When it comes to water, Jordan is the fifth poorest country in the world. During recent years, its consumption has increased by 40% whilst its supply continues to decrease.

While this is going on, Israel has had to deal with an evaporating volume of water from River Jordan (the volume has reduced by half since 1950) and the drying up of the Dead Sea.

On 19 November 2018, King Abdallah II, King of Jordan, sent a Jordanian delegation to Israel, to present the proposals of Kingdom.

The project dates back to 2013 and consists of the following stages:
1. pumping water from the Red Sea to Jordan;
2. in Jordan, extracting the salt from it;
3. distributing the de-ionized water in the region
4. discarding the residual saline solutions via a pipeline into the Dead Sea.

This project would provide a temporary solution to the problem of water in Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian territories. While this plan is ambitious, it is less so than the plan for a canal, properly called, between the two seas.

In 2015, an agreement was probably signed with Israel, the Palestine Authority and the World Bank. Its budget has been estimated at 900 million dollars. The United States and Japan promised to contribute 120 million dollars. France, Italy, Spain, the European Union and the European Investment Bank are ready to lend 140 million dollars at an attractive rate. However nothing has been done.

Jordan also proposes to better divide the existing resources: Israel would be authorized to extract water from the common phreatic planes in the South in exchange for water in the North of the country.