Abir Dandis, the mother of the two girls who were murdered in the Negev town of Al-Fura’a last week, couldn't find a police officer to listen to her warnings, neither in Arad nor in Ma’ale Adumim. Both police stations operate in areas where Israel wants to gather the Bedouin into permanent communities, against their will, in order to clear more land for Jewish communities. The dismissive treatment Dandis received shows how the Bedouin are considered simply to be lawbreakers by their very nature. But as a resident of the West Bank asking for help for her daughters, whose father was Israeli, Dandis faced the legal-bureaucratic maze created by the Oslo Accords.

The Palestinian police is not allowed to arrest Israeli civilians. It must hand suspects over to the Israel Police. The Palestinian police complain that in cases of Israelis suspected of committing crimes against Palestinian residents, the Israel Police tend not to investigate or prosecute them.

In addition, the town of Al-Azaria, where Dandis lives, is in Area B, under Palestinian civilian authority and Israeli security authority. According to the testimony of Palestinian residents, neither the IDF nor the Israel Police has any interest in internal Palestinian crime even though they have both the authority and the obligation to act in Area B.

The Palestinian police are limited in what it can do in Area B. Bringing in reinforcements or carrying weapons in emergency situations requires coordination with, and obtaining permission from, the IDF. If Dandis fears that the man who murdered her daughters is going to attack her as well, she has plenty of reason to fear that she will not receive appropriate, immediate police protection from either the Israelis or the Palestinians.

Dandis told Jack Khoury of Haaretz that the Ma’ale Adumim police referred her to the Palestinian Civil Affairs Coordination and Liaison Committee. Theoretically, this committee (which is subordinate to the Civil Affairs Ministry) is the logical place to go for such matters. Its parallel agency in Israel is the Civilian Liaison Committee (which is part of the Coordination and Liaison Administration - a part of the Civil Administration under the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories).

In their meetings, they are supposed to discuss matters such as settlers’ complaints about the high volume of the loudspeakers at mosques or Palestinians’ complaints about attacks by settlers. But the Palestinians see the Liaison Committee as a place to submit requests for permission to travel to Israel, and get the impression that its clerks do not have much power when faced with their Israeli counterparts. In any case, the coordination process is cumbersome and long.

The Palestinian police has a family welfare unit, and activists in Palestinian women’s organizations say that in recent years, its performance has improved. But, as stated, it has no authority over Israeli civilians and residents. Several non-governmental women’s groups also operate in the West Bank and in East Jerusalem, and women in similar situations approach them for help. The manager of one such organization told Haaretz that Dandis also fell victim to this confusing duplication of procedures and laws. Had Dandis approached her, she said, she would have referred her to Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, which has expertise in navigating Israel’s laws and authorities.

John Kerry revealed his long-awaited plan for peace in the Middle East on Sunday, hinging on a $4bn (£2.6bn) investment in the Palestinian private sector.

The US secretary of state, speaking at the World Economic Forum on the Jordanian shores of the Dead Sea, told an audience including Israeli president Shimon Peres and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas that an independent Palestinian economy is essential to achieving a sustainable peace.

Speaking under the conference banner "Breaking the Impasse", Kerry announced a plan that he promised would be "bigger, bolder and more ambitious" than anything since the Oslo accords, more than 20 years ago.

Tony Blair is to lead a group of private sector leaders in devising a plan to release the Palestinian economy from its dependence on international donors. The initial findings of Blair's taskforce, Kerry boasted, were "stunning", predicting a 50% increase in Palestinian GDP over three years, a cut of two-thirds in unemployment rates and almost double the Palestinian median wage. Currently, 40% of the Palestinian economy is supplied by donor aid.

Kerry assured Abbas that the economic plan was not a substitute for a political solution, which remains the US's "top priority".

Peres, who had taken the stage just minutes before, also issued a personal plea to his Palestinian counterpart to return to the negotiations.

