In the past few years the Jordanians, Palestinians and Israelis did not have much common thinking to invite any kind of normalization or cooperation in a political mode of tension and violence. However, a recent emerging threat has managed to unite them in a crusade to save their agricultural production system. This is a story from UN news center    April 2007 – United Nations agencies are helping... [read more]

Press Release from EMPOWERS The EMPOWERS Partnership has now available the 'Guidelines for Improved Local Water Governance'   The Guidelines consolidate the experience gained over the past 4 years in developing and testing a range of participatory planning tools for local water development. These have been developed through action research with a wide range of stakeholders in Egypt, Palestine,... [read more]

Jordanian magazine "Jordan Business" has recently published a thorough analytical article on the joint statement by Jordan, Israel and Palestine to conduct a feasibility and environmental impact study for the proposed Red-Dead Canal.   This is the full text of the article:   Last month, Jordan, the Palestinian Authority and Israel launched a two-year feasibility study for a project to replenish... [read more]

Another interesting article from the Jordanian economic expert Yousef Mansour published by the Jordan Times on January 9th   Yusuf Mansur Can the dead be revived? No, but if we are speaking of the Dead Sea, it is possible, and with water, too! How simple the cure is. The new-old initiative of connecting the Red Sea with the Dead Sea is the most important economic project for the sustainable... [read more]

JAYYOUS, West Bank - Jayyous's farmers are used to surveying their land from their commanding hilltop village in the northern West Bank. But for many, gazing is now all they can do. Israel’s West Bank barrier has separated the village of Jayyous from 9,500 of its 13,600 dunums (a dunum is 1,000 square metres) of land, and the Israeli authorities have denied them permits to access it. “In the... [read more]

This is an opinion article published in the Jordan Times by Dr Dureid Mahasneh the former Secretary General of the Jordan Valley Authority and a former leading water negotiator in the Jordanian-Israeli water negotiations associated with the Jordan-Israel peace treaty. This article is about the Red-Dead Seas canal.   By Dureid Mahasneh Finally a concrete step towards starting the Red Sea Dead... [read more]

In 2005 I participated in a regional research project supported by the Heinrich Boell Foundation- Middle East office to develop a comparative study on the application of the UN Right to Water concept in four Arab countries; Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan and Palestine. Each country study aims to identify the scale of knowledge of and commitment to the UN concept in the region and is meant to identify the... [read more]

The Euro-Med Participatory Water Resources Scenarios (EMPOWERS) project has recently publish a booklet entitled "Recommendations for Policy and Practice. This brochure presents a package of recommendations for policy and practice on improved local water governance in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA).The recommendations were developed by 68 practitioners, researchers and policy makers representing... [read more]