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Water shortage is a major problem in the Middle East - and it is worsening with climate change. In order to face this humanitarian challenge significant amounts of water have been diverted from sources that feed the Dead Sea - causing the biblical lake to shrink and in turn sparking environmental problems. An ambitious venture has therefore been launched to face these challenges: A trilateral agreement between Israelis, Jordanians and Palestinians shall benefit the populations of all three partners and replenish the dwindling Dead Sea.
Israel’s Regional Cooperation Minister Tzachi Hanegbi hailed the so-called Red Sea-Dead Sea Conveyance project as the “biggest and most ambitious project event initiated and exercised” in the area. It shows that “water can serve as means for reconciliation, prosperity, cooperation rather than calls for tensions and dispute”.
And this is how the plan will work:
The saltiest and lowest body of water in the world, the Dead Sea, lies over 400 metres below sea level. Its water level is dropping more than a metre each year. The Red Sea, an inlet of the Indian Ocean between Africa and Asia, is a few hundred kilometres south of the Dead Sea.
Seawater from the Red Sea will be turned into drinking water. Through the construction of a 220-kilometer pipeline the brine—the high-saline solution remaining after the desalination—will be transferred from the Red Sea to the Dead Sea and thus reduce the decline in the water level. “The drop in the level of the Dead Sea will be reduced by almost 30%,” says Oded Fixler, Deputy Director General of Israel’s Water Authority. As the water runs down the gradient towards the lowest point in the world it will also be used to generate electricity that will equally power a desalination plant to produce drinking water.
Building a canal that links the Dead Sea to another body of water is an idea that dates back to 1664 when a German Jesuit scholar envisioned it would be a part of a network of water transportation. Another proposal was put forward in 1855 by a British naval officer who suggested such a canal as cheaper alternative to the Suez Canal. In 1902’s “Altneuland,” or “Old-New Land,” Theodor Herzl imagined that a third of the Jewish state’s energy would come from a Dead Sea Canal, utilizing hydroelectricity gained from the elevation drop from the Mediterranean Sea to the Dead Sea.
The idea of a project of regional cooperation between Israel and Jordan in this field was born in 1994. But it was only in 2013 that Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority signed a memorandum of understanding in Washington on the current plan. That was a landmark regional water-swapping agreement that includes the Red Sea-Dead Sea project, the release of water from the Sea of Galilee in Israel to Jordan, and the sale of drinking water from Israel to the Palestinian Authority.
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