"Let me say to my dear friend President Abbas," Peres said, "Should we really dance around the table? Lets sit together. You'll be surprised how much can be achieved in open, direct and organised meetings."

Thick locks hug the front gates of shuttered shops, now covered in graffiti and dust from lack of use. Only a handful of customers pass along the dimly lit road, sometimes stopping to check the ripeness of fruits and vegetables, or ordering meat in near-empty butcher shops.

“All the shops are closed. I’m the only one open. This used to be the best place,” said 64-year-old Mustafa Sunocret, selling vegetables out of a small storefront in the marketplace near his family’s home in the Muslim quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City.

Amidst the brightly coloured scarves, clothes and carpets, ceramic pottery and religious souvenirs filling the shops of Jerusalem’s historic Old City, Palestinian merchants are struggling to keep their businesses alive.

Faced with worsening health problems, Sunocret told IPS that he cannot work outside of the Old City, even as the cost of maintaining his shop, with high electricity, water and municipal tax bills to pay, weighs on him.

“I only have this shop,” he said. “There is no other work. I’m tired.”

Abed Ajloni, the owner of an antiques shop in the Old City, owes the Jerusalem municipality 250,000 Israeli shekels (68,300 U.S. dollars) in taxes. He told IPS that almost every day, the city’s tax collectors come into the Old City, accompanied by Israeli police and soldiers, to pressure people there to pay.

“It feels like they’re coming again to occupy the city, with the soldiers and police,” Ajloni, who has owned the same shop for 35 years, told IPS. “But where can I go? What can I do? All my life I was in this place.”

He added, “Does Jerusalem belong to us, or to someone else? Who’s responsible for Jerusalem? Who?”

Illegal annexation

Israel occupied East Jerusalem, including the Old City, in 1967. In July 1980, it passed a law stating that “Jerusalem, complete and united, is the capital of Israel”. But Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem and subsequent application of Israeli laws over the entire city remain unrecognised by the international community.

Under international law, East Jerusalem is considered occupied territory – along with the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Syrian Golan Heights – and Palestinian residents of the city are protected under the Fourth Geneva Convention.

Jerusalem has historically been the economic, political and cultural centre of life for the entire Palestinian population. But after decades languishing under destructive Israeli policies meant to isolate the city from the rest of the Occupied Territories and a lack of municipal services and investment, East Jerusalem has slipped into a state of poverty and neglect.

“After some 45 years of occupation, Arab Jerusalemites suffer from political and cultural schizophrenia, simultaneously connected with and isolated from their two hinterlands: Ramallah and the West Bank to their east, West Jerusalem and Israel to the west,” the International Crisis Group recently wrote.

Israeli restrictions on planning and building, home demolitions, lack of investment in education and jobs, construction of an eight-foot-high separation barrier between and around Palestinian neighbourhoods and the creation of a permit system to enter Jerusalem have all contributed to the city’s isolation.

Formal Palestinian political groups have also been banned from the city, and between 2001-2009, Israel closed an estimated 26 organisations, including the former Palestinian Liberation Organisation headquarters in Jerusalem, the Orient House and the Jerusalem Chamber of Commerce.

Extreme poverty

Israel’s policies have also led to higher prices for basic goods and services and forced many Palestinian business owners to close shop and move to Ramallah or other Palestinian neighbourhoods on the other side of the wall. Many Palestinian Jerusalemites also prefer to do their shopping in the West Bank, or in West Jerusalem, where prices are lower.

While Palestinians constitute 39 percent of the city’s population today, almost 80 percent of East Jerusalem residents, including 85 percent of children, live below the poverty line.

“How could you develop [an] economy if you don’t control your resources? How could you develop [an] economy if you don’t have any control of your borders?” said Zakaria Odeh, director of the Civic Coalition for Palestinian Rights in Jerusalem, of “this kind of fragmentation, checkpoints, closure”.

