Lot's lot: The Death of the Jordan

“You can almost jump across this river. In other places, you don’t need to even jump. You can just cross it. It’s ankle deep.” This was an Israeli scientist’s sad assessment of the dying Jordan River. Gidon Bromberg’s anecdotal evidence was backed by his team of Israeli, Jordanian and Palestinian environmental scientists which says large stretches of the Jordan River could dry up by 2011. (photo: Getty)

A report from the EcoPeace / Friends of the Earth Middle East (FoEME) group say the river is in grave danger from excessive water diversion and pollution as well as being treated as a backyard dump. An astonishing 98 percent of its fresh water is currently being diverted while discharge of large quantities of untreated sewage is threatening to cause irreversible damage to the river valley. In the last 50 years, the river’s annual flow has dropped from more than 1.3 billion cubic meters to less than 30 million cubic meters and it has lost half its biodiversity due to habitat loss and the high salinity of the water.

FoEME is an unique environmental peacemaking movement and a tri-lateral organisation that brings together Jordanian, Palestinian, and Israeli environmentalists. FoEME say their primary objective is the promotion of cooperative efforts to protect their shared environmental heritage. This, they say has a double purpose, that of advancing sustainable regional development and the creation of necessary conditions for lasting peace in the region.

The Jordan River is sacred to three religions. It is mentioned in Genesis: "And Lot lifted up his eyes, and saw that the Jordan Valley was well watered everywhere like the garden of the Lord." A pillar of salt near Deir Ain Abata in the Dead Sea is said to be Lot’s wife, after she turned to watch the destruction of Sodom. The Jordan is also the traditional baptismal site of Jesus and many of Mohammad’s venerable companions are buried near its banks, making it a holy site for Muslims around the world as well.

The Jordan Valley is also of immense ecological significance. The Valley is part of the 7,200-kilometre Great Rift Valley and is at the centre of one of the most important bird migration flyways on the planet. 500 million birds migrate annually through this narrow corridor between Europe and Africa. The area is also an important Middle Eastern wetland; both Birdlife International andWetland International have declared the entire river basin a significant bird and wetland area, maintaining many globally valuable species that are regionally or globally threatened or endangered species. The plight of the river is adding the strain on these species.

FoEME’s Israeli co-director Gidon Bromberg took journalists on a tour of the region to tell them what is killing the river and to tell them how much water is needed to save it and where the water would come from. Al Jazeera’s Orly Halpern said the river “was a narrow foul brownish stream that gurgled its way south”. Bromberg said the sewage from an additional 15,000 Israelis living in the upper Jordan Valley, 6,000 Israeli settlers, 60,000 Palestinians and 250,000 Jordanians provides the Lower Jordan with most of its water."No one can say this is holy water," said Bromberg. "The Jordan River has become holy shit.”

In their water quality study released 3 May entitled “Towards a Living River Jordan” (pdf) FoEME said the Lower Jordan needed 400 million cubic metres of fresh water annually to return to life. They suggest 220 mcm should be provided by Israel, 100 by Syria and 90 by Jordan based on the historical usage of the water. In addition, the report says the river needs an annual minor flood event to flush out the salinity of the water. It said Israel and Jordan are building new waste water treatment plants which will remove the pollutants but further action is now required to allocate fresh water.

But FoEME is pleased by the first steps. Earlier this year, the Israeli Ministry of Environment released the Terms of Reference (ToR) for their proposal to rehabilitate the LJR from the Sea of Galilee to Bezeq Stream at the border with the Palestinian West Bank. The Israeli side presented the ToR to Jordanian and Palestinian stakeholders for comments during FoEME’s Regional Advisory Committee in February. FoEME praised this as a “first step towards rehabilitation and encourages the international community to support Jordan and Palestine in the development of their own ToRs as partners to the rehabilitation effort.”

FoEME say a billion cubic metres of water could be saved if appropriate economies were introduced in Israel, Jordan and Palestine. "In the middle of the desert we continue to flush our toilets with fresh water rather than using grey water or even better - waterless toilets; and we grow tropical fruit for export," Bromberg said. "We can do much better in reducing water loss and we need to treat and reuse all of the sewage water that we produce."

