Jordan River: Rich in history, poor in water
Politically sparring sides agree that the shrinking waterway, significant for many, needs restoration
ALONG THE JORDAN RIVER — Kristen Burckhartt felt overwhelmed. She needed time to reflect, to let it sink in that she had just briefly soaked her feet in the water where Jesus is said to have been baptized, the Jordan River.
“It’s very profound,” said the 53-year-old visitor from Indiana. “I have not ever walked where Jesus walked, for one thing.”
Tourists and pilgrims come to the site from near and far, many driven by faith, to follow in Christ’s footsteps, to touch the river’s water and to connect with biblical events.
Symbolically and spiritually, the river is of mighty significance to many. Physically, the Lower Jordan River of today is a lot more meager than mighty: By the time it reaches the baptismal site, its dwindling water looks sluggish, a dull, brownish-green shade.
Its decline, due to a confluence of factors, is intertwined with the entanglements of the decades-old Arab-Israeli conflict and rivalry over precious water in a valley where much is contested. Championing the transboundary Jordan’s revival without wading into the thicket of the disputes that have fueled its deterioration can be a challenge.
A stretch of the river was a hostile frontier between once-warring Israel and Jordan; it also separates Jordan, on its eastern bank, from the West Bank, seized by Israel in a 1967 war and sought by the Palestinians for a state.
“It’s a victim of the conflict, definitely. It’s a victim of people, because it’s what we did as people to the river, basically, and now, adding to all this, it’s a victim of climate change,” said Yana Abu Taleb, the Jordanian director of EcoPeace Middle East, which brings together Jordanian, Palestinian and Israeli environmentalists and lobbies for regional collaboration on saving the river. “So it’s a victim in every way.”
EcoPeace has said for years that the Lower Jordan River, which runs south from the Sea of Galilee, is threatened by decades of pollution and water diversions for agriculture and domestic use. Only a tiny fraction of its historical water flow now reaches its terminus in the Dead Sea, not far south from the baptismal site Burckhartt visited.
That partly explains why the Dead Sea has been shrinking.
Standing at the baptismal site known as Bethany Beyond the Jordan, Burckhartt, a Presbyterian, said the water felt cold, offering a respite from the heat. Amid a jumble of emotions, she felt sadness for the river’s dwindling.
“I am sure God above is also sad.”
The Bible says Jesus was baptized in the Jordan River.
The eastern and western banks both house baptismal sites, where rituals of faith unfold, a ref lection of the river’s enduring religious, historical and cultural allure.
The river holds further significance as the scene of miracles in the Old Testament; after years of wandering the desert, the ancient Israelites are said to have crossed the Jordan on dry ground after the water was stopped to allow them to pass.
At the Jordanian baptismal site on the eastern bank, a woman dipped her feet in the water, then cupped some with her hands, rubbing it on her face and over her head. Others touched the river and crossed themselves or bent over to fill empty bottles.
Charlie Watts, a tourist from England, submerged a wooden cross — a gift and a blessing for his Christian mother back home.
“I took a video ... so I can show her that it was true,” Watts said.
Although he is not as religious as his mother, the 24year-old considered his visit to the site special.
“What made it surreal is to think that this is what started the world movement of Christianity,” he said.
In an interview, Rustom Mkhjian, director general of the Baptism Site Commission in Jordan, spoke passionately about the site’s claim to authenticity and its preservation as it was in the time of Christ and John the Baptist. UNESCO has declared it a World Heritage Site “of immense religious significance to the majority of denominations of Christian faith, who have accepted this site as the location where Jesus” was baptized.
“Every year we celebrate interfaith harmony, and among my happiest days in my life is days when I see Jews, Christians and Muslims visit the site, and the three of them cry,” Mkhjian said. “The present spot where we are is a site with a great message needed: Let us build human bridges of love and peace.”
The Jordanian and West Bank sites both give visitors access to the river, where they come face to face, a narrow stretch of water between them.
An Israeli f lag at the West Bank’s Qasr al-Yahud serves as a reminder to those in Jordan that the river is a frontier separating the two worlds. That site is also billed as the place Jesus was baptized. Jordan and Israel compete for tourism dollars.
Several people in flowing white robes waded in from the West Bank recently, posing in a semicircle for photos. Visitors in another group stood on riverbank steps or in the water as two men in black, apparently clerical attire, poured river water over their heads.
Some sang, their voices heard by those on the Jordanian side: “Oh, brothers, let’s go down . ... Down to the river to pray.”
Such serene moments contrast with the military hostilities that have played out on the river’s banks as part of the Arab-Israeli conflict. The river’s history and its water have been politically fraught and, for decades, land mines have lurked menacingly on banks that were once a war zone.
On the eastern bank, demining of the area around the Jordanian baptismal site began after a 1994 peace treaty between Jordan and Israel. On the West Bank, a team from the HALO Trust, a British American charity, has cleared mines from areas housing churches in the vicinity of the Qasr alYahud site as recently as 2020. The site itself opened to the public years earlier after Israel cleared a narrow road to the river.
Work to clear those mines began in 2018, after three years of building trust among all involved, from Israeli and Palestinian authorities to the several Christian denominations that own the churches and lands, said Ronen Shimoni, who was part of the HALO effort.
“Nothing is simple here in the West Bank,” Shimoni said.
It’s against that turbulent backdrop that EcoPeace Middle East has been urging regional collaboration on the Jordan between rivals who have long had every motivation to squeeze as much water as possible out of the river or its tributaries.
