How Israel, Jordan and Palestine can cooperate to slow Dead Sea’s demise 

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Updated 08 December 2022
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How Israel, Jordan and Palestine can cooperate to slow Dead Sea’s demise 

  • Water levels have been falling over the past half century, endangering the salt lake’s very existence
  • Joint effort to revive the Jordan River and a canal to the Mediterranean Sea among potential solutions

AMMAN: From Greco-Roman times, the Dead Sea’s unique equilibrium was finely balanced by nature. Fresh water from nearby rivers and springs flowed into the lake, combining with rich salt deposits and then evaporating, leaving behind a brine of 33 percent salinity.

Now, owing to a combination of climatic and man-made factors, this balance has been disrupted. As a result, the Dead Sea has been receding at an alarming rate over the past half century, endangering its very existence.




The Dead Sea has been receding at an alarming rate over the past half century. (AFP)

At the UN Climate Change Conference, COP27, held in Egypt’s resort town of Sharm El-Sheikh in November, a joint Israeli-Jordanian agreement was signed to try to address the Dead Sea’s decline.

However, given that the deal excluded the Palestinians and was signed by an outgoing Israeli environment ministry official, some say that its chances of success are low.

Without sufficient funding, and in the absence of a three-way agreement, Jordan and Israel have instead decided to focus on cleaning up the Jordan River to help replenish the Dead Sea’s main water source.

What was signed by Israeli and Jordanian officials on the sidelines of COP27 was an agreement to this effect. But if the Dead Sea is to be rescued from impending oblivion, it is clear that far more needs to be done to undo the damage to its natural freshwater sources and to set aside political rivalries for the common environmental good.

No one knows exactly how the Dead Sea came into being. The Bible and other religious texts suggest this lifeless, salty lake at the lowest point on Earth was created when God rained down fire and brimstone on the sinful towns of Sodom and Gomorrah.

Russian experts have even tried excavating under the lake bed in the hope of finding evidence to support the Biblical tale. A nearby religious site called Lot’s Cave is said to be where the nephew of Abraham and his daughters lived after fleeing the destruction.

Scientists, meanwhile, point to the lake’s more mundane, geological origins, claiming the Dead Sea is the product of the same tectonic shifts that formed the Afro-Arabian Rift Valley millions of years ago.

Halfway through the 20th century, among the first big decisions made by the newly formed state of Israel was to divert large amounts of water by pipelines from the Jordan River to the southern Negev, in order to realize the dream of Israel’s first prime minister David Ben-Gurion to “make the desert bloom.”




If the Dead Sea is to be rescued from impending oblivion, it is clear that far more needs to be done to undo the damage to its natural freshwater. (AFP)

In 1964, Israel’s Mekorot National Water Company inaugurated its National Water Carrier project, which gave the Degania Dam — completed in the early 1930s — a new purpose: to regulate the water flow from the Sea of Galilee to the Jordan River.

One result was that the share of water reaching the neighboring Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan fell drastically, thereby depriving the Dead Sea of millions of cubic meters of freshwater per year from its primary source.

Another potential contributing factor at present is the Israeli company behind Ein Gedi Mineral Water. The Ein Gedi bottling plant has monopolized the use of freshwater from a spring that lies within the 1948 borders of the state of Israel and which long fed into the Dead Sea.

However, not all the blame for the lake’s decline rests with one country. According to Elias Salameh, a water science professor at the University of Jordan, every country in the region bears some responsibility.

“All of us are responsible at different levels for what has happened to the Dead Sea,” Salameh told Arab News. Israel, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria have all sucked up water intended for the Dead Sea in order to satisfy their own needs.

FASTFACTS

• The Dead Sea receives almost all its water from the Jordan River.

• It is the lowest body of water on the surface of the planet.

• In the mid-20th century, it was 400 meters below sea level.

• By the mid-2010s, it had fallen to 430 meters below sea level.

