Jordan River

WITH HIS daughter at his side, Fred Edell stood in church on a chilly winter morning and bowed his head to prepare for an ancient rite of initiation.The minister placed one hand on him, then gently splashed his head with water.Even as she celebrated a ceremony that goes back to the earliest days of the Christian church, the Rev. Anita Hendrix was following a tradition of her own.The water she used to anoint Edell, who wanted to be baptized with his 7-year-old daughter, Jessica, wasn't the ordinary kind.

Your editorial suggesting that United Nations recognition of Palestine will put pressure on Israel to resume peace talks is a naive repetition of the myth that Palestinians actually want peace with Israel ("Pressure on Israel to negotiate," Nov. 30). The Palestinian charter calls for the destruction of Israel, not "living side by side in peace" with it as you state. The charter of Hamas is even more explicit. How can you negotiate with an entity that has sworn your destruction?

JERUSALEM -- A Jordanian soldier opened fire into a crowd of Israeli schoolgirls visiting a scenic spot near the Jordan River yesterday, killing seven of the girls and wounding six more before he was overpowered by other Jordanian soldiers.The attack took place at a farming area where the Yarmuk and Jordan rivers meet south of the Sea of Galilee. The area has been known as "The Island of Peace" since Israel and Jordan signed a peace treaty in 1994.The shooting happened amid new tensions between Jordan's King Hussein and Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Students enjoy free Israel 10-day educational trip Shepherd University student Joshua Castelbaum and St. Mary's College of Maryland student Adam Ross recently returned from a 10-day educational trip to Israel where they enjoyed hikes to watch the sunrise at the Masada, "floating" in the Dead Sea, riding camels, rafting down the Jordan River and visiting the Western Wall and Yad Vashem Holocaust museum. Sponsored by Taglit-Birthright Israel, the young men's trip was free, offered as a gift to Jewish adults between the ages of 18 to 26. According to Castlebaum, he and Ross, 2009 Howard High School alumni, were only responsible for lunch daily, a $250 deposit and spending money.

AMMAN, Jordan -- Chanting "Go away, U.S.A." and waving Iraqi flags, a noisy but orderly crowd of about 200 women staged an anti-war demonstration in front of the American Embassy here yesterday.Machine gun-toting Jordanian security police stationed at the embassy gate called in reinforcements as the midday rally picked up steam. The biggest disturbance was the occasional blocking of traffic.One sign summed up the crowd's sentiment, saying, "If you cared that much about Kuwait, why didn't you care about Palestine?"

Your editorial suggesting that United Nations recognition of Palestine will put pressure on Israel to resume peace talks is a naive repetition of the myth that Palestinians actually want peace with Israel ("Pressure on Israel to negotiate," Nov. 30). The Palestinian charter calls for the destruction of Israel, not "living side by side in peace" with it as you state. The charter of Hamas is even more explicit. How can you negotiate with an entity that has sworn your destruction?

TABA, Egypt -- Israeli authorities yesterday ordered the evacuation of about 20 Jewish students from a building in Jericho as negotiators prepared to resume talks here today on Israeli withdrawal from Jericho and the Gaza Strip.The yeshiva students were ordered out of a house built over an ancient synagogue that is likely to be included in the area turned over to Palestinians. Authorities said that the building was not connected to water or electricity and that the students could not stay.

JERUSALEM -- Water has been an incentive for warfare in the Middle East since the first wanderer found a spring in the desert and decided to protect it with his life.In the hundreds of clashes between Israel and its Arab neighbors, water often has been the sought-after prize. Armies have fought over malarial swamps and small streams because as a measure of local wealth water is rivaled only by land and oil.Most battles in the water war have been fought in a small pocket of territory lying east and north of the Sea of Galilee, along the borders that existed before 1967 between Israel, Syria and Jordan.

Ask someone what causes wars in different parts of the world, and you're likely to get a few all-purpose answers. You have the standard human vexations: greed, fear, intolerance, general tendency toward violence. And then you have the more practical reasons, such as natural resources -- especially, people will say, oil. After all, modern societies depend on oil, and we all know the Middle East is rich in it. "No war for oil" became a rallying cry in protests against the recent war in Iraq.

That historic handshake in Washington between leaders of the Palestine Liberation Organization and Israel has already resulted in a decision by the Clinton administration to commit a preliminary $250 million in economic aid for the Gaza strip and the Jericho area of the West Bank. Further commitments are expected from the World Bank.The apparent new order also radically alters the role of Jordan, dramatized the other day by another Washington handshake under President Clinton's auspices. This one linked Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and Crown Prince Hassan, brother and foreign minister to Jordan's King Hussein.

