Did you know that the Dead Sea – already 420 m below sea level – is falling by more than 1m each year? This is because the rivers which used to flow into it have been dammed up to provide freshwater for drinking and agriculture for Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

However, there is a plan for a “Red Sea-Dead Sea” pipeline to take water from the Red Sea, to desalinate some of it to provide much needed drinking water for the region, and pour the rest into the Dead Sea, to stabilize its level. BUT the Dead Sea falls under 3 jurisdictions: Jordan, Israel, and the Palestinian Authority, so the feasibility study must engage with three sets of people, who do not always get on!

Stephen McIlwaine is working on the environmental and social assessment for a British firm, and has the task of working closely with Israelis, Palestinians and Jordanians. He says: ‘Each group has a very different perspective. Jordanians are concerned about getting more drinking water. Israelis are worried about the Jordan River drying up, and what will happen if salt water leaks from the pipe into the desert aquifers. Palestinians are concerned about their water rights – should they support this project, in advance of settling their legal rights over their aquifers and the Dead Sea shoreline, to which they currently have no access?

So for the last few months, Stephen has had meetings with local communities all over the region—with Bedouin in the Jordanian desert, with Palestinian university students in Bethlehem and Nablus in the West Bank, and also with Israeli farmers and kibbutzniks in the Arava desert. He says: ‘It’s a fascinating study – water is a very political issue here. We can be sitting in the morning in a Ramallah office, high in the West Bank mountains, talking about Israel restricting water supply to Palestinian towns, then be sitting in the evening with Israelis on the coast in Tel Aviv, hearing of their fears of the Palestinians.’

But while this project is on the table, and the 3 governments are involved, there is hope for co-operation. Please pray that the region’s water issues will be solved by cooperation, such as with this project, rather than through conflict.

If you want to know more about this project, go to www.worldbank.org/rds