Arava Institute in the News

June 2010

Mr. Robert Upton’s Philosophy of Planning and How It Applies to the Middle East

By Tafline Laylin, June 5, 2010
Green Prophet, Israel

“How Do We Want to Live?” asks England’s Former Secretary-General of the Royal Town Planning Institute Robert Upton at an urban planning conference in Israel.

Whereas Colombian planner Oscar Diaz (who we interviewed) was practical and sited specific planning examples at the recent anniversary conference at the Technion-Israel’s Institute of Technology, England’s planner Mr. Robert Upton’s speech was more philosophical. This seasoned response from the fourth Royal Town Planning Institute Secretary-General (and the only one to make it out alive, Upton jokes), asked of Israel’s planning audience to think reflectively about the challenges of their profession.

He began by recalling the history of England’s Royal Town Planning Institute, a relatively brief history that began in 1914. But he said that early on the profession became “cluttered” with “no shortage of bodies who claim to be specialists.” And the public was skeptical.

In a personal interview with Green Prophet he was careful to clarify that in the context of WWII, there was a tremendous need for England to rebuild itself and planners such as Thomas Sharp took on the challenge. Sharp later became “disillusioned” according to Upton, as the public became increasingly dissatisfied.

The profession also suffers from a sort of existential dilemma. It is never clear whether planners are designers or technical, whether the field falls under the parlay of social science, or if it is a hybrid.

Israelis such as architect Amos Brandeis and government planner Shamay Asif, who provided commentary after Upton’s presentation, also identified with this dilemma.

Another shared conflict in England and Israel is that between architects and planners. What role should design play in the planning process?

Architects believe that they should play an important role in the planning process, but planners think they are redundant. Upton says that it is important that planners “dont’ take the design out of the plan – design creates understanding.”

However, he also quoted English author Samuel Johnson, who said approximately that it isn’t necessary to know how to make a good chair in order to be able to recognize one. The fire rages on.

Upton summarized his discussion with the question “how do we want to live?” This is the question that all planning institutes should answer, for which Upton agreed with me that there is no blanket answer. The answer depends on the following variables: “what are our options? Our values? What are the facts? What are the rules? The power of relations? Who benefits, and who is not represented?” The answers will be different in every community.

Alexandra Frackelton from The Arava Institute raised the question of public participation. It was agreed that public participation in Israel is neglected, and that the process of encouraging it needs to be streamlined.

As a legal problem, it is currently being addressed. Meanwhile, going forward, Upton believes it is important to find a “shared ethic.”

While Mr. Upton’s presentation raised more questions than provided answers, John Simone believed that framing the right questions is the key to wisdom. Israeli planners are faced with a rapidly growing population, diminishing natural resources, and imminent climate change: their greatest challenge will be to find questions that will produce the best solutions for the greatest number of people.

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Two MSU students engineer Boren awards for international study

By Ilse-Mari Lee & Sally O'Neill, June 02, 2010

MSU News Service, USA

The arid Israeli desert and the elongated reach of Chile are both a long way from the hallways of Montana State University's Roberts Hall, home of the College of Engineering. Yet, for two MSU engineering students, the college has been a pathway to the two countries as they have become recipients of one of the U.S.' most prestigious scholarships for international study.

Katy Hansen, a recent graduate in industrial engineering and economics who hails from Bozeman, and Lara Wabrek, a senior majoring in mechanical engineering from Pocatello, Idaho, are both recipients of Boren awards, which are State Department sponsored fellowships to study abroad.

Hansen is the first MSU student to win a Boren Fellowship, which is the Boren award exclusively for graduate students. She will receive a $30,000 award for study in world regions critical to U.S. interests. Hansen will study water management in Israel and the Middle East and is already enrolled in an intensive Arabic language program to prepare her for her year abroad.

Wabrek, who received an undergraduate Boren, will spend the spring 2011 semester in Valdivia, Chile as a Boren Scholar. She will receive an award of $10,000 to study at the Austral University in Valdivia and hopes to perform an internship in the community.

According to Sally O'Neill, MSU's coordinator of Boren awards based in the Office of International Programs, it is believed to be the first time MSU has won a Boren graduate award. Wabrek's is the sixth undergraduate Boren received by an MSU student. The last was Kathy Laubach, an MSU business student who studied in Japan in 2001.

"This is extraordinary news for Montana State University and the College of Engineering," said Heidi Sherick, assistant dean for the MSU College of Engineering and the director of EMPower (Engineering Minority Program), a program that supports underrepresented groups in engineering, including women.

"The fact that both of the students selected were women in our college makes us especially proud. They are living examples of successful women engineers who are changing the world. Both women are bright, driven and a joy to be around. Ironically, they have been roommates during part of their time at Montana State."

Hansen learned about the Boren Fellowship from Ilse-Mari Lee, director of MSU's University Honors Program, who thought she might be a good fit for the graduate Boren. Hansen, in turn, thought her friend and former roommate, Wabrek, might be a good candidate for the undergraduate Boren award.

In addition, both Hansen and Wabrek came to MSU as Presidential Scholars, which is the equivalent of an academic full-ride, and are part of MSU's University Honors program.

Hansen, who had been considering other universities for her undergraduate studies, said the Presidential Scholarship, as well as the quality of the academic programs, professors, and extra-circular activities, were big reasons that she stayed in Bozeman and attended MSU.

A graduate of Bozeman High School, Hansen's father was an engineer in Iraq and both of her parents served in the U.S. State Department in Mumbai, India. After high school she worked in Vienna, Austria, and studied German before enrolling in college. Once at MSU, she became involved in a variety of activities that reflected her passion for global issues. She worked with MSU political scientist Linda Young researching improving agricultural economics in emerging countries. She was president of MSU's Engineers Without Borders chapter, which has become one of the most respected chapters in the country for its work to bring potable water to remote villages in Kenya. Hansen was also vice president of ASMSU and a member of MSU's Women in Engineering Student Advisory Board.

Hansen said she majored in engineering and minored in economics because she believes the two fields will give her the tools to help address some pressing global issue.

"My long-term goal is to apply industrial engineering principals to humanitarian crisis," Hansen said. She said she believes her future work will focus on the shortage of water, which she believes will become increasingly critical to global economics, politics and peace. Water systems will be essential to her work on her Boren Fellowship as she interns at the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies at Kibbutz Ketura in Israel. There she will conduct water resource management research in Israel, Palestine and Jordan.

Lee said that Hansen's Boren graduate fellowship is indeed "a significant opportunity" and applauds her for foregoing lucrative opportunities in private industry for a career in public service.

"I had dozens of people (at MSU) who were lifting me up, which is important to the discussion of any accomplishment that I may have had here," Hansen said, adding that an advantage of attending MSU was that from her first year, she was able to do research with professors on meaningful subjects, such as Young's international political economics. "I don't think I would have had such opportunities (elsewhere)."

Boren fellows are required to work for one year following the fellowship at a government job. Hansen eventually hopes to enroll in graduate school.

Unlike Hansen, Wabrek was not already familiar with MSU while growing up, but she knew about academia. Her father is an engineering professor at Idaho State University. Wabrek said she knew from a young age that she wanted to major in engineering. But, her requirements were a little unorthodox.

"I was looking for a school that offered both engineering and fencing," she said. "There are not as many schools with that combination as you might think."

While at MSU, Wabrek has been involved in fencing, although now she primarily coaches rather than competes. She has also served as an Engineering Ambassador, representing mechanical engineering in outreach events, recruitment and student advocacy. Wabrek's undergraduate Boren requires that she be fluent in Spanish. She will return to MSU to get another major in Spanish and has also spent a "glorious" semester abroad studying in Valencia, Spain. .

Wabrek will take courses at a local university while in Chile, will live with a local family and will have an internship in the community. She will graduate next May then she will be required to work for the government for a year in exchange for the scholarship. She eventually hopes to attend graduate school, perhaps majoring in biomechanics, perhaps in the medical field.

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May 2010

Arava Power Company: Should it or Shouldn't it?

April 2010

Op-Ed by Rabbi Michael Cohen: Einstein, Obama and Binyamin Netanyahu

By Michael M. Cohen, April 25, 2010
Jerusalem Post, Israel

What do they all have in common? Zionism.

For the last 34 years of his life, Albert Einstein was the most famous spokesman and advocate for the Zionist movement. Many may find it surprising that a pacifist and opponent of nationalism like Einstein was the champion of the Zionist cause in the decades leading up to the establishment of the Jewish state in 1948. That involvement with Zionism, however, also serves as a cautionary tale, adding light on the present relationship between US President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.

Einstein’s support of the Zionist enterprise was absent during the first four decades of his life. It was after he moved to Berlin in 1914 that he said, “I discovered for the first time that I was a Jew, and I owe this discovery more to the gentiles than to the Jews.”

Tied to that awakened identity was his growing awareness “of our precarious situation.” With that new orientation Einstein fully embraced the Zionist cause as the only answer to the Jewish situation. His visit to the United States in 1921 on behalf of Zionism was a sensation. It had the same electricity the Beatles generated when they first came to America in 1964. Einstein was a star, constantly followed by the media, including his meeting with president Warren Harding. His visit instilled a deep sense of pride in the American Jewish community.

For the rest of his life he wrote about, spoke out for and worked on behalf of Zionism.

While Einstein’s embrace of the movement was full, it was not without a serious reservation. His skepticism toward nationalism, that led him as a 15-year-old to renounce his German citizenship, never abated. His support of Zionism was always qualified by his fear of what it and the Jewish state could become vis-a-vis nationalism.

In 1929 he wrote to fellow scientist and future first president of Israel Chaim Weizmann, “If we do not succeed in finding the path of honest cooperation and coming to terms with the Arabs, we will not have learned anything from our 2,000-year-old ordeal and will deserve the fate which will beset us.” While addressing the “Third Seder” of the National Labor Committee for Palestine in 1938, he said, “I am afraid of the inner damage Judaism will sustain – especially from the development of a narrow nationalism within our own ranks.”

The question of a narrow nationalism opposed to a broader, more embracing nationalism has been an ongoing question within the Zionist movement for a century. It is the debate between two Zionisms, nationalist Zionism with its maximalist attitude toward territory and the borders of the Jewish state and cultural Zionism with its greater emphasis on the type of society that a Jewish state should be.

The timing of the Ramat Shlomo building announcement during Vice President Joe Biden’s visit last month showed the contradiction between wanting peace and acting as though it means nothing. The good thing about this episode is that, by getting in the US administrations’s face, muddling for Israel is no longer an option. It needs to make a clear decision on which Zionism it wishes to be.

Albert Einstein and his fellow Nobel Laureate Barack Obama are clearly within the cultural Zionist camp, while Binyamin Netanyahu acts within the nationalist camp. US policy toward Israel in regard to settlements and borders has been consistent since 1967. The only change we are witnessing now in the Obama administration is a vocal, public expression and enforcement of that policy. Those who are shocked by the message the president is sending should step back and understand that he has thrown himself within that much older debate between those two camps in Zionist movement.

Disagree, if you will, with the president, but not because he has abandoned Israel, rather because he has taken a more difficult path. This president who holds a Passover Seder on the campaign trail and in the White House has decided to enter the mispacha, including one of the fiercest debates within that family.

His support for Israel is, as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently said, “rock solid, unwavering, enduring and forever.”

However like his fellow Zionist supporter Albert Einstein he is advocating for a particular vision of what Zionism stands for and means. And in that vision he sees what is good both for Israel and the United States.

The writer is author of Einstein’s Rabbi: A Tale of Science and the Soul (Shires Press) and a faculty member of the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies at Ben-Gurion’s University.

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Earth Day 2010: Israeli School Makes Link Between Healthy Planet, World Peace

By Linda Gradstein, April 21, 2010
AOL News

On a kibbutz in Israel's Arava Desert, Arabs and Jews are taking a first step toward peace by working together for a cause that knows no boundaries: the environment.

"Environmental problems in Israel are not for the most part contained within the borders of Israel -- what we do here will affect what's happening in the West Bank and Jordan," explained Clive Lipchin, director of research at the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies, which runs the program. "So if you really want to understand environmental problems and if you want to address them in a comprehensive and sustainable way, the only way to do it is on a regional cooperative basis."

More than 500 students -- Israelis, Palestinians, Jordanians and North Americans -- have studied at the Arava Institute, founded in 1996 and affiliated with Ben Gurion University of the Negev. The alumni work in dozens of governmental and nongovernmental organizations having to do with the environment. They remain in close touch, and often cooperate.

"One of our alumni is involved in working to fix the problem of the sinkholes in the Dead Sea on the Israeli side," said alumni director Sharon Benhaim. "And one day his boss said, 'I wish we could cooperate with people in Jordan who are also working on this. So he said, 'No problem,' and through our alumni network he found his counterpart on the other side."

What is unique about the program is that all the students live together on a kibbutz, or communal settlement. They eat in the kibbutz dining hall along with the kibbutz members and are often invited to attend religious ceremonies, such as the Passover seder.

Some Arab students say their families are uncomfortable with their studies.

"When I told my mother that I wanted to go and study in Israel, she freaked out," said Jordanian Osama Sullman, who recently completed his master's degree and now works for an environmental organization in Amman. "It was hard for me to talk about the [Arab-Israeli] conflict because I only knew one side -- my side."

But Sullman said he soon learned the conflict is far more complicated than he had thought, and his time at the Arava Institute changed him.

"At the end of the semester, where do you go? You leave this bubble, but you don't leave it as you came," he said. "You take everything you have learned back to your society -- in my case, Jordan. We are the generation that can make a change."

"This program opened my eyes in so many ways," agreed Israeli Amit Chertoff, an alumna who serves as student life coordinator. "I learned so much about environmental issues and so much about my neighbors here. I almost don't have words to describe it."

For Earth Day, Chertoff is offering the students and kibbutz members the chance to participate in things like an "eco-cinema," featuring movies on environmental themes, and building an earthen fence around the kibbutz's petting zoo.

As with everything else in the Middle East, politics often intervenes here. In 2006, Israel passed a law that Palestinian students were not allowed to study in Israel for security reasons. The Arava Institute, along with Gisha, an organization that defends Palestinian rights, appealed to the Israeli Supreme Court and arranged an exception for institute students.

This year, the 42 students are one-third Arabic speaking (both Jordanians and Palestinians), one-third Hebrew speaking and one-third English speaking.

"Israelis, Palestinians and Jordanians live in the same room," said David Lehrer, executive director of the institute. "There may be a difference of opinion about history or politics or about why the conflict started in the first place. They all have to learn to live together, as angry as they may be about each other."

But Lehrer said the most important lesson the students learn is that environmental issues are a microcosm of the broader conflict.

"It's not if the Israelis win, the Palestinians lose, and if the Palestinians win, the Israelis lose," he said. "If one side loses, both sides lose. Our alumni are making a critical difference to the dialogue among peoples in the region about environmental issues, about natural resources and about how we need to work together to make this place a better place to live in."

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January 2010

Op-Ed by Rabbi Michael M. Cohen: The Lesson of Tu B’Shvat: A Judaism for Every Season

By Michael M. Cohen, January 13, 2010
The Forward, US

Tu B’Shvat is once again on the horizon. The holiday marks the winding down of winter and the arrival of spring in the Land of Israel. The different seasons remind us that change is the way of the world.Change and adaptation also happen to be among the keys to the longevity and vitality of the Jewish people. As Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan taught, Judaism is the manifestation of the Jewish people as “an evolving religious civilization.”

Tu B’Shvat is a perfect example of the evolutionary nature of the Jewish people. It is first mentioned in the Mishna in a debate between Hillel and Shammai. At issue then, some 2,000 years ago, was the question of what date should separate one year from another in relation to fruit-tree harvests. Such a marker was necessary so our ancestors would know how to calculate various tithes as well as the age of trees for orlah— the biblical prohibition against eating fruit from a tree during its first three years.

Hillel won the debate, and the date was set on the full moon of the month of Shvat, the 15th of Shvat, which is what Tu B’Shvat literally means. Since the destruction of the Second Temple, however, Tu B’Shvat has not been utilized as a tax date for tithes, although the date is still used to determine the age of trees for orlah.