Jordan to invest in Petra facilities

The Jordanian government has announced a $US 1.4 million plan to upgrade visitor facilities at the ancient Nabataean city site of Petra three hours south of the capital Amman. According to local authorities, the project will “enlighten tourists through a wide range of exhibits depicting various aspects of economic, cultural and social life of communities that lived there in a historically accurate way.” The aim is to provide insights into how the Nabataean culture operated 2,000 ago and will be a significant addition to Jordan’s premier tourist site which attracts 30,000 visitors every month.

Petra was the glittering capital of the Nabataean empire which reached its zenith under King Aretas IV (9BC to 40 AD). These dates straddled the lifetime of Jesus and Aretas was involved in hostilities with Herod, the Roman client king of Judea over a domestic spat when Herodias displaced Aretas's daughter as Herod's wife.

The city was established three hundred years earlier by a formerly nomadic people called the Nabataeans. The Nabataeans migrated from Arabia as shepherds and caravan traders who benefited from horse breeding. They settled and farmed rich irrigated productive land on a trade route, centred on the previously unpopulated area round Petra. It became known as 'a rose red city half as old as time'. The capital was strategically situated only twenty kilometres from the crossroads of two vital trade routes; one linking the Persian Gulf (and the silks and spices of India and China) with the Mediterranean Sea (and the empires of the Greeks and Romans), the other connecting Syria with the Red Sea.

Over the next two centuries, Petra became a major centre of commerce in the Negev desert dominating the spice route down to Arabia and Yemen. It carved out a bustling trade in incense, ivory, textiles and other precious goods that flowed by camel caravan from China, India and Southern Arabia to Mediterranean markets. It was the Nabataean ability to harness the limited water supply of the region that was the key to their success. The city’s elaborate water management system is still not fully understood.

By the time the Romans took over the desert metropolis in 106AD, a complex integrated system of hand-carved stone flumes (some lined with ceramic pipes), reservoirs and 200 cisterns was capable of supplying as much as 12 million gallons of water a day to the settled valley.

Petra was half built and half carved into the rock at the interior of a circle of mountains riddled with corridors and gorges. The largest monument is the Treasury building, the Al Khazneh. It is Petra’s signature building most often photographed through the narrow siq (the gap in the gorge) which leads to the monument.

Petra’s decline began after the Roman takeover as the Romans found new sea trade routes replace the caravans. But it remained a capital of a Roman province and a bishopric when Rome converted to Christianity. A major earthquake in 363AD destroyed much of the city’s infrastructure and crippled the water system. Petra sits on the western edge of the Arabian plate, southeast of the Dead Sea. The sandstone outcrops extend north on the eastern side of the transform fault segment of the Dead Sea rift zone. When the water system crumbled, the Nabataean dams and canals no longer diverted flow from the tombs and town and the community no longer had the wealth to rebuild the city. A second earthquake a hundred years later left the city in ruins. It lay forgotten until rediscovered by 19th century archaeologists.

Petra has made the cut in the "official" new seven wonders of the world (alongside Machu Picchu, the Great Wall of China, the Taj Mahal, the Colosseum, Rio’s Christ Redeemer and Mexico’s Chichen Itza). The interactive exhibit idea was inspired by Fawwaz Hasanat, head of the Petra Hotel Association, after his visit to the Pharaonic Village in Cairo. The Cairo village uses over 100 actors and actresses to perform daily activities and arts of the ancient Egyptians including agriculture, pottery, sculpture and weaving as well as fishing and wine-making. “It was something we lack in Jordan,” said Hasanat. “We have an amazing civilisation of Nabataeans, which deserves to be highlighted in that way.”

Six Day War: consequences keep coming

On the fortieth anniversary of Israel’s occupation of Palestine, Amnesty International issued its damning 2007 report on “Israel and the Occupied Territories.” The report (pdf) condemns Israel’s policy of military checkpoints, blockades, and a 700km fence inside the West Bank which curtails movement between communities and is destroying the Palestinian economy. Amnesty say the restrictions are not there to prevent suicide bombing in Israel but instead are imposed on Palestinians to benefit Israeli settlers in the area.

