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DEGANYA,
Israel — At the Alumot Dam on the edge of Kibbutz
Deganya, a couple of miles south of the Sea of Galilee, you can
smell the Jordan River long before you see it.
Once there, two Jordan rivers come into view:
North of the dam, the water is calm and clean enough for swimming.
Every year, tens of thousands of Christian pilgrims flock to
Yardenit, the picturesque Baptism site on the Israeli bank of
the river in which Jesus Himself was baptized.
South of the dam, the Jordan is tainted with untreated and partially
treated sewage, salt water and fishpond effluents that pour from
large drainpipes built into the riverbed. The stench is staggering.
This pollution, worsened by the diversion of much of the clean
water by Israel, Syria and Jordan, is endangering the river — the
backdrop of so many Biblical narratives — to the point
of extinction.
“In the summer, the Lower Jordan River (below the Galilee) is dry in
certain places, and this is a totally man-made problem,” Israeli environmentalist
Gidon Bromberg said while watching the filthy water drain into the river.
“The Lower River is an open sewage canal, and the sad irony is that the
sewage water is keeping the river flowing,” said Bromberg, who heads
the Israeli branch of Friends of the Earth Middle East. “Being Baptized
in the water below the dam — something that takes place on the Jordanian
side of the river — cannot be too spiritually uplifting.”
The Old and New Testaments feature the lush Jordan River Valley,
which stood in stark contrast to the parched desert landscape
beyond, as the Gates to the Garden of Eden.
The Book of Genesis says that Lot decided to settle there because
it was “well-watered everywhere, like the garden of the
Lord.” Moses dreamed of crossing the river into the Promised
Land, but died in Jordan. The Bible says John the Baptist found
refuge by the river, where he Baptized countless followers, including
Jesus. It also is the place where the spirit of God is said to
have “descended like a dove” on Christ.
The Jordan main source is precipitation from Mount Hermon, a
snow-covered peak shared by Israel and Syria in the north. Three
streams originating in Lebanon, Israel and the Golan Heights
also feed the river. On its way to the Dead Sea, its destination,
the Jordan swells Huleh Lake and the Sea of Galilee.
The river’s steady decline began in the 1950s, when Israel
started diverting water for agriculture and other domestic use.
Jordan and Syria built a series of dams and canals on the Yarmouk
River, the Jordan’s main tributary, further cutting the
flow. Yet another large Jordanian-Syrian dam is to be finished
next year, a fact that makes the situation even more urgent for
environmentalists.
Before the diversions began about 50 years ago, the average
amount of water that flowed down the Jordan to the Dead Sea
each year was 1.3 billion cubic meters. Today it’s just
50 million to 100 million cubic meters.
“In summertime, up to half of that flow is untreated sewage from communities
in Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority,” Bromberg said.
The diversions are also endangering the Dead Sea region, another
Biblical backdrop, where Lot’s wife was turned into a pillar
of salt, and where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered. The
salt-filled sea, whose shores abound with spas offering treatments
for skin ailments and other conditions, has lost one-third of
its surface area in the past half-century.
Speaking by phone from the Jordanian
capital, Amman, Khaled Nasser, the director of the Jordan Society
for Sustainable Development, said “regional mismanagement” of the Jordan and its
tributaries is worsening the Middle East’s chronic water
shortage. Nasser noted that the Jordan “is holy to Muslims” as
well as Christians.
Nasser charged that “Israel is taking much more water
than international law allows.”
Uri Schor, a spokesman for Israel’s Water Commission,
said “Israel is fulfilling its side of our agreements,
and in fact gives more water to our neighbors than the agreements
require.” He called on the Palestinians to treat and recycle
their sewage water for agricultural use, contending that “the
only way to increase the region's limited water supply is by
recycling and creating desalinization plants.”
Nasser was critical of the region’s governments, including
his own, for encouraging farmers to grow crops “without
enforcing wise agricultural strategies,” which he said “has
led to the salination of land” in some areas. Rather than
grow bananas, tomatoes and watermelons, which need a great deal
of water, he said, “the land should be used for vegetables
suitable to the environment.”
If it were up to environmentalists, the countries of the region
would import more produce in order to save the Jordan and other
water sources.
“Agriculture accounts for just 2 percent of Israel’s GDP (gross
domestic product), yet it utilizes 30 percent of the fresh water in the country,” Bromberg
said. “In Jordan, where agriculture accounts for 6 percent of the GDP,
70 percent of the fresh water is used for crops. The economies would benefit
more from tourism projects.”
Friends of the Earth Middle East, one of the few successful partnerships
between Israelis, Palestinians and Jordanians, has stepped up
its efforts to publicize the Jordan River’s sorry state.
“Water can be a bridge for peace,” Nader Khateeb,
the organization’s Palestinian director, told a group representing
200 non-governmental organizations during a September seminar
at the United Nations. “The water resources are so scarce
in the Middle East that we have to work together with our Israeli
neighbors to help guarantee that we as Palestinians get our fair
share of water, and all together stop the pollution of the water
resource.”
Religious leaders, who also have a stake in the Jordan, say more
needs to be done to get the word out.
“The whole Sea of Galilee and Jordan River are in and of themselves a
holy site,” said David Parsons, information officer for the International
Christian Embassy (ICE), an evangelical ministry that brings thousands of Christians
to the Holy Land every year. “If this news gets out, I think a lot of
Christians will be very concerned.”
Although ICE pilgrims go to the Yardenit site along the Upper
Jordan to be baptized, Parsons says, “I worry about those
believers, mainly from the traditional churches, who sometimes
get baptized in the Lower Jordan, on the Jordanian side. … I
don’t think they realize the pollution there.”
While the Yardenit site evokes images of the Garden of Eden,
with reeds, small fish and even otters floating in crystal-clear
pools, Parsons is convinced that “if Christians knew that
just a mile down the river a toxic mix was being dumped, they
would be very upset about it.”
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