In the 16th century, Rabbi Isaac Luria and his circle of kabbalistic followers in Safed brought new layers of meaning to Tu B’Shevat. Wrestling with the theological implications of the expulsion from Spain, they developed an innovative theology holding that at the very beginning of the creation of the world, there was a break, an imperfection, that we are called upon to repair. The Tu B’Shvat Seder was created as a way to help bring about tikkun olam — the repair of the world.

Inspired by the Passover Seder, which utilizes various foods in commemorating the repair of our status from slavery to freedom, the Tu B’Shvat Seder was premised on the notion that when we take fruit from a tree, an imbalance is created that needs to be repaired through the saying of the proper blessings. For the kabbalists of Safed, traumatized by the expulsion and trying to make sense of a broken world, Tu B’Shevat came to be seen as a path to repair and renewal.

Three centuries later, also in the Land of Israel, one of the early Zionist movement’s goals was the reforestation of the land. As early as the First Aliyah at the end of the 19th century, we see Tu B’Shvat become a day to plant trees. With each successive wave of Jewish immigration to the land of Israel, Tu B’Shvat grew in importance.

The Jewish National Fund, founded in 1901, turned tree planting, particularly on Tu B’Shvat, into part of the national ethos. The Zionist movement also turned to Tu B’Shvat as a symbol of revival, beyond just reforestation, when the date was chosen for the opening of the Technion in 1925 and of the first Knesset in 1949. It came to represent the blossoming of a restored Jewish nation.

More recently, in reaction to the birth of the worldwide environmental movement, Tu B’Shvat has taken on an additional role as the Jewish equivalent of Earth Day. By the mid-1980s, there was a revival of Tu B’Shvat Seders, with the expanded and heightened message to care for the environment. At the conclusion of the first decade of the 21st century, the popularity of Tu B’Shvat in its latest manifestation continues to grow.

As we have seen, in its 2,000 years of existence, Tu B’Shvat has taken on different roles and meanings as the reality and related needs of the Jewish people change. First created to demarcate a tax and fiscal year, it later developed into a ritual for a new kabbalistic theology, and was rediscovered by the modern Zionist movement. Finally, in our day, it has become the Jewish environmental holiday par excellence.

There is a school of thought that says stasis is the key to maintaining authentic Judaism. This is an outlook with many followers, but it is proven wrong by the grand sweep of Jewish history. Our challenge today, as it has been in every generation, is to distill what is at the core and essence of Judaism and discover, when needed, new and sometimes even radical ways to go forward.

The strength of a tree lies in its flexibility to bend so it does not break in powerful winds. For many trees there is also the ability to change appearance with the seasons. This is what takes place above ground, while below ground a tree’s roots remain firmly planted. It is with this dynamic understanding that we say of Torah and the Jewish tradition, “It is a tree of life to those who hold fast to it.”

Rabbi Michael M. Cohen is director of special projects for the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies and the author of “Einstein’s Rabbi: A Tale of Science and the Soul” (Shires Press, 2008).

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December 2009

Environment Journalists, Bloggers and Activists From Israel, Jordan and the PA Unite: Let’s Meet Jordan

By Karin Kloosterman, December 24, 2009

Green Prophet blog

It was 20 hours we will never forget. Nineteen journalists, activists and bloggers from Jordan, the PA and Israel met at an international blogging workshop in Jordan intending to make better environment bloggers (and friends) out of all of us. Hosted by Green Prophet, Volunteers for Peace in Bethlehem and the Masar Center in Jordan, we shared, we ate, we danced and we wrote. Blog posts from the event are forthcoming.

Besides all of our mutual desires to share and to learn more about communicating our regional problems in the global blogosphere, each and every one of us all shared our local environmental issues, projects and dreams. Readers should take note: it’s very uncommon for Palestinians, Jordanians and Israelis to meet in such face-to-face encounters. We overcame our fears and stereotypes to broaden our worldviews and to make change.

In order of presentation, let’s start with Jordan:

It seems that all of the Jordanian participants had studied at the Arava Institute in Israel, so they were already attuned to the importance of cross-cultural dialogue in solving green problems.

We met Sawsan and Osama who have both studied at the Arava Institute (see them in the video below), and who are instigating a pilot project called “Thin Film” to see how thin, transparent and flexible solar panels from Arizona can be used on greenhouses in Jordan and the Middle East. The idea here is that the solar PV panels with limited efficiency can be used to collect light energy for electricity, while letting enough sunlight through for photosynthesis. The project set for 14 months has been underway for only 2 already.

For example, the electricity generated can be used for pumping water to the greenhouse plants. It works already on crops like algae. The Jordanian team, partnered with other locals in the region, are looking to see if thin films will work for other crops like tomatoes and cucumbers.

We learn that only 16% of the Jordanians use water solar heaters on their homes, while in Ramallah in the Palestinian Authority, about 80% of all homes use this method for heating water.

Meet Osama and Sawsan on film.

Zein tells us about an eco-schools project she is trying to create in Amman, by building environment clubs to create a culture of activism in Jordan, a culture that is lacking. “The best thing for the future is working with children,” she says. “They will watch what their moms and dads are doing at home.” Among some of the planned activities is a communal garden and recycling center.

Meanwhile Khaloud is taking a survey on what’s needed in environmental education in Jordan and is working on building a teaching curriculum.

Hug people not trees! Manal explains to us that water is relatively cheap in Jordan, and people don’t have awareness to conservation. On another note, she’s working on a countrywide campaign to collect money for planting trees in Jordan and the Palestinian Authority. People are mocking her work. Why are you collecting money for trees, they ask?

So far she’s help collect enough money to plant about 1 million trees, and hopes to plant 2 million more in the coming year or so.

The group then met Mohammad a fairly active blogger and social renegade for Global Voices Online. He talks about the need of reducing the cost of solar PV cells to a price point that’s reasonable for the Jordanians to consider using it. Today solar PV generated energy costs for about $3 per kilowatt hour in Jordan. While people pay about .9 cents per kilowatt hour in Jordan for power from the grid. In Germany, power plants can get the price point down to as low as .15 cents per kilowatt hour.

Can it be done in Jordan? Transmission costs will need to be lowered, he says. Solar powered water heaters, he adds, are something that can be used now in Jordan. They cost about JD 600 to install (about $850). He advocates the use of such systems.

Next up is our meeting with the group from Israel. Stay tuned.

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The Jewish Beduin

By Lauren Gelfond Feldinger, December 10
Jerusalem Post, Israel

She could never have expected to drop her crusade for marine biology to live among the Beduin in Israel. Growing up Orthodox and Zionist, she could never have imagined any of the Middle East desert adventures that were to follow.

Ilana Meallem, 32, grew up in London underneath an Israeli flag tacked to the wall over her bed. Her Egyptian father of Iraqi descent filled her childhood with stories about fleeing repression in Egypt, and adventure tales of Israel's pre-state underground forces working against the British. On public buses, she watched as her non-Jewish peers taunted her siblings in their Jewish day school uniforms. England was for her just a random country housing her family until she could grow up and escape to her spiritual homeland in Israel.

After volunteering for two years in the IAF as a reconnaissance photographer, and then studying biology and environmental studies at Hebrew University, she spent most of her early 20s traveling. She started in Cairo to find the cousins she had never met. In South America and Asia, she volunteered in disadvantaged communities and interned at conservation societies for dolphins, whales, turtles, coral reefs and nature reserves. Later, when she signed on for graduate studies at the Arava Institute of Environmental Studies and Ben-Gurion University's desert studies program, she came armed with a proposal dedicated to dolphin welfare.

But the people she met there, combined with a sustainable-development field trip to unrecognized Beduin villages in the Negev, made her realize that she didn't need to look for people and projects to help all over the world when there was so much to be done at home and in the region.

Are you a Beduin?

My friends call me a techo-beduin, because I'm hooked up to wireless Internet through a cellphone modem. But I have been nomadic for the past 12 years, and in the last six it has been extreme, moving all over the Middle East and the world with my laptop and drum. In the last two years my lifestyle took a major upgrade, and now, when in Israel, I use a camper, not as a car but as my home, parked alone in forests, deserts, by riverbanks, beaches, in friends' backyards and in Beduin villages.

The van has a kitchen and bed, but I don't sleep in the van unless it's raining. Sleeping under the stars and waking up with the sun helps me feel grounded, connected, inspired and rejuvenated. I love to light a fire at dawn and await the new day. I make bread on a Beduin sajj [a metal plate over a fire] and I shower in nature at any water source, or simply from a two-liter water bottle with holes in the lid. I live as close to nature and people as possible with minimal impact on the environment and maximum freedom.

What was the first thing that happened in your travels that influenced your lifestyle?

Through a cetacean training at the Phuket Marine Biology Research Center in Thailand, I joined a one-month river dolphin survey in Bangladesh's Sunderbans, the largest mango forest in the world, famous for its man-eating Bengal tigers. I was the only Jewish person with 29 Muslims, one Christian and a Hindu.

On the boat, I frequently hung out below deck, talking, singing and playing my drum with the crew. These workers - fisherman, guards, cooks, the captain - were blown away. Even the Bangladeshi researchers rarely came below deck - workers and researchers are always segregated. Soon all of us were having cultural nights on deck, dancing, singing and praying together in Bengali, Arabic and Hebrew. I was the first Jew any of them had met and they started to call me "the healer."

I always loved being in nature, but this was the beginning of my journey in trust and faith, and seeing myself on a mission to bring a positive Jewish example into the Muslim world.

What was one of the most unexpected things that happened in your travels?

I was staying in Dacca, the capital of Bangladesh, with the family of a friend from the survey. They were in love with the movie Fiddler on the Roof - they grew up with it and knew all the songs. I would never have dreamed that I would arrive in this far away place, surrounded by a population of some 12 million Muslims, and that they would be watching this and that I would be watching with them, singing with them and explaining things, like what is a kippa and what all the customs are. They were so excited to meet a Jew.

Why did you leave all your adventures to go to graduate school?

I came back to Jerusalem for my sister's wedding and, by chance, heard about the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies, an interdisciplinary program training Palestinians, Israelis, Jordanians and internationals as the region's next environmental leaders. I realized that to solve environmental problems it is not enough to know science - you also have to fund-raise, understand cultural, political, social and gender aspects and how to establish or work with NGOs. It became clear I needed more training. I wrote my application while volunteering in a shanty town in Chile.

A few months later I was working in the Pantanal Nature Reserve in Brazil, leading safaris on horseback, swimming with piranhas and anacondas, helping set up an ecological center and training hunters as guides. I had to travel one hour to a phone for my interview.

Once accepted to study, you intended to focus on the Israeli bottlenose dolphin population. What happened?

We had a field trip to Wad el-Nam, an unrecognized Beduin village in the Negev, next to the Ramat Hovav toxic waste treatment facility. These people were living without electricity, in tin shacks under huge high-voltage lines from the power station, and were getting sick from the pollution. And I was touched by these tribal women. I had seen the makeshift villages surrounded by garbage, but never thought about why they live like this.

This began a journey to understand how government policies forcing these once proud, healthy and vibrant semi-nomadic people off their traditional range lands to relocate and urbanize, left them without traditional livelihoods, with scarce possibilities and with huge public health problems. I was struck - I had been all over the world volunteering and right under my nose in a place I love so much was something so unjust and volatile.

Wasn't this also the first time you met Palestinians?

I never had a deep connection with a Palestinian. Like many Israelis, I was afraid of them and believed they wanted to throw all us Jews into the sea. At the Arava Institute, it was my first time to hear personal stories of hardship faced by Palestinians and Jordanians and Arabs living in Israel. I trusted these accounts - they were not from books or newspapers but were personal histories from real people who had become my friends. Their stories opened my eyes to understand better the complexities of the region.

How did you come to live with the Beduin?

The more I learned, the more I couldn't believe what was happening there and the more I realized that Israelis don't know. So I told my adviser that even though I have no background in anthropology, sociology or Arabic, I have to live with the Beduin to understand. He connected me to an expert on Negev and Sinai Beduin, who introduced me to a Beduin family. I was also able to get several scholarships to research environmental health in Beduin communities.

What are your first memories about the Negev Beduin village of Umm Batin?

I first went to meet them during Ramadan. A respected sheikh in the village took me to a very bare tin home with asbestos ceilings. Everything was broken and poor. One of his wives spoke some English and we had an amazing conversation about her premarital life in a nearby Beduin township, before moving to live in the harsh conditions of this unrecognized village. We ate rice and I picked out the meat.

A few months later, I came back, this time to stay for a few months and conduct my study. My first day I hung out with the women and kids, drumming and dancing to songs on their transistor radio. The father has three wives, 15 kids and 13 grandchildren. He said: "You are like my daughter now; welcome to my home. You have my protection. Don't walk alone outside after dark, but know that you are safe." They were so warm to me.

I slept outside under a mosquito net on uncovered mats with the kids and the wife who was not having her alternating night with the sheikh. Lying under the stars, I would tell them about my world and straight away became a member of the family. I never once felt in danger, especially since I put on the head scarf. They were really touched by that. The most dangerous thing in a Beduin village is the dogs. I carried stones in my pocket. When I went to see my family for Shabbat, it was like going from the Sudan to Switzerland.

What did you do all day?

I conducted a pioneering field research into the public and environmental health impacts of waste disposal practices related to Israeli government polices of denying or providing inadequate basic municipal services to the Negev Beduin population. I observed and led interviews to learn about how their way of life changed, what do they buy, what do they use, what do they throw away and where.

After three months, I lived with another family and recruited a research assistant from the village. Using his non-roadworthy car, which we turned on with a knife, we drove all over Beduin areas, even in Tel Sheva, where even the police don't go. In these areas, it's the wild west. My identity made it easier to build trust - being from England with a Jewish Egyptian father and that I was learning Arabic. As a foreign woman, I also had access to the men's and the women's worlds.

What did your research find?

Despite having official documents of land ownership from the Ottoman Empire, the villagers of Umm Batin fought for recognition by Israel for decades, suffering from home demolitions and the spraying of herbicides on their crops until 2005, when they won the legal battle. Traditionally, lifestyles revolved around raising livestock and practicing rain-fed agriculture, and all the organic waste was put to use as food for livestock, fertilizer for land or energy sources for heating and cooking. Old clothes were reused as rags for sanitation or as patches for clothes and tents. Hides from slaughtered animals, wool and hair were used as stuffing for mattresses or pillows, to weave tents, make bags or decorations.

But in the past 25 to 30 years, government policies and the villagers' increased contact with modern lifestyles and Western consumer culture resulted in a shift from the traditional "waste free" lifestyles. Today consumption levels are much higher and the kinds and amounts of waste being produced and needing disposal include tin, aluminum, plastic, glass, metal, concrete and diapers. Yet without access to municipal waste disposal services, the villagers are literally being buried under their own waste. Burning of waste in the backyards is the most common disposal method. This is a serious health concern: New types of waste contain materials that, when burned, are explosive or produce toxic chemicals, such as dioxins and furans.

Add to this pollution, people placing contaminated wood and used plastic bags on the fire used for heating, cooking, washing, making tea and baking Beduin pita. All these pollutants can make people very sick - migraines, birth deformities, cancer and respiratory problems. For this reason, burning waste is illegal in Israel. For cultural reasons, women especially deal with the waste and are enclosed at home more, so they and their children are most at risk. There is minimal awareness of these hazards and safer options are often unavailable for economic reasons. The Hebron wadi, which runs for four kilometers through the heart of the village, was also polluted with hazardous chromium, and sheep and goats grazed on vegetation contaminated by this untreated sewage, meaning the meat can be toxic. There was also a huge stench that is horrific from the sewage and piles of rubbish, animal waste and on occasions, dead animal carcasses.

Is paying municipal taxes a factor in getting municipal services, like garbage removal?

In general, yes. But in the case of unrecognized villages, you cannot pay taxes if the settlement is not recognized. But even the seven legal Beduin townships get less funding from the national government compared to Jewish towns and, with their extremely high population density, less land is available to safely distance waste dumping from the homes. This encourages the use of informal and hazardous alternatives, like in some cases, garbage and animal waste burning seen in the middle of town.

Further worsening the situation is general poverty and absence of any real economic activity in the Beduin settlements, meaning municipalities collect extremely low levels of taxes. Since government grants supposed to compensate for this deficiency fall short, the level of municipal services is well below acceptable levels.