In 1955, the Jordan Valley Unified Water Plan, brokered by US Ambassador Eric Johnston, allowed Israel to use 25 million cubic meters of Yarmouk River water per year, Syria 90 million and Jordan 375 million.

“But not all countries abided by the commitments made to the American, Johnston,” said Salameh. “It was never signed because Arab countries had not recognized Israel and refused to sign any agreement with Israel. Syria took the biggest portion, getting away with 260-280 million cubic meters annually.”

In the 1970s, Jordan and Syria began their own diversion of the Yarmouk River, the largest tributary of the Jordan River, again reducing its flow. Another agreement, in 1986, gave Jordan the right to 200 million cubic meters. But, in reality, Jordan took barely 20 million.

According to the UN, Jordan is the second most water-scarce country in the world. The 1948 and 1967 Arab-Israeli wars, which led to the mass exodus of Palestinians, more than doubled Jordan’s population, making its water needs even more acute.

As a result of these deals and diversions, the Dead Sea receded from roughly 398 meters below sea level in 1976 to around 430 meters below sea level in 2015. What is more worrying, perhaps, is the decline has been accelerating.




“Climate change has aggressively hit Jordan in the past two years,” said Motasem Saidan, University of Jordan professor. (Supplied)

During the first 20 years after 1976, the water level dropped by an average of six meters per decade. Over the next decade, from the mid-1990s to the early 2000s, it fell by nine meters. In the decade up to 2015, it fell by 11 meters.

Some attribute this accelerating decline to man-made climate change. Climate scientists say global warming has already resulted in significant alterations to human and natural systems, one of which is increased rate of evaporation from water bodies.

At the same time, the waters of the Dead Sea are not being replenished fast enough.

Although the Dead Sea borders Jordan, Israel and Palestine, and despite the valiant efforts of such cross-border NGOs as Earth Peace, which includes activists from all three communities, no serious collective action has been taken to deal with the ecological disaster.

Cooperation is essential, however, to stave off the wider environmental consequences — most concerning of all being the rapid proliferation of sinkholes along the Dead Sea shoreline.

According to scientists, when freshwater diffuses beneath the surface of the newly exposed shoreline, it slowly dissolves the large underground salt deposits until the earth above collapses without warning.

Over a thousand sinkholes have appeared in the past 15 years alone, swallowing buildings, a portion of road, and date-palm plantations, mostly on the northwest coast. Environmental experts believe Israeli hotels along the shoreline are now in danger.

On the Jordanian side, too, the fate of luxury tourism resorts along the eastern shore of the Dead Sea face is in the balance.




Dead Sea is the product of the same tectonic shifts that formed the Afro-Arabian Rift Valley millions of years ago, scientists say. (AFP)

“The main highway, which is the artery to all the big Jordanian hotels, is in danger of collapsing if the situation is not rectified,” Salameh said.

Israel has developed a system that can predict where the next sinkhole will appear, based on imagery provided by a satellite operated by the Italian Space Agency, which passes over the Dead Sea every 16 days and produces a radar image of the area.

By comparing sets of images, even minimal changes in the topography can be identified before any major collapse.

Israeli officials have been searching for solutions to prevent a further decline in water levels and thereby stave off the spread of sinkholes. One suggestion is the construction of a Red Sea-Dead Sea canal.

A report compiled to assess the potential impact of transferring Red Sea water into the lower-lying Dead Sea found that a moderate flow could slow, but not halt, the retreat of the Dead Sea and reduce the number of new sinkholes per year.

Ironically, it found that too much Red Sea water could have the opposite effect. If the flow was significant enough to raise the level of the Dead Sea, the report predicted the sinkhole problem would be exacerbated.

Because the Red Sea is less salty than the Dead Sea, it would likely increase the dissolution of underground salt deposits and thereby speed up the appearance of sinkholes.

Although many solutions have been suggested to help address the Dead Sea’s decline, none has been implemented owing in large part to a lack of funding.




