Unlike Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner, however, it seems that there will be plenty to drink.

Israel, Jordan and the Palestinians have finally signed on the dotted line enabling the construction of the “Red-Dead Canal” – a pipeline connecting the Red Sea and the Dead Sea:

Israel, Jordan, and the Palestinian Authority were set on Monday to ink an agreement to build a long-anticipated pipeline from the Red Sea to the Dead Sea, part of an initiative that would produce millions of cubic meters of drinking water for the parched region and slake the critically dwindling Dead Sea.

[…]

“We’re talking about a historic process that realizes a dream of many years,” Shalom told Yedioth Ahronoth, which broke the story. “We have here strategic cooperation of national significance between Israel, Jordan, and the Palestinian Authority.”

[…]

The surface of the Dead Sea lies some 427 meters (1,400 feet) below…