Israel pollutes Jordan river waters

A specialized study has announced that Israel is polluting Jordan's share of the Jordan river waters by wastes and sewage waters and the wastes thrown by the Israeli settlers of remains of fish farms established to the west of the river.

The study which was prepared by Arab and foreign experts from UNESCO and issued by al-Jazira weekly on Tuesday said that Israel consumes 720 million cubic meters of the waters of the Jordan river and deliberately pollutes the left amounts of waters by solid wastes, and industrial wastes caused by the settlers.

The study unveiled that Israel takes out from 40 wells it drilled in al-Aghwar ( the valleys ) some 57 million cubic meters of waters.

The paper explained according to authentic information that Israeli officials had told Jordanian officials their objection to drill water wells in the eastern part of the Jordanian river under the pretext that such wells will negatively affect water storage in the west Bank.

The study said that Jordan had got an Israeli commitment to work to cleaning the course of the Jordan river to the south of the Tiberies lake and to prevent leaking of salt and sewage waters as well as wastes into it and the waters of the river to be shared equally but Israel has so far not committed it self to all that.