Israeli and Jordanian mayors declare joint war on houseflies

David Litvinoff, the head of the Tamar Regional Council, has lived most of his life at Kibbutz Ein Gedi near the Dead Sea. But he made his first visit to neighboring Jordan only last week. His main reasons for finally taking the trip were the houseflies that plague residents on both sides of the Dead Sea, and the realization that the ever-shrinking sea is also a common problem.

Litvinoff and a delegation of regional council heads from the area met in the Jordanian city of Safi with officials of the Jordan Valley Authority and district governors. He and the head of the Jordan River district, Ghaleb al-Shamaila, signed a memorandum of understanding to work together against the flies and to establish a border crossing for merchandise and workers on the Dead Sea's southern shore. They also pledged to work to establish a regional peace park south of the Dead Sea and to bring public pressure to bear on the issue of the Dead Sea's desiccation.

The visit to Jordan was organized by the joint Israeli, Jordanian and Palestinian Friends of the Earth-Middle East (FoEME). "It is a rare event in which the representatives of so many Jordanian bodies meet with Israelis, as political pressure usually prevents such meetings," FoEME's Israeli director, Gidon Bromberg, said. He stated that the shared nature of the issues on the local level had created the level of trust needed to reach the understandings.

"We've tried everything against the flies," Litvinoff said. "We brought in specialists and used every kind of pesticide. The flies continue to come from the Jordanian side. Some months, you can't even sit outside."

The Israeli delegation came face to face with the source of the problem in the fields near Safi: a fertilizer that attracts the winged pests. "People here are poor, and they don't have money to buy suitable fertilizers," said Dr. Farouk Arslan, a Jordanian ecologist accompanying the group.

"This fertilizer gets wet and attracts the female flies, and that's how the next generation develops," explained Shlomo Abadi, a pesticide expert advising both sides.

The participants resolved to conduct a study on various methods of decreasing the legions of flies. Bromberg and his Jordanian counterpart, Munqeth Mehyar, met last week in Amman with the U.S. ambassador to seek his help in establishing a compost facility that will not attract flies.

The Jordanian side of the Dead Sea is in many respects a mirror image of the Israeli side, complete with potash works and their evaporation pools and a large number of hotels. The outstanding difference is that the population on the Jordanian side is much larger, and poorer, than on the Israeli side.

The Jordanians led their Israeli guests through a banana plantation in which a huge sinkhole had opened, similar to the hundreds of such holes on the Israeli side. The holes, which open without warning, are created due to the drop in the level of the Dead Sea, which allows fresh water to penetrate through salt layers beneath the surface, dissolving them and causing the surface to collapse.

Ahmed Bukhri, a Jordan Valley Authority engineer, said that there are about 50 sinkholes in Jordanian fields. "We tried to block some of them, but they reappear," he noted. As opposed to Kibbutz Ein Gedi, which has stopped cultivation in the fields where the sinkholes appeared, the Jordanian farmers appear to have no choice and continue to work their fields, although there are sinkholes all around.

The shrinkage of the Dead Sea requires intervention at a higher level than mayors on both sides, but the mayors are trying to raise international awareness of the importance of preserving the area. At their meeting, both sides agreed to continue their efforts to persuade the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to declare the Dead Sea basin a World Heritage Site.

Efforts will also continue to preserve areas like the springs south of the Dead Sea. On the Jordanian side, an area has been set aside in which FoEME can establish a park by the Dead Sea shore. "The only advantage of the decline in the water level is that the area of the park will be bigger in the future," Mehyar said ironically as he showed the visitors around.