Fishes and loaves: Miracle needed to restore Sea of Galilee

Water levels in the Sea of Galilee are at their lowest level on record, reports The Telegraph. For four years a drought, combined with high demand for agricultural irrigation, has been sucking the sea down to what Gidon Bromberg, the Israel director of Friends of the Earth Middle East, calls ‘the black line’ — a point where so much damage is wrought that the water body never returns to its previous health.

While Israel has managed to make the desert into the sea, the sea is quickly becoming a desert. According to The Telegraph, “The main factor driving the unending thirst is Israel’s projection of itself is a country of pioneering farmers who made the desert bloom while the previous Palestinian owners of the land were prepared to live in a barren environment without seeking progress.”

While farmers suffer through the drought, fishermen are also experiencing difficulties they link to the drought. Fisherman Ari Binyamin says, “We used to say even a few years ago that one place where you couldn’t go wrong fishing was Kinneret [Hebrew name for the Sea of Galilee] but now it is getting very, very hard because the stocks are so low.”

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Source: The Telegraph