But this is a very complex issue with many political, economic and cultural power dynamics. Regardless, my research showed that the environmental and public health impact of the lacking municipal services in this community also potentially endangers neighboring Jewish communities. So this is really a transboundary environmental and public health issue that should be of concern to all.

The restriction on grazing in the village and the desire to keep raising livestock means that manure and soiled straw from animal pens piles up next to homes, attracting rats that bite children, flea infestation and waste that is so bothersome that residents often burn it and the fires sometimes smolder for weeks, creating choking smoke and hidden coals that children often stumble onto, burning hands and feet. In addition, the absence of electricity means diesel generators are prevalent, but very costly, so are operated only for a few hours, meaning refrigerators do not keep food fresh during off hours. Gas is prevalent for cooking and heating but also a big expense for this impoverished society, so there are cases of Beduin children dying of pneumonia in harsh winters.

What solutions have you proposed?

This whole issue of energy and waste is a big problem, but one solution is to turn this waste into a resource and use the human and animal manure to create biogas to fuel lights, cook on, run refrigerators, heaters and as a fertilizer by-product. I approached the Arava Institute, which helped me and Arab alumnus Mazen Zoabi to work together to develop a Beduin biogas project, in cooperation with many academic institutions and NGOs. We are developing an integrated biogas system adapted to arid lands. At a training course in China we met a Jordanian biogas researcher and have since developed a project for small-scale biogas digesters in Beduin communities in Jordan and Israel. We are now building our first pilot. It's an amazing solution that came out of my research.

Was your level of freedom difficult for the Beduin?

This is a big conflict in my life: For any woman, the way I live in my camper and traveling the world and sleeping outside is on the extreme side of free. I meet so many people who are more restricted than me. Some of my Beduin sisters have zero freedom. For most of them it's just a dream to travel, and I worry if it is fair that I'm sharing stories of my journeys. But I know each person has her path. I was born with a certain level of freedom and feel it is my obligation to maximize this, to live life to its fullest, because I can and so many people cannot.

Sometimes it has a certain level of influence. Three young Beduin girls in the family I lived with are now doing a year of community service in Beduin towns and villages. One will study environmental science and my research assistant even traveled to Turkey and Brazil. When in the village, I often find myself helping to prepare Beduin women for their wedding night - we have amazing late-night conversations about the feminine aspects of life. I gave one woman her first massage, she was crying out of gratitude. It is insane. How many times have I received a massage in my life?

Were there cultural difficulties for you?

Some women cannot go to the health clinic without being escorted by men, but some women go on to study medicine, so the independence of women really varies within Beduin society. Verbal and physical fighting seems common and there is a lot of tension between the wives. I saw a lot of difficult things, but was careful to keep a neutral position. I try to be true to who I am and how I act affects them. For example, the kids don't get a lot of affection but they know from me they will get a lot of hugs and love. I am myself and people see that and take what they want.

How did living with the Beduin influence you?

I learned a lot of Arabic there and it helped me to make friends and appreciate Arabic culture, something I was afraid of before. I have since visited Jordan 25 times and Egypt 10 times, and other places around the region, and Arabic is the key to connecting and feeling comfortable. Before if I sat at a bus stop and someone was speaking Arabic, I got nervous. I didn't know what they were saying, and now I can turn and speak to them. I also learned Arabic dance from the many weddings and to make bread on a sajj - very useful when you live outdoors.

Most of all, I learned about hospitality. Beduin are the ultimate hosts and as a Jew I learned that this was the trait of the patriarch Abraham/Ibrahim, the father of Isaac and Ishmael, the ancestor of all Jews, Christians and Muslims, that his tent would be open from all sides, welcoming all who came.

Through my camper and my nomadic life, I also try to create a sacred space that welcomes everyone. Last winter I hosted hundreds of people from all over Israel and the West Bank at the Dead Sea. I am sure I was able to create this welcoming space because of my years knowing the Beduin and learning to love part of the Arab culture and embodying this very positive aspect of their tradition.

You often sleep alone in the wilderness. Don't you get scared?

I love to feel a trust in the universe and in the creator. Lying under the stars, before I sleep, I always say the Jewish prayer, "afkid ruchi b'yadecha"- I place my spirit in your hands- and I mean it with all my heart.

When you travel alone in the Middle East alone, have you been threatened?

In Jordan, after meeting with King Abdullah to talk about Israeli youth, I went with a group of delegates to hear live oud music. As I was dancing, a 60-year-old man asked me where I was from. I said, "I am your neighbor." He said, "What? From Israel?" and he put his hands around my throat. I said, "It's okay; I love you" - it just came out. I even surprised myself with this automatic response. I knew it wasn't me he wanted to choke but all the stories and his suffering that at that moment I represented. I looked into his eyes and said it again and he let go and walked away. I couldn't believe it. Later he came back and started to talk to me. He told me he was a Palestinian refugee and I told him who I am, what I do, and we talked for a while. It was a powerful experience.

Things are not always what you expect. My Beduin family has half their family in Jordan and once when I went with their tribe to visit, I got off the bus in Amman and took a taxi. The driver saw that I had Hebrew written in my notebook and told me he was from the West Bank and had worked with Jews selling fruits and vegetables in Lod, before travel was restricted. He loved Hebrew so insisted on driving me for one hour to my destination instead of dropping me at the bus stop, so that we could talk in Hebrew. He also put in a tape of [Israeli singer] Zehava Ben. The next week he hosted me in his house in Amman to meet his family.

There is so much desire for connection if you meet people and are not fearful. Whenever I travel the Middle East, I have always told the truth about my roots, born in England to a Jewish family with a father from Egypt and now based in Jerusalem. But for a nomad like me, who has spent time in nearly 50 countries in the last 12 years, where I am from is a complicated question.

Recently I have started responding with a quote from the Koran, "Min blaad Allah el awasa"- I am from the magnificent country of God, which is the same source for all people, and always in the Middle East, people respond to this with, "waana kaman," - and me too. This always leads to a wonderful conversation about good and bad people in all religions and countries.

What have you been doing recently?

Since completing my research in 2006, which received two awards, I have been working at the Arava Institute on the Beduin biogas project and, with other alumni, on projects to encourage the network of graduates from all over the region to stay connected and involved in joint environmental projects in Israel, Palestine and Jordan.

Most recently, I also initiated several workshops in Jordan, Egypt, Turkey, Palestine and Israel that teach a holistic approach to activism. So many young peace and environmental activists from this region are burned out, exhausted and even depressed, so we encourage them to work together on overcoming personal and community obstacles, and to build personal, community and environmental sustainability, which we consider to be peace-building. We use tools from many traditions, from yoga to talking workshops and studying the earth-based wisdoms of the American Indians. Such tools are especially hard for activists from the Arab and Muslim countries to access, and doing it together with Israelis is very complex and challenging but ultimately very powerful. At the events held in Jordan, Turkey and Egypt, we have had young peace activists participate from countries including Iran, Iraq, UAE, Egypt and Afghanistan, together with Israelis.

I am also a core member of the Musaique Project, with musicians from around the Middle East, who meet to play, sing, perform and record together.

Don't you meet people in the Middle East who don't want to affiliate with an Israeli Jew?

At a UN energy training course in Amman, I was the only Jewish Israeli with six Palestinian and Jordanian Arava Institute graduates and 60 people from the Middle East, including Saudis, Kuwaitis, Syrians, Lebanese, Yemenis and Iraqis. Many participants were upset that an Israeli was there and determined to avoid contact with me. The next day I decided to sit next to a woman from Lebanon and immediately asked her about how her family was affected by the last war with Israel, saying that I was sorry for her suffering. I think this really shocked her and slowly she opened up and we connected.

On the third day we were supposed to watch Al Gore's film on the environment, and by mistake or serendipity, someone put on Encounter Point, a film made by the Bereaved Parents Forum, showing Palestinian and Israeli families who lost relatives in the fighting and were working together for reconciliation and change in their own societies. Nobody from any of these represented Arab countries would likely have seen such a program and they were taken by surprise.

Twenty minutes later, when the organizers came to check on us and saw the wrong film playing, they tried to switch it, but nobody wanted them to. Person after person came up to me afterward in tears and told me that after this film they were able to better understand where I might be coming from and that it was so powerful to meet their first Jew or Israeli. I developed deep and real relationships with many participants and presented my work on the Beduin and this was also a credential for me, that as a Jewish Israeli I went to live with and cared about Palestinian Beduin. The mutual love and respect between myself and the Arab Arava graduates also did wonders and gave a powerful message.

With a young delegation at the Fourth Petra Peace Conference last year, most of the Arabs from Palestine, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, etc., boycotted the Jewish Israelis because 26 Palestinians had been killed in Gaza that morning and because participants from their delegations in the previous year had problems with all the publicity when they returned home. I was not aware of the boycott and just kept trying to connect. The people from Arab and Muslim states were not so responsive but on the last day, the Palestinian boycott organizers said, "Thank you, you never stopped smiling or trying to speak to us. This meant so much to us and the boycott was really was a mistake - you are the people we should have come to to get our story out." This is the real peace work.

What's next?

During the violence in Sderot and Gaza last January, it was clear to me that Palestinian and Israeli activists needed to maintain relations and support each other, so I organized two weekend gatherings at the Dead Sea. At the first event, 100 Israelis and Palestinians came, and the next, 150 came - about 60 percent were Palestinians from Ramallah, Jerusalem, Hebron, Nablus and Bethlehem and Beduin from across the Negev and the North. Everyone brought food, wood, tents, water. We had sharing circles, prayers, workshops and just hung out for a few days.

For so many Palestinian and Israeli organizations, it is difficult to find meeting places, let alone in a nourishing and rejuvenating environment. It is often humiliating and time consuming for Palestinians to get permits to enter Israel. So often we travel abroad to meetings in the US, Turkey and Jordan, spending thousands of dollars. But there is a common vision to build a permanent retreat center in part of the West Bank that has easy access to Israelis and Palestinians. It will be built in an ecological way, and use permaculture and other sustainability and renewable energy techniques, in a natural setting. This will be created by Israelis, Palestinians and internationals, some of whom will live on site in the community. This will be a place I could settle in, trade my caravan for a simple home and start creating my own tribe.

In the short term, in addition to my other Middle East projects, my next step is moving my home to its winter location at the Dead Sea for two or three months and continuing to hold joint retreats and gatherings in nature, including one in January for Palestinian and Israeli women.

How do you finance these projects?

Fund-raising is so time consuming and often filled with great letdowns. I wish to have access to enough funds to be able to run these events in peace and provide scholarships if needed. But maybe this is part of my inner work, to plan in the belief that things will work out; that somehow adequate funds will arrive as this good work is so needed.

Many people say that this kind of work is the work of hippies who live in their own world and are just small drops in the sea and have no influence. How would you respond?

First, peace begins with each of us, so I work on myself and see how my experiences have transformed me. Then I see all the people I have met and touched and helped to meet others, and I have seen their transformations when they put a face and story to the monster or when they simply begin to understand why people act and think as they do. I think focusing on the negative creates more of what we don't want. I seek out the good and I find it and slowly try to understand more sides, more aspects.

I have faith in the human spirit and the power of love. Hatred is learned, so it can be unlearned. As Gandhi said, we need to be the change we want to see. One Arava alumna from Amman used to wear a full black burka and financially supported Hamas operations against Israel. Now she works in Jordan for a joint Israeli-Jordanian youth initiative. Building this kind of trust happens one person at a time, one meeting at a time and over time. All year people - Israelis, Arabs, Beduin - are calling me to ask when the next gathering is. There is a hunger for connection and learning.

You grew up in an Orthodox, Zionist home and now you study and pray with shamans, sheikhs and clerics and citizens of every religion. How do you define yourself now?

I'm a soul from the universe and from the same source as all beings, it's just been given so many different names. I was born into certain labels and I'm so grateful for all that has given me. Whatever conditioning I have received from my family and schooling, I am trying to observe and keep choosing what is true for me. When I'm representing Jews in the Arab world, my deep connection to Judaism comes up and I love the mystic and shamanic aspects that basically say the same things as all the other wisdoms. I am really trying to show this side of Judaism to the world.

Do you stay in touch with your Beduin family?

If I am in the country, which is not too often, I always go to visit, and even once my mum came, too. Last week, on the eve of Shabbat and the Muslim festival of Id al-Adha, I went to visit them. I received a beautiful welcome of kisses and hugs, and we sat around the fire, drinking tea, eating sweets and chatting.

Come sunset, I took two small candles out from my bag and told Hanan, the 19-year-old daughter, that it was my prayer time. She smiled and said, "Of course" followed by "Shabbat Shalom!" In her room, I lit the candles, praying for the light of the Shabbat to be with this family, this village, this tribe, all peoples and the world. I sang some songs from the Kabbalat Shabbat service and welcomed the special Shabbat angels to come.

My eyes shut, and in deep prayer, I became aware of someone behind me. It was Hanan, she had dressed in her prayer clothes and laid out her prayer carpet, and began the Muslim prayer. We continued, each in her own language, but to the same source, two women, one Muslim, one Jew, there in a small room, in the midst of a Beduin village, praying. To me this felt perfect - no need for compromise, no need for one of us to stop and give space to the other; no need to convince the other of another way, but together - with mutual respect. To me this is peace, this is unity. This is love.

That was the best advice you ever got?

When I left to travel for the first time, my older brother wrote me a farewell greeting, whose closing words were, "Trust everyone."

***

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November 2009

Food for Thought

By Ehud Zion Waldoks, November 22, 2009
Jerusalem Post, Israel

The first conference on food and sustainability in Israel on Thursday threw into stark relief the complex issues that often go unnoticed as people sit down to their meals.

The one-day conference drew several hundred people to the Tel Aviv Port for a keynote address by author/activist Ruth Ozeki and a series of mini-panels and workshops.

The way food is produced and processed has become a prominent issue in the United States as authors like Ozeki, Michael Pollan and others have thrown a harsh spotlight on the industry in recent years. Ozeki has written about the meat and the potato industries, while Pollan has traced both the industrial and organic food production processes.

While perhaps not as ubiquitous as the food issues in the US, Israel has its own fair share of problems, as the conference demonstrated. Ozeki used her latest novel, All Over Creation, which weaves a story around the history of the potato, to warn of the dangers of genetically modified organisms (GMOs).

"Genetic engineering is a way for humans to exert control. Scientists and novelists are alike - we're control freaks," she said. However, the difference is that her creations on paper remain fantasies while scientists' creations in the labs become reality.

Ozeki outlined a worrying sequence of events that she noted has already begun to occur. Whereas scientific research into the natural world has been the way of discoveries, inventions and understanding for millennia, there has been a shift toward research conducted for product development. She pointed to a decrease in public funding and an increase in corporate funding for research.

"That shift means there's less worry about all of the potential effects of a discovery in the lab and more pressure to rush a product to market," Ozeki said.

Genetic engineering also encouraged monoculture, heavily planting just one crop instead of diversifying, which in turn was the basis for big business.

"Monoculture is extremely brittle, while nature is flexible, inefficient and redundant and thus resilient to shocks," she told the audience.

The shift from public to private funding for research has been accompanied by another worrying trend, she continued, that of privatization, patents and intellectual property. GMOs can be copyrighted and the big companies have done so. That means that if an independent researcher is interested in studying one of the GMOs, he needs to ask for permission from the company and to share the results with the company, she said.

That essentially adds up to scientific censorship through copyright law, Ozeki charged. The big corporations also silence investigative journalism by strategic libel lawsuits against journalists, she said.

"Nature is open source, not copyrighted. With genetic engineering, you cannot recall a defective product. The solution is polyculture [like in nature]. We must embrace a diverse, chaotic, anarchic solution," and give up this attempt at control, she concluded.

Agriculture Minister Shalom Simhon opened the conference by saying that his ministry has focused on encouraging environmentally sound farming practices and will continue to do so.

The conference, called "Food for Thought: The First Food and Sustainability Conference" was sponsored by the Heschel Center for Environmental Learning and Leadership and the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies at Kibbutz Ketura.

Heschel Center Academic Supervisor Dr. Lia Ettinger talked about food security in Israel during a series of 10-minute two-person panels.