The report was issued on the eve of the fortieth anniversary of the Middle East’s most defining event: the Six Day War which started on 5 June, 1967. The war changed the political map and its impact is felt to this day. The war itself was swift and severe. Israel gained a spectacular victory over its Arab neighbours. Egypt lost Gaza and the Sinai Peninsula, Syria lost the Golan Heights, and Jordan lost East Jerusalem and the West Bank. The Arab countries call this war an-Naksah (the setback).

The roots of the war lie in the aftermath of the Suez Crisis. In 1956, Egypt nationalised the canal which was already off-limits to Israeli shipping. Israeli forces attacked the Sinai while British and French paratroopers took back control of the canal. The US demanded British withdrawal from the canal and Israeli troops from Sinai. A United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF) was deployed to the Canal Zone and the Sinai to keep the peace.

The next major flashpoint was over access to water in the early 1960s. Israel began by withdrawing water from the Jordan River to fund its irrigation projects in the arid south. Syria retaliated by building diversion works to take the waters from the Banias Stream out of the Sea of Galilee and into a dam for use by Syria and Jordan. Israel attacked the dam works in 1965 precipitating tit-for-tat low level violence between the countries for the next 18 months.

The third escalation was the Samu incident in 1966. An Israeli border patrol struck a mine and three soldiers were killed and six others injured. Israel blamed West Bank terrorists and launched “Operation Shredder” a revenge attack into Jordan. A 4,000 strong force entered the small village of Es Samu near Hebron, blew up 50 houses and killed 15 Jordanian soldiers and three civilians.

All throughout May 1967 tension increased as the Arab side prepared for war. The Soviet Union issued a false warning that Israel was massing troops in the north in preparation for an attack on Syria. Egypt and Syria already had a military alliance from the year before and Jordan joined in at the end of May. Nasser’s Egypt demanded the evacuation of UNEF from the Sinai. The Egyptian navy also blocked the strategically vital Straits of Tiran at the bottom of the Gulf of Eilat between Sinai and Saudi Arabia. The move effectively blocked Israeli vessels from getting in and out of its southern port of Eilat. With forces from other sympathetic Arab countries joining the force, Israel was confronted with an army of 465,000 troops, 2,880 tanks and 810 aircraft massed at their borders.

Alarmed by the build-up, Israel began a call-up of reserve forces and tried to find a political solution to the growing crisis. UN Secretary General U Thant visited Cairo. He agreed to remove the UNEF troops and recommended a two-week moratorium on aggressive acts in the Straits of Tiran. He also asked for a renewed diplomatic effort to solve the crisis. The US, preoccupied by the Vietnam conflict, was slow to move and its mediation plans were overtaken by events. Convinced that the Arab forces were about to attack, Israel drew up its own counter-offensive plans.

On 5 June, Israel decided on a pre-emptive strike. They took just three hours to destroy the bulk of Egyptian air force on the ground. Coming in below radar cover they killed 100 Egyptian pilots and destroyed 300 of the country’s 450 Soviet-made planes by the end of the day. With air superiority assured, Israeli army divisions swept through Gaza and into the Sinai towards the canal.

The main Sinai Desert battle took place at Abu Ageila (pdf) near the town of Arish in the north of the peninsula. This was a key battlefield in 1956 and now again eleven years later. Major General Ariel Sharon’s forces encircled the town and attacked Egyptian positions from the front, flanks and rear. Egyptian defences, ringed by mines, proved to be stronger than the Israelis expected. After two days, sappers cleared the minefield and the Israeli infantry broke through the trenches. The road to the Central Sinai was now open for the Israelis. When the Egyptian high command heard about the fall of Abu-Ageila, they ordered the retreat of all forces from the Sinai. The Egyptian campaign was effectively over.