“Without freedom of movement of goods and human beings, how could you develop an economy?” he asked.

“You can’t talk about independent economy in Jerusalem or the West Bank or in all of Palestine without a political solution. We don’t have a Palestinian economy; we have economic activities. That’s all we have,” Odeh told IPS.

Israel’s separation barrier alone, according to a new report by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTD), has caused a direct loss of over one billion dollars to Palestinians in Jerusalem, and continues to incur 200 million dollars per year in lost opportunities.

Israel’s severing and control over the Jerusalem-Jericho road – the historical trade route that connected Jerusalem to the rest of the West Bank and Middle East – has also contributed to the city’s economic downturn.

Separation of Jerusalem from West Bank

Before the First Intifada (Arabic for “uprising”) began in the late 1980s, East Jerusalem contributed approximately 14 to 15 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) in the Occupied Palestinian territories (OPT). By 2000, that number had dropped to less than eight percent; in 2010, the East Jerusalem economy, compared to the rest of the OPT, was estimated at only seven percent.

“Economic separation resulted in the contraction in the relative size of the East Jerusalem economy, its detachment from the remaining OPT and the gradual redirection of East Jerusalem employment towards the Israeli labour market,” the U.N. report found.

Decades ago, Israel adopted a policy to maintain a so-called “demographic balance” in Jerusalem and attempt to limit Palestinian residents of the city to 26.5 percent or less of the total population.

To maintain this composition, Israel built numerous Jewish-Israeli settlements inside and in a ring around Jerusalem and changed the municipal boundaries to encompass Jewish neighbourhoods while excluding Palestinian ones.

It is now estimated that 90,000 Palestinians holding Jerusalem residency rights live on the other side of the separation barrier and must cross through Israeli checkpoints in order to reach Jerusalem for school, medical treatment, work, and other services.

“Israel is using all kinds of tools to push the Palestinians to leave; sometimes they are visible, and sometimes invisible tools,” explained Ziad al-Hammouri, director of the Jerusalem Centre for Social and Economic Rights (JCSER).

Al-Hammouri told IPS that at least 25 percent of the 1,000 Palestinian shops in the Old City were closed in recent years as a result of high municipal taxes and a lack of customers. “Taxation is an invisible tool…as dangerous as revoking ID cards and demolishing houses,” he said. “Israel will use this as pressure and as a tool in the future to confiscate these shops and properties.”

On his visit to Israel and the Palestinian Territories, U.S. President Barack Obama laid out his vision for a revival of the long-stalled peace talks. Yet, it was clear from his statements that a settlement freeze is no longer an immediate requirement. And, he carefully avoided mentioning the pre-1967 lines as the basis for a two-state solution, to the Israeli Prime Minister’s delight.

Back in May 2011, on the eve of a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House, Obama made a speech on the broader Middle East.

He then declared: “The borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps so that secure and recognised borders are established for both states.” His call was a first for a sitting U.S. president, and a low-point in Israel-U.S. relations.

This week not a single time – neither in Jerusalem nor in Ramallah – did the U.S. President mention the June 4, 1967 ceasefire lines.

At his meeting with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, he conceded that “the Palestinian people deserve an end to the occupation.” But he outlined his vision of a Palestinian state as “the homeland of the Palestinian people alongside the Jewish State of Israel,” ignoring the Palestinian President’s opposition to such definition of Israel. Some 20 percent of Israeli citizens identify themselves as Palestinians.

And whereas addressing the Muslim world in Cairo during his first trip abroad of his first term he had insisted that “it’s time for these settlements to stop,” on his first trip abroad of his second term he rejected the Palestinian demand that Israel resumes its settlement freeze as precondition to a resumption of peace talks.

“How do we get sovereignty for the Palestinian people, and how do we assure security for the Israeli people? That’s the essence of this negotiation,” said Obama.