The Dead Sea receded from roughly 398 meters below sea level in 1976 to around 430 meters below sea level in 2015. What is more worrying, perhaps, is the decline has been accelerating. (AFP)

According to Salameh, the most logical solution proposed to date is the Med-Dead project, which would allow for a channel to run from the Mediterranean Sea to the Dead Sea.

Two of the sites proposed for this channel are Qatif, near the Gaza Strip, and Bisan, north of the Jordan River in Jordan. However, such a plan would first require Jordanian and Palestinian approvals.

Jordan has also suggested a similar project establishing a channel from the Red Sea, but Salameh does not consider this feasible.

“The distance is long, and it is not a viable project,” he said.


Saudi Arabia slams Israel’s move to annex Palestinian land and block ‘two-state’ solution

Updated 15 August 2025
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Saudi Arabia slams Israel’s move to annex Palestinian land and block ‘two-state’ solution

  • Saudi foreign ministry called on the the international community “to assume its legal and moral responsibilities” and “protect the Palestinian people” 
  • “It must also compel Israel to stop its aggression against Gaza” ... “and to halt its crimes against the Palestinian people,” the ministry said in a statement

RIYADH: Saudi Arabia on Friday condemned moves by Israeli authorities to push ahead with construction of settlements around the occupied city of Jerusalem.

In a statement, the Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs also denounced pronouncements by Israeli officials to block internationally backed efforts to create a sovereign Palestinian state as part of a solution to the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Israel’s moves to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state “is a violation of international law, the inalienable right of the Palestinian people to self-determination and the establishment of their sovereign state,” the statement said. 

“These decisions and statements confirm the continuation of the illegal expansionist policies of this Israeli government, its obstruction of the peace process, and the serious threat to the possibility of a two-state solution,” the statement said.

Earlier Thursday, Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich announced that work would start on a long-delayed settlement that would divide the West Bank and cut if off from East Jerusalem. 

“Whoever in the world is trying to recognize a Palestinian state today will receive our answer on the ground. Not with documents nor with decisions or statements, but with facts. Facts of houses, facts of neighborhoods,” Smotrich was reported as saying.

Smotrich’s office later doubled down by saying the move would “bury” the idea of a Palestinian state.

Israeli media on Thursday also reported that Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar has vowed that Israel “will not allow” the implementation of the two-state solution, which allows the creation of a Palestinian state standing side-by-side with Israel.

“A Palestinian state in the heart of the land of Israel would indeed be a solution — a solution for those seeking to destroy us. We will not allow that to happen,” Sa’ar said in a statement from his office and carried by the Times of Israel.

“If large countries like France and Canada wish to establish a Palestinian state within their own territory, they can — they have plenty of space. But here, in the land of Israel, it will not happen,” Sa’ar further reported as saying.

France and Canada had recently announced plans to unilaterally recognize a Palestinian state next month amid Israeli defiance of international calls for a ceasefire in Gaza and to allow humanitarian agencies to their work. Britain also threatened to follow suit unless Israel agreed to a ceasefire with Hamas, improve humanitarian conditions in Gaza, and work toward a long-term peace framework.

Call for immediate action

In view of the recent moves by Israeli officials, Saudi Arabia urged the international community “to assume its legal and moral responsibilities, protect the Palestinian people, and fulfill their legitimate rights, including recognition of the Palestinian state.”

“It must also compel Israel to stop its aggression against Gaza and its illegal violations in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and to halt its crimes against the Palestinian people, particularly those amounting to genocide, and hold the perpetrators accountable,” the statement said.

“The Kingdom renews its categorical rejection of Israeli policies based on settlement expansion, forced displacement, and the denial of the Palestinian people’s legitimate rights. 

”It calls on the international community, especially the permanent members of the Security Council, to take immediate action to compel the Israeli occupation authorities to end their crimes against the Palestinian people and the annexation of Palestinian territory and to comply with UN resolutions and international law,“ the statement further said.


