Sea of Galilee water level at lowest on record

Richard Alleyne The Telegraph 31 Aug 08;

The waters of the Sea of Galilee where Jesus is said to have once sailed are at their lowest level on record due to drought and demand from Israel, it has been claimed.

The freshwater lake which supplies Israel with much of its drinking water and irrigation has been hit by a combination of four years of drought and relentless demand from homeowners and farmers in the region.

The waters are now at their lowest on record and are set to fall even lower.

Critics say the Israeli government seems oblivious to the damage being caused to the largest lake in the country.

Despite the water falling below the lowest red line, which denotes serious hazard, the pumping has continued until it is due to reach an even lower black line, seen previously as a point of no return.

Gidon Bromberg, the Israel director of Friends of the Earth Middle East, said: "There is a very real danger that this could lead to over-salination.

"The lower red line indicates the level at which the sustainability of the lake is threatened. We are certainly very alarmed by the authorities' willingness to go to the black line. This development could well be irreversible."

The main factor driving the unending thirst is Israel's projection of itself is a country of pioneering farmers who made the desert bloom while the previous Palestinian owners of the land were prepared to live in a barren environment without seeking progress.

Attempts by the Israeli government to bring in strict restrictions on water usage would be politically suicidal with an election on the horizon. No party would be willing to put forward such proposals against the powerful farming lobby.

Israeli farmers consume 40 per cent of the country's fresh water using some of it, environmental campaigners point out, to grow fruit such as bananas and types of berries alien to the desert, for export to the West.

The Galilee region had been verdant through the ages with a ribbon of flourishing towns and villages beside the lake. The historian Flavius Josephus, writing in the first century, was so taken with the area that he wrote: "One may call this place the ambition of nature." He reported 230 fishing boats working each day.

Ari Binyamin, a fisherman, said the water levels have also affected fish stocks.

"We used to say even a few years ago that one place where you couldn't go wrong fishing was Kinneret [Hebrew name for the Sea of Galilee] but now it is getting very, very hard because the stocks are so low.

"Many fishermen fear for their livelihood and so do I. But it seems no one really cares about us."