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Ezekiel is a key figure in the Bible and in his end-of-days prophecy, he foresees the Dead Sea flourishing into life – something that is considered to be impossible due to its high salt content. Israeli photojournalist Noam Bedein has reported sightings of marine life in small sinkholes around the Dead Sea, as well as vegetation growing. Photos released by the Dead Sea Revival Project show tiny fish swimming in water that is reportedly from the highly-salinated body of water. Mr Bedein, who works on the Dead Sea Revival Project, which works to preserve the Sea and other Israeli “water...

MOUNT SODOM, ISRAEL — Israeli researchers said Thursday they have surveyed what they now believe to be the world’s longest salt cave, a network of twisting passageways at the southern tip of the Dead Sea. A recently completed survey of the Malham Cave determined the labyrinthine cavern stretches more than 6 miles in length. That puts it well ahead of Iran’s Namakdan Cave, previously thought to be the longest salt cave. **SNIP** The Malham Cave’s main outlet yawns not far from a salt pillar named “Lot’s wife,” after the biblical character who was petrified for looking back at the destruction...

The Dead Sea could be saved from drying up under a groundbreaking plan to flood millions of gallons of seawater in from the Red Sea more than 110 miles away. Funding has been secured for a feasibility study into the ambitious and controversial scheme to reverse falling water levels. The scheme involves a 110-mile long canal, dubbed 'Red To Dead', that would channel roughly five million tonnes of seawater each day into the Dead Sea. While schemes on a similar scale have been tried before for fresh water, this is by far the most ambitious seawater canalisation programme ever envisaged....

EIN GEDI, Israel—Ten years ago, during a routine early-morning solo tour of the area surrounding his kibbutz, Ein Gedi, on the shores of the Dead Sea, geographer-geologist Eli Raz heard an ominous rumbling noise. Raz, who is widely considered Israel’s foremost expert on sinkholes—those terrifying crater-like holes that open up without warning—immediately knew that he was about to be swallowed up. Sitting in his windowless, cramped office on the kibbutz, Raz, 70, a wiry, sun-wizened man with thick silver hair, tells his tale calmly. “I fell in, tumbling down, deeper, deeper. I thought I’d be buried alive. Instinctively, I started...

Jordan and Israel signed an agreement on 26 February to go ahead with a World Bank-sponsored project to build a desalination plant in the Gulf of Aqaba and a pipeline linking the Red Sea with the Dead Sea. The plant will be built in the southern Jordanian port of Aqaba on the Red Sea and will desalinate water to be shared by Israelis and Palestinians. The brine that is a by-product of the process will be sent north in a 180km pipeline to the Dead Sea. The project will cost around $900m (£584.5m, €803m). It will take nearly three years...

Regeneration of the Biblical Dead Seaby Leslie J. Sacks Amid the constant turmoil and angst boiling over in Israel and the West Bank, at the center of the Middle East, lies the Dead Sea. [3] This salt-laden desert sea is rapidly diminishing in size as its source, the Jordan River, dries up: the Syrians (via the Yarmuk, a source for the Jordan), Israelis and Jordanians all draw an ever-increasing amount of water from this biblical tributary. [1] We think of the Dead Sea as a tourist haven for spa treatments and beauty products, as a relief for psoriasis sufferers;...

  Dead Sea Power Project GREEN ENERGY: The Dead Sea Power Project (DSPP) is a tunnel and hydropower project that can produce 1500 to 2500 megawatts of clean and renewable electric energy. The value of such electric energy will be maximized by power generation during peak demand times. Planned operation of the project can fill the Dead Sea to the desired level within seven years of operation; after that, the continued operation of the hydropower plant will be enabled by the development of additional desalination capacity to supply the water needs of the region. SAVING THE DEAD SEA AND...

Environmentalists concerned about the threat to its unique eco-system. Water levels in the lowest and saltiest body of water on the planet are falling by more than four feet a year, giving rise to quips that the Dead Sea is dying. The government in Amman has said it is planning to extract more than 10 billion cubic feet a year from the Red Sea 110 miles to the south, feed most of it into a desalination plant to create drinking water, and send the salty waste-water left over to the Dead Sea by tunnel. Similar plans are already the subject...

AMMAN — Jordan has decided to go it alone and build a two-billion-dollar pipeline from the Red Sea to the Dead Sea without help from proposed partners Israel and the Palestinian Authority, an official told AFP. "Jordan is thirsty and cannot wait any longer," said Fayez Batayneh, the country's chief representative in the mega-project to provide drinking water and begin refilling the Dead Sea, which is on course to dry out by 2050. "Israel and the Palestinians have raised no objection to Jordan starting on the first phase by itself," Batayneh said. "The first stage, at an estimated cost of...

There would be sweet Zionist vindication were the Dead Sea rehydration project to actually be implemented with full Jordanian, Palestinian and world partnership. After all, the vision of refilling the Dead Sea, using water from the Mediterranean, was floated back in Theodor Herzl's seminal 1902 Altneuland. True, Herzl envisioned the project for generating hydroelectric power, while today's updated version of his dream would call for channeling Red Sea water for desalination purposes. Yet there's no denying that the very notion captures the imagination and raises our hopes of peaceful cooperation belying the ever-rampant regional belligerence and boldly charting the mutually...

New boost for planned canal between Red Sea and Dead Sea · Firms commissioned to study feasibility of link· 25-year project would ease region's water shortage Ian Black, Middle East editor Wednesday June 27, 2007 The Guardian (UK) Hopes of building a canal linking the Red Sea to the Dead Sea have been given a fresh boost with 11 firms commissioned to produce feasibility studies. Their work will be submitted to an Israeli-Jordanian-Palestinian committee looking at ways to implement the huge engineering scheme, which could take as long as 25 years to complete. As well as reviving the rapidly shrinking...

A cycling tour to sound the alarm about the deteriorating state of the Dead Sea is planned for next month, hoping to attract those concerned that the area is heading toward an ecological disaster. Cyclists will have the opportunity to ride over 260 kilometers during the January 24-26 competition known as the Tour de Dead Sea. According to the Megilot Council, which organized the event, both professionals and amateurs are invited to be a part of the event, which aims to sensitize the public to the drastic drying-out of the Dead Sea. The tour's route circles the sea and includes...

The Dead Sea is dying, with the world's saltiest water body threatened by a lack of fresh water and an increasingly tense political situation, environmentalists have warned. The bare, sun-baked landscape around the Dead Sea -- the lowest point on earth which is bordered by Israel, Jordan and the West Bank -- has since Biblical times been fed by the Jordan river's fresh water. But that has been systematically diverted for agricultural and hydroelectric projects, while an evaporation basin for farming world-famous Dead Sea minerals has lowered the water level by one metre (three feet) a year for the past...

JERUSALEM (AP) - The Dead Sea is dying, and only a major engineering effort can save it, Israel's Minister of the Environment said Monday. The Dead Sea gets its name from its heavy salt content, because no aquatic creatures can live in it. Now there's a new ``death threat'' - the Dead Sea is drying up and disappearing. An Israeli TV reporter, illustrating the government report, stood on a spot where, just 20 years ago, water met land. Now that point is 2,000 feet of parched ground away, he said, as the sea gradually recedes. Because it is landlocked in...

Experts at a water conference in Jordan yesterday warned the Dead Sea may disappear in 50 years if current conditions are maintained, prompting Jordanian and Israeli officials to appeal for international assistance to save the much-revered body of water. The sea – the saltiest water in the world and the lowest point on earth – has been dropping 3.3 feet per year for at least the past 20 years, mostly because of river diversion projects by Syria and Israel, according to experts. "We appeal to water experts attending this conference to help us explain the crisis of the Dead Sea...

Jerusalem-(AP) -- The Dead Sea is dying because it's drying up. That's the assessment of Israel's Minister of the Environment, who says only a major engineering effort can save it. The Dead Sea gets its name from the salt content so high that it can't accommodate sea creatures. An Israeli TV report illustrated the shrinking shoreline. A reporter stood at the spot where 20 years ago water met land. That spot is now 2,000 feet away, across the parched landscape. The Dead Sea is so salty that people can float with no effort. It's popular for spas and treatments at...

The Dead Sea is dying as its dark salty waters retreat (Filed: 04/10/2003) Human exploitation is forcing the surface level down by three feet each year, reports David Blair The jagged cliffs of the Judaean desert mountains, where John the Baptist wandered and Jewish fighters made their last stand at Masada, once sloped directly into the Dead Sea. Today, many of those cliffs descend into ugly mudflats covering much of the basin marking the lowest point on Earth. For the Dead Sea is in retreat as human intervention forces the water level downwards by more than three feet per year....