“That’s not to say settlements aren’t important. It’s to say that if we solve those two problems, the settlement problem will be solved,” he reasoned, next to a stone-faced Abbas. “So I don’t want to put the cart before the horse.”

“It’s not only our perception that settlements are illegal. Everybody considers settlements… more than a hurdle towards the two-state solution,” Abbas protested.

If that’s so, why such a turnabout in U.S. policy; why such realignment with the Israeli position?

After a ten-month settlement freeze in 2010; after barely three weeks of bilateral negotiations in September of that year; and three-and-a-half years of futile diplomacy nudging the parties to return to the negotiating table, Obama realised he “screwed up somehow” as he candidly said next to Netanyahu.

He now invokes political constraints and recalcitrant constituencies on both sides as impediments to a resumption of peace talks.

On the Palestinian side, the schism between the West Bank and Gaza, between the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Hamas that is adamantly opposed to negotiations with Israel – let alone to its recognition – doesn’t bode well for statehood.

“Waiting and longing is the theme of our political agenda – longing for Palestinian unity; waiting for the new Israeli government’s directions,” says Mahdi Abdul Mahdi, founder of the Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs (PASSIA).

“We’re only left with our narrative. That is why the PA is losing its credibility.”

“It’s the Israeli government’s duty to halt settlement activity,” Abbas told Obama. Yet, he didn’t explicitly demand a settlement freeze as prerequisite to talks.

The small opening in the Palestinian position could provide an opportunity for U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, back on Saturday to Jerusalem and Ramallah, to discuss ways to translate the Obama vision into concrete steps for a resumption of negotiations.

For Abdul Hadi, renewed U.S. efforts at brokering talks reflect a tighter convergence of interests with Israel, a result of the two allies’ shared concerns with regard to the Arab Awakening.

“Obama’s visit here was to clarify the U.S. presence in the region and open a fresh chapter of support and enhancement in the strategic alliance with Israel under the new government,” says Abdul Mahdi.

Conscious that the sustainability of the new Netanyahu government depends largely on the Jewish Home party, Obama spoke over Netanyahu’s head. This party, if not opposed to talking with the Palestinians per se, rejects a two-state solution and advocates the annexation to Israel of 60 percent of the West Bank.

He reached out to Israeli university students; inspired them to reach out to their Palestinian neighbours; touched them on the immorality of the occupation – and received a standing ovation which Netanyahu would envy.

“Political leaders will never take risks if the people don’t push to take some risks. You must create the change that you want to see,” Obama urged.

Obama’s call was a first for a U.S. president, but that didn’t seem to trouble the Israeli leader.

Whether or not Obama is trying to ‘do a Cairo to him’, Netanyahu is counting on the fact that an awakening against the injustice of the occupation by the same young generation of Israelis who demanded social justice in the summer of 2011 is far from guaranteed.

“The speech is no problem for Netanyahu unless Israelis buy into its core premise – that if Israel only pushes harder for reconciliation, regional hostility to Israel will gradually melt. On that, as the elections proved in January, Israelis are thoroughly divided,” cautions David Horovitz, the Times of Israel website’s editor-in-chief.

Though Obama tactfully avoided demanding any tactical concession from Netanyahu, there’s little doubt as to what the fulfilment of the U.S. strategic goal entails – eventually, the settlements must stop; a Palestinian state must be created on the basis of the pre-1967 borders through negotiations.

But that’s not for the immediate future.

Meanwhile, so long as the borders of a future Palestinian state aren’t specified, and settlement expansion is not on the agenda, the Israeli Prime Minister has no reason to worry about the future of his new-born coalition, and can even afford to pledge Israel’s commitment to a two-state solution as he did during the presidential visit.

U.S. President Barack Obama arrives in Israel on Wednesday, his first destination abroad of his second term, to pay a visit to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu whose own second consecutive term will have started only 48 hours beforehand. No wonder that the true purpose of the U.S. President’s visit is defined as reaching out to the Israeli people.

