The Jordan River is 156 miles long and provides water to Israel, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon. It begins at the top of Israel from tributaries in Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon, flows through the Israel-occupied Golan Heights in Syria, through the Sea of Galilee, along the border of the West Bank and Jordan, and ends in the Dead Sea. The Jordan Valley, the area around these bodies of water, is one of the driest in the world and water scarcity is a life-threatening issue here. The Sea of Galilee is extremely low and getting lower, the Jordan River is polluted and at 10% of the level it once was, and the Dead Sea is too salty for any use. 800,000 people rely on the river to make a living from agriculture alone. Political, military, and diplomatic issues between the four countries involved have caused uneven distribution of the water from the Jordan River, and currently only 65% of the communities around the river are able to receive water from it. The water crisis is also exacerbated by poor infrastructure, rapid population growth, and of course, climate change.
After the Arab-Israeli war and the creation of Israel in 1948, Israel and Jordan went on their own paths to utilize the water from the Jordan River. In 1953, Israel began constructing a water carrier to transfer water from the Sea of Galilee while Jordan and Syria planned to dam the Yarmouk River, the largest tributary of the Jordan River, before the Sea of Galilee. Militaries from the three countries fought over this, and a US ambassador was sent to resolve the dispute, allocating 40% of the river’s water to Israel and 60% to Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon. In 1980, Syria and Jordan started building a dam on the Yarmouk, but in 1981 Israel annexed the Golan Heights, blocked the plan in 1988, and changed the previous agreement to double their water intake. In 1994, Jordan and Israel signed a peace treaty and established a Joint Water Committee to regulate river flow. By 2011 when the Syrian civil war broke out, Syria had made 21 dams along the Yarmouk river, but most farmers fled Syria during the war, so much more water now flows into the Israeli and Jordanian parts of the river.
Díaz Escudero, Marina. “Jordan River Basin – Hydropolitics as an Arena for Regional Cooperation.” Global Affairs and Strategic Studies, University of Navarra, www.unav.edu/web/global-affairs/detalle/-/blogs/jordan-river-basin-hydropolitics-as-an-arena-for-regional-cooperation.
Klassen, Hannah. “Water Scarcity in the Jordan River Valley.” Ballard Brief, Ballard Brief, 26 July 2023, ballardbrief.byu.edu/issue-briefs/water-scarcity-in-the-jordan-river-valley.
Zraick, Karen. “Jordan Is Running out of Water, a Grim Glimpse of the Future.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 9 Nov. 2022, www.nytimes.com/2022/11/09/world/middleeast/jordan-water-cop-27.html.