Aerial. River Jordan/ Dead Sea | Music | 00:00 |
| BROWN: It meanders towards the lowest place on earth, through the very cradle of civilisation. | 00:05 |
Healthy section of river | Music | 00:12 |
| BROWN: More recently, the followers of three great faiths have come to believe these waters are holy, and that miracles happen here. | 00:19 |
| Now those same believers seem have turned on the once mighty Jordan River. | 00:29 |
Gidon and Brown standing in river | GIDON: When we destroy this, we destroy really a part of ourselves, and that's unacceptable, it's not necessary. | 00:41 |
Healthy section of river | Music | 00:48 |
| BROWN: For Jews, the Israelites, led by Joshua, crossed this river to enter the Holy Land. Muslims believe the companions of the prophet Mohamed are buried here. And for Christians, it's where Jesus came to cleansed in the river by John the Baptist. | 00:55 |
Filthy river | But if Jesus walked down here today well he'd be shocked by what he'd find, because this is what has become of the Jordan River. | 01:21 |
| Its waters are just full of muck and filth. But it doesn't start out that way. | 01:30 |
Upper reaches of river | In its upper reaches in Israel, the Jordan River is everything you'd imagine. A bubbling waterway, fed from streams here in Israel, and from Syria and Lebanon. | 01:40 |
Brown kayaking with Gidon | My journey begins with a man who knows this river well. | 01:54 |
| GIDON: Okay, this is the mighty Jordan, this is the way it should be all the way though. Whoa! | 01:59 |
| BROWN: Gidon Bromberg was born in Tel Aviv, but grew up in Melbourne. | 02:06 |
| Now, as an environmentalist with Friends of the Earth, he's taken on the biggest challenge of his life -- to save a river that's being literally drained, not only by Israel, but by its neighbours Jordan and Syria. | 02:14 |
| GIDON: Many people say that the next war in the Middle East will be over water. It's in fact the demise of the River Jordan and the Dead Sea | 02:30 |
Gidon. Super: Gidon Bromberg Friends of the Earth | that can and should be the impetus to promote cooperation. | 02:41 |
Sprinkler irrigation of crops | BROWN: The Jordan River takes its first hit here. It's the breadbasket and fruit bowl of Northern Israel. | 02:50 |
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| 02:57 |
Jid in mango plantation | Israeli pioneers like Jid Shoshani turned this land from brown to green, thanks to irrigation water from the Jordan. He'll tell you it's part of his national mission. | 03:02 |
Jid. Super: JID SHOSHANI | JID: We have to stay here, we cannot develop only the Tel Aviv area, and one, two, three the big towns in the middle of Israel. We have to grow inside, we have to cover the country. | 03:15 |
Jid in mango plantation | BROWN: Jid Shoshani started growing vegetables for the local market more than 40 years ago. Now his sights are set on the export market and his favourite crop, mangoes. | 03:34 |
| GIDON: It's madness, it's madness to be growing tropical fruits in the middle of the desert, be it mangoes, avocados, bananas. These are water guzzlers. | 03:48 |
Gidon. Super: Gidon Bromberg Friends of the Earth | The Middle East is a natural desert, we cannot be the breadbasket of other continents, of other societies. | 04:00 |
Mango plantation | BROWN: But Jid Shoshani says he can grow his mangoes using less water than they need in the tropics, and they're a good little earner. | 04:11 |
Jid. Super: JID SHOSHANI | JID: The mango is close to five times more than olives, now same quantity of water. | 04:20 |
Sea of Galilee | BROWN: Some of its waters lost to irrigation, a still healthy Jordan feeds the fabled Sea of Galilee. | 04:32 |
| Music | 04:39 |
| BROWN: It's here Jesus is said to have walked on water, and multiplied the loaves and fishes. | 04:46 |
| Music | 04:54 |
Golan Heights seen over Sea | BROWN: On its eastern shores rise the Golan heights, land conquered from Syria during the 1967 war. | 05:01 |
