Israel's interest in the Litani River has been longstanding, with roots in early Zionist ambitions during the 1919 Paris Peace Conference where Chaim Weizmann and David Ben-Gurion presented a map for a proposed Jewish state that included the Litani River in Lebanon. Despite their future successes in establishing Israel in 1948, they could not secure the Litani due to the Sykes-Picot Treaty of 1915 which had already established the border between Lebanon and Palestine.