Second, the bend within the Jordan River the place we have been standing — the spot the place custom says John the Baptist baptized Jesus — was roughly 100 meters vast, with speeding rapids. At present it’s solely 5 to 10 meters vast, with no rapids, which was why we may watch Christian pilgrims comfortably standing in the midst of the Jordan being baptized by their priest.
The connection? It’s now so scorching down right here for a lot longer annually (virtually 115 levels final August) that basically the one crop that may be reliably grown anymore is dates. However that’s attainable provided that the palms have lots of water, and that’s now at risk.
With out a wholesome Jordan River, even date palms gained’t be capable of survive right here. Center East Eye not too long ago quoted a Jordanian farmer about how haywire his planting season has turn into: “We used to begin planting in July, however now we begin in September and even October” as a result of the summer season months are too scorching. “However then it will get chilly in a short time” — too shortly generally for greens to outlive.
Easy methods to get extra water? The previous technique was resistance, zero-sum pondering — “everybody simply grabbing water for what they thought have been their legit safety wants,” defined Bromberg. Again within the Nineteen Sixties, Israel constricted the movement of the Jordan from the Sea of Galilee so it may divert extra water by way of a nationwide water provider to thirsty Tel Aviv and right down to the Negev to make the desert bloom. Syria choked its Jordan River tributary the Yarmouk River, and Jordan restricted what was left of its portion of the Yarmouk and different tributaries feeding the river from its territory.
The as soon as mighty Jordan become a freshwater trickle, which episodic droughts solely exacerbated, resulting in a big swath of the Lifeless Sea drying up. Worse, they used the Jordan as a dumping floor for human waste.
The excellent news is that Israel and Jordan acknowledged that this was self-defeating and as a part of their 1994 peace accord agreed that Israel would flip the faucet again on from the Sea of Galilee and provides Jordan a much bigger allotment of water from the river. However the Jordan River couldn’t sustain. With the local weather getting hotter and drier within the valley — and 700,000 Jordanians, 30,000 Israelis and 60,000 Palestinians attempting to make a residing from agriculture there — a extra sustainable resolution was wanted.
In October 2021, I wrote in regards to the outlines of what I hoped may turn into a brand new form of peace treaty between Arabs and Israelis — a treaty fostering resilience among the many events quite than simply ending resistance between the events.