“White smoke in Jerusalem,” announced political pundits. There’s finally a government in Israel. One day prior to the deadline allocated to him by law to form a coalition, Netanyahu informed President Shimon Peres on Saturday evening that he has a government.

“We face a decisive year in the fields of security and economy, and efforts to promote peace,” he told Peres.

But before facing a decisive year, Netanyahu must face a decisive week – the Obama week.

Netanyahu’s majority coalition of 68 legislators in the 120-member Knesset parliament depends largely on the two rising stars of Israeli politics – Yair Lapid and his centrist party There’s a Future (19 seats) that appealed to the middle class with its “equal sharing of the social burden”; and Naftali Bennett and the Jewish Home party (12 seats) linked to the settlers’ lobby.

Netanyahu’s confidantes, former defence minister Ehud Barak, and traditional Likud party buddies were ousted from politics; his ultra-orthodox allies, from the coalition.

“Netanyahu is in a weak position vis-à-vis Obama not just because he’s increasingly alone at the helm, but he’s yet to forge a new policy. Obama knows that. So he’ll hear what the President has to say, but won’t have much to say himself,” says Channel 10 correspondent Yonatan Regev.

“We’ve got a clear policy – on Iran, the Arab world, the Palestinian issue,” retorts Yossi Kuperwasser, director-general at the Ministry of Strategic Affairs.

Regev suggests that “Obama and Netanyahu aren’t the best of friends after all.” Precisely because they’re not ‘best friends’, Obama sent out some ‘feel good’ messages in an exclusive interview to Israel’s Channel 2 last week.

He went out of his way to refer to Netanyahu by his nickname (“Bibi”) at least ten times, declaring, “We’ve got a terrific businesslike relationship. He’s very blunt with me about his views on issues; I’m very blunt with him about my views on issues.”

“We may differ here and there about what exactly constitutes the right move that would promote our joint interest towards peace,” cautions Kuperwasser. “Matters are discussed, but we’re very close. That’s the atmosphere that’ll characterise the visit.”

On Obama’s agenda is the spring-to-summer red line on Iran obtaining capability to develop nuclear weapons drawn by his host, which if crossed would trigger an Israeli strike on its nuclear sites. And, spring’s in the offing.

Meanwhile, Tehran is reportedly diverting some enriched uranium for research, thus slowing down its march towards an atomic bomb, so that no one knows for sure when Netanyahu’s red line will be drawn.

His opposition to a unilateral attack on Iran notwithstanding, Obama has sought to assuage Israeli misgivings. “Iran possessing a nuclear weapon is a red line,” he said on Channel 2, adopting the Netanyahu language. ”When I say all options are on the table, all options are on the table.”

“It’s not, ‘All options are on the table’,” says Kuperwasser. “There’s need for a credible military option to convince the Iranians to stop their programme.”

Also on the agenda is renewal of peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA) of President Mahmoud Abbas, who Obama will meet on Thursday.

“Israelis are concerned with socio-economic issues – the price of apartments; the draft of ultra-Orthodox students who’re exempted from military service; the budget,” says Regev.

Immersed in domestic politics for the past three months and in the foreseeable future, Netanyahu has had no time to devote to policy-making. So it’s hard to believe he’ll be hard-pressed by Obama to move forward on the only foreign policy issue on which he can call the shots – peace-making with the Palestinians.

Abbas’s successful bid for UN recognition of ‘Palestine’ as a non-member observer state in November has sparked Palestinian protests against the Israeli occupation.

“Obama’s visit to Abbas is a sideshow to contain the Palestinian problem and give life support to the PA so that it doesn’t collapse but carry on its mission in this transitional phase until the Israelis wake up to realise that they must work for a two-state solution before it’s too late,” says Mahdi Abdul Hadi, founder of the Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs (PASSIA).

In September 2010, Netanyahu refused Obama’s request to extend a ten-month moratorium on settlement construction; as a result, Abbas refused to have peace talks extended.

