Israel agrees to share water with Palestine and Jordan

Israel today heralded a new water agreement with Jordan and the Palestinians, which will tap the Red Sea to bring more water to the arid region and the fast vanishing Dead Sea.

"This is a historic agreement that realizes a dream of many years and the dream of [Zionist leader Theodore] Herzl," said Israeli water minister Silvan Shalom after the signing at the World Bank headquarters.

Regional cooperation on the vital issue of water is always noteworthy, especially given tensions between Israelis and Palestinians and the potential for water shortages to spark conflicts. 

But the deal should not be confused with the long-anticipated, much more ambitious project to connect the Red Sea with the quickly vanishing Dead Sea, known as the Red-Dead canal. 

 

The Red-Dead project would have brought 2 billion cubic meters of water from the Red Sea to the salty Dead Sea, whose surface area has shrunk some 30 percent in the past few decades – due in part to Israel diverting water from the Jordan River upstream for agriculture. 

That project was also expected to yield about 800 million cubic meters (mcm) of drinkable water. However, the project was shelved due to economic and environmental concerns raised in a World Bank study.

Today's water exchange deal, by contrast, is one-tenth of the scale. It involves only 200 mcm per year, 80 mcm of which will be desalinated.

 

Christa Case Bryant for Christian Science Monitor

Source: ucanews.com (Dec. 10, 2013)