"More than 1 billion people are starving around the world. That's one-in-six people on the planet. There has been a dramatic rise in health-related illnesses like heart disease, diabetes and obesity. Food is not a commodity, but that's how food is presented," she said.

Ettinger outlined four criteria for food security and environmentally safe agriculture - healthy food, durable food, more people making a living from agriculture and sustainable farming practices.

"The political question is: What is the percentage of farmers that we need? In many countries, including Israel, a very small percentage of the populace are farmers. Is that the way it should be?

"Agriculture should also mimic biology and be polycultural. [Monoculture industrial agriculture relies on more machines and fewer people - E.Z.W.] That demands more manpower, but many people are unemployed and could use the work," she said.

"What will increase the number of farmers in Israel? [Nothing short of] a renaissance, and you can be a partner to it," she challenged the crowd.

Ma'ariv environmental columnist Aviv Lavi also challenged environmental groups to start talking about food issues and raising awareness. "Right now, food issues are talked about as health or economic issues rather than environmental ones," he said.

This discourse was almost totally absent in Israel and since "it takes about a decade and sometimes two to go from talking about it to action and change, we need to start now." Lavi said.

Highlighting in an amusing manner the changes in eating habits that Israelis have undergone but pointing to deep and troubling issues, journalist Tamara Traubman delved into the disappearance of the Israeli breakfast.

"Where has the Israeli breakfast disappeared to? The Israeli breakfast used to be cucumbers, tomatoes, cheese, bread and other natural ingredients. These days, 87 percent of people eat corn flakes for breakfast. The rest drink liquid yogurt on the go," she said.

Traubman attributed the change to the entry of more women into the workforce, which leaves them less time to prepare food.

Longer hours and lower salaries in general have led to a circle of exploitation as well - exploitation of people and of natural resources.

"Government subsidies for corn and soy produced monocultures that kept an unprofitable enterprise afloat as well," she said.

Furthermore, "there has been a cultural shift in how we understand what food is: Is it our culinary tradition? Who decides for us - industry or ourselves?" she asked.

The conference also featured mini-panels focusing on fair trade and food justice, climate change and food, sustainable agriculture and political vegetarianism.

At the fair trade mini-panel, it was pointed out that 3% of the lower strata of society could not afford to feed their children according to the minimal health standards of the Health Ministry.

Fair trade attempts to stop the exploitation cycle that Traubman referred to, by enabling people to make a respectable living as producers. There are only a handful of fair-trade domestic goods in Israel, but there has been growing interest on both the Israeli and Palestinian sides, panelists said.

Since fair trade was in its infancy in Israel, as opposed to the rest of the world, it was still subject to the shocks of the market and other factors.

Green Action head Avi Levy described a Palestinian olive grower who was forced to hew rocks instead this year because the olive harvest had been particularly poor. In previous years, Green Action had worked with him to sell his olive oil at fair-trade prices.

With food issues beginning to abound as a result of climate degradation, the conference provided many initial peeks into what could become a lively debate in Israel about what comes to your plate - and how.

***

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October 2009

Eilat-Eilot region seeks to become center for renewable energy

Op-Ed by Rabbi Michael Cohen: All we are saying is give peace a chance

By Rabbi Michael M. Cohen, October 13, 2009
Arab News, Saudi Arabia

A few years ago, long before he was named US special envoy for Middle East peace, George Mitchell made the point that wars are usually fought until a conclusion of the conflict has been reached. He then made the point that the tragedy of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was, and still is, that we have known what that conclusion looks like for a long time. What needs to be negotiated is not the final-status issues; what is left to be negotiated is the fine-tuning of those issues within the square of the Clinton parameters, the Arab Peace Initiative, the Taba Accords, and the Geneva Initiative and Annexes. Yes, the devil may lay in the details, but the longer the delay the stronger the devil becomes.

The pathos of tragedy includes an element of redemption; it is unclear if this conflict has that luxury anymore. While this conflict contains most of the elements of a tragedy, at this stage madness may be a better description. Part of the problem is that the tail has been allowed to wag the dog for too long - the radical fringes are allowed to shape the debate and in so doing create impossible and negative impressions of both sides. This despite the majority of Israelis and Palestinians saying that they want peace and understand that it will be found within the square mentioned above.

It is time for the voice of that majority to be heard and to take back the debate. In the ebb and flow of diplomacy, the ups and downs of the peace process, there are scores of Palestinian, Jordanian, and Israeli people-to-people NGOs that are a constant; they are on the ground modeling what Israeli and Palestinian politicians in the area have failed to achieve - tangible, concrete examples of what peace can look like. Their actions say that peace is no mirage, but a reality.

It is time to allow their message and model to shape the debate and create the conditions that will give the politicians the backbone to deliver the peace that is so desired here. One way to do that is by raising the profile and work of those organizations. One means to that end is for political leaders to step out of their box and not only meet with each other but visit the above mentioned Palestinian, Jordanian, and Israeli people-to-people NGOs. Newly named Noble Peace Laureate President Barack Obama, and other high-ranking members of his administration, along with King Abdullah, President Abbas, and Prime Minister Netanyahu need to add visits and knowledge of these organizations to their itineraries.

While I have no illusions that such visits will be all that needs to be done, they can play a vital role to help reshape the psychological landscape that has been so damaged. In so doing, they will present the peoples of the region with a real vision of hope that is grounded in the positive concrete examples of these grassroots organizations.

— Rabbi Michael M. Cohen is the director of special projects for the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies (www.arava.org) that trains a new generation of environmental leaders for the Middle East.

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September 2009

Sukkot and global warming

By Mordecai Specktor, Septemer 30, 2009

The American Jewish World, US

You meet the most interesting people in the Jewish World offices. Two recent visitors were from the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies (AIES), which is located on Kibbutz Ketura, about 35 miles north of Eilat.

In addition to being a leading environmental and research program in the Middle East, the Arava Institute brings together Israelis, Palestinians and Jordanians in a spirit of international and interreligious cooperation.

David Lehrer, the Arava Institute director, visited the AJW offices, under the auspices of the Jewish National Fund (JNF), which funds Arava Institute projects. He was accompanied by Tareq Abu Hamed, Ph.D., director of Arava’s Center for Renewable Energy and Energy Conservation. Abu Hamed is an Arab Israeli from Sur Baher, an Arab neighborhood in East Jerusalem; he and his wife and their three children live on Kibbutz Ketura.

In case you missed that last sentence: Abu Hamed, a Muslim environmental scientist, lives among Jews on a kibbutz. Before taking his job at Arava, Abu Hamed studied for two years, from 2006-2008, at the University of Minnesota.

Sitting in on the interview were Sonya Jacobs, a JNF campaign executive based in the Chicago area; and Karen Cohen, a past president of JNF’s Women’s Division who lives in Cincinnati.

In addition to the Jewish and Israeli angles to a story about the Arava Institute, it is appropriate to reflect on the message from Arava in light of the holiday of Sukkot, which begins at sundown on Friday. The central tradition of Sukkot, dwelling in a sukka, reminds us of the journey of the Israelites in the wilderness; also, the sukka, a rude structure with a semi-thatched roof through which stars are visible, imparts a lesson on the transitory nature of life.

In these times when the world is bound together with an overwhelming amount of information flowing on digital streams, we know that the industrial onslaught has degraded the quality of life on the planet. In plain terms, there are too many people on the planet generating too much garbage. The present course of human society is not sustainable; we are entering a period of cataclysmic climate change, in which animal species are disappearing, and rising ocean waters will inundate many populated areas.

Asked about the reality of global climate change, David Lehrer mentioned that the Arava Institute has been doing research in desert regions, where the impact of global warming impact can be determined — even though these desert areas are hot most of the time.

“We’ve done some studies that show that the amount of rainfall in the Arava region, even though there was very little rainfall in the first place, has dropped in the past 40 years by 50 percent,” Lehrer points out, adding that “40 years is a long time to look at a weather system.”

In the United States, the global warming debate has been skewed by ideological currents; perhaps, some folks don’t like Al Gore and relish the chance to tarnish his reputation.

However, Lehrer commented, “I don’t think that there is any serious scientist today that doesn’t believe that global warming is a fact, it exists.” He allowed that the precise effects of industrial society on climate change may never be known with certainty; but we are making a “major” impact on the ecosystem, “in terms of carbon-loading into the atmosphere.”

At some point in our discussion, Tareq Abu Hamed, who has been involved in “all kinds of renewable energy” research at Arava, laconically remarked that the global warming problem “will solve itself,” because the world is running out of oil, coal and natural gas. Over the next century these nonrenewable energy resources will be gone. The world is “very, very, very late” in addressing future energy needs, he said.

Abu Hamed and Lehrer described a number of innovative projects underway in Israel to conserve energy — for example, new buildings that require no air conditioning, such as Arava’s new administration building, which is funded by JNF’s Sapphire Society — and to develop the next generation of renewable energy resources.

As mentioned before, the Arava Institute is doing this work while building bonds “across religious and national borders,” in Lehrer’s words. The 500 graduates of the Arava Institute’s academic programs reach around the globe and comprise a community of dedicated environmental activists.

If we are to survive on Spaceship Earth — and celebrate Sukkot over coming generations — we will have to quickly devise new ways to live that preserve our fragile environment. By many accounts, the recent Group of 20 (popularly known as the G-20) summit conference in Pittsburgh failed to take decisive action on the climate change crisis.

“Time is not just pressing. It has almost run out,” Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, told attendees at a meeting in Bangkok, Thailand, that was preparing for the Copenhagen summit in December, which will discuss a new international deal to supersede the Kyoto protocols on reducing greenhouse emissions.

— Mordecai Specktor / editor@ajwnews.com

***

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August 2009

Water knows no borders – The Red Sea-Dead Sea “Peace” Conduit

August 2009
International WaterCentre, Australia

“Water knows no borders,” says Dr Clive Lipchin of the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies in Israel. Through collaborative study of water issues in the Jordan River region, Dr Lipchin hopes to also help break down Jewish-Arab political borders in the Middle East.

Dr Lipchin, Director of Arava’s Centre for Integrated Water Resource Management in the Middle East, spoke to International WaterCentre Masters students about the Red Sea-Dead Sea Conduit and other environmental issues of the region.

“The International WaterCentre and the Arava Institute share common goals,” Dr Lipchin said. “Both strive to create leaders who tackle water issues in integrated and sustainable ways across the boundaries of disciplines and regions, and achieve greater goals than just water management.”

To help realise the dream of collaboration in the Middle East, the Arava Institute brings students from Jewish, Arab and western backgrounds together to work and study in its Master of Desert Studies program. Students look at environmental issues, conflict resolution and cultural understanding. They learn from Israeli, Jordanian and Palestinian water and environmental experts and participate in regular peace building seminars and debates.

“The Red Sea-Dead Sea ‘Peace Conduit’ brings with it a great opportunity for breaking down political borders,” says Dr Lipchin. Sponsored by the World Bank, the project is currently a feasibility study of a water conveyance system which would pump water from the Red Sea to the Dead Sea to restore Dead Sea water levels and supply desalinated drinking water to the region. If successful, the project would be the largest ever undertaken in the Middle East.

“Our hope is to one day see Israeli, Jordanian and Palestinian leaders working together in collaboration in this project,” said Dr Lipchin. “This politically, environmentally and spiritually important part of the world could see these governments taking transboundary steps towards co-operation and peace in the Middle East.”

For more information visit: www.arava.org/

***

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No borders, No boundaries

July 2009

A Chat with Clive Lipchin

Op-Ed by David Lehrer: Preserving or Consuming the Nation’s Natural Treasures

By David Lehrer, July 23, 2009
Ynet English, Israel

[translated from the original Hebrew]

The recent decision of Ber Sheva Judge Hendel allowing the Israel Lands Authority (ILA) to issue a tender for the continued sand mining of the Samar Dunes, the last large block of sand dunes on the Israeli side of the Arava border, is one more example of this nation’s disregard for its own natural treasures. The claim of the ILA is that the continued mining of the Samar Dunes is critical to the building industry in Eilat. The claim of those who fight to preserve the dunes in their natural state is that they represent a unique ecosystem with rare and endemic species found nowhere else in Israel. The dunes that once spread across 11 square kilometers have now been reduced to 2.3 square kilometers due to industrial pollution, agriculture and legal sand mining sanctioned by the ILA. The remaining 2.3 square kilometers of pristine sand dunes are the habitat for rare and endangered species of gerbils, geckos, beetles and spiders. The compromise reached between the ILA, the National Parks and Nature Reserve Authority and the Hevel Eilot Regional Council will allow the sand mining of another 0.7 square kilometers while preserving 1.6 square kilometers as a Nature Reserve.

Such a compromise may sound reasonable to many however it is based on the assumption that the value of the sand to be mined from the next track of dunes is greater than the value of preserving the Samar Dunes in tact. First I will address the value of extracting the sand and then I will address the value of leaving the sand in place.

If Judge Hendel had ruled against the ILA and cancelled the tender, would that spell the end of building in Eilat? Clearly building contractors will find alternative sources of sand for building. It is estimated that the Samar Dunes can yield another 500,000 tons of sand for building. On average, until the sand mining ceased in 2005, the Samar Dunes yielded about 35,000 tons a year for building purposes. The price per ton of sand from the Samar Dunes was approximately 10.00 NIS a ton. Today, building contractors in Eilat are buying sand from Mishor Rotem near Dimona at approximately 30.00 NIS a ton. The 20.00 NIS difference represents the increased costs of transporting the sand from Dimona to Eilat. On the assumption that contractors can continue to transport 35,000 tons of sand for building from Mishor Rotem to Eilat for the next 15 years, the additional cost to the building industry for not mining the Samar Dunes is the dune’s potential sand yield; 500,000 tons multiplied by the marginal transportation cost of bringing down the sand from Dimona; 20.00 NIS per ton. Therefore, the total value of the Samar Dune’s potential sand yield is:

500,000 tons of sand X 20.00 NIS per ton = 10,000,000 NIS

It is much more difficult to answer the question, “What is the economic value of leaving the sand in place?” The value of a natural resource is made up of both its use and non use values. The use value of the Samar Dunes as sand dunes (and not as a sand quarry) could be the value of preserving the dunes for tourism. There are methods for measuring the monetary value of tourism to natural areas like the Samar Dunes. I believe, however, that the use value of the Samar Dunes for tourism is relatively minor compared to the non-use or the existence value of this unique and endangered ecosystem. Economists also have methods for measuring the monetary value to the people of Israel for the continued existence (the non-use value) of the Samar Dunes but do we really need an economist to explain to us that 10 million NIS paid out over 15 years is a small price to pay for preserving in tact, this unique landscape, the last large block of natural sand dunes on the Israeli side of the Arava Valley?

Another alternative to trucking sand from Dimona or destroying the last large block of sand dunes on the Israeli side of the Arava border is to continue to dig deeper in the existing sand quarries where mining was ceased in 2005. Digging deeper in an already disturbed area could easily replace either the sand from Dimona, saving millions of shekels or the sand from the Samar Dunes saving a valuable and unique ecosystem. What are we waiting for?

David Lehrer
Arava Institute for Environmental Studies
Kibbutz Ketura

***

Read original article here [Hebrew]

June 2009

Israelis and Palestinians Study Together in the Arava

By Lior Dattel, June 7, 2009
The Marker, Israel

[translated from the original Hebrew]

"Nature has no boundaries," promises the internet site of the Arava Institute for Environment Studies (AIES), located on Kibbutz Ketura, north of Elat, and headed by Executive Director David Lehrer. Established in 1996, the institute indeed operates an academic curriculum of environment studies attended by students from all over the Middle East and the world. Some 30-40 students, mostly undergraduates, take classes there every semester.

The institution's courses have been recognized by the Ben-Gurion University and other academic institutions worldwide. According to the Midot Company rating, some 70% of the AIES graduates found work with social and environmental projects. Additionally, surveyed students reported a high level of satisfaction with their studies in the institute. The AIES was graded A-, which is a positive grade on the Midot associations' rating, matching the median of other associations examined.

The Midot staffers positively graded the AIES vision and goals, conducting an ongoing survey of the students' satisfaction level and the quality work plans. At the same time, the surveyors stated that the AIES board members are not all equally involved. The board takes part in decision-making, but does not scrutinize the organization's comprehensive policy.