Kuperwasser dismisses a renewed settlement freeze: “We’ve been there already. The fact is the Palestinians prefer to opt for a unilateral policy and receive UN declarations with no meaning on the ground instead of negotiating with us without pre-condition possibilities to change the situation in both our favour.”

In a sign that a resumption of peace talks isn’t expected during the presidential visit, U.S. officials have said that Obama will resort to listening to his Israeli and Palestinian interlocutors, and reach out to the Israeli people directly.

Hence, the preview of the President’s trip recently posted on YouTube by the White House highlights a speech on Thursday in front of Israeli students.

“This really is the true purpose of the visit – the ability for the President to speak directly to the Israeli people about the future that we want to build together,” says U.S. Deputy National Advisor Ben Rhodes in the video clip.

During his first trip abroad of his first term, Obama addressed the Muslim world from Cairo University, unaware he had become a source of inspiration for the Arab awakening.

Yet if Obama hopes that he’ll touch Israelis the way he touched the Arab world; that Israelis will emulate the motto ‘Yes We Can’ and reach out to the Palestinians, may be in for a big disappointment.

Two of the three main objectives of the Red Sea-Dead Sea canal project grapple with how to “save the Dead Sea” and “build a symbol of peace in the region.” With Israeli-Palestinians relations and the Dead Sea at an all time low, questions arise whether the ‘Red-Dead Canal’ (as it is known in environmental jargon) could save not only the hyper-saline desert lake but peace itself.

If the grand project gets the green light from the World Bank, its implementation will depend on donors’ investment. The international economic climate is not auspicious.

Jordan would be allocated the largest portion of desalinated water with 230 million cubic metres a year (Israel and Palestine would equally be apportioned 60million cubic metres a year), but many Jordanian environmentalists object to the project.

“The whole plan takes place on Jordanian territory,” says Munqeth Mehyar, director of Friends of the Middle East-Amman. “And Jordan is hard-hit by the global economic downturn. That doesn’t bode well for international aid.

“Besides, the project will only employ 1,700 people and only during the peak years of construction,” he says, referring to the World Bank’s feasibility study released in January.

Above all, for the canal to come into existence and thrive, cooperation between the three beneficiaries who share the Dead Sea will be critical. This, in turn, depends on the political situation.

“The water conduit will be vulnerable to terror attacks,” Gidon Bromberg, director of FoEME-Israel warned at a joint press conference in Tel Aviv with his Jordanian counterpart. “The Egyptian gas pipeline destroyed several times is a case in point.”

On the outskirts of the Palestinian oasis town of Jericho just north of the Dead Sea, Palestinian labourers are busy planting date palms in a field which ‘belongs’ to an Israeli settlement.

“We have no access to the Dead Sea; it’s occupied land. How could such a canal help us?” says a Palestinian labourer.

“We don’t call the Dead Sea ‘occupied’,” retorts Silvan Shalom, the Israeli minister for regional development.

“The canal could lay a strong basis for peace had the Palestinians not been left away from it,” says Mehyar.

This is strongly refuted by Shalom: “If the Palestinian Authority would like to join us, they’re most welcome. But the real partners are Israel and Jordan.”

Comments from all sides point to present and potential conflicts over the project.

“The project won’t serve its peace-building purpose – unless the Palestinians are not in full control of their shores of the Dead Sea, not just in command of the project,” Mehyar stresses.

“Israel will have to recognise Palestine as a riparian of the Dead Sea,” Bromberg chimes in. “I don’t see the current nationalist government giving in. And if the government doesn’t give in, potential donors won’t give the free money.”

In the course of its feasibility study, the World Bank cautioned that “there has been no clear consensus as to whether the project would have a peace dividend or not.” However, later on it insists that “there is a potential peace dividend from the project.”

