Butayhah Basin
The Butayhah Basin is a valley by the northeast shores of the Sea of Galilee at the steep foothills of the central Golan Heights, Quneitra Governorate, Syria. The area is currently under Israeli occupation.
Etymology
The name of the valley Buq'at al-Butayhah is also spelled Bik'at Beteiha, or el-Batikha.Bethsaida Valley is the modern, administratively assigned name used by Israeli authorities, derived from the ancient town of Bethsaida, best known from the New Testament. In Hebrew beit means house, and tzed means both hunting and fishing. The resulting name means either "house of the fisherman" or "house of the hunter". The Hebrew Beit-tzaida, adapted to Greek phonetics and transliterated to Latin, yields Bethsaida.
Wetlands
The Jordan River and the streams coming down from the Central Golan create a landscape of swamps and open water surfaces, variously called deltas, estuaries or lagoons.The following five rivers or streams flow through the valley : Jordan, whose upper course ends here, at the northern edge; then Meshushim, Yehudiya, Daliyot, and Sfamnun/Sfamnon. The wetlands are protected as part of the. The reserve covers 6.930 dunams, some of it agricultural land, and represents a sequence of habitats.
The Meshushim River, which has already received the waters of Zavitan, and the Yehudiya River, merge shortly before reaching the lake and form the Zaki estuary, while Daliyot River creates the Majrase or Majrassa estuary, also known as the Daliyot River estuary. The Majrase is the largest freshwater nature reserve controlled by Israel.