Meanwhile Israel issued an ultimatum to Jordan to keep out of the war. Jordan refused and instead convinced that Egypt’s air force was winning the war, issued an artillery barrage on West Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Israel counterattacked. On 7 June the order was given to capture the Old City of Jerusalem. Defence Minister Moshe Dayan and Chief of Staff Yitzhak Rabin marched through to the Zion Gate formally mark the Jews’ return to their historic capital’s holiest site. At the Western Wall, army chaplain, Rabbi Shlomo Goren, blew a shofar (kosher instrument made from ram’s horn) to celebrate the event. Within three days they had comprehensively defeated the Jordanian army and captured all of biblical Judea and Samaria.

One day later, Israel attacked Syria. Backed by the unimpeded fire from the Israeli air force, troops entered the Golan Heights in force. Within 24 hours four brigades broke through onto the plateau. Two more groups joined them from the north and south in a pincer movement that effectively ended Syrian resistance. Israel captured the entire Heights including its now abandoned principle city of Quneitra. Fighting stopped along a defacto border that became known as the Purple Line.

By 10 June, the war was over and the parties signed a ceasefire. Israel had more than tripled the size of the area it controlled, from 20,000 square kms to 67,000 square miles. It controlled the West Bank, the Golan Heights, Sinai and Gaza. Israel now ruled more than three-quarters of a million Palestinians, the vast majority of whom were hostile to their new political masters. Another 325,000 Palestinians living in the West Bank fled to other parts of Jordan where they became a significant and troublesome minority group.

Israel itself thrived as a result of the war. Beforehand it was a small country of two million people surrounded by 80 million Arabs. But now the Arab world knew it could never push the Jewish state into the sea. Armed with this self-confidence and renewed energy, Israel attracted major immigration from the West and more than a million immigrants from the Soviet Union. Its population has tripled to 7.1 million (including 1.4 million Israeli Arabs), its gross national product grew by 630 percent and per capita income tripled to $21,000.

In November 1967, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 242, which it hoped would established a formula for Arab-Israeli peace. Israel would withdraw from territories occupied in the war in exchange for peace with its neighbours. This resolution has served as the basis for peace negotiations from that time on. But the emerging Palestine Liberation Organisation embittered by the plight of their people refused to accept the resolution and turned to the terrorism that would define their struggle for next 25 years.

Some of the geographical consequences of the war were eventually unravelled. Israel withdrew from Sinai after the 1973 Yom Kippur war. The withdrawal allowed Nasser’s successor Sadat to make a historic peace with Israel. The 1993 Oslo accords marked the beginning of a political dialogue between Israel and Palestine and allowed Jordan to make peace with its old enemy across the river. Israel and Syria maintain an uneasy peace. But the demography of the entire region has changed. 450,000 Israeli settlers now live in illegal settlements in the West Bank. They brought with them a biblical sensibility that informed their belief that this was ‘their country’. Israel remains defiant that an undivided Jerusalem is their capital. Six days have caused forty years of pain that still refuses to go away.

Flashpoint at the Al Aqsa mosque

Israeli soldiers have blocked the entrance to East Jerusalem’s Al Aqsa mosque, Islam’s third holiest site. Security forces manning barricades are now checking Palestinians' identification, allowing only men over 45 years of age and women near the site. The action is an attempt to prevent wide access to the site and demonstrations against a hill demolition near one of the mosque’s entrances in order to build a road for Jewish settlers and pilgrims.

The problem is that the al-Aqsa and Dome of the Rock mosques sit above the Western Wall of the Temple Mount, Judaism's holiest site and the only surviving part of the Second Temple destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD. The Israel Antiquities Authority has now authorised a bridge to connect the Dung Gate in Jerusalem's Old City to the Mugrabi Gate, located next to the Western Wall and leading to the Temple Mount itself.

Archeologists working on the site claim the work does not directly touch the Al-Aqsa mosque. Yural Baruch, the Archaeologist in charge of the works said “you can see all the ruins. This is the continuation of this excavation in this area. This is nothing connected to the political.” However the Arab states community sees it differently.
Palestinians are concerned it is part of a plan to demolish their religious identity. Qatar’s Peninsula reported that the Islamic Scholars Union (ISU) has warned any attack on the mosque will be a spark which will inflame the whole Islamic world. "It is high time Muslims performed Jihad in the light of the crisis of the mosque and the internal fighting among the Palestinians," a statement published by the union said.