Seduced entrepreneurs envision (prematurely maybe) the promised “peace dividend” in the form of Disneyland-style artificial lakes for recreational, touristic purposes in the Arava desert, ideally transformed into a “Valley of Peace”.

But that might be putting the cart before the horse.

Water (as in existing water resources, not new sources) is a core issue of conflict resolution between Israel and Palestine, and negotiations have been at a standstill since 2010. So, phasing and synchronising the complex political and technical elements stemming from the project idea will be the key to success.

Aside from an implausible phased recognition by Israel of Palestinian riparian rights of the widening shores of the Dead Sea – rights over the exposed land is gradually becoming a bone of contention between the two parties – for any phased implementation to meet the project’s objectives, a minimal requirement of 75 percent of the full-scale scheme would need to be implemented.

“The World Bank experts are telling us, it’s all or nothing – either we go the whole way or we don’t do anything at all,” protests Bromberg.

Green activists prefer to throw their support behind a more modest combination of alternatives dubbed ‘CA1’ in a study of over 20 options published by the World Bank correlatively with the feasibility study.

‘CA1’ proposes desalination at the Red Sea and at the Mediterranean Sea, where there are already two desalination facilities (one of them, in Ashkelon, Israel, is the world’s largest); water importation from Turkey; and water recycling and conservation.

Such a plan would require sustained cooperation between the beneficiaries and, in order to change patterns of water behaviour in industry and agriculture, a carrot-and-stick policy of incentives and penalties.

“These changes in water use could be incrementally achieved and would provide sufficient water to restore the lower Jordan River and stabilise the level of the Dead Sea above its current level,” the World Bank acknowledges.

FoEME calls for restraint on development in absence of firm evidence that the ‘Red-Dead Canal’ won’t harm the environment.

“Rather than a ‘go’ for one megaproject that will tie us up all for the next 50 years, we could implement several small-scale, flexible projects which are responsive to technological changes and which, together, will achieve the same results,” says Bromberg.

It might be more feasible to change the course of nature than for political and financial interests in the Red-Dead Canal to run their course, say advocates of the scheme.

“All the parties, including Syria, pump water from the Jordan River. It isn’t solely in our hands,” Shalom admits.

“These kinds of projects are very attractive to leaders: a fabulous cutting-ribbon ceremony; a 10 billion dollar project; ten companies who get the lion’s share; and a handful of people who become very wealthy,” says Bromberg.

So, is a new dawn rising on the desert? Not as fast as the Dead Sea succumbs to lower and lower man-made tides, vanishing in the glistening mirage of its own restoration. Just ask FoEME.

The World Bank has declared the Red Sea-Dead Sea canal project feasible. Designed to “save the Dead Sea”, “desalinate water and/or generate hydroelectricity at affordable prices in Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian Authority”, and “build a symbol of peace in the Middle East”, the scheme, green groups warn, is fraught with environmental hazards.

Currently at 426m below sea level, the Dead Sea, Earth’s lowest elevation on land, is drying and dying in the desert by roughly 1.1 metres a year. Its surface area has shrunk by a third during the last 50 years from 960 square kilometres to 620 square kilometres.

Set along the Great Rift Valley between the biblical Moab plateau and Judaean desert, the hyper-saline desert lake borders Jordan to the east, Israel and the nascent Palestinian state to the west.

As the world’s most buoyant lake, the Sea is a natural spa. Its minerals have been extracted for treatment of skin diseases since the times of Cleopatra. Today, the chemicals industry is a multibillion dollar operation, with the Israeli Dead Sea Works and the Jordanian Arab Potash Company exploiting the water as raw material.

The total inflow to the Dead Sea has reduced from 1.25 billion cubic metres a year to 260 million cubic metres a year within 60 years as a result of the diversion of water for agriculture from the Jordan River, its main tributary to the north.

Add to that a changing climate and the Sea is an ever receding horizon trapped in a man-induced dead zone. Route 90 used to wind its way along it. Now the shore is over a kilometre away.

