AMMAN, 11 December 2006 — Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian Authority yesterday launched a feasibility study to help save the rapidly vanishing Dead Sea, a joint statement said.
The Jordanian government is pushing ahead with efforts to enlist world support for a controversial project envisaging the establishment of a multibillion-dollar canal between the Dead Sea and the Red Sea despite criticism at home.
Considered the first step to save the Dead Sea from drying up in less than 50 years, the study will examine the economic and environmental effects of establishing a 200-kilometre pipeline to transfer Red Sea water into the Dead Sea, the lowest point on earth, according to Jordanian officials.
France, The Netherlands, Japan and the United States will finance the two-year study estimated to cost around $15 million. It will be managed by the World Bank, the statement said. The study will examine the feasibility of building a canal to channel water from the Red Sea to the Dead Sea, where the level has been falling by about a meter (more than three feet) each year, it said.
The agreement was reached between Jordan’s Water Minister Zafer Al-Aalem, Israeli Infrastructure Minister Benjamin Ben Eliezer and Mohammed Mustafa, the economic adviser to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.
Also present at the meeting on the Jordanian shores of the Dead Sea were representatives of the World Bank, Europe, Japan and North America.
“The meeting, hosted by the Jordanian government, launched a feasibility study and environment and social assessment for the Red Sea-Dead Sea water conveyance study,” the study said.
“The three beneficiary parties have requested the World Bank to coordinate donor support and to manage the study,” it added.
The meeting capped more than three years of talks between Jordanian, Israeli and Palestinian experts to prepare and finalize the study’s terms of reference.
“The significance of this joint study is not merely its importance in restoring the well-being of the Dead Sea and the producing of fresh water,” Alaam said.
The Palestinian representative said “immediate attention to the current crisis of the Dead Sea is urgent and important.”
Ben Eliezer praised the agreement, long-delayed over tensions with the Palestinians in recent years, as “an excellent example for cooperation, peace and conflict reduction.”
“Hopefully it will become the first of many such cooperative endeavors,” Ben Eliezer added. Inger Anderson, World Bank director of sustainable development for the Middle East and North Africa, echoed him. “The three parties are truly demonstrating how water can be a catalyst for regional cooperation,” he said.
But Jordan’s Islamic-led opposition rejects the project, dubbing it a “political move” that has the primary aim of promoting normalization of ties with the Jewish state.
“From a principled attitude, we view the project a political move that has the key aim of normalizing ties with the Zionist entity,” Secretary-General of the Islamic Action Front (IAF), Zaki Bani Ershaid, told Arab News yesterday.
“A technical study already conducted has shown that the project involves political, economic, environmental and geological perils to Jordan,” he said.
In addition to preserving the Dead Sea, the project involves the construction of a hydroelectric power plant and a desalination facility, with an estimated cost of two billion dollars, he added. Environmentalists have expressed concern over the project on the grounds that the consistency of the Dead Sea would be irreversibly altered if normal sea water is allowed to flow into it.
The Dead Sea’s salt concentration is about 33 percent, compared with three percent in the Mediterranean.