| The Galilee is Israel's biggest single source of drinking water -- a huge reservoir dammed up to quench the thirst of city and farm alike. | 05:09 |
Water slide park | This is also where Israelis come to play. If they're worried about a water crisis in this desert nation, they're not showing it here. | 05:23 |
Baptism |
| 05:35 |
| When the Jordan river emerges from the Galilee's southern shore, it is barely moving. But it still attracts those who hope to follow in the footsteps of Jesus. | 05:40 |
Pilgrim | WOMAN: I want to do something he did, I want to do something he did. And then imitate him - I don't know. | 05:55 |
Pilgrims at baptism |
| 06:03 |
| BROWN: These waters are considered so sacred the robes the pilgrims have worn to the river, will be kept and used as their burial shrouds. | 06:08 |
Pilgrim | PILGRIM: God bless it, you know what I mean, Jesus Christ was right here. | 06:19 |
Baptism | BROWN: But most pilgrims don't know this is probably not where Jesus was baptised. It's just that this is the last place on the river where you would ever want to go near. And just downstream, it gets a lot worse. | 06:27 |
Gidon and Brown on dam | GIDON: Well this is the last stretch of the clean waters of the River Jordan and they come to a complete halt here on this earthen dam. | 06:42 |
Water flows out of pipe | BROWN: On the other side of the dam its banks are filled once more, with a cocktail of salty water diverted from streams around the Sea of Galilee, and raw sewage. | 06:56 |
Sewage in river | GIDON: This is a little hidden secret, a secret of demise, of disgrace, the destruction of the Jordan River takes place here, where raw sewage is flowing out. | 07:09 |
| It's amazing what we've done in cooperation to destroy a river that's holy to half of humanity. | 07:24 |
River running through farmland | Music | 07:34 |
| BROWN: With its transfusion of putrid salt and sewage the river heads though farmland, but it's now too foul to be of any use to anyone. |
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Underwater shot of muddy river
| Music | 07:43 |
| BROWN: The Jordan's fall from grace has, to this point, been humiliating enough, but there's even worse to come. In its moment of need it becomes a security zone, a no man's land. The river takes on a precarious new role -- as the boundary between Israel and the Arab world to the East. | 07:47 |
Nirit opens gate | Nirit Bagron was born on a kibbutz on the shores of this river and she's lived here all her life. The Israeli military allows her to run tours through this historic site. | 08:11 |
| NIRIT: Two thousand years ago the Romans understood that | 08:24 |
Nirit and Brown by bridge. Super: | this place exactly, it's the place to cross the Jordan River. | 08:27 |
| BROWN: The Ottoman Turks also came here to cross the river, the underwater foundations of the bridge they built are now high and dry. | 08:31 |
| It was also a natural barricade to the invading Arab armies in the war of 1948. But the river has been robbed of its once forbidding force. | 08:43 |
Nirit | NIRIT: I am really concerned that it will vanished one day and it will be dry. | 08:55 |
Fish in river | I think it is really dangerous to eat this fish, but they survive you see. | 09:01 |
Nirit | People come to see and to feel the Jordan River like it looks thousands of years ago, and we ruined it by our hands, and it is very sad. | 09:07 |
Narrow polluted river | BROWN: This is what it's come to. The lifeblood of the holy land is now mostly just sewage and salt water. It could have just petered out right here, end of story. But there's a twist. In it's darkest hour, the Jordan River gets a new lease on life. And it comes from the most unlikely source -- of all places, Israel's sworn enemy Syria. | 09:24 |
Yarmouk River | Music | 09:50 |
| BROWN: The much faster flowing Yarmouk River runs out of Syria and into Israel. It's a gift of geography. But there should be much more water to replenish the Jordan. | 09:57 |
| Music | 10:08 |