“Any fresh water left in the river would have in the past been seen as empowering the enemy . ... You take everything that you can,” said Gidon Bromberg, the group’s Israeli director.
“There’s legitimate need for the water . ... Water is scarce,” he said. “But the conflict creates an incentive to take everything.”
The result is that the Lower Jordan’s annual discharge into the Dead Sea was estimated at 20 million to 200 million cubic meters in a report published in 2013 by a U.N. commission and a German federal institute, compared with a historic amount of 1.3 billion cubic meters. Bromberg puts the current figure at no more than 70 million.
“Israel, from a historical perspective, has taken about half the water, and Syria and Jordan have taken the other half,” Bromberg said. “The pollution that’s coming into the river is coming from Jordanian, Palestinian and Israeli sides and a little bit also from Syria.”
Water use in the Jordan River basin is unevenly developed, the U.N.-German report said, adding that Palestinians can no longer access or use water from the Jordan River. Syria doesn’t have access to the river but has built dams in the Yarmouk River sub-basin, which is part of the Jordan River basin, it said.
For Palestinians in the West Bank, the only way to see the Jordan River is to visit the Israeli-run baptismal site, said Nada Majdalani, Palestinian director for EcoPeace.
“The Jordan River in the past, for Palestinians, meant livelihoods and economic stability and growth,” she said. Now, it has been reduced to an “ambition of statehood and sovereignty over water resources.”
The river’s decline, she said, is especially disappointing to elderly Palestinians “who remember how the river looked ... and how they used to go fishing, how they used to have a dip in the river.”
Bromberg said EcoPeace has been documenting the “lose-lose” nature of the river’s deterioration for all parties.
“From a Jewish tradition, you know, the river and its banks are a place of miracles,” he said. “Well, it doesn’t reflect a place of miracles in its current depleted state.”
In late July, the Israeli government approved plans to rehabilitate a stretch of the Lower Jordan — a decision described by Environmental Protection Minister Tamar Zandberg as “historic” and the beginning of a correction.
“For decades it was neglected and most of its waters were taken, and it effectively turned into a sewage canal,” Zandberg said in a statement. “In an era of climate crisis and a serious ecological crisis, there is double significance to rehabilitating the River Jordan and returning it to nature, the public and hikers.”
Speaking by phone, Zandberg said the plan focuses on a stretch that runs in Israeli territory and reflects the country’s improved water situation due to its desalination program, which has left it much less reliant on supplies from the Sea of Galilee.
“Now, we’re actually more equipped to do it,” she said. “We have water.”
She hopes the decision will showcase the river’s potential and pave the way for broader collaboration on the rest of the Lower Jordan as well as send a signal to Jordan that “we are committed ... to our mutual assets.”
“It can provide a success story on that segment, and then it will enable more successful partnerships in the future,” she added.
That’s something that doesn’t come easily.
“Politics sometimes interferes, and also budget issues and the trust ... between the parties,” Zandberg said.
A regional rehabilitation and development master plan announced in 2015 by EcoPeace and others was adopted by the Jordanian government but not by Israelis or Palestinians due to outstanding “final-status” peace process issues, according to the group.
That plan said the lower part of the Jordan River will require at least 400 million cubic meters of freshwater per year to reach “an acceptable rehabilitation level.”
Creation of a trust fund to finance de-pollution projects — an effort EcoPeace had viewed as less politically controversial — stalled after a 2017 diplomatic crisis between Israel and Jordan and amid years of strained ties under the government of former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. There have been signs of improved ties since.
Not everyone in the region welcomes, or trusts, EcoPeace’s calls for cooperation.
“Our job is tough. Our messages are challenged,” said Abu Taleb, the group’s Jordanian director.
“Because of having that, you know, Israeli chapter, we’re always accused of being ‘normalizers,’ ” or having normal relations with Israel, she said. That is a contentious topic, unpopular among many ordinary Arabs, citing factors such as Israel’s open-ended occupation of lands it captured in 1967 and a lack of resolution to the Palestinian issue.
“The water knows no borders,” Abu Taleb said.
Bromberg, too, has run into criticism from what he said was a vocal minority in Israel “inappropriately” branding EcoPeace’s work as benefiting Jordanians and Palestinians at the expense of Israeli interests.
“Sadly, there are people who think that if you’re working with the other side, you must be working for the other side exclusively,” he said.
Politics aside, the strain on governments to meet water needs complicates calls to add water to the river.
Jordan is one of the world’s most water-scarce nations, and its challenges are compounded by a growing population swelled by waves of refugees.
“We are under stress, so we don’t have a surplus to add to the Jordan River and to revive it, despite the great importance of this to the Jordanians,” said Khalil Absi, an official with the Jordan Valley Authority.
Solutions, he said, require “concerted [regional] effort” and the help of the international community. “We have many beautiful ideas for the Jordan River, but there are limitations.”
Climate change threatens to exacerbate such problems.
“The impact of the climate change is seriously influencing the water resources,” Absi said.
The Middle East and North Africa region faces the greatest expected economic losses from climaterelated water scarcity, estimated at 6% to 14% of gross domestic product by 2050, according to the World Bank.
Bromberg acknowledges that climate change is making a revival of the Jordan River harder but argues that restoration offers economic incentives.
“The climate crisis brings home the issue of urgency that rehabilitating the river is perhaps the only way to prevent further instability in the valley,” Bromberg said, “because it can create alternative revenues through tourism.”
For all the river’s challenges, Absi remains optimistic, he said. The alternative could be grim.
“If there is no water, people won’t come despite [the presence] of religious sites,” he said. “Water is life. Without water, there is no life.”