A Memorable Place Petra, the hidden city built by nomadic Arab traders called Nab-ataeans, had always been one of my fantasy destinations, so I was thrilled when my daughter, Marian, asked me to travel through Jordan with her before she participated in a workshop for Iraqi scholars. More than 2,000 years old, Petra was the main attraction for us, and the site exceeded our expectations. We approached the vast complex of ruins through the Siq, a narrow gorge winding through lofty cliffs for about three-quarters of a mile.

Call it the great-granddaddy of every candle, furnace and backyard grill ever invented. Archaeologists digging on the banks of the Jordan River in northern Israel say they have found the earliest evidence outside Africa of the controlled use of fire by our ancestors - and perhaps the strongest such evidence anywhere. Their discoveries, in lake sediments laid down as long as 790,000 years ago, included tool-making debris - flint chips - that were crazed and cracked by fire, as well as charred fruits and grains, and pieces of Syrian ash and wild olive evidently used as firewood.

Ask someone what causes wars in different parts of the world, and you're likely to get a few all-purpose answers. You have the standard human vexations: greed, fear, intolerance, general tendency toward violence. And then you have the more practical reasons, such as natural resources -- especially, people will say, oil. After all, modern societies depend on oil, and we all know the Middle East is rich in it. "No war for oil" became a rallying cry in protests against the recent war in Iraq.

MOUNT NEBO, Jordan -- Pope John Paul II began a weeklong pilgrimage to the Holy Land yesterday, standing atop this wind-swept peak where Moses is said to have gazed down on the Jordan valley to the Promised Land, the "land of milk and honey" that God allowed him to see but would not let him enter. The pope came to Jordan on the first leg of a spiritual journey that has already taken him to Mount Sinai and continues today as he arrives in Jerusalem, where he will spend the rest of the week visiting sites holy to the three great monotheistic religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

WITH HIS daughter at his side, Fred Edell stood in church on a chilly winter morning and bowed his head to prepare for an ancient rite of initiation.The minister placed one hand on him, then gently splashed his head with water.Even as she celebrated a ceremony that goes back to the earliest days of the Christian church, the Rev. Anita Hendrix was following a tradition of her own.The water she used to anoint Edell, who wanted to be baptized with his 7-year-old daughter, Jessica, wasn't the ordinary kind.

JERUSALEM -- A Jordanian soldier opened fire into a crowd of Israeli schoolgirls visiting a scenic spot near the Jordan River yesterday, killing seven of the girls and wounding six more before he was overpowered by other Jordanian soldiers.The attack took place at a farming area where the Yarmuk and Jordan rivers meet south of the Sea of Galilee. The area has been known as "The Island of Peace" since Israel and Jordan signed a peace treaty in 1994.The shooting happened amid new tensions between Jordan's King Hussein and Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Don't blame Israel or worldwide Jewry if the ''land for peace''slogan evokes only sardonic laughter. The Zionist movement has been surrendering land since early in the century, and peace has never been the result.Palestine, the land upon which Israel was settled, is now regarded as being located west of the Jordan River. In fact, until the end of World War I, historic Palestine was not only the West Bank but all or most of what is now the Kingdom of Jordan.Hence, when Lord Balfour's famous declaration was issued in 1917 -- ''His Majesty's government views with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish People . . .'' -- he meant the Palestine as defined at that time.

SHUNAT, Jordan -- Ibrahim el-Adwan has almost everything a farmer in the Jordan River valley could want: good soil, willing workers and modern irrigation equipment.But none of those does him much good. He doesn't have water.Jordan has been paying him not to plant 90 percent of his fields, even though winter is the prime growing season. Until this winter's heavy rains, Jordan could provide water for irrigation or drinking water for its cities but not both.Mr. Adwan's land, like much of the Middle East, is in danger of running dry within a decade.

WADI ARAVA, Jordanian-Israeli Border -- Under the mountains of Moab and Edom and beside the Red Sea, Israel and Jordan signed a formal treaty yesterday swearing to live in peace.A hot desert wind dried the signatures on the treaty putting an end to a formal state of war that had lasted 46 years since the founding of the Jewish state. President Clinton, King Hussein of Jordan and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin spoke loftily of a new era of conciliation.King Hussein called the event "the end of a chapter of darkness and the opening of a book of life."

TABA, Egypt -- Israeli authorities yesterday ordered the evacuation of about 20 Jewish students from a building in Jericho as negotiators prepared to resume talks here today on Israeli withdrawal from Jericho and the Gaza Strip.The yeshiva students were ordered out of a house built over an ancient synagogue that is likely to be included in the area turned over to Palestinians. Authorities said that the building was not connected to water or electricity and that the students could not stay.