Over 300 square kilometres of seabed have been exposed since the 1960s with some five square kilometres a year currently being exposed.

Bared mudflats have thus caved in without warning, and led to the formation of over 3,000 sinkholes which slowly swallow land, roads, buildings; posing a significant hazard to agricultural, industrial, and touristic infrastructures.

No wonder then that the three waterside neighbours failed last year to have the Dead Sea crowned as one of the Seven Wonders of Nature, and the probability of having the Dead Sea listed as a World Heritage Site is a sinking dream.

“We don’t want the Dead Sea to die; we want to revive it,” Israel’s minister for regional development Silvan Shalom tells IPS. “That’s our main goal – to bring more water to an arid region. The best option is a canal to pump 2 cubic billion metres a year from the Red Sea.”

What could save the Dead Sea from death foretold is a 180-km development project called the ‘Red Sea-Dead Sea Water Conveyance’.

This is how it would work: marine water would be pumped from the Red Sea. A pipeline conveyance system with six pipes and a tunnel would then flow the water by gravity, exploiting the difference in elevation at and below sea level, to a high-level desalination plant and two hydroelectric plants.

The high-salinity brine reject would be discharged to the Dead Sea to halt and, eventually, reverse its decline.

After a decade-long argument, the World Bank released a series of studies last month which deem the proposed ‘Red-Dead Canal’ (as the ambitious scheme is dubbed) technically, environmentally and socio-economically feasible.

The main objectives would thus be fulfilled, the World Bank assesses. All that for a total capital cost of 9.97 billion dollars, the World Bank estimates; half of it amortised by selling desalinated water and hydroelectricity, the other half financed out of international aid to development – “a win-win situation,” hails Shalom.

“The project doesn’t hold water,” counters Gidon Bromberg, director of Friends of the Earth Middle East-Israel (FoEME-Israel), a unique NGO which brings together Israeli, Jordanian and Palestinian eco-peace activists.

“The mixing of the Red Sea marine water with the unique brine of the Dead Sea is likely to lead to gypsum (a sedimentary deposit) excretions, to red algae bloom and will slime the water’s purity. The two bodies of water won’t mix, like oil and water. The Red Sea water will float on top.”

Indeed, World Bank experts note that massive intakes of Red Sea water might durably whiten the otherwise royal blue colour of the Dead Sea, but that “this problem could be mitigated by adding gypsum crystals at the discharge location allowing a faster sedimentation of the precipitated gypsum.”

Another concern lies with contamination of groundwater resulting from potential leakage of seawater while operating the pipeline conveyance system along the Arava Valley, an area classified as a “highly active seismic zone”.

“Pipes could explode in the midst of an earthquake, and we’d see millions of cubic metres of water polluting groundwater,” Bromberg tells IPS.

The World Bank suggests special arrangements like concrete boxes enclosing the pipes, isolation valves, and wave joints. A control system will close the valves in case of seismic stress on the pipes.

Addressing the fear that the pumping station might impact on the Red Sea coral reef, a modelling study commissioned by the Word Bank recommends that the intake be located at a depth of at least 140 metres. “The deeper the intake the less likely will be the impact.”

“There were many hearings and these redundant arguments were rejected by the World Bank. Green groups don’t want the project no matter what, that’s the bottom line,” says Shalom.

Prior to issuing a final report, the World Bank is currently holding a last series of hearings in Israel, Palestine and Jordan.

If the project is endorsed by the World Bank, intergovernmental negotiations will decide on how best to proceed. “There’ll be a need to obtain finances, from our respective governments, from the World Bank itself, or from the private sector,” Shalom clarifies.

“Then, tenders will be issued, contracts awarded for the design, procurement and construction of the canal. This should be discussed between the parties.”

The World Bank’s forecast is that the canal could be built within six years and start operating in 2020, reaching its maturity stage by 2060.