Financially, the AIES appears stable, with several sources of income, including from private donors and financial funds, and has a long-term financial plan. Nevertheless, Midot pointed out, the organization's stability is threatened by a shortage of cash reserves. They additionally noted that the cost of the bicycle trip, Bicycle Eco-Paths, is particularly high (23% of the AIES total expenses). In recent years, the AIES expanded both the scope of its activities and the level of its investment in them. According to Director Lehrer, "last year was successful despite the war. While Israelis and Palestinians engaged in combat, here, at the institute they sat and learned together how to live in the Middle East."

Income in 2008 - From the government and other public authorities, 1%; independent income, 8%; private donors, 65%; philanthropic institutions, 26%.

Expenses in 2007 - on academic programs, 31%; bicycle trip (23%); research center, 20%; administrative and general, 18%; other, 8% -- a total of NIS 7.7 million.

The AIES

Goal: An academic center for the development of environmental leadership, focusing on regional and global cooperation. Target Audience: Students. Main Donors: JNF, Canadian Fundraisers [probably meaning: UJA Federation of Greater Toronto], Irmgard Boim [?], Marin Jewish Community Teen Foundation . Chairman of the Board: Dr. Michael Beyth. Director General: David Lehrer. Organization Size: medium. Hired workers: 27. Volunteers: 3. Highest AIES wages: NIS 9,000-12,000 (gross average). Source of Donations: Israel, 2%; abroad, 98%.

***

Read original article here [Hebrew]

May 2009

Leora gets to grips with Michael Crichton’s ‘State Of Fear’

By James Murray-White, May 27, 2009
Green Prophet blog, Israel

Michael Crichton’s “State of Fear” is a thriller, telling the story of eco-terrorists artificially creating extreme weather events in order to convince the world of the non-existent threat known to the rest of us as “anthropogenic (human caused) climate change”. The hero of the story, an MIT professor and special agent by the name of John Kenner, follows the terrorists around the world trying to stop them, and in his free time, educates some lost souls about the truth behind climate change.

The characters in the book are very clearly divided. On the one hand, we have scientists, who know that climate change is a scam. On the other hand, we have rich celebrities, shoddy environmentalists, and lawyers, advocating the reality of climate change, because they’re naïve, lacking in knowledge, or just plain evil.

It’s clear from the start, if only by the way Crichton chooses to represent and frame the issue, that this isn’t an attempt to objectively and honestly examine the issue of climate change. And despite his declaration in the “Author’s Message” at the end of the book – “Everybody has an agenda. Except me” – it’s quite clear that Crichton has his agenda, which is articulated throughout the book and which he presents in this same appendix.

I suggest taking Crichton’s advice when attempting to assess his novel, as he stated in one of his speeches:

“The greatest challenge facing mankind is the challenge of distinguishing reality from fantasy, truth from propaganda…” (Environmentalism as religion, 2003)

Crichton attempts to present his book as scientifically based, complete with footnotes and a lengthy bibliography. In truth, it’s a work of fiction, in which information is manipulated in order to promote a specific agenda. I have selected three examples demonstrating Crichton’s willful misrepresentation of facts.

I. Selective use of arguments
Throughout the book, Crichton attempts to undermine the theory of global warming by presenting records of local areas and cities that don’t follow the supposed warming trend. For Crichton, local variations prove that global warming isn’t happening. However, the fact that we’re talking about global warming definitely does not imply that climate will now be exactly the same in the whole world. Global warming is the rise of the global mean surface temperature. This does not imply that the whole globe is warming uniformly.

Crichton knows this, and even uses this exact same argument when it serves his purposes. During a visit to Antarctica, where the eco-terrorists are trying to break-off icebergs by the use of explosives, Kenner tells us of a huge iceberg that broke off two years prior to their visit. When global warming proponents claim that this is due to global warming, Kenner replies-

“Actually, [global warming] wasn’t responsible. It was caused by local conditions…There’s nothing wrong with the idea of local conditions. This is a continent. It would be surprising if it didn’t have it’s own distinctive weather patterns, irrespective of global trends…” (p. 245)

So local conditions can apparently explain the phenomena that side with global warming, but not the ones that don’t…

II. Misuse of research
Crichton supports the United States’ decision not to ratify the Kyoto protocol since it will make no real contribution to halting climate change. He claims that the effect of the steps agreed upon in the treaty would be to reduce temperatures by the year 2100 by only 0.04 degrees Celsius.

In a footnote, Crichton supports this point by mentioning an article by Tom Wigley (p. 569). Crichton states that all “footnotes are real”. That’s why Chris Mooney of the Boston Globe took upon himself to check the footnotes and the opinions of the scientists cited. Regarding this point, he found-

“Tom Wigley… has complained previously that others have misused his research to undermine Kyoto. While that paper did indeed find that the treaty would have a relatively small long-term effect, Wigley has subsequently warned that his analysis ”assumed that Kyoto was followed to 2010, and that there were no subsequent climate mitigation policies.” The point of the paper was not to bash Kyoto… but rather to demonstrate that it represents only a first step toward climate stabilization. ”Once we’ve done Kyoto we’re obviously going to do other things,” says Wigley.” (Chris Mooney, Checking Crichton’s footnotes)

As it were, Crichton took the Kyoto treaty that expires in 2012 and extended it to 2100, conveniently assuming that no other measures would be undertaken in the future.

III. Tampering with data
One of the main issues in the book, returned to again and again, is criticism of climate scientists and their use of computer models to make predictions. Prediction is claimed to be impossible, and all past predictions to have been wrong.

For example, Crichton criticizes Jim Hansen’s testimony regarding climate change to congress in 1988: “His 1988 prediction was wrong by three hundred percent.” (p.294)

In fact, Hansen presented a spectrum of results – three different model simulations for different scenarios. In his testimony, Hansen stated clearly that scenario B, the more modest business-as-usual assumption, was the most probable scenario. The temperature change for the decade under this scenario was very close to the actual change observed, so the model did a reasonable job. The “300 percent” error claim comes from deleting the bottom two curves and leaving only the top one which assumed exponentially increasing CO2, in order to give the impression that the models were unreliable.

In conclusion, it is clear that Crichton did not attempt to scientifically and objectively examine the issue of climate change, but rather chose to represent the information in a selective and manipulative manner. Once again, no one says it better than Crichton himself: “This is not the way science is done, it is the way products are sold.” (Aliens cause Global Warming, 2003)

Our guest reviewer, Leora Resnick, is a Jerusalemite, who participated in the “Tevel be’Tzedek” study and volunteer program in Nepal, and then returned to the program again as part of the staff. She says “In between I studied for a year at the Arava Institute for Environmental studies (and as a part of the class there on climate change I wrote a review paper on “state of fear”, from which this short version was adapted). Now I’m living in Klil (in the Galil), working on a joint project of Klil and Tevel be’Tzedek – developing a sustainability model site that involves environmental education and co-existence.”

***

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April 2009

It's the water that binds us, Alexandra Cousteau finds

By Karin Kloosterman, April 23, 2009
Israel 21c, Israel

From the Ganges River, the spiritual heart of India, to the Mississippi River in America, legendary marine scientist and explorer Jacques Cousteau's granddaughter is collecting stories about water. She's not reporting on new technologies that promise to save the world, or on politics, or the regular environmental doom and gloom.

Thirty-two-year old Alexandra Cousteau, whose grandfather taught her to scuba dive at age seven -- connecting her to water forever -- seeks to re-connect all people throughout the world to water, our life support system.

At the end of last month, as part of her 100-day, five-continent journey 'Expedition: Blue Planet', she landed in Israel. "We started in India looking at water, faith and spirituality," she says. In Israel, she and her crew are investigating how water scarcity "can lead to diplomacy and not necessarily conflict."

In Israel, she collected stories from housewives and farmers to spread to the global community through her blog and video news feeds. As part of her trip, she also met with Jordanians and Palestinians from the West Bank.

In total she interviewed about 10 different people from the region, "collecting archetypal stories that represent water stories facing the global community," Cousteau, a dedicated environmentalist tells ISRAEL21c. The stories and videos are now posted on her website.

Time to put water under the bridge

Water is the one thing that connects every individual on this planet of seven billion people, explains Cousteau, since the impacts of climate change will be felt most seriously on this essential natural resource. "Everyone will need to be involved in implementing solutions," she says.

Filming on the road, and uploading videos and news feeds to her site, Cousteau expects the material will be visited by a wide audience, including journalists and young change makers.

Among the collection, are the stories of people -- normal, every day people -- that she met in Israel. As part of her trip, she visited and surveyed the Dead Sea, the Sea of Galilee, the Hula valley wetlands, and the Jordan River; in Jerusalem she met Israeli water officials and toured the Old City. Not far away in the Palestinian Authority's West Bank, Cousteau met with officials there to discuss water allocations under the Oslo Accords.

Her visit in Israel and the region, adds to the hopeful things she's seen in other parts of the planet, says Cousteau by telephone. "It's been hopeful to talk with people from around the world about water issues. Water is life, and wherever I go, all of the people all say the same three words.

"Water is life," she repeats. Whether it's spiritual leader in Africa, housewives and farmers in Israel, Jordan and the Palestine Authority, Saudis, or activists in Turkey. All people say the same thing, "And that's been amazing," she says.

For Israel specifically, "water is a means for peace," she says.

Israel, or other Middle Eastern countries, needn't politicise the water issue, she believes. Water is a basic human right that everybody needs to survive: "We are not here to talk politics with people," she explains.

Hosted by a green Israeli peace-making school

When asked about specific regional environmental concerns, Cousteau didn't delve into specifics. These are issues that people know about anyway, like the problems with the shrinking Dead Sea, she says. Her mission rather, was as a story collector, to speak with average people in Israel about what water means to their lives. "We didn't get too deep," Cousteau says humbly.

In Israel, the Arava Institute, an environmental education group, helped Cousteau and her crew identify which people to interview. Finding the organization through a journalist friend of hers, the Arava Institute kept the team focused, she says.

After arriving from South Africa, she enters a fresh entry in her blog: "The reason we're at Kibbutz Ketura is to visit the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies, a remarkable non-profit organization who makes its home here," she writes.

"Arava brings Israelis, Palestinians, and Jordanians together with students from around the world to study environmental issues. However, their not-so-subtle agenda is not just a sustainable future for natural resources, but also cooperation between the peoples of this conflict-ridden region.

"As such, they compliment rigorous academic coursework with a special one-year mandatory class on peace and leadership skills, in which they confront issues such as religion, stereotypes, and the historical narratives of each group head-on. Their motto is: "Nature knows no borders." We are curious to explore their model for how water scarcity can serve not as a necessary cause of conflict, but rather as a vehicle for peace," she writes.

In awe over the dropping water levels in the Dead Sea, and the small size of the Sea of Galilee, Cousteau was impressed that neighbouring Jordan has a national water day. "All these things are contributing to creating wonderful stories," she says. "There are lessons here that people should know about."

The stories collected will be useful for "young people who want to work across political and cultural divides. It's powerful stuff," she adds.

While her legendary marine explorer grandfather started his career at the Red Sea, which is bordered by Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern and African countries, she has no specific recollection of him traveling to or having ties with Israel. "He was working in a different time," it was about "exploration and discovery" and later in the end, she says, he started to get into marine conservation.

"This generation that I am part of has to move past awareness, and has to be proactive and be part of the solution," urges Cousteau. "Now that we know [water's] there, we have to protect it and prevent it from disappearing."

***

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Op-Ed by Gigi Strom: Fruits of our labor

By Marjorie Strom, April 3, 2009
Haaretz English, Israel

"The Jewish people lack the principal ingredient for national life. We lack the habit of labor ... for it is labor which binds a people to its soil and to its national culture..." (A.D. Gordon, "Our Tasks Ahead," 1920)

The kibbutzim and moshavim that make up the backbone of Israeli agriculture were founded on A.D. Gordon's philosophy of national redemption through labor, and, by most standards, Israeli agriculture remains a huge success. Israel's drip irrigation methods are used around the world, its dairy cows are among the most productive, and locally developed strains of flowers and vegetables feature prominently in world markets. In recent years, however, the land has not been predominantly worked by Israeli citizens. As Passover approaches, with freedom and slavery on our minds, it is a prudent time to ask whether an industry dependent on foreign labor can truly be considered successful.

The Thai workers on whom Israeli agriculture depends, who made up 45 percent of agricultural labor as recently as 2001 (the last year for which figures are available), are certainly not slaves. As part of the foreign-worker population, they are protected by Israeli labor laws, and most return to Thailand wealthier than their fellow countrymen who did not work abroad. In general, agricultural laborers, who live close to their bosses and have daily contact with them, are treated far better than aliens with jobs in urban centers. In many ways, the employment of foreigners in Israeli agriculture is a win-win situation, as it allows farmers to develop highly specialized greenhouse agriculture while providing the foreign laborers with a mechanism to establish themselves economically. In peripheral areas such as the Arava, in the southern Negev, this source of labor is essential, as local residents are unable to do all the work themselves, and Israelis from other parts of the country are often unwilling to come south for this work, even during periods of high unemployment.

The ready availability of low-cost labor has significantly diminished the number of Israelis involved in farming. While it may appear benevolent, this dependence on foreign workers carries a high price for the agricultural community and the kibbutzim in particular. The large number of educated Israeli farmers in the 1960s and 1970s - and their desire to make their own work easier - was the spearhead that turned Israel into a world leader in agricultural technology. This aging generation of farmers is being replaced by a much smaller generation, who primarily manage other workers.

Originally, the prime national motivation for developing Israel's agricultural sector, despite the nation's lack of water resources, was the fear of dependence on foreign imports for food supplies. While nowadays nearly as much of the country's food is exported as imported, because of the labor situation, Israel still depends on a foreign labor force.

It is the kibbutzim themselves that are truly paying the price for abandoning the policy of self-labor, by which they did the work themselves instead of hiring others. In agricultural branches with mostly foreign workers, the kibbutz profit represents "rent" from hired labor and capital. While earning rent from one's assets is every capitalist's goal, the idea of earning rent from another's labor negates the very premise of the kibbutzim. This situation is not only morally problematic but can also give rise to social and economic problems. The evidence for this comes from research on "social loafing," the tendency of an individual to work less when part of a group than when alone ("parasitism" in kibbutz slang). While this tendency exists in all cultures, "parasitism" is reduced if members identify strongly with the group and feel that their contribution is valuable. In a kibbutz that receives much of its income as rent on its assets and on outside labor, members may feel their contributions are not essential to the group product, and thus contribute less.

Solely blaming farmers for the growing dependence on foreign workers would be a mistake. The Agriculture Ministry has, since the 1990s, provided generous grants for construction of greenhouses, in which growing is extremely labor-intensive. At the same time, the funds made available for development of labor-saving technologies were far lower and not pushed in the same manner. Furthermore, no direct subsidy has been offered to an extent that would allow the farmers to replace foreign workers with Israelis at a price that will attract Israelis. Farmers have been forbidden from using agricultural land for any purpose other than farming.

While some farmers have been able to survive economically without foreign labor, these are not the majority. Israeli farmers, particularly in the kibbutzim, have had to face a no-win set of alternatives: Either renege on values in a way that threatens your social and economic structure, or be left without a source of income. The Agriculture Ministry must help Israel's farming sector return to the essence of Gordon by using technological developments to reduce Israel's dependence on foreign labor.

Marjorie Strom is scientific editor at the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies.

***

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March 2009

Alexandra Cousteau, granddaughter of Jacques Cousteau, is visiting Israel as part of her global tour aimed at studying the most critical water issues

By Shira Horesh, March 30, 2009
Globes, Israel

"I am glad I have this opportunity to relate how critical environmental issues such as water can lead to cooperation between people and become a tool for lasting peace and development."

Alexandra Cousteau, water quality and policy advocate and granddaughter of famed scientist and researcher Jacques-Yves Cousteau, is currently touring Israel, the West Bank, and Jordan, and will stay in the region until this weekend, 3 April. While here, she intends to study the River Jordan and the Dead Sea Basin, focusing on the theme of "Water as a Tool for Peace, or Conflict."

