A week after the Dead Sea failed to make the list of winners in the New 7 Wonders competition, the cabinet rejected yesterday (Sunday) a bill that would provide for its rehabilitation and protection in an 8-7 vote. “The government has chosen to stand on the sides of the factories and has failed in safeguarding the Dead Sea,” said MK Dov Khenin (Hadash).

Though written by members of  the green group Israel Union for Environmental Defense (Adam Teva V'Din), the bill in question had originally been submitted to the Knesset by MK Khenin, who called the proposed plan historic. Among the main principles of the bill were provisions to preserve the Dead Sea and its surrounding natural resources, maintain the waters for future generations, curb plunging water levels in the northern region of the sea and create a new management system that would provide for reasonable amounts of mineral extraction while protecting biodiversity, according to its text.

“Thanks to the incisiveness of the environmental protection minister, who filed an appeal against the government decision, the proposed bill will be up for discussion again in another two weeks, and we hope that the government, which chose to side today with the factories instead of implementing real action that would save the Dead Sea, will chance its stance,” said Amit Bracha, director of Adam Teva V’Din.

The bill included specific measures to give the environmental protection minister more control on the management of the Dead Sea region, as well as established a national plan to reinstate some of the lost water from the northern basin by way of the Lower Jordan River, the amount of which would be determined by the water situation in Israel, according to Adam Teva V’Din.

Meanwhile, the law would limit infrastructural development in the Dead Sea region’s protected areas, like Ein Gedi, would impose an additional annual levy on Dead Sea Works for any operations conducted in the northern basin and would have the power to impose new environmental regulations on a renewal of the Dead Sea Works tender.

“It is easy to SMS for the good of the Dead Sea, but it is much harder to vote in reality for it,” MK Khenin said, expressing his disappointment with the decision. “We must not miss the moment – because the Dead Sea is really dying out before our eyes. Only a comprehensive deal, as our proposed bill suggests, can stop the rapid deterioration and begin to reverse this direction.”