ABSTRACT
In the summer of 1999 both Israel and Jordan faced a water crisis of unprecedented dimensions. What had been described for a decade or more as a crisis now loomed as a catastrophe. In the winter months of November 1998 through March of 1999 rainfall in the Jordan Valley was less than 250 mm,1 a drop of 60 per cent; the water in the Yarmuk River, which supplies Syria, Jordan and Israel, was at its lowest level in 90 years.2 The level of the Sea of Galilee (Lake Kinneret or Lake Tiberias) dropped to 10 centimetres below the ‘red line’ of 213 metres below sea level, the depth which hydrologists had established as the lowest point to which this reservoir of fresh water could fall without irreparable damage being done to its quality. Yet pumping continued as an emergency measure,3 and the Israeli Water Commission lowered the ‘red line’ by 30 centimetres.4 The situation in Israel’s other main water sources was no better. The level in the mountain aquifer at the three observation wells was either slightly above, or about 70 cm below, the ‘red line’.5 In the coastal aquifer, on average, it was about 50 cm below the ‘red line’.6