Alexandra Cousteau's visit here is part of her "Expedition: Blue Planet," a 100-day tour of five continents that focuses on the quality of life and how it changes with the quality of the water. She is part of a delegation that intends to help shaping a social dialogue where water is viewed as one the most crucial issues in the current century and a primary tool to register climatic changes. Her Israeli leg of the tour is held in collaboration with the Arava Institute for Environment Studies.

Presenting relevant and authentic water stories, the Cousteau expedition wishes to inspire people to take significant action and make a difference on critical water issues.

Before arriving in Israel, the delegation visited the Ganges River in India and the Okavango Delta in Botswana. Her tour in Israel will start with a visit to the Arava Institute on Kibbutz Qetura, whose researchers will guide and help her examine boundary-crossing regional water issues. Her team will visit sites such as the Hula Valley, Lake Kinneret, the Sapir pumping station, and Jerusalem, and will meet Israeli water officials.

The delegation will conclude its visit with an extensive survey of the Dead Sea Basin and the main challenges facing it today.

Touring the West Bank, the team will learn about the political branching of water management, meet PA officials who deal with the water issue, and discuss the allocation of water under the Oslo accords.

In Jordan, the team will visit sites such as Aakaba, Wadi el-Mujib, the King Abdallah Canal, and the Adasia Dam, and meet official members of the Jordanian Government and academia.

Cousteau said, "I am glad I have this opportunity to work with the Arava Institute during my delegation's tour of the Dead Sea and River Jordan, and that I have the opportunity to relate how critical environmental issues such as water can lead to cooperation between people and become a tool for lasting peace and development."

Dr. Clive Lipkin, director of the Arava Institute's Research Department and a water expert, said: "The Arava Institute for Environment Studies is proud to join Alexandra on her important regional mission and to guide her in visiting critical water sites and issues in the region. The boundary-crossing approach of the Arava Institute and its philosophy, according to which 'nature knows no boundaries,' is what makes it a unique and qualified partner of the Cousteau delegation."

***

Read original article here [Hebrew]

Dr. Elaine Solowey interviewed on Reshet Bet radio

Seeking the Sun

Ziv Hellman, March 12, 2009

Jerusalem Post, Israel

Extract from an article in Issue 25, March 30, 2009 of The Jerusalem Report.

Even in the late winter months, the sun can shine so brightly in the Arava, the desert plain that stretches between the Dead Sea and Eilat, that it is easy to understand why a man might take one look around him and imagine he has discovered a gold mine in these days of awareness of the potential of solar energy.

Yosef Abramowitz did just that.

Just three years after he arrived from Boston to settle in Kibbutz Ketura, about 50 kilometers north of Eilat, a firm that Abramowitz established has been awarded the first commercial license issued to a completely private company to produce solar-powered electricity to be fed into Israel's electricity grid. The installation is expected to be the largest photo-voltaic solar energy field in the world.

Located in one of the world's most sun-drenched areas, Israel was an early pioneer in the field of solar energy, but it has been lagging behind for years now. It has only recently and somewhat tentatively begun putting together a comprehensive national plan for constructing a renewable energy infrastructure, leaving the country behind the curve of many other nations.

"So far, we've been our own worst enemy," says Abramowitz, 44, who endured two years of a seemingly regulatory obstacle course before obtaining the license for his Arava Power Company (APC). "The fact that Israeli solar companies choose to work in California and Spain and not in Israel says something about the regulatory, statutory and political environment in the State of Israel."

This is Abramowitz's first venture in the energy business -- or indeed, in any business at all. Back in Boston, he ran a large Jewish publishing non-profit organization and was involved in a variety of Jewish communal activities - even running for the Knesset in 2006, while still living in the United States. (He has been an Israeli citizen since 1969, when his family made aliya to Israel from Brooklyn; in 1972, when he was 8 years old, the family moved back to the United States).

Charismatic, energetic and fond of the expression "thinking out of the box," Abramowitz is undaunted by the bureaucracy. "I thought I would build a solar energy field in Israel," he quips, "and instead I ended up working on building the field of solar energy in Israel."

The first investors in APC were Abramowitz himself and Kibbutz Ketura. After a year of operation, he had raised nearly $1 million from friends and family. APC is formally registered as a subsidiary of Global Sun Partners, a British Virgin Islands corporation.

Kibbutz Ketura is in a way the quintessential location in Israel for a project with a mix of environmental idealism and an American-style can-do entrepreneurial attitude. Founded in 1973, two-thirds of its 130 members are immigrants, most from North America. It has pioneered ecologically oriented projects, and its main industrial plant, Algatech, extracts materials from algae for use as fish food and pigments in cosmetics. Ketura is also the home of the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies, which conducts research in desert ecology and renewable energy. A close relationship has developed between the Arava Institute and APC's solar power project.

Israel's now-diminished prestige in the solar energy world was due in no small part to the locally-invented solar water heater, which became such a fixture, installed in over 90 percent of Israeli homes, that an estimated 3 percent of the country's national energy consumption is solar generated. But in an era of international carbon capping and global-warming concerns, with renewable energy rapidly emerging as one of the major industries of the early 21st century, that figure is increasingly less impressive.

A government decision, adopted in January 2009, provides for 5 percent of Israel's energy to come from renewable sources by 2014 and 10 percent by 2020, which translates into about 1.5 gigawatts per year from solar energy. But Europe is well on the way towards a goal of 20 percent renewable energy by 2020, and Spain alone already produces 1.6 gigawatts of solar energy.

Falling behind global standards in this field, say many analysts, is not something Israel can afford to do, given the country's extreme dependence on foreign energy sources, its status as an "electricity island" unable to draw on electricity from its neighbors if necessary, and the increasing importance of renewable-energy technology in the world. The recent discovery of vast natural gas fields off of Israel's shores may reduce its dependence on outside sources, but natural gas is not a renewable source of energy. In addition, when Israel graduates from its current developing nation status under the Kyoto Protocol in 2013 to developed nation status, it will be required to reduce its carbon footprint or purchase expensive offsetting carbon credits.

"Infrastructure planning in Israel in general is too fragmented, and this is also true in particular with respect to renewable energy. There are too many different bodies involved," says David Miron-Wapner, executive director of the U.S. - Israel Science and Technology Commission, who has studied the issue. "Several centers for clean technology have been established, which is good, but there is need for better coordination, especially in order to enable entrepreneurs to be able to plug renewable energy power plants into the electricity grid."

The good news is that the country has recently shifted into higher gear in moving towards greater renewable energy production. In July 2008, the Public Utilities Administration (PUA) introduced a tariff of 2.01 shekels per kilowatt hour (kWh) paid to small solar-power generating sources feeding electricity into the national grid, capped at 15 kW capacity in residential sites and 50 kW in commercial sources. It has also announced plans to offer a feed-in tariff of 1.5 shekels per kWh later this year for medium-sized suppliers, with capacities of between 50 kW to 5 MW. The Israel Lands Administration (ILA), which owns 90 percent of the land in the country, introduced a series of new regulations in October 2008 to govern the allocation of land for solar fields and the economic cabinet in Israel's government, in January, finally approved a comprehensive Renewable Energy Act that designated the Arava and Negev areas as renewable energy zones, granting these areas a range of tax benefits intended to spark renewable energy generation.

In addition, last summer the state issued a tender for the construction of a 250 MW solar park in Ashalim, a Negev settlement about 35 km south of Beersheba, a project that had been delayed for several years due to bureaucratic red tape. The winner of the tender is scheduled to be announced in April, and the project is expected to supply 2.5 percent of Israel's power needs, at an estimated investment cost of $700 million.

And then there's the Ketura project. On March 2, Infrastructure Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer formally granted APC its initial license for constructing what is expected to be an 80 MW photovoltaic field, which would make it the largest PV solar energy field in the world. APC hopes eventually to develop a network of solar fields generating 500 to 1,000 MW.

There are currently three main types of industrial-strength solar-energy generation technologies. The solar-tower method and parabolic-trough system both ultimately generate electricity thermally by heating liquids in order to run turbines - the latter method by shining sunlight onto liquids pumped through pipes located between parabolic mirrors, and the former by concentrating sunlight directly onto one focal point by spreading a large field of flat mirrors surrounding a large tower.

The photovoltaic (PV) method works on entirely different principles. PV cells, usually placed in flat panels turned towards the sun, convert sunlight directly to electricity using the photoelectric effect, which was first explained by Albert Einstein and for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1921.

PVs have significant advantages over the thermal methods. No large-scale turbines need to be constructed for PV cells. PV light collectors needn't be located on level ground, and can work in rugged landscapes. They do not require raising large sums of money up front for plants yielding 1,000 megawatts or more. One can begin with small individual PV cells and add them modularly as needed. PVs, however, are overall less economical under current technological conditions than thermal solar-power generators, and even expert researchers in photovoltaic technology such as David Faiman, director of the Ben-Gurion National Solar Energy Center, recommend basing large-scale electricity generating plants at present on thermal technologies.

The poor economics of PVs are partly explained by the fact that silicon is an expensive material for light collection, and currently it takes nearly a year for the sunlight collected by 1 square meter of a PV cell to produce the same energy as that of one barrel of oil. Most advancements in PV technology in coming years - and these are definitely on the way, based on cutting-edge laboratory research - will focus on switching to cheaper materials and producing more energy per cell.

All three of the main solar-power generating methods are present in Israel. The large Ashalim project, with a projected capacity of 250 MW, will contain both a parabolic trough thermal field and a photovoltaic station, and a solar-tower field is in operation in the Rotem Industrial complex outside Dimona. But the Rotem field is not connected to the electricity grid; Luz II, which runs the site, is using it as a test bed for technologies it will apply in solar plants it will build in California and Europe. The Ashalim park has been a source of disappointment and frustration for solar power advocates in Israel - due to regulatory hurdles and bickering between various administrative bodies overseeing the project, it has been stuck in the planning stages for nearly six years and is not expected to produce power before 2013 at the earliest.

The Negev, for all its seeming open, empty vistas, is crowded - with military bases, national parks, nature reserves, Beduin, and areas ear-marked for new settlements, making the identification of readily available, significantly large areas for large solar fields a difficult task. And the bid process for mega-plants is inherently slow, involving a search for appropriate and available land, soliciting bids from companies, and installing extensive new infrastructure in previously empty areas.

Infrastructure Ministry assistant spokesman Elazar Nevo tells The Report that to achieve its 10 percent renewable energy goal by 2020 the Ministry's efforts will focus on tenders for licenses granted to companies constructing large and concentrated solar-power plants in the Negev and Arava. "We intend on adding 250 megawatts of renewable energy capacity a year from 2010 to 2020," he says. "We are mapping appropriate areas for the establishment of wind and solar power plants. Open land for solar-power plants will be granted on the basis of tenders, in association with the Israel Lands Authority and the Interior Ministry."

Abramowitz, however, is convinced that relying solely on build and operate tenders is a wrong approach, and advocates instead for a significant portion of Israel's solar-generated electricity to come not only from new mega-plants built on huge tracts of open land, but from a network of small, private PV-based generating stations inside existing kibbutzim and other settlements in the Negev and Arava. He puts forward an intriguing argument: Instead of looking for open, virgin territory, use underused land already owned by kibbutzim that can easily be rezoned and house solar-power generating plants filled with PV cells with relatively small infrastructure investment, in a win-win situation that will benefit both the kibbutzim and the country.

Extract from an article in Issue 25, March 30, 2009 of The Jerusalem Report

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Op-Ed by Rabbi Michael Cohen: Establishing an International Fund for Israeli-Palestinian Peace

By Rabbi Michael M. Cohen, March 19, 2009
Common Ground News Service

The day after the very successful Summit of the Alliance for Middle East Peace (ALLMEP) I went for a walk around Capital Hill. As I passed the headquarters of The United Methodist Church I noticed they had planted a Peace Pole and, with the leaders of the Six Iroquois Nations, a Tree of Peace. I paused, thinking how nations often build monuments about war, but rarely about peace. With that thought I crossed the street to the U.S. Capitol Building to discover, above the entrance to the House of Representatives, a sculptured relief called “Peace Protecting Genius”, including a carving of an olive tree of peace. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that my previous thought on governments not building monuments to peace was not entirely true.

While altering my perspective somewhat by that discovery, the raw, harsh fact remains that governments spend more on war, and remembering wars, than on peace. The Arab-Israeli conflict is no different when it comes to that equation. Billions are spent each year on armaments, often with monies granted from other countries. Far, far less is invested in peace.

This fact led to the 2003 creation of ALLMEP, the umbrella association of some 60 NGOs working on grassroots coexistence, people-to-people activities between Arabs and Jews, Israelis and Palestinians in the Middle East. ALLMEP’s initial advocacy in Washington secured dedicated funds for these organizations within the Office of Conflict Management and Mitigation of USAID. Now ALLMEP has set its sights on a much loftier and larger goal – the establishment of an International Fund for Israeli-Palestinian Peace (IFFIPP) modelled on the International Fund for Ireland that played a crucial role in mitigating the “troubles” in Northern Ireland.

On March 3, 2009, the summit members of ALLMEP held a meeting with members of Congress, the Department of State, USAID, and the White House. As a measure of how much interest has grown for the idea of the IFFIPP, the Alliance saw a doubling in the number of meetings this year compared to last, and met with over ten percent of Congressional offices.

The Summit drew over 250 people. Participants heard from experts including Alexander Smith, the General Director of the International Fund for Ireland, and Dr. Joe Montville, the Chair of the Center for World Religions, Diplomacy and Conflict Resolution, who was the first to coin the phrase “Track II diplomacy”.

The Summit also included a closed-door Ambassadors' Roundtable between ALLMEP leaders and chief Israeli, Palestinian, Jordanian, and Moroccan diplomats to discuss the IFFIPP. The meeting was cordial and productive with all agreeing on the importance of the IFFIPP in strengthening the crucial work of people-to-people NGOs in the region to move the peace process forward.

In the ebb and flow of diplomacy, the ups and downs of the peace process, these NGOs are a constant; they are on the ground modelling what Israeli and Palestinian politicians in the area have failed to achieve – tangible, concrete examples of what peace can look like. Their actions say that peace is no mirage, but a reality.

A panellist at the summit said that too many political leaders allow themselves to become “stuck in a magnetic field”, sucking them into the black hole of the all too known failures in that region. These NGOs, whose work –as ALLMEP founder Avi Meyerstein said—is to “complement diplomacy”, are able to point the compass in a different direction.

As another participant put it, both sides need to create the conditions for “mutually assured security”. The investment by the international community, in the establishment of the IFFIPP, will allow these NGOs to grow and expand their influence so they can play a larger role in creating both the understanding and trust essential to achieve that goal.

The international community has invested in war in the Middle East for decades with the outcome of continuing violence. It is time to invest a greater percentage of our resources in creating peace. In the present world economy where extra funds may not be available, perhaps some monies will need to be diverted from swords to ploughshares. As we are reminded when we look at the relief “Peace Protecting Genius” above the entrance to the U.S. House of Representatives, it should not take a genius to figure that out.

Rabbi Cohen is the Director of Special Projects for the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies (www.arava.org), a member organization of ALLMEP (www.allmep.org) and author of Einstein’s Rabbi: A Tale of Science and the Soul. This article was written for the Common Ground News Service (CGNews).

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Transboundary Environmental Management

Action: Blueprints for Green Living

By Jane E. Herman, Spring 2009
Reform Judaism Online, US

According to the Mishnah, in the hour when the Holy One created the first human being, God took Adam before all the trees of the Garden of Eden and said: “See my works, how fine and excellent they are! Now all that I created, for you I created. Think upon this, and do not corrupt and desolate my world; for if you corrupt it, there is no one to set it right after you” (Ecclesiastes Rabbah 7:28).

Faced as we are today with global warming and other environmental perils, we must ask ourselves: How can we make environmentally sound choices that preserve life? And what can we learn from Reform Jews, Reform congregations, and the Union for Reform Judaism about sustaining the planet for future generations?

