Cooperation between Israel and Jordan round the Yovata Salt Flat.
In September 1994 a peace treaty was signed between Israel and Jordan in a ceremony held at the Arava border crossing. Present and participating were the late King Hussein of Jordan, the late Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin of Israel, and President Bill Clinton of the United States. Cooperation between residents on both sides of the border began in 1996. A joint initiative for agricultural development was begun by researchers and consultants from the Arava Research and Development Facility in Israel, and Al-Haq Farms (the entity responsible for the development of settlements in the Jordanian Arava). Students from Jordan studied in Israel and began to develop the agriculture in Rahme. In the wake of these agricultural ties cooperative ventures were initiated between the schools and students from both sides of the border. This cooperation included: Four meetings between students and teachers from the Yotvata and Rahme schools, furthering mutual acquaintance and understanding of the activities in the schools. Development of a website including research and data on the physical and social aspects of the area. Asaph Levy and Nir Menahem (Israel) were responsible for the initiative and most of the work involved in developing the site. For the preparation of the material in Arabic, Rawan Naoumir, a Jordanian student from Aqaba, was recruited. Photographs taken of the meetings between students were used in the site. The computer equipment at the Yotvata school is more advanced, therefore the Jordanian students came to learn computer applications in Israel. As part of these activities they wrote about themselves and their schools (in Arabic). Israeli students in the Earth Sciences track researched the subjects of water, soil, flora and sediments around the Yotvata Salt Flat, in a project known as a geotope. Field work was carried out on the western margin of the salt flat (in Israel) and the eastern margin (in Jordan). Data was also collected from the central area of the salt flat, around the international border. These data are included in the website. In the coming months we’ll continue our cooperative ventures in several areas: meetings between teachers from Jordan and Israel, joint scientific work on the flora and fauna of the salt flat, agricultural activities in the greenhouses of the schools, and cooperative study and research in subjects related to marine life in the Gulf of Eilat. During the coming school we hope to have joint tours for the students to Jerusalem, Amman, Petra and other sites. A suitable infrastructure between the schools will be developed to enable direct E-mail communication. This significant breakthrough will facilitate further development of the website. This cooperation between children living on both sides of the border in Jordan and Israel contributes a lot to establishing and strengthening the peace between the two countries. Building this trilingual electronic website (English, Arabic and Hebrew) strengthens the reciprocal ties and creates an educational and scientific base for further shared activities. |
Along the Arava Valley Israelis and Jordanians live in
rural villages based primarily on desert agriculture. Israeli children live on
the ten area kibbutzim and study at the Ma’ale Shaharut regional school,
located at Kibbutz Yotvata near the northwest tip of the Salt Flat. 650 pupils
from grades 1-12 attend the school, most of them from the kibbutzim and some
from the city of Eilat. Most of the Jordanian children study at separate boys’
and girls’ schools in the village of Rahme, situated near the northeast corner
of the Salt Flat. The Rahme schools have approximately 250 students. Although
the schools are on opposite sides of the border, the aerial distance between
them is only five kilometers!