Al Aqsa is the second oldest mosque in the world. Only the Kaaba in Mecca is older. It was built in the 7th century after the completion of the nearby Dome of the Rock. Caliph Al-Walid built a mosque to the south of Dome and called it al-masjid al-aqsa, which means "the farthest mosque".

While the Dome of the Rock was constructed as a mosque to commemorate the Prophet's Night Journey, the building known as Al-Aqsa Mosque became a centre of worship and learning, attracting great teachers from all over the world. The building was damaged many times over by earthquakes and rebuilt and re-enforced each time. When the First Crusaders invaded they set up the Kingdom of Jerusalem and turned the mosque into the Royal Palace of Solomon which served as the palace of the Kings of Jerusalem and then the home of the Knights Templars.

Jerusalem would have many different rulers over the centuries. Saladin took the city back from the Crusaders. It passed into the hands of Egyptian Ayyubids, then the slave dynasty of the Mamelukes before finally falling to the Ottoman Empire in 1517. It would remain in Ottoman hands until the Turkish defeat in World War I. Under the British mandate, the Balfour Declaration gave in principle support for a Zionist state in Palestine. But they also promised the country to the Arabs for their support in the war. The British withdrew in 1948 and left problem to the newly formed UN to resolve. They proposed two separate states in Palestine.

But the two sides could not agree and the situation deteriorated into what Israel called the War of Independence. Five Arab countries Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Transjordan, and Egypt all sent troops to crush the Jews. But aided by Jewish volunteers from around the world (called the Machal) the young country fought back strongly. Arab forces also laid siege on Jerusalem but it was lifted before the UN negotiated a ceasefire. The ceasefire line established through the 1949 Armistice Agreements between Israel and Jordan cut through the centre of the city.

Israel captured East Jerusalem in the 1967 Six Day War and asserted sovereignty over the entire city. But worse was to follow for the Al Asqa mosque two years later. A deranged Australian tourist deliberately set fire to the mosque. The fire caused $9 million worth of damage and gutted the south-eastern wing of the mosque and destroyed a priceless one-thousand-year-old wood and ivory pulpit that was a gift from Saladin. Israeli firemen put out the fire despite attacks by Muslim bystanders, who also cut some of the fire hoses. Two days later Dennis Michael Rohan was arrested for arson. Rohan was a follower of a Christian evangelical sect known as the Church of God. He “hoped to hasten the coming of the Messiah” by his act of arson. To this day, Palestinian authorities still blame Israel for the fire.

The mosque remains a highly contentious symbol in the world’s most politically, culturally and religiously divided city. The current excavations have the power to create a major international incident. Ten years ago an Israeli Government decision to dig open a tunnel beside the Al-Aqsa Mosque led to rioting and the deaths of 100 people. The man in charge of archaeological works around the mosque at the time Meir Ben-Dov, advised against the current work proceeding saying Jerusalem has "three religions so you have to respect everyone and every religion in this city.”

Death of a Sea

The Dead Sea may live up to its name within 30 years. It is dying. Evaporating at a rate of one meter every three years, the world’s saltiest body of water is threatened by a lack of fresh water and the lack of political will to enforce environmental change. In another three to five decades, the evaporating Dead Sea is likely to become completely dry.

Surrounded by the fraught political situation of Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian West Bank, the Dead Sea is the lowest land point on Earth. It is called the Dead Sea because nothing can survive in its salty water. Its only source of life is fresh water from the Jordan River. Because it is so low, it has no exit points. The Dead Sea water evaporates, causing salts to accumulate in the lake and in its sediments. It is this unusual buoyancy that makes the Dead Sea a major tourist drawcard as it is impossible to swim or sink in its salt-rich deposits. It is also renowned for the unique mineral content of its mud which attracts health spa tourism.

