“Ghost churches near Jordan River baptism site await reclamation”

http://www.reuters.com/article/uk-israel-palestinians-churches-idUSKBN15227H

We always take our Israel tour groups to visit this site, which I like.  Sometimes we talk with other tourists who are across the Jordan River (in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan).  The river is very narrow here — as, these days, it is everywhere else.

I believe that I first visited this specific site from the Jordanian side, with President Merrill J. Bateman of BYU and the president of the University of Jordan.  Prior to that, I don’t think that we could approach the site very closely, on account of the mines around it and its location right on the boundary of Israel and Jordan, which were still in a formal state of hostility until 1994.