Like a modern-day Moses, I led my flock last week through parched terrain that I had never visited before, in search of a piece of land known to me by description only.
Granted, this was on a weekend hike with my family, to which we arrived by car with a liter of sunscreen and a stack of beef jerky.
Still, there was plenty of Moses-like pioneering spirit on our summertime stay in Nahal Tzalmon, a wadi in the Galilee that leads to the Sea of Galilee. It has a flow in the rainy season, but from mid-May until autumn, the wadi turns into a volcanic-rock oven, offering little respite from temperatures that often soar past 104°F.
Tzalmon used to have very few visitors in summer, but this year, Israel’s hiking crowd is abuzz with reports and photos of a remarkable rehabilitation there.
In November, the stream received a steady flow of 5,000 cubic meters of desalinated water per hour, pumped out of the Mediterranean to form the first-ever project of its kind anywhere in the world.
On display amid dramatic natural scenery, the project is a testament not only to Israelis’ ability to ensure that their society flourishes despite droughts, but to how their solutions are now helping to restore life in nature.
The technological novelty adds to the destination’s allure as a hiking spot, but it’s too recent to appear in topographic maps. So, to safely navigate it, the first-time visitor must cross-reference outdated maps, community mapping apps, social media posts and information gleaned from hikers on site—preferably those hiking in the opposite direction.
Some uncertainty on the trail is usually exciting, but not when my wife and I were carrying 80 pounds of food, gear and water between us, with three sulky preteens in tow, their faces reddening with each mile to a crimson glow.
We encountered three women walking toward us at a point that I’d figured was about a mile from where the water was supposed to emerge into the wadi. Someone on the trail had told them the water was still 5.5 miles out, and they were going back to their car, they told us.
The three smaller Hebrews, under the leadership of my wife and I, were immediately disheartened. She inventoried our water supply and was already planning a managed retreat. The children—two of my own and a cousin’s—bemoaned their fate (“nine kilometers?!”) as though it were a 40-year trek through the desert.
Remembering Moses’s error, I tried to keep my cool. I encouraged them to persevere. The rocks will yield water, I insisted, scanning the landscape for a tell—a trench of reeds, a fig tree, a reassuring frog’s croak.
Suddenly, like a mirage, the discharge point presented itself at a point called Ein Ravid. The water gushed out of a 6-foot-wide concrete structure that seemed to emerge out of barren rock under the direct sun. The flow was so intense that it sent a fine mist into the air. Around the structure, the flow formed a generous pool with a delightful current, which cascaded into additional pools downstream.
Vindicated, I pointed at the stream as though I had just created it. It was such an unlikely sight that the children didn’t immediately register the upgrade. We had the place to ourselves—relatively few hikers know it—but we had some visitors later on, as we cooled ourselves in the pristine water. A group of cyclists. A middle-aged couple. And a fellow Moses, his face relaxing in relief, as mine had, when he saw that he’d successfully led his wife and two young sons to the promised water.
Although the water was clearly very clean—we immediately replenished our supply without even bothering to filter it—it didn’t taste like untreated H2O: there was a faint chemical taste, milder than Israel’s chlorinated tap water, but still noticeable.
The discharge is the culmination of a four-year project that has cost 1 billion shekels ($343 million) and is called in Israel “the reverse water carrier” (haMovil heHafuch), which references the National Water Carrier of Israel (HaMovil HaArtzi). One of Zionism’s first major engineering projects, it carried water from the Sea of Galilee all the way to the central Negev, serving as the linchpin of Israel’s water security and the backbone of its heavily agricultural industry in the country’s first few decades.
As Israel’s only large body of fresh water, the Sea of Galilee has provided visual evidence of the country’s nearly perpetual water shortage. In dry years, the government imposed water discipline to keep the water level above 213 meters (about 700 feet) below sea level—the “upper red line.“ It is considered the minimum safe operating level for large-scale pumping because below it, water quality can deteriorate and ecological damage may occur.
In 2018, the water level dropped almost to the dreaded black line of -214 meters, below which there is genuine risk of long-term ecological damage. In the summer of 2001, the water had already dipped briefly below the black line. In those years, several perennial streams, including a part of Nahal Tzalmon, were diverted to supply drinking water, turning once-lush green wadis to lunar-looking wastelands.
In 2022, the government launched the reverse carrier project, which officials said was designed to stabilize water levels in the Sea of Galilee. The idea was to replenish the lake using Israel’s recent desalination breakthroughs, achieved in 2009-2013, when Israel’s technological advances dramatically lowered desalination prices. The current lowest price in Israel is about $0.41 per cubic meter, among the lowest rates reported globally.
The breakthroughs moved Israel for the first time from chronic water scarcity to a structural water surplus, after a massive expansion of seawater desalination capacity culminated with the opening of the Sorek desalination plant in 2013.
For the first time, the country could reliably meet domestic demand even during drought years without over-pumping the Sea of Galilee and its aquifers. The shift became unmistakable by the end of the decade, when a combination of large-scale desalination and several wet winters left excess supplies instead of the usual shortfalls. Meanwhile, throughout the Levant, other countries are grappling with one of the worst drought periods in modern history.
Currently, desalinated water accounts for about 80% of Israel annual drinking water consumption of about 2.5–3.0 billion cubic meters.
The water relief has allowed Israel to rehabilitate additional streams, including Nahal Betzet in the Western Galilee (although that stream was dried up temporarily after it became a breeding ground for an invasive crawfish). Betzet’s water, too, had been diverted decades ago to address shortages.
The reverse carrier solved two issues simultaneously: It allowed desalinated water to flow into the existing infrastructure for distribution instead of requiring an alternative system, and it helped preserve the Kinneret as a natural asset. It is the world’s only freshwater stream that flows from the sea into a lake, according to the Mekorot national water company.
We pitched our tents and decided that, instead of returning to the car, we would walk another four miles along Tzalmon, and end our trip at Kibbutz Genosar on Kinneret’s shores, before taking a taxi to our car parked upstream. We spent a moonless night under a large sycamore fig tree growing atop the stream as bats feasted on its orange fruit all around us.
Although it has been flowing only briefly, fauna and flora quickly reclaimed the stream: catfish, tilapia, water snakes, water crabs, frogs and aquatic insects had traveled upstream and established a visible presence, alongside jackals, porcupine, wild boars, deer, hyraxes and gazelles that inhabit the Tzalmon nature reserve.
Along the stream, we passed archaeological finds that put this marvel of engineering in historical perspective: the ruins of a Jewish settlement from the Second Temple and early Roman periods, perched above the streambed. It included remains of buildings, cisterns, terraces and burial caves. Tzalmon is mentioned by Josephus as one of the Galilee communities fortified ahead of the Jewish revolt against Rome in 66–70 C.E. They had several flour mills and water channels whose remains are still visible today, reflecting centuries of agricultural use.
The terrain leveled off as we approached the Sea of Galilee. Tzalmon led us through Genosar’s banana groves and watermelon fields, which were bursting with ripe fruit awaiting harvest. Seeing the Sea of Galilee, the children picked up the pace. They found a pier to jump into the water from, just far enough from the Genosar lifeguard for him to ignore them.
On the beach, I struck up a conversation with Netanel, a fellow hiker.
“I’ve seen us take away several streams, like Betzet and Tzalmon,” said Netanel, a gardener whose parents came from Yemen, and who has one grandfather. “I never thought I’d live to see us giving them back.”