EU, Norway, rights groups rap West Bank settlement plan

Updated 15 August 2025
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EU, Norway, rights groups rap West Bank settlement plan

  • Palestinians fear land fragmentation will rob them of any chance to build a state of their own in the area

MAALE ADUMIM: Israeli far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich announced work would start on a long-delayed settlement that would divide the West Bank and cut it off from East Jerusalem, a move his office said would “bury” the idea of a Palestinian state.

The Palestinian government, allies, and campaign groups condemned the scheme, calling it illegal and saying the fragmentation of territory would rip up peace plans for the region.
Standing at the site of the planned settlement in Maale Adumim on Thursday, Smotrich, a settler himself, said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Donald Trump had agreed to the revival of the E1 development. However, there was no immediate confirmation from either.
“Whoever in the world is trying to recognize a Palestinian state today will receive our answer on the ground, not with documents nor with decisions or statements, but with facts. Facts of houses, facts of neighborhoods,” Smotrich said.
Israel froze construction plans at Maale Adumim in 2012, and again after a revival in 2020, because of objections from the US, European allies, and other powers who considered the project a threat to any future peace deal with the Palestinians.
Restarting the project could further isolate Israel, which has watched some of its Western allies condemn its military offensive in Gaza and announce they may recognize a Palestinian state.
Palestinians fear the settlement building in the West Bank — which has sharply intensified since the 2023 Hamas attack on Israel that led to the Gaza war — will rob them of any chance to build a state of their own in the area.
In a statement headlined “Burying the idea of a Palestinian state,” Smotrich’s spokesperson said the minister had approved the plan to build 3,401 houses for Israeli settlers between an existing settlement in the West Bank and Jerusalem.
In Maale Adumim, Smotrich said the plan would go into effect on Wednesday.
Breaking the Silence, an Israeli rights group established by former Israeli soldiers, said what it called a land grab “will not only further fragment the Palestinian territory, but will further entrench apartheid.”
Nabil Abu Rudeineh, the Palestinian president’s spokesperson, called on the US to pressure Israel to stop settlement building.
“The EU rejects any territorial change that is not part of a political agreement between the involved parties. So annexation of territory is illegal under international law,” European Commission spokesperson Anitta Hipper said.
Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide said the move by Smotrich, an ultra-nationalist in the ruling right-wing coalition who has long advocated for Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank, showed that Israel “seeks to appropriate land owned by Palestinians in order to prevent a two-state solution.”
Peace Now, which tracks settlement activity in the West Bank, said there were still steps needed before construction. 
However, if all goes through, infrastructure work could begin within a few months, and house building could start about a year later.
“The E1 plan is deadly for the future of Israel and for any chance of achieving a peaceful two-state solution. We are standing at the edge of an abyss, and the government is driving us forward at full speed,” Peace Now said in a statement.
Consecutive Israeli governments have initiated, approved, planned, and funded settlements, according to Israeli rights group Yesh Din.
Some settlers moved to the West Bank for religious or ideological reasons, while lower housing costs and government incentives drew others. 
They include American and European dual citizens.
Palestinians were already demoralized by the Israeli military campaign, which has killed more than 61,000 people in Gaza, according to local health authorities, and fear Israel will ultimately push them out of that territory.
About 700,000 Israeli settlers live among 2.7 million Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. 
Israel annexed East Jerusalem in a move not recognized by most countries, but has not formally extended sovereignty over the West Bank. 
The UN and most world powers say settlement expansion has eroded the viability of a two-state solution by fragmenting Palestinian territory. 
The two-state plan envisages a Palestinian state in East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza, existing side by side with Israel.
Most of the global community considers all settlements illegal under international law.
Israel rejects this interpretation, saying the West Bank is “disputed” rather than “occupied” territory.
Britain, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand imposed sanctions in June on Smotrich and another far-right minister who advocates for settlement expansion, accusing both of them of repeatedly inciting violence against Palestinians in the West Bank. 


UAE joins Jordan, EU countries in Gaza humanitarian airdrops

Updated 14 August 2025
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UAE joins Jordan, EU countries in Gaza humanitarian airdrops

  • Action is 71st of Operation Birds of Goodness, part of UAE’s Operation Chivalrous Knight 3 to help Palestinians
  • Aid includes essential food supplies donated by Emirati charities

LONDON: The UAE and Jordan, alongside Germany, Italy, Belgium, and France, carried out humanitarian airdrops on Thursday to help deliver relief to the 2 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

The aid airdrop was the 71st of Operation Birds of Goodness, part of the UAE’s Operation Chivalrous Knight 3 in support of Palestinians facing Israeli attacks, reported the Emirates News Agency.

The aid included essential food supplies which had been donated by charities in the UAE. Since the onset of the Israel-Hamas conflict in late 2023, the UAE has delivered 3,956 tonnes of various items, including food and essential supplies.

The initiative underscores the UAE’s commitment to supporting the Palestinian people, enhancing resilience, and promoting humanitarian assistance in crisis areas, added WAM.


Turkiye reports mass return by Syrians

Updated 14 August 2025
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Turkiye reports mass return by Syrians

  • Turkiye’s interior ministry said 411,649 Syrians had so far returned
  • Around 2.5 million Syrian refugees still live in Turkiye

ISTANBUL: More than 410,000 Syrians who fled to Turkiye during the rule of Bashar Assad have returned home since he was overthrown in December, the government announced Thursday.
Turkiye’s interior ministry said 411,649 Syrians had so far returned, the rate picking up in recent weeks, with the immigration service recording 140,000 returns since mid-June.
In June Filippo Grandi, head of the UN refugee agency (UNHCR), said 600,000 Syrians had returned homme from neighboring countries.
Syria has seen outbreaks of violence in recent weeks, testing the authorities’ ability to contain inter-religious strife after the fall of Assad.
Around 2.5 million Syrian refugees still live in Turkiye, according to the latest figures, released in early August.
In 2021, Turkiye said up to 3.7 million Syrians had taken refuge in the country.


Sudan army chief rules out any compromise with RSF paramilitaries

Updated 14 August 2025
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Sudan army chief rules out any compromise with RSF paramilitaries

  • Sudan’s war, now in its third year, has killed tens of thousands, displaced 13 million
  • So far, mediation efforts led by Washington and Riyadh have failed to secure a ceasefire in Sudan

PORT SUDAN: Sudan’s army chief on Thursday vowed there would be no compromise with paramilitary forces who have been at war with the regular army for more than two years amid a deepening humanitarian crisis.
Speaking on the centenary of the Sudanese armed forces, General Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan renewed his commitment to the “battle for dignity, to defeat the rebellion, and to make neither compromise nor reconciliation, whatever the cost.”
The remarks come just days after a confidential meeting in Switzerland between Burhan and US Africa envoy Massad Boulos.
According to two Sudanese government sources, the pair discussed a new US peace plan. So far, mediation efforts led by Washington and Riyadh have failed to secure a ceasefire.
The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, led by General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, have attempted to establish a parallel administration in western Sudan, on territory under their control.
The United Nations Security Council strongly condemned the move on Wednesday, calling it “a direct threat to Sudan’s unity and territorial integrity.”
Sudan’s war, now in its third year, has killed tens of thousands, displaced 13 million and plunged the nation into the world’s worst hunger and displacement crisis.
The European Union on Thursday called on all parties in the civil war in Sudan to “urgently” allow the entry of international aid, as the country weathers its worst outbreak of cholera in years.
“Civilians must be protected, and humanitarian access must be granted,” the EU said in a joint statement also signed by countries including Britain, Canada and Japan.