When government ministers and corporate leaders from a host of nations gather in Jordan on May 22 they aim to launch a study on one of the most controversial projects ever envisaged for the Middle East: construction of a multi-billion dollar "canal" from the Red Sea to the Dead Sea. The Red-Dead Project has been around for decades, essentially because it has always seemed to make good sense to make use of the 400-metre altitude difference between the Red Sea and the below-sea-level Dead Sea to generate electricity in the region. But getting Israel, Jordan and the Palestinians to agree on what would have to be a common project, and resolving the complex arguments concerning both its high initial costs and the environmental consequences of such a canal, was never likely to be an easy task.
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