British Mandate: A Survey of Palestine: Volume I - Page 417

CHAPTER X.
pumping, about half would draw its water from the Yarmuk, upstream of the hydro-electric power station. The Palestine Electric Corporation's concession is entitled to the use of the waters of both the Yarmuk and the Jordan and, so, any pumping scheme above the power station could, under the present concession, only be carried out by agreement with them.

An alternative suggestion, larger and probably much more costly, would be to dam the Yarmuk by a barrage or weir and take off a gravity canal. Such a canal would pass through about 800 metres of difficult construction where it would have to be either in a tunnel or else cut in the face of an almost vertical cliff. The advantage of this scheme is that the barrage would also serve as t!te head works of a canal commanding, on the Trans-Jordan side of the river, a greater area than in Palestine.

82. The lower Jordan valley. In the Jordan valley, between Beisan and the Dead Sea on the Palestinian side of the river, there are about, 200,000 dunums of sparsely inhabited land. The soil of this land varies; some at the north-west corner of the Dead flea needs a good deal of washing before it will bear a crop, whilst that at Jericho, Ghor el Fari'a, the 'Auja and Fasayil is good.

For the purposes of irrigation, this land may be divided into :-

(a) Good land irrigable from known springs such as those at Jericho and the 'Auja

(b) Good land irrigable from Wadi Fari'a water

(c) Good land which might be irrigated by pumping from the Jordan (lifts up to 100 metres)

(d) Poor land or land which could be economically irrigated only where underground water can be tapped in sufficient quantities

Dunums

20,000

10,000

50,000

120,000 200,000

The area of (a) is already fairly well developed near Jericho but in the 'Auje, improvements will be somewhat speculative owing to some unreliability in the behaviour of the spring. The Wadi Fari'a, section (b), is considered below. The future of agriculture in the Jordan valley would appear to depend chiefly either on (c), water pumped from the river, or on (d), the discovery of sweet water in boreholes.

Pumping from the river is feasible but the high lift and the long rising pipe lines necessary may make such projects expensive. The extent to which underground water can be obtained has not

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