World Bank’s Red Sea-Dead Sea Feasibility Study Ignores the Source of the Problem

By Isabelle Humphries


	A measuring stick tracks decreasing Dead Sea water levels near an Israeli hotel at Neve Zohar, in the southern Dead Sea region, December 2006 (Photo Ossama Bawardi).

AN EARLY December meeting among representatives of the Jordanian, Palestinian and Israeli governments culminated in the launching of a World Bank-sponsored feasibility study of a “Red Sea-Dead-Sea “canal” (see August 2006 Washington Report, p. 33). The project is designed to funnel water from the Red Sea to the rapidly disappearing Dead Sea, the world’s largest body of salt water. But despite the fact that the region is facing a massive water crisis, environmentalists have urged caution in greeting this project with open arms.

Although over 95 percent of Israel’s access to the Jordan River—the source of Dead Sea waters—crosses through the West Bank, Palestinians today have no access to the river, or to the saltwater lake into which it flows. While Palestinian Authority representatives participated in the Amman meeting, in reality Palestinians have no control over the water resources around them which hold the key to a sustainable future. So much for “power-sharing.”

Since prehistoric times the Dead Sea—a unique eco-system providing valuable minerals—has attracted settlers and visitors. The novelty of floating on the surface of its saltwater at the lowest point on Earth never fails to impress the tourist at modern Jordanian and Israeli hotels, and no doubt has been a source of wonder since ancient times.

Yet generations gone by would not have been floating at the same water’s edge as we do today. This is because water levels are dropping by an average of a meter per year. Owing to severe over-pumping of the Jordan River, a sea whose levels remained stable for thousands of years has shrunk by a third. The fact that hotels built in recent years already are located a significant distance from the water’s edge indicates just how fast this ecological disaster is progressing.

Indeed, as far back as the end of the 19th century, Zionist strategists considering the looming Dead Sea crisis suggested pumping waters from the Mediterranean coast. In the 1980s several new versions were put forward, but the plan as it currently stands was promoted in the 1990s, during the Oslo peace talks, by former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres.

If the Red Sea-Dead Sea scheme is implemented, the multi-billion-dollar canal would replenish the waters of the Dead Sea with those of the Red Sea, several hundred kilometers further south.

As currently being considered by the newly launched study, the canal would function by utilizing the 600-meter difference in elevation between the heights of Faran in Jordan and the low point of the Dead Sea. Originating in the Israeli-held Gulf of Eilat, the channel of water would cross the border to the high point in Jordan, then flow down to the Dead Sea.

The broader project also includes the building of a desalination plant and a hydroelectric power station, providing essential resources for Israelis, Jordanians and Palestinians. If built, the desalination facility at the foot of the Dead Sea would be the world’s largest, producing 800 million cubic liters a year, with excess water pumped directly into the sea.

The World Bank-sponsored study of the so-called “Peace Conduit” is expected to take two years, and the majority of the money for the study already has been raised from the U.S., Japan, France and the Netherlands, with talks ongoing with Sweden, Spain, Britain and Germany.

Words of warning, however, have emerged from various quarters, from scientists to environmental groups—notably Friends of the Earth Middle East (FoEME), leading campaigners on the regional water crisis. Their concern is that with a study so centrally focused on the feasibility of a canal, the root causes of the decrease in Dead Sea water levels have been ignored. The crisis at the Dead Sea is a result of massive diversion of the waters of the Jordan (and, additionally, overuse of water resources by the mineral mining industry), yet these issues are not to be addressed by the study.

Campaigners call for a total rethinking of water management—or lack of same—in the region. Regarding agriculture, for example, in a water crisis such as this no government should be permitting the growth of tropical fruits, which require excessive amounts of water. Nevertheless, governments in the region permit this shortsighted economic activity to continue. In Israel, 50 percent of water is directed to agriculture, yet that sector represents only 3 percent of the country’s GDP.

Regarding the specifics of the canal itself, FoEME pose a number of difficult questions if it is to go ahead. How will planners address the ecological effects of mixing Red Sea water with Dead Sea water that has a salt concentration 10 times higher? Will the pumping of water from the Red Sea change currents and result in damage to ecologically important coral reefs? Situated in an earthquake zone, what will happen if a natural disaster or other cause results in leakage of saltwater into sweet groundwater reserves?

As usual, excessive Western money is being used to plaster over the cracks and avoid addressing fundamental regional issues. The World Bank and its sponsors have no intention of actually forcing regional actors to address their own responsibility in the water shortage, as this would present very awkward questions for the West’s regional allies. Why, for example, is the average Israeli able to consume four times as much water, per capita, as the average Palestinian? Why does Israel violate the Oslo accords by denying Palestinian access to the River Jordan? Why do Israel and Jordan and other states continue to over-pump the Jordan and its tributaries in such a crisis?

In December, the Israeli daily Haaretz reported Syrian anger over construction of a new water reservoir in the east of the occupied Golan, near the 1967 border, reducing the amount of water which would reach the shared Yarmuk River. Why is Israel allowed to continue occupation of this region of strategic water resources without international isolation? Such a line of questioning, of course, will not be found in World Bank-sponsored water studies.

Whatever the results of the feasibility study, funds are unlikely to be raised to start construction until 2011 at the earliest. It remains to be seen if the feasibility study materializes into something more concrete.

While headlines concerning the Middle East usually herald accounts of daily brutality, it is worth noting that, in terms of a long-term sustainable future and security for ordinary people in the region, there is no more strategic and fundamental issue to be addressed than the preservation of water. And real preservation and security will only come with a just distribution of power and resources.

Isabelle Humphries is conducting Ph.D. research on the Palestinian refugee community inside Israel’s 1948 borders. She can be reached at <isabellebh2004@yahoo.co.uk>.