Israel-Palestinian peace requires realism on Jordan Valley

The upcoming Israeli-Palestinian agreement outline being prepared by US Secretary of State John Kerry has put the Jordan Valley in the spotlight. That forsaken region, which is part of the Oslo Accord’s Area C, is one of the central diplomatic-security issues to be resolved between the sides.

Unfortunately, nature refuses to accommodate the political timetable. The importance of the Jordan River to the three monotheistic religions, to which half of the world’s population adheres, has not prevented the human abuse of the river in the last few decades. The Christian belief that John baptized the first believers in the Jordan River, the Muslim tradition according to which the companions of the Prophet Muhammad were buried there and the Jewish story about the people of Israel who crossed the river on their way to the Land of Canaan — none of these protected the river from drying up.

The water sourcing of Syria, Israel and Jordan have reduced the amount of water flowing into the river by 98% compared to the river’s flow in the 1940s. This severe water depletion has caused growing environmental, cultural and economic hardship. Perhaps it is this precise combination that will lead to the salvation of the river.

At an emergency conference held in Jordan in November 2013, the heads of churches in the Middle East, of Israel’s rabbinate and of the Muslim Waqf signed an interfaith covenant calling for the river’s rehabilitation. “We have a different vision of this valley,” the signatories wrote. “A vision in which a clean, living river flows from the Sea of Galilee to the Dead Sea, in which the valley’s plants and animals are afforded the water they need to flourish, in which the springs flow as they have for millennia and in which the water extracted for human use is divided equitably between the nations that share the valley and the people who live here.”