Doing Green Environmentalist Martin Westerman, otherwise known as “Eco-Guy” at his synagogue, Congregation Kol HaNeshamah in Seattle, has written two books on greening, teaches businesses how to become greener, and says some unexpected things about how to conserve energy in our world. While, for example, most of us think that being green in the kitchen is using ceramic coffee mugs, Westerman points out that “on a lifecycle basis, the energy and greenhouse gas output embedded in using ceramic crockery (mining, manufacture, distribution, water, cleansers, storage, etc.) outweigh the lifecycle energy and greenhouse gas output of biodegradable paper goods, which, ideally, get returned to the organic waste stream and become soil to grow the pulp materials for more plates.”

Before “Eco-Guy” came to the rescue, Kol HaNeshamah’s food events, including weekly Shabbat potluck dinners, ended with food, paper goods, and plastic flatware dumped right into the trash. Now, making use of Seattle’s program to collect yard and food waste for composting, Westerman and others have arranged for the composting of nearly all food-related leftovers. Biodegradable dishes, cups, and napkins—made from corn syrup rather than petroleum, all available at competitive prices—go into the composter. Bottles and cans that can’t be composted are recycled. The end result is not only a much smaller carbon footprint but a financial windfall too—garbage output and associated costs have been cut by 50%. In addition, the congregation’s events are vegetarian, eliminating the greenhouse gas byproducts of meat processing.

The key to implementing eco-change, Westerman says, is to move people gradually away from their habits of overconsumption, with a minimum of personal discomfort. Make subtle changes first, he suggests, such as turning off the car engine if you’ll be idling for more than 30 seconds, replacing single-pane windows with double panes, and bringing your own grocery bags to the checkout stand. Hopefully, Westerman says, we will build an infrastructure in which preserving our world becomes “just the way we do things.”

Building Green Challenged by several failed attempts to purchase building sites, an unexpected rabbinic transition, finances, and more, it took Congregation Beth David in San Luis Obispo, California 25 years to construct a new building—but what a building it is! For decades, temple leaders had queried members about what to build and repeatedly heard the message: make it natural, with solar power and wind power. Today, Congregation Beth David sits on 92 pristine acres just outside the city limits and is the very first synagogue to be awarded Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification from the U.S. Green Building Council.

The facility’s overall design is much like a bagel, with a central interior courtyard as the “hole”—an ideal setting for outdoor activities on the windy site. Roof-mounted photovoltaic panels generate 50% of the building’s electricity; some walls are constructed with rice straw (the straw bales are reinforced with wire mesh and covered with cement and stucco to render them structurally sound); and recycled newspaper (pretreated to retard fire and resist mold) serves as insulation. Many windows, skylights, and natural daylighting account for nearly 100% of the building’s light, significantly reducing electricity use. Temperature sensors in each room and a customized computer program that automatically operates motorized windows ventilate the building naturally, without air conditioners. Both heat (which comes from gas fireplaces and wall-mounted room heaters) and air flow can be programmed independently. Outside, the grounds are landscaped with native plants.

“Going green is a real impetus to getting people engaged and involved, and a great source of pride to the entire congregation,” says Mike Blum, a past temple president who served as the site and building chair during the planning and construction period. The congregation now has a Green Shalom committee that promotes carpooling for temple events, recycling, paperless synagogue newsletters, and such green products as reusable grocery bags and water bottles (both of which are sold at the synagogue). Members of the congregation’s Green Havurah, Blum says, “have used sustainable concepts from our new building in remodeling their own houses.”

Many Models The greening of Reform congregations is a coast-to-coast phenomenon. According to a 2008 National Association of Temple Administrators survey, nearly 95% of Reform congregations in North America have investigated or initiated some form of greening their facilities; and of those that have engaged in major construction recently, 64% attempted to use sustainable materials. Here are just a few examples:

In New York City, Congregation Rodeph Sholom’s building systems have been transformed to conserve energy, fuel, and water. Congregants are repeatedly encouraged to follow suit through the “green” tips published in each temple newsletter, refrigerator magnets highlighting energy conservation tips distributed at 2007/5768 High Holiday services, reusable shopping bags disbursed at 2008/5769 High Holiday services, and environmental programming as part of the temple’s Mitzvah Weekend.

In Washington, DC, Temple Sinai’s “Environmental Committee” created a brochure, "Ten Things To Do This Summer To Help the Earth"(PDF), which offers congregants conservation tips such as “get regular [car] tune-ups (these can cut gas usage by 4%), properly inflate tires (3%), and avoid jack-rabbit starts and speeding (7–33%).”

In Tampa, Florida, Congregation Schaarai Zedek’s “Limud Zedek—Teaching Righteousness Committee” partnered with nearly every Jewish organization in Tampa as well as environmental organizations to host a Global Warming Forum designed to educate and inspire the Jewish community to take action on key energy issues. Its handout, “What You Can Do To Reduce City-Wide Global Warming and Support the Environment,” recommends “turn[ing] off and/or unplug[ging] electronics from the wall when they’re not being used. Even when turned off, hair dryers, cell phone chargers, and televisions use energy. In fact, the energy used to keep display clocks lit and memory chips working accounts for 5% of total energy consumption.”

In Rye, New York, Community Synagogue’s “Green Team” purchases eco-friendly cleaning supplies as well as paper towels and toilet paper made from recycled waste. Tuesday is “no energy” night, during which no functions or meetings are held. And a new organic flower garden on synagogue grounds will supply flowers for synagogue functions. All the while, explain “Green Team” co-chairs Frances Ginsberg and Lisa Sandler, “We endeavor to teach our community not just what we can do as stewards of the earth, but why we need to do it, both as Jews and as citizens of the world.”

In Kensington, Maryland, Temple Emanuel published a “Green Shalom Action Guide” featuring ecologically responsible actions to make members’ homes more environmentally friendly, supports reforestation projects that reduce CO2 emissions and benefit ecosystems, and composts waste from the temple’s on-site gardens.

In Austin, Texas, Congregation Beth Israel maintains a paper-recycling dumpster in the parking lot which is also used by the larger community.

In Erie, Pennsylvania, Temple Anshe Hesed is set to become a carbon neutral facility in 2009—and, when the initiative is complete, it will be the first carbon neutral synagogue in the United States. According to Eric Pallant, the congregation’s treasurer and a professor of environmental science at Allegheny College, to offset Anshe Hesed’s carbon footprint (36.5 tons in 2007, to be offset at $85.50 per ton of CO2, a total cost to the congregation of approximately $6,200), the temple installed compact fluorescent light bulbs, retrofit portions of its energy system, and acquired solar panels for a dormitory roof from the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies in Israel (with which the temple has an ongoing relationship). The panels, which are set to be installed this spring, will offset carbon emissions in amounts equal to Anshe Hesed’s unavoidable carbon emissions.

In Short Hills, New Jersey, Congregation B’nai Jeshurun initiated a comprehensive greening program that included posting “No Idling” signs by the car pool line to reduce vehicular emissions.

In Los Gatos, California, Congregation Shir Hadash’s installation of a solar photovoltaic power system has reduced electricity use by 45% and reduced carbon emissions by the equivalent of driving a passenger car approximately 32,000 miles.

And in Beverly Hills, California, Temple Emanuel has retrofitted its fluorescent lighting with more efficient bulbs, saving the congregation $1,500 in lighting per month.

Green Camping Each of the Union for Reform Judaism’s 12 North American camps is also moving toward renewable energy. At the Olin-Sang-Ruby Union Institute’s new aquatic center in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin, solar panels to be installed later this spring will help heat the pool water, and solar blankets will conserve the heat overnight. In Bruceville, Texas, Greene Family Camp’s solar hot-water heaters work in conjunction with electrical heating systems in all residential facilities. Camp Newman in Santa Rosa, California is collecting and storing rainwater for irrigation and installing photovoltaic systems aiming for “net zero” energy use in future buildings. Partnering with Faiths United for Sustainable Energy (FUSE), the camps are also engaged in recycling, teaching campers about energy conservation, and more. “In the years to come,” says Greene Family Camp director Loui Dobin, “these seemingly small steps will have a tremendous impact on the children and grandchildren of today’s campers.”

Eating Green—A Reform Jew’s Journey About 12 years ago, David Crohn, a longtime member of Temple Beth El in Riverside, California and an associate professor of environmental sciences at UC Riverside, became a vegan—a way for him to observe kashrut in light of Jewish tradition’s concern for animals, to protect the earth, and to support his own personal health. “Judaism is very food-oriented, and what you eat is intensely meaningful and personal,” he says. “Plus, animal agriculture is thought to be the single greatest contributor to the anthropogenic greenhouse gases that affect global warming. In the United States, too, it is usually much less efficient to grow food and give it to animals as feed than it is to grow other foods that can be eaten directly by humans.”

Crohn encourages other Jews to consider adopting a vegetarian or vegan lifestyle. There “will be things you miss,” he says, “and if you need to have something, eat it—it’s not a big deal. Take your time, cutting back gradually, and find good vegan and vegetarian cookbooks to help you along the way.”

Green Resources for Home & Temple In 1991, the Union for Reform Judaism’s General Assembly passed a historic resolution calling upon the Reform Movement to provide specific environmental guidance to congregations and congregants to preserve the planet. Here are some of the ways the Movement can now help you make environmentally sound choices.

The Commission on Social Action of Reform Judaism and the Department of Synagogue Management’s website "Greening Reform Judaism" serves as the Union for Reform Judaism’s green point of entry. You’ll find backgrounders on climate change; text studies for educators and lay leaders (including lessons on climate change and conserving energy from the CHAI Learning for Jewish Life curriculum); green “best practices,” including a room-by-room greening guide for synagogues; congregation case studies; an architecture guide; funding sources; environmental audit guidelines designed for small congregations; and more. Seasonally, you’ll discover a Chanukah-related guide to green your lifestyle from the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, a cofounder of the premier Jewish environmental organization Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life; and the Association of Reform Zionists of America / Kibbutz Lotan’s joint resource packet, “Make Sukkot a Truly Green Holiday,” which features guidelines for hosting an eco-friendly Sukkot dinner.

When it comes to preserving and protecting the earth, our most sacred inheritance, we all have a role to play. Using cloth grocery bags in the market, carpooling to and from work, recycling, installing solar panels, composting…in all these ways and others we ensure that we, and, in turn, our children and our children’s children, can choose life.

Jane E. Herman is a writer and assistant to Rabbi Eric H. Yoffie, president of the Union for Reform Judaism.

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Desert Secret Cracked: Ancient Hunting Techniques Revealed

By Baruch Gordon, March 2, 2009

Israel National News, Israel

How did humans living in the third millennium BCE manage to find sufficient quantities of meat in the arid desert regions? A new study of the "desert kites" that are spread across the expanses of Israel's Negev and Arava desert region, carried out by researchers from the University of Haifa, unearths the answer to this riddle.

Already in the early 20th century, British pilots flying over the Middle Eastern deserts identified strange forms spreading over hundreds of meters, sometimes even over a few kilometers. The shapes looked like two long walls that meet at angles and at the meeting point of each wall was a round-shaped trench.

To the pilots, the shapes resembled kites, hence the name given to them: "desert kites." A few such "kites" are known of in the deserts of Jordan, Syria, Israel, and Sinai. Archaeologists have suggested a number of theories as to the uses of these constructs, most supposing that they were used for hunting purposes, others suggesting that they served as cattle pens.

A few weeks ago, an interdisciplinary research group, funded by National Geographic, completed an encompassing survey of all eleven "kites" of the Negev and Arava, which included archaeological digs in four "kites", detailed documentation by means of state-of-the-art measuring instruments, aerial and ground photography, and dating by means of two independent radiometric methods.

The study's findings have clearly shown that these "kites" were used as mass hunting apparatus, dating back no later than the third millennium BCE. "When standing in one of these kites, it is astounding to see how it fits into the landscape and how the wild animals' migration routes would converge into the hidden kite," stated Dr. Bar-Oz. "Only then can one grasp how much energy and strategic understanding were invested in its construction."

The kites' branches can reach over 200 meters in length. At the base of each kite, the branches converge and end in a chasm or large trench. On some of the kites, an elevated stage was erected, probably in order to heighten the leaping wall and perhaps to hide the trench that was dug beneath it.

According to the researchers, the hunting method involved directing the indigenous wild animals alongside the walled branches of the kite toward its tip and its trench, where hunters awaited them.

The height of the walls which sometimes reached over one meter, and their thickness testify that the apparatus were intended for hunting not only gentle animals, such as deer, but also larger hoofed animals like wild ass and rams.

The extensive study, which examined all eleven traps scattered from Givat Barnea in the north of the desert region to Eilat in the south, also exposed the thinking processes that were invested in planning each trap. "The traps were placed in locations where animal migration routes were concentrated into bottlenecks. There is no doubt that this reflects that the prehistoric inhabitants of the desert had a lot of knowledge: they knew the cattle migration routes very well and knew where to place each of the traps most efficiently," Dr. Nadel noted.

"We were not taken by surprise by the technological ability; humans in that period were very similar to us in their capabilities… We are definitely talking about wide-scope construction in a region that is challenging for survival."

The research was headed by a University of Haifa team: zooarchaeologist Dr. Guy Bar-Oz, archaeologist Dr. Daniel Nadel, and landscape ecologist Dr. Dan Malkinson. Also participating in the project were researchers from the Arava Institute, the Geological Institute in Jerusalem, the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot, and Bar-Ilan University.

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February 2009

American Israelis Make Their Bid with the Green Team

By Josh Spiro, February 4, 2009
JTA in Jewish Journal - US

Alon Tal, the third candidate on the Green Movement-Meimad's Knesset list, addressing the party's kick-off rally on Jan. 18 in Tel Aviv. Photo by Yosef Israel Abramowitz

For an Israeli politician, Gershon Baskin has an unusual resume.

In the 1960s, he was protesting America’s war in Vietnam, not fighting against invading Arab armies. He grew up on Long Island marching for civil rights, not wandering the alleyways of Jerusalem’s Old City.

And that was all before his bar mitzvah.

Baskin says both his social conscience and his Zionism come from his Zionist youth movement, Young Judaea.

It’s no coincidence that “you find so many Young Judaea people of our generation who have become social entrepreneurs and gotten engaged in all kinds of initiatives to make Israeli society a better place," Baskin told JTA.

Baskin is one of three Young Judaea graduates who are now American-Israelis running on the Green Movement-Meimad ticket in Israel’s election Feb. 10. Environmentalist Alon Tal occupies the party’s No. 3 slot, while Baskin is listed as 26th and entrepreneur and social activist Yosef Abramowitz is No. 36.

The Green Movement, which is left-leaning and secular, merged with Meimad, a left-leaning and moderate religious party, in the run-up to the election. The party’s platform focuses on energy policy and education.

“There is a lot of enthusiasm, especially since the decision to run together with Meimad," Abramowitz said of the party’s support base. “If we win together and enter the Knesset together, it will solidify a remarkable philosophical and ideological breakthrough in Jewish life."

Baskin, a crusader for Jewish-Arab coexistence, says he was prompted to run for Knesset because he wants to be in a position to help drive the Israeli government agenda.

“I personally got tired of telling politicians what they ought to do and realized the time had come for me to stand up to the plate and take responsibility,“ Baskin told JTA.

The founder of the Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information, Baskin has spent the last few years crusading for coexistence through everything from sharing the region’s limited water to cross-border business initiatives.

Tal, too, has sought to build bridges across borders. As founder of the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies, he brings Israeli, Palestinian and Jordanian graduate students together to work on environmental problems.

In 2006, Tal’s environmental work earned him the prestigious Charles Bronfman Prize, a humanitarian award with a $100,000 prize. He also founded the Israel Union for Environmental Defense, which counts among its successes battling the dumping of sewage from Eilat into the Red Sea and got a $10 million purification system installed in the Kishon River near Haifa.

Tal says the paucity of Jews in Durham, N.C., connected him to his fellow Jews and influenced his decision to move to Israel.

"There is a high percentage of Jewish North Carolinians who move to Israel, and it’s not because they don’t like North Carolina," he said, “but because they have a strong sense of Jewish identity."

Of the three, Abramowitz is the most recent transplant to Israel. Three years ago, he and his family left their home near Boston for a desert community, Kibbutz Ketura, near Eilat.

Despite their enthusiasm, it’s unlikely any of the candidates will win a Knesset seat. Even if the Green Movement, one of two environmental parties vying for seats, gets a toehold in the parliament, the chances that the party would win enough votes to seat three members are dim.

