in stone. But, the very waters will become the sore point and the great conflict between Egypt and the God of Israel.

            Ezekiel is commanded to prophesy against Egypt, “Speak, and say, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I am against thee, Pharaoh king of Egypt, the great dragon that lieth in the midst of his rivers, which hath said, My river is mine own, and I have made it for myself” (Ezekiel 29:3). What is the reason for this judgment? “And all the inhabitants of Egypt shall know that I am the LORD, because they have been a staff of reed to the house of Israel…Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I will bring a sword upon thee, and cut off man and beast out of thee. And the land of Egypt shall be desolate and waste; and they shall know that I am the LORD: because he hath said, The river is mine, and I have made it.” (verses 6, 8-9).

            Based on verse 12, a forty-year judgment period is yet to come: “And I will make the land of Egypt desolate in the midst of the countries that are desolate, and her cities among the cities that are laid waste shall be desolate forty years: and I will scatter the Egyptians among the nations, and will disperse them through the countries.”

            However, in the end, Egypt will experience God’s grace: “Yet thus saith the Lord GOD; At the end of forty years will I gather the Egyptians from the people whither they were scattered…but they shall know that I am the Lord God (verses 13,16).

(For more on judgment for the nations, read Judgment Day!, Item 2211.)

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