Comparing a topographical map of Palestine in the early 1900s to a modern Google Map of Israel, one striking differences juts out. No, not the separation fence (wall, hedge, whatever you want to call it). The Dead Sea is shrinking at an alarming rate primarily due to over-mining from both Jordanian and Israeli companies. Even though both nations receive significant revenues from tourism to the site, the export of minerals from the Dead Sea -most famously in bath and beauty products- caused the sea to shrink to half its previous size.
In order to remedy this shift, the governments of Israel, Jordan, and the Palestinian Authority intend to embark on a pilot project that would examine re-filling the Dead Sea with water from the Red Sea. A new committee would test the feasibility of running a canal between the two bodies of water and determine the effects of mixing water from the Red Sea with the Dead Sea, a much saltier marine basin. Complicating the initiative could be environmental damaged caused by the canal. However, seeing that the Dead Sea is the ‘lowest place on earth,’ gravity is on the side of engineers in making the water flow hundreds of kilometers north.
Photo taken from geotimes.org.