“Everything is against us and it’s very hard to break in as a new party," Tal acknowledged.

One of the challenges facing the party is the split of the environmental vote. A recent survey conducted by the Jerusalem Post suggested that the other environmental party, the Greens, could eke out a Knesset seat or two—2 percent of the vote, or roughly 80,000 votes, are necessary to win a seat—but the Green Movement’s odds aren’t as good.

Despite the disillusionment of many Israelis with the larger parties, concern with security is likely to keep them in power.

“I think the large parties will gain most of the votes," said Professor Avner De-Shalit, a political science professor at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University. “Despite being not popular, people will vote for them because of the recent war [in the Gaza Strip] and its effects."

Tal remains optimistic, however, predicting that the Green Movement “is going to show up and surprise the pundits." He said his optimism is fueled by the heavy traffic to the party’s Web site and the increasing interest in environmentalism in Israel—evidenced by the growing number of environmental activists and organizations—over the past few years.

The party’s kickoff rally on Jan. 18 drew an estimated crowd of 1,200 to 2,000. In an event styled after a youth movement meeting, the crowd formed a large circle to hear speeches and musical performances that included Tal on saxophone and fiddle, as well as a rendition of Joni Mitchell’s environmentalist ballad “Big Yellow Taxi."

“Walking into the room, you realized, 'Oh my God, we’re going to get some seats in the Knesset,' "Abramowitz said.

In a bid to make the most of its limited budget, the party is employing innovative campaign tactics, including sending text messages to potential supporters, raising funds and awareness through house parties, and running a Web site that appears in Hebrew, English, Arabic and Russian.

Still, for all but the top candidates on the list, the election is not about landing a Knesset seat.

“My goal is not to become a Knesset member," said Abramowitz, who refers to his 36th slot on his party’s list as “double chai." "My goal is to bring solar power to the State of Israel."

Abramowitz, founder of the Arava Power Company, one of Israel’s biggest solar developers, was brought into the party as a solar energy and business expert.

Baskin, on the other hand, has his sights set on making it into the Knesset—at least someday.

“I think I’ll do much better next time," he said of his party ranking, No. 26. “I think what I bring to the party is the non-environmental agenda, ensuring that this party also addresses social and political issues like peace with the Arab world."

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Allegheny College Student's Senior Project Helps Temple Anshe Hesed Become Carbon Neutral - Considered First in Nation

February 4, 2009
Allegheny College, Meadville, PA, US

A congregation in Erie, Pa., has become what is thought to be the nation's first carbon-neutral synagogue, an achievement spurred on by an Allegheny College student's senior project.

Temple Anshe Hesed neutralized its carbon footprint -- the total amount of greenhouse gas emissions for which it is responsible -- by collaborating in a carbon-offset program with the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies, located in the desert of southern Israel. The institute prepares future Arab and Jewish leaders to cooperatively solve the Middle East's environmental challenges.

A carbon-offset program allows an organization to reduce its carbon footprint by paying for technology to meet another organization's energy needs without creating carbon emissions. Temple Anshe Hesed purchased solar panels that the Arava Institute will install to generate electricity for its campus.

Because of its remote location, the institute currently must purchase electricity produced from fossil fuels at a facility 150 miles away, with an estimated 15 percent of that power lost during transmission.

"Through its efforts to become the first carbon-neutral synagogue in the United States, Temple Anshe Hesed demonstrates a deep and abiding commitment to the Jewish value of tikkun olam -- repair of our world," said Rabbi Eric H. Yoffie, president of the Union for Reform Judaism in New York City. "The purchase of solar panels not only helps the synagogue offset its own carbon footprint, but furthers the institute's sacred endeavors as well."

Temple Anshe Hesed already had taken steps to reduce its carbon footprint by installing energy-efficient light bulbs and retrofitting parts of the synagogue's heating and cooling system. But, prompted by the ethic of environmental stewardship permeating the Hebrew Scriptures and Jewish literature, the temple's members sought to do more.

"We want to be an example for other congregations in colder or warmer climates who have older buildings which may not be easily adapted to more eco-friendly energy footprints," said Temple Anshe Hesed rabbi John Bush, "to inspire them to find a way as we did to offset our impact on the environment while having a positive impact on our religious movement."

The synagogue enlisted Tara Fortier, at the time a student at Allegheny College, to develop a plan to participate in the Arava Institute's offset program, which Rabbi Bush had learned about during a summer 2007 visit to Israel. Fortier, a double major in environmental studies and religious studies, found that Temple Anshe Hesed emitted 36.5 tons of carbon dioxide in 2007 from the use of electricity and natural gas.

She then calculated the cost for the synagogue to offset its emissions and developed a series of recommendations for them to fund solar panels at the Arava Institute. Fortier's senior project culminated with an event for the congregation held on Tu B'Shvat, known as "the Jewish Earth Day," to encourage interest in the institute and the offset program.

"The congregation was very welcoming on every level," said Fortier, who studied at the Arava Institute in summer 2007 and graduated from Allegheny in May 2008. "The monetary cost of progressive action can be substantial, but ultimately the congregation understands that the environmental cost of passivity is much more, and their beliefs drive them toward action."

Fortier's senior project built on existing ties between Allegheny and the Arava Institute. Eric Pallant, an environmental science professor who helped direct Fortier's study, taught as a Fulbright Scholar at the institute in 2001 and serves on the institute's board of trustees. In 2004, four student interns from the Arava Institute spent six weeks at the college working on local projects that promoted sustainable environmental practices.

"We have a strong relationship with both the Anshe Hesed congregation and Allegheny College and are very happy to have found a new and unique way to strengthen those ties," said Arava Institute president David Lehrer. "The Temple Anshe Hesed initiative is a first for the Arava Institute. It is a kind of pilot project that, if it works, we hope to repeat with other congregations around North America in order to reach the ultimate goal of a carbon-neutral campus."

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Op-Ed by Elaine Solowey: The answer is in the trees

By Elaine Solowey, February 6, 2009
Haaretz English edition, Israel

As we celebrate Tu Bishvat, the holiday of the trees, we need to take a critical look at our cultivation and production methods. Whereas tree crops represent one of the most sustainable forms of agriculture, they are outnumbered by modern agriculture's megacrops, which badly damage the earth. The latter waste nutrients, pollute the water and allow topsoil to be blown away, while the chemicals they are sprayed with contaminate food. And modern agriculture uses more energy than it produces in the form of food. Amid a global energy crisis and world hunger, we cannot afford such carelessness.

Perennial crops are inherently more sustainable than the annual crops of modern agriculture, which need to be replanted each year. Sustainable agriculture can help heal the earth - if we recognize its value in boosting the quality of our food and land.

Erosion is the enemy of both agriculture and civilization, according to J. Russell Smith, author of "Tree Crops," a classic text on arboreal agriculture. Smith took a series of trips in the 1930s to the Mediterranean, Far East and Middle East to study land use. He was appalled by the vast stretches of destroyed and depleted land he encountered: "Forest - field - plow - desert. That is the cycle of the hills under most plow agricultures." Between the water erosion on hilly and sloping lands and the wind erosion on flat plains, the world's fertile topsoil continues to drift away or be washed away. So it is no exaggeration to say that topsoil erosion is as big a threat as climate change, a problem not as visible as the coming oil shortage but a far greater danger to humankind.

The world's population is bigger than ever, and all humanity needs food. But depending, for our food, on a system that systematically ruins the land simply means that sooner or later we will not be able to produce food for ourselves.

The megacrops (the most important commercial crops) of the 20th century are all weak competitors - they have to be planted in environments where other plants have been eliminated. Grains, for instance, are grown on bare fields with every weed sprout sprayed or harrowed out of existence. Rice is cultivated in flooded, intensively weeded paddies; soybean and rapeseed are grown in fields stricken by chemicals; and corn is grown in huge blocs as big as small countries, where no other living thing is allowed to survive.

A terrible ecological price is paid for this kind of cultivation, all over the world. Communities wither, wildlife disappears, and the land dies. Unfortunately, almost every modern crop is cultivated this way.

That is, every kind of crop except trees. Their bounty of fruits, nuts, fibers or pods is a blessing to the earth, and their cultivation is not inherently damaging. Trees do not need annual plowing and can be fertilized with organic materials like compost and mulch. Diverse orchards can be kept pest free with sensible strategies.

Just about every damaging factor in modern agriculture is absent from arboreal cultivation. Tree crops can actually yield significantly more food, including carbohydrates and animal feed. Once upon a time, in ancient Greece and among Native Americans in California, for example, the main source of bread was oak trees. The bottom line is that there are many alternative options that need to be explored.

Moreover, the ecological benefits of trees are profound: They make food and oxygen, and manufacture topsoil by breaking up rocks in the subsoil and releasing minerals later stored in fruit, seeds and leaves. Their roots stabilize the soil and protect it - creating microorganisms and insect homes. Trees stop erosion, store water and are magnets for rain. A mature deciduous tree may give off 500 liters of water from its approximately six acres of surface area on a warm summer day. The cool air under the trees, drawn upward as rain clouds glide over, often leads to rain. The trees then absorb water through their leaves, and the raindrops settle among their roots.

With all the benefits of arboreal agriculture, why then are plowed crops the most prevalent form of cultivation? Perhaps modern agriculture has narrowed its sights to things that can be bred quickly and provide produce quickly - things that can be done in an instant. Agriculture is focused on quick annual crops.

On this Tu Bishvat, we should remember trees' environmental benefits in mitigating and stabilizing the climate: The air and the earth are several degrees cooler under a tree in hot climates and several degrees warmer in a cold one. In addition to acting as the world's lungs, trees are the earth's air conditioners. Deforestation, something of a throwaway line when global climate change is discussed, is most likely one of its main causes. Public debate over climate change must address alternative cultivation methods and embrace arboreal agriculture as a key solution.

Dr. Elaine Solowey is director of the Center for Sustainable Agriculture at the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies.

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December 2008

Earth-friendly peace studies attract Vermonters to Holy Land

By Joel Banner Baird, December 21, 2008
Burlington Free Press - Burlington, Vermont, US

Windswept and nearly barren, the rift valley extending south from the Dead Sea might seem an unlikely magnet for young environmentalists.

Yet a small institute in southern Israel -- where good science serves as a foundation for regional peace -- has a growing fan base at the University of Vermont.

Earlier this year, Kimberly Wallin, who teaches ecosystem health at UVM's Rubenstein School Environment and Natural Resources, paid a short visit.

She encountered at the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies (AIES) a rigorous curriculum in drought-resistant agriculture, renewable energy, biodiversity and environmental law. The institute's sun-baked location appealed to her.

"What better place to learn about water issues?" she said last week, adding that the contrast to Vermont's lush forest ecology jolted her out of habitual modes of observation.

Wallin also found Israelis studying side by side with Palestinians and Arabs.

Objective problem solving, her hosts told her, fostered congenial and purposeful dialogue. The institute requires all students to enroll in peace and environmental leadership seminar.

Kibbutz Ketura, which hosts the Arava institute, sits snugly along Israel's border with Jordan. Egypt's Sinai Peninsula lies 10 miles to west. A half-hour bus ride south to the Red Sea port of Elat brings the visitor within sight of the coast of Saudi Arabia.

Rabbi Michael Cohen, a Manchester-based UVM grad and a member of the institute's founding faculty, said the AIES' location drives home an important message.

"The environment doesn't care about borders," he said. "The peace component is a major derivative of what happens when you get these students together."

These days, Cohen works as a stateside student recruiter and fundraiser for AIES. Since the facility's founding in 1999, he's taught courses at the institute that trace references to diversity and environmental stewardship in the Book of Genesis.

He's led discussions among Jews, Muslims and Christians on biblical accounts of Moses -- but not as an authoritative voice for any one religion.

"We look at him as a model of leadership and environmental wisdom," Cohen said. "He's a test case of what works and what doesn't work."

Wallin is working to firm up academic links with the institute, ultimately adding a new minor in arid-ecosystem studies to the Rubenstein School. She's convinced the enthusiasm she found there will prove contagious to students.

"Any time you can operate outside your comfort zone it brings new ways of thinking," she said. "It fuels curiosity. It pushes the limits of how you look at things and the way you question things."

And, she added, the credits earned at AIES transfer seamlessly back to UVM.

That policy kick-started coursework for Sam Frank, 19, of Eugene, Ore. He spent two semesters at Arava last year before enrolling at UVM as an ecological-agriculture major.

"I really had no idea what I wanted to do before I went there," Frank said. "I ended up with a great education in sustainable agriculture."

Students and faculty were on a first-name basis, he added, and the student mix -- roughly one-third Israeli, one-third Arab and Palestinian, one-third North American -- added to the bracing cocktail of ideas.

Frank, who described his upbringing as "typical, American-Jewish middle-class," had a Palestinian roommate.

"We bonded," he said. "This kind of work gives people something to work on that brings them together, rather than driving them apart."

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Green Movement elects veteran activists to its Knesset candidates list

By Ehud Zion Waldoks, December 14, 2008
The Jerusalem Post, Israel

Green Movement cofounder Eran Ben-Yemini was voted into the top spot on the party's slate for the Knesset on Friday in a primary at Seminar Hakibbutzim in Tel Aviv. He was followed by cofounder Alon Tal.

Ben-Yemini was the founder of Green Course - the national student environmental organization - and currently works at the Heschel Center for Environmental Learning and Leadership in Tel Aviv.

Tal founded the Israel Union for Environmental Defense (Adam, Teva, V'din) and the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies at Kibbutz Ketura.

No. 3 on the list is Iris Hahn, a city planner affiliated with the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel and its Open Landscape Institute. She also represents the environmental organizations on the National Planning and Building Council and various subcommittees.

Hussein Tarabieh, who took the fourth spot, founded the first environmental unit in the Arab sector in Sakhnin. He also founded an environmental center there that uses the environment as a motif in coexistence dialogue.

Anglos did not fare so well in the primary. Although North Carolina-native Tal made it to No. 2, Gershon Baskin, raised in Long Island, New York, and Yosef Abramowitz, from Massachusetts, failed to crack the top 10.

The rest of the list, in order: Yael Cohen Paran, Ofer Kott, Rami Livni, Natalia Gutkovski, Sarit Oked and Shmuel Chen.

About 70 percent of the 1,000 party members voted in the primary and Ben-Yemini was voted to lead the party by a large majority, the Green Movement said.

"Democracy triumphed. The people who made it to the front of the list are people who have proven themselves over the past several years as those who led the most prominent environmental battles in Israel. We hope that with the help of the public we will continue to lead the fight in the parliamentary sphere as well," Ben-Yemini said in a statement.

It is as yet unclear what chance any green party has of passing the 2% electoral threshold on February 10 and entering the Knesset.

A poll on Thursday for Israel Radio placed the other green party, the Greens, outside the Knesset once again. The Green Movement did not appear in that survey.

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Op-Ed by Rabbi Michael M. Cohen: Green Power

By Michael M. Cohen, December 12, 2008

Washington Times, Washington, DC, US

The election of Barack Obama is a reminder of the power of effective grassroots organizing. It is an important lesson that Mr. Obama learned some 20 years ago on the South side of Chicago. The renewed appreciation of change from the bottom up, in the wake of his election, may signal that a new zeitgeist has arrived. In many ways it is the latest unfolding, made easier through the new technologies of our day, of Marshall McLuhan´s Global Village. One area where we need to look to grassroots power to move a political process forward is the Arab-Israeli conflict. There, scores of Israeli, Palestinian and Jordanian nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have been working together to mitigate that conflict.

One of the reasons that the peace process is locked in a stalemate is that for far too long trust and hope have been depreciated. We know that the vast majority of Israelis and Palestinians want peace, and understand that difficult, yet necessary, concessions will need to be made. Yet when they look around they ask themselves, "Is this really possible?" Under the radar screen, not because they are ineffective, but because success and cooperation between the parties is not what is highlighted. The aforementioned NGOs continue to work across the divide to keep the soil fertile for the peace we all desire and desperately need there.

In the ebb and flow of diplomacy and the ups and downs of the peace process, these organizations have been modeling for years what the political leaders have failed to achieve –- a vision of what peace can look like. Their actions say that such a peace is no mirage, but a reality. The efforts of these organizations need to be accentuated to help break through the psychological walