Not much is left of the biblical Jordan but a dirty mudslide

The Lido Yehuda, an Art Deco style restaurant dating from the 1930s, near the border with Jordan, was loved by many. From the terrace you could walk straight into the lukewarm, salty water of the Dead Sea. Parts of the building are still there, but the complex was abandoned years ago and turned into a desolate ruin full of graffiti. And the Dead Sea? It is no longer here. Through a hole in the wall, a sliver of water can just be seen on the horizon, almost two kilometers away.

“I remember when we came here as a child,” says 54-year-old Bassam Almohor, who works for the environmental organization EcoPeace, in which Israel, Palestine and Jordan work together. “The water then came close to the Lido.” The level of the Dead Sea is now dropping at a rapid rate, often by up to a meter per year.

This also has unpleasant consequences for the immediate vicinity of the Dead Sea. In many places it has become too dangerous to walk or drive along parts of the coast that have fallen dry, because the salt dissolves in cavities when rainwater seeps in. As a result, so-called sink holes created: meters deep holes that suddenly arise and can swallow up parts of the road, buildings and cars. A little further on, at Ein Gedi, you can see that the road had to be diverted after part of it collapsed.

The fact that the Dead Sea is receding so quickly has everything to do with the Jordan River, which used to guarantee a solid supply of new water. But the Jordan, which springs high in Lebanon on Mount Hermon, is no longer a shadow of the river of Biblical times, when Jesus was baptized in it according to tradition.

The pilgrims have to bend their knees to go under, because the Jordan is now a muddy stream

Of an ecosystem full wetlands is no longer the case. Gone are all the rapids. The amount of water still flowing through the seriously polluted river is less than a tenth of what it used to be. Already ten years ago stated Gidon Brombergthe director of the Israeli branch of EcoPeace, that “the tragedy is that the Jordan does not move a wheel for mice today.”

The deterioration of the Jordan River, Bromberg now explains by telephone from Tel Aviv, is mainly due to short-sighted policies of the countries along the river. “They saw it as one zero sum game. Israel also tried to take what it could get. In the desert, having water was power. And what you had, your enemy did not have.”

Nowhere is the decline more apparent than at Qasr el Yahud, ten miles upstream from the Dead Sea, where thousands of Christians come each year to be baptized like Jesus. Also this morning there are dozens of buses in the red-hot parking lot. A large group of Armenian Christians prepares to follow a priest in full regalia and a large cross into the water. A group of Americans has just finished. “This is what I always dreamed of,” says Julee Higgins (50), still dripping and half in a trance.

The pilgrims, however, have to bend their knees to go under, because little is left of the Jordan than a dirty brown, muddy stream barely six meters wide, with only a very weak current. On the other side, where Jordan begins, excited believers go through the same ritual. On both sides of the border, Israeli and Jordanian soldiers keep an eye on things.

Upstream

The fact that the Jordan has so much less water than before is not only because of Israel but also because Syria and Jordan, countries with water problems, draining the upper Jordan River considerably. Syria alone has built 40 dams in the last 60 years. Following the example of Syria, Jordan – one of the world’s most water-poor countries – built a canal to divert water from the Yarmouk, the Jordan’s main tributary, elsewhere. In recent years, it has also needed a lot of extra water to provide the hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees with water.

Israel, in turn, built a dam in the 1960s to divert some of the water from the Sea of ​​Galilee for irrigation purposes. As in many other areas, the Palestinians, still the largest population group in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, also lost out in the distribution of Jordan water. In practice, Israel got a little less than half, while Jordan and Syria combined also made off with about half of the Jordan’s water.

Today, the Israelis only allow Palestinians to reach the river at Qasr el Yahud. “But with all those Christians from all over the world here, I can’t enjoy that,” says Bassam Almohor. “It feels like a humiliation for us Palestinians that we are not allowed anywhere else near the river.” Palestinians are allowed to travel across the Allenby Bridge to Jordan. “Then we can see the river, but we are not allowed to get off the bus,” says Almohor.

In the so-called Jordan Valley, the Palestinians are also less and less involved. Most of it has been designated a military zone by the Israelis. Only Israeli farms, including palm plantations, are allowed there. These are partly irrigated via a pipeline with somewhat cleaned wastewater from Jerusalem.

Palestinian farmers in the area cannot count on such support. Not only do they have to fight harder for water, but also to be able to work their land. Again and again there are hard confrontations with settlers in – according to international law – illegal Jewish settlements.

At his home in Jericho, surrounded by vegetable gardens, Muafaq Hashem, 50, a man with a deep voice, a beard of several days and a plaid shirt, tells us that he and others work on a cooperative farm just outside Jericho. Their company is surrounded by four settlements. “A few days ago we were attacked again by settlers from the settlements,” says Hashem, still indignant. “That’s how it goes over and over again. They always receive support from the Israeli army. One of us ended up in the hospital, another was arrested, our tools were confiscated. They accuse us of being terrorists. Sometimes they spoil our harvest with chemicals.”

The Palestinians are not allowed to drill wells and have to get their water from four kilometers away, which is relatively expensive. “It makes little sense to start lawsuits,” says Hashem. “Israeli authorities always believe the settlers.” Under the new Israeli government, in which radical settlers play a leading role, the situation for the Palestinians is expected to become even more difficult.

Waste water

In turn, Israelis accused Palestinians in the West Bank of allowing much of their wastewater to flow into rivers untreated. Israel is much more careful about this. Added to all the problems is the fact that countries in the region have experienced rapid population growth without exception. And all those people are using more and more water.

EcoPeace, the partnership of Israel, Jordan and Palestine, could theoretically initiate improvements by joining forces. But it is not easy to get all noses in one direction in three countries that have experienced so many mutual conflicts.

“We would like to see many more projects that improve the water supply for the local Palestinian population,” said Nada Majdalani, the young director of EcoPeace’s Palestinian branch, in her office overlooking Ramallah. “But yes,” she sighs, “the water supply for Palestinians is closely linked to the political situation. We have many ideas, but in the end there is always a lack of political will, in Israel but also in Jordan and in the Palestinian Authority” – which officially controls at least part of the West Bank. “I’ve been working here for five years now and we keep moving in circles, very frustrating.”

Yet there is some hope. This is partly due to the progress that Israel in particular has made with the reuse of sewage water for irrigation and with the desalination of seawater. In Israel, about 90 percent of sewage is now reused, which means that the country needs less water than before. Desalination has also become cheaper. That costs only about 50 cents per cubic meter. Half of all Israeli drinking water is now extracted from seawater.

As a result, Israel’s willingness to share water resources is growing. Last year, Israel signed an agreement with Jordan about the annual supply of an additional 25 billion liters of water from the Sea of ​​Galilee. And at the recent climate summit in Egypt Israel and Jordan even agreed to make the Jordan cleaner together. “Cleaning up the pollution, restoring water flow and strengthening the natural ecosystems of the Jordan River will help us prepare for the climate crisis,” said outgoing Israeli environment minister Tamar Zandberg.

Read also: Israel’s water scarcity turns sewage into gold

Sewage

Gidon Bromberg of EcoPeace also sees opportunities. “But all sides must participate, the water must be cleaner without raw sewage flowing in from the Palestinian and Jordanian side, and there must really be substantially more water flowing through the river.”

In addition, to stem the decline of the Dead Sea, restrictions must be imposed on an Israeli company, Dead Sea Works, which extracts valuable minerals from Dead Sea water by diverting large amounts of water from the lake. And the same goes for a similar company on the Jordanian side of the Dead Sea. The two companies together are responsible for about 40 percent of the Dead Sea’s decline, according to Bromberg. The concession for the Israeli company expires in 2030, and EcoPeace and others have already negotiated with the Israeli government that the company can only continue to operate if it pumps as much clean water back into the Dead Sea as it takes out. They hope that Jordan will follow suit.

“People in the countries along the Jordan and the Dead Sea are starting to realize that the climate crisis is not a thing of the future,” says Bromberg. “We are already experiencing the serious consequences. If we do not restore the Jordan together, the existence of hundreds of thousands of people in the area is in acute danger. It has become a matter of national security for all of us.” And that offers hope, thinks Bromberg, because all those countries do take their safety very seriously.

Also see: This photo series about the disappearing Dead Sea

A version of this article also appeared in the January 7, 2023 newspaper