Israel Providing Jordan with Additional Water to Avoid a Crisis in Bilateral Relations

The recent water crisis in Israel and the neighboring countries was about to harm bilateral Israeli-Jordanian relations. Israel was asked in the middle of the present water crisis to provide Jordan with millions of cubic meters of water in addition to the already agreed upon amounts, due to a contamination incident that was found in one of the main water canals in Jordan.

A month ago, contamination was detected in the East Ghor canal, also known as the King Abdullah Canal (KAC), the main water canal for Jordan. In the wake of this incident Jordan called on its Israeli neighbor to control the sewage flooding in from the Golan Heights which due to much rainfall reached the KAC. As a result, the Israeli Water Authority quickly pumped millions of cubic meters of water from Lake Tiberias to Jordan. The Israeli sources confirmed that the step was to avoid the rising tension with Jordan.

In the mean time, Jordan declared the formation of an investigation committee on the issue, and confirmed that Israel pumped water to Jordan on 5 consecutive days after discovering the problem. The committee also confirmed however that Israel never gave clarifications on this problem. The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs supplied the investigation committee with a document confirming the extra supply of water to Jordan, stating that this action helped in strengthening the existing relations between the two countries.