But the Jordan River is no longer able to supply its lifeblood to the Dead Sea. Gideon Bromberg of Friends of the Earth Israel told AFP the area is headed for ecological disaster unless serious measures are taken. Only 7% of the Jordan River water flow is now making it as far as the Dead Sea. The rest is diverted for irrigation and drinking water, mostly by Israel but also by Jordan and Syria. In the 1950s about 1.3 billion cubic meters of water a year flowed into the Dead Sea. The flow is now down to 300 million. Scientists have monitored the sea’s water level continuously since 1930. The sea has declined 21 metres between 1930 and 1997 which represents a drop of a metre every three years.

The Israeli spa resort of Ein Gedi used to lap the shores of the Dead Sea. The sea is now a kilometre away and the resort needs to bus its tourists to the shoreline. The falling sea level has left dangerous cracks in the surrounding terrain and roads, hotels and chemical plants in the vicinity are in danger of collapse. The water level has declined faster than ever since Israel took control of the water resources that feed the Jordan River after occupying the West Bank after the 1967 Arab/Israel war.

The Dead Sea is set in one of the largest fissures in the Earth’s surface – the 6,000km long Great Rift Valley. The Great Rift Valley is on the edge of a continental plate and is tearing Africa apart. It is moving Arabia and Eastern Africa away from the rest of the continent. It stretches all the way from the Taurus Mountains of Turkey to the Zambezi Valley in Mozambique. The valley is less than 100km wide and is up to several thousand kms deep. As well as the Dead Sea, the Rift is responsible for the Gulf of Aqaba, the Red Sea and the African Great Lakes.

The Dead Sea is mentioned in the Book of Genesis. It was known in Hebrew as Yam Hamelakh, the Salt Sea. The cities of Sodom and Gomorrah were on the southern shores of the Salt Sea. In the story of Sodom, God tells Abraham that he plans to destroy the city because of its immorality. But he agrees to spare the city if Abraham can find ten righteous people living. Abraham finds only one, Lot. God carries through his plans but angels tell Lot and his family to flee but not look back. When Lot's wife does look back, she is turned into a pillar of salt. Ancient traditions persist to this day hold that Lot's wife exists permanently as one of the pillar-like "salt mushrooms" that form on the Eastern shore of the Dead Sea.

There are no angels willing to save the Dead Sea but the countries of Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian Authority have agreed on an ambitious new rescue plan for the waterway. The World Bank have issued a grant of $15m to investigate the feasibility of a canal from the Gulf of Aqaba, Jordan is leading the exercise as much of the infrastructure to support it, including salination plants and a hydro-electric facility, would be in that country. Ex-Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres said the three-country project had the potential to help the peace process. But not everyone is happy about the canal scheme. Friends of the Earth have warned mixing water from the Red Sea with the unique chemical soup of the Dead Sea could create a natural catastrophe. The Dead Sea’s mix of bromide, potash, magnesium and salt is unique and by bringing in marine water, this composition will change. There is concern about algae growth and how the two different chemical bodies will interact.

But it is the only possible way the sea and its unique ecosystem will be saved. Jordan Valley Authority Secretary General Zafer Alem is optimistic the project will succeed despite the politics and environmental issues involved. He told the Jordan Times “the Dead Sea is a unique feature on this planet. It does not belong to Jordan, nor to the Palestinians, nor to Israel: It is part of world heritage”.

Nabatea

Between the 6th century BC and the first century of the common era (according to Yeshua, the fulcrum of the calendar) lived a people called Nabateans. They flourished in the south and east of Palestine from Petra in the north in modern Jordan to Hajaz in the south in modern Saudi Arabia. Petra was their capital and they had a sophisticated pantheon of Gods including Al-Azzi, the female deity. It was suggested and suspected that they were leaning towards a single deity towards the end of their power. They spoke Aramaic and would have been a profound influence on Judean culture in Maccabean times. The last remnant of post Alexandrian power was waning across the region and the new Roman masters were to destroy the power of Jew and Nabatean alike. Only Yeshua and his supporters were to flourish from this crossroads of history, politics and power.

Unsexed
I don’t complain I’ve lived simply
but styleless find me guilty
lacking in quintessential arts
Barry’s constant is not in
the formula of cloths to appearance
squeezing out goodness at the chapel of being
I’m a spinster spider
the web in which I lead
my life in others