| BROWN: The Yarmouk was once mighty enough to power Israel's first hydro electric dam. But these days, before it gets anywhere near Israel, much of its water is siphoned off upstream by Syria and Jordan. | 10:15 |
| Music | 10:28 |
Jordanian farms | BROWN: On the east bank of the river, the Jordanians too are farming for export. These greenhouses grow exotic herbs and vegetables for tables in Europe. | 10:35 |
| Music | 10:45 |
| BROWN: Although the Jordan River is only two kilometres away, farmer's couldn't use it even if there was enough water for irrigation. | 10:49 |
Said. Super: SAID MASRI | SAID: At the moment, we can see that the higher salinity and other pollutants within the river would actually stop us from using it. | 10:58 |
Irrigation dam of Masri's farm | BROWN: Instead, farmers here rely on water diverted form the Yarmouk before it even reaches the Jordan. | 11:13 |
| Like their Israeli counterparts across the river, they say their businesses and their communities must come first. SAID: I normally get furious by | 11:23 |
Said. Super: SAID MASRI | the fact that people are against agriculture, even in Jordan or elsewhere, because it is part of a culture. It's agri- culture, it's a culture by itself, and I cannot imagine a country without agriculture, any country -- not only Jordan --any country. | 11:35 |
Jordanian baptism site | Singing | 11:53 |
| BROWN: At the lower reaches of the Jordan, the river is in its death throes. And yet this is where it should be at its biblical best. It's where the pilgrims should be dunking, if only it was safe enough to go in. | 11:58 |
Rustom. Super: | RUSTOM: We are here 400 metres below sea level, but we are considered to be the closest to the heavens, because when Jesus was baptised, so close from where we are now, the heavens opened. | 12:18 |
Jordanian baptism site | Singing | 12:29 |
| BROWN: Only the most faithful could still believe in the purifying powers of these waters. | 12:34 |
| GIDON: People, millions of people would want to bath, to be baptised, in the place where Jesus was baptised. | 12:44 |
Gidon. Super: Gidon Bromberg | Today people that come out of that water, are likely to come out with a rash. | 12:51 |
Dead Sea | Music | 12:58 |
| BROWN: It's been a truly torturous journey, but the Jordan has one more twist. It empties its poisonous waters into another holy land icon, that wonder of the natural world, the Dead Sea. This is the lowest place on earth, and only ten per cent of the water that used to flow from the Jordan now makes it. The Dead Sea too is dropping, by a staggering one metre every year. | 13:05 |
Eli and Brown at former campsite | Eli: This particular sinkhole enlarged suddenly and swallowed me. | 13:39 |
| Brown: You fell in? Eli: Yes, I fell in. | 13:44 |
| BROWN: Geologist Eli Raz takes me to what was a tourist campsite near the water's edge. The lowering of the sea level has allowed fresh water to leach salt from the soil, opening up huge sinkholes. The camping ground has literally been swallowed by the earth. | 13:47 |
Eli. Super: ELI RAZ | ELI: I feel very bad, I feel very bad, sometimes I am crying, inside of me. | 14:06 |
| Music | 14:13 |
Brown and Gidon at Dead Sea | GIDON: We can see the terraces on the surface of the exposed ground every year with the sea level dropping. We're losing this magnificent body of water. | 14:21 |
| Music | 14:36 |
Brown and Gidon at Dead Sea | GIDON: As we kill the river and as we kill the Dead Sea , it's our economies that will lose and therefore | 14:42 |
Gidon | it's strong grounds, it is mutual grounds to be working together - Palestinians, Jordanians , Israelis, Syrians, to save the river and to save the Dead Sea. | 14:49 |
Jordan Valley | BROWN: The great Jordan Valley has witnessed some of the most important moments in human history. By any measure this is an inspiring place, but the insatiable hunger and thirst of its modern custodians has all but spelt its doom. | 15:03 |
| Music | 15:21 |
| Reporter: Matt Brown Camera: Brant Cumming Editor: Garth Thomas Producer: Trevor Bormann | 15:28 |