Baqoura (Island of Peace)

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An area between the natural route of the Jordan river and a canal that fed the hydro power plant of Naharayim (unused today). Hence, an island.
In the 1930s and 1940s there was a hydro-electric plant here, at the junction of the "two rivers" (Hebrew: naharayim) of Jordan and Yarmuk. Canals and routes of pipeline are visible, as is the old Haifa-Damascus railway. The greenish area was a small reservoir, now gone. After 1948, this was in No Man's land between Israel and Jordan and was abandoned
The peace agreement signed by Israel's prime minister Yitzhak Rabin and Jordan's King Hussein in 1994 stipulated that sovereignty was returned to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, while Israeli farmers from a nearby Kibbutzim were allowed to keep cultivating its land, and tourists from Israel would be able to visit the island - for a duration of initially 25 years. This initial term "shall be renewed automatically for the same periods, unless one year prior notice of termination is given by either Party, in which case, at the request of either Party, consultations shall be entered into."

In 1997, a Jordanian soldier posted on the island opened fire and killed 7 Israeli schoolgirls. King Hussein's extraordinary visit to mourn the dead in Israel helped to ease the tension between the two countries.

In 2019, Jordan assumed full authority over the island, in line with Annex I (b) of the 1994 peace treaty. Access from the west is no longer possible whereas access from the Jordanian side is open to the public since November 2019.

Peace treaty, Annex I: www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/israel-jordan-peace-treaty...