As you know, Ketura is just along the Jordan border about 50 km from Eilat, which along with the Jordanian city of Aqaba resides on the northernmost tip of the Gulf of Aqaba. I would like to say that it was as simple as everyone piling into the bus and crossing into Jordan at the Eilat-Aqaba border crossing, but you should be aware by now if you've been reading the blog thus far that nothing is as simple as that with a group like ours. The Palestinian students are not allowed by their permits to enter the municipality of Eilat for whatever ridiculous reason (why Eilat of all places? They can go anywhere else!), and therefore can't cross over from Eilat to Aqaba. So they had to leave a couple days early and cross over at a different border crossing (The Allenby Bridge - King Hussein crossing) nearer to Jerusalem and Amman. The question came up in a meeting why we couldn't all cross with the Palestinians as a show of solidarity. Well, it turns out that the crossing the Palestinians were using is actually just for Palestinians, being as it is in Area A (Israelis can't go there), and Israeli and Jordanian authorities don't grant Visas to international passport holders visas for this crossing. It can take all day for the Palestinians to cross the border, seeing as they have to pass through not two, but three authorities - Palestinian, Israeli, and then Jordanian. So it had to happen that the Palestinians left two days early, went to Amman first and then met us in Wadi Mujib on the first day, after we had crossed into Jordan at Eilat-Aqaba.
Just to give a brief synopsis of the purpose of the trip, it essentially hinges on the political ecology of water in the Jordan River Basin. There are four major riparians (bodies - usually states but with an exception in this case - that have claim to a right of water use in a basin) in the Jordan River Basin: Syria, Israel, Jordan, and Palestine. Lebanon and Egypt have marginal claim, but they're not very important in the political scheme of things, each having their own much more important water supply. Excepting groundwater, there is one major water source supplying water to Israel, Jordan, and Palestine - the Jordan River Basin, which arises out of a few tributaries in the north of Israel, flows through the Hula Valley and into the Sea of Galilee (Lake Kineret in Hebrew, the little blue patch on the line demarcating the Golan Heights in the map). From there it "flows" south into the Dead Sea, which is as good a place as any to start.
The first stop in Jordan, Wadi Mujib, was all about the Dead Sea. The water level in the sea has been dropping at a rate of approximately 1 meter a year for about 30 years, and shows no sign of stopping anytime soon. At current rates, the sea will salinate to the point where no more evaporation will take place - about 200 meters shallower than currently, with only 1/3 the surface area. Why is this happening? The reason can be summed up pretty well in the words of one of the Jordanian water authorities we met along the way: in the current water management mentality, any water that is not "used" in some way is a waste. After all, currently Jordan is the most water stressed country in the Middle East with a water deficit of hundreds of millions of cubic meters (i.e. the amount that demand outstrips supply) and Israel is also water stressed especially in the summer months. Therefore, every little bit of water worth using is used, and Wadi Mujib is a good example. Rain falls far more abundantly in the mountains that run parallel to the Israeli border than in the dry Arava Valley in which runs the border south of the Dead Sea. Therefore, there are many rivers flowing out of these mountains and through wadis to the sea. Almost every single one, however, is dammed and diverted to supply domestic, industrial, and agricultural uses in the area - Wadi Mujib now barely makes it to the Dead Sea. The only reason it still does, if ever so slightly, is that a little water is let through the dam to provide tourists like us a little hike up a shallow river to a waterfall - but except for this tiny piece, the natural ecosystem that used to flourish along the river is entirely gone. The same is true for every little stream that used to flow into the Dead Sea - of the original 1.3 billion cubic meters that used to flow into it from the Jordan River, only 300 million still does, and this 300 million is made up entirely of a mix of fish farm waste, agricultural run-off, and untreated sewage water. The Dead Sea is essentially now a waste dump, and a shrinking one at that.
Why is this a problem? After all, it's a "dead" sea right? It's not like we'll lose abundant treasures of biodiversity if the thing dries up. Nothing save a couple of halophilic (salt-loving) microbes even lives there. But let's think "upstream," so to speak, before returning downstream. Remember that bird migration map I showed in an earlier post that showed that most of Europe and Africa's migrating birds go through this part of the world on their journey? Well, diverting all of the natural water sources to provide for agriculture, industry, and domestic uses deprives those birds of their natural fueling spots, leaving them with the natural choice of turning to the farms and fields that the water irrigates. This creates huge problems with farmers, but more about this when I talk about Hula. Returning to the Dead Sea, the shrinking water level means that fresh water moves in to take its place, dissolving a large salt layer in the ground surrounding the sea and causing thousands of sinkholes tens of meters across, making it dangerous to hike, and making farming in the area a very uncertain affair - you might come out one morning to find that half your farm has collapsed, literally. Finally, there is a large amount of industry associated with the Dead Sea, largely consisting of tourism and mineral extraction from the water. If you look up at the water map, you'll see that there are really two Dead Seas, the lower one being nothing but shallow (~5 m) evaporation pools where nearly 40 percent of the world's potash, along with dozens of other minerals, is extracted. These evaporation pools also contribute significantly to the lower levels of the actual Dead Sea, although the Jordan River problem is almost an order of magnitude more significant. But as the Sea subsides, it is more and more costly to pump this water into the ponds, and the tourism will suffer as well.
(up next post - The Red-Dead Conduit, Amman, Irbid, and the Hula)
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