In a word, the Dead Sea is dying.
The world’s lowest body of water, 440 meters below sea level, is drying up at an alarming rate, creating thousands of sinkholes along the shore.
The reasons for its decline are clear.
It is not being replenished sufficiently by the Jordan River, which itself is dangerously polluted. By one estimate, the Dead Sea requires an additional 800 million cubic meters of water per annum just to sustain itself.
Its receding shoreline is also caused by the extraction practices of companies mining commercially valuable minerals such as potash and bromine.
Israel and Jordan, which share the Dead Sea, have attempted to fix the problem, but deep-seated political issues related to the unresolved Palestinian issue have interfered with this much-needed process.
Dead Sea Guardians, an impassioned documentary by Yoav Kleinman and Ido Glass, explores this charged topic with rigor and knowledge. The film is now available on the Izzy streaming platform. I was interested in it because I have visited the Dead Sea on numerous occasions in the past 50 years.
The current status and possible fate of the Dead Sea are examined through the eyes of three men who could easily be enemies: Oded Rahav, an Israeli, Yusuf Matari, a Palestinian, and Munqeth Meyhar, a Jordanian.
Several years ago, they joined forces in a grassroots effort to jolt Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority into meaningful action to deal the looming disaster that faces the Dead Sea, which is ten times saltier than the oceans.
Their intention was to recruit a cadre of participants from the region and around the world and train them to perform a dangerous and unprecedented feat: to swim across the Dead Sea from Israel to Jordan.
Rahav, a high tech entrepreneur, started the project by contacting Meyhar, an environmentalist who belongs to EcoPeace Middle East, an organization dedicated to preserving the Dead Sea and the Jordan River. To prove he was serious, Rahav went to Amman to meet Meyhar. Meyhar’s family was upset when he told them he intended to work with Rahav. His Palestinian wife was especially troubled.
Many Jordanians, particularly those of Palestinian ethnicity, oppose any form of normalization with Israel and reject personal ties with Israelis despite the fact that Jordan, in 1994, became the second country after Egypt to sign a peace treaty with Israel.
Matari, a self-described apolitical person and a seasoned lifeguard from a Palestinian village close to Jerusalem, had no such qualms. He immediately agreed to join Rahav and Meyhar.
It’s obvious that they get along and want the project to succeed. But the news from Jordan dampens spirits. In spite of his efforts, Meyhar cannot find Jordanians willing to participate. It is even questionable whether he will take part.
The film, a melange of the personal and the technical, unfolds as the threesome practice swimming in the Dead Sea, whose high salinity enables swimmers to float on its surface without moving their arms or legs. Numerous photographs have been published of foreign tourists floating on their backs nonchalantly as they read newspapers.
A month before their great event is due to take place, not a single Jordanian swimmer has been recruited. The same holds true for Palestinians, apart from Matari.
To make matters worse, the Jordanian government still has not confirmed its approval of the swim, which is scheduled to occur in mid-November when the weather is temperate. At almost the last moment, Jordan assents to it.
The swimmers, a group of about a dozen hailing from a variety of countries, are not identified. Nor are they given the opportunity to explain why they were drawn to this challenge.
Dropped off in the middle of the Dead Sea, the point at which the border between Israel and Jordan is demarcated, they start swimming toward the Jordanian shoreline a little past dawn. They’re accompanied by a bevy of assistants and a doctor stationed on a boat.
Braving the corrosive spray of salt and brine, several of the swimmers need to wash themselves off before proceeding any further. A swimmer who succumbs to dehydration is cared for by the physician. Eventually, they reach Jordan, where they are greeted by a gaggle of onlookers, photographers and journalists.
Oddly enough, the swimmers are not interviewed, at least in the film.
Their triumph, while laudable, has no effect whatsoever on the politics of the Middle East on that day, as the filmmakers suggest. In East Jerusalem, Palestinian rioters clashed with Israeli police. And in the Gaza Strip, Hamas, the governing authority, fired a barrage of 150 rockets at Israel.
In a postscript, Rahav, Meyhar and Matari meet on a bridge connecting Israel and Jordan and sign a document pledging to continue their quest to save the Dead Sea.
They mean well, but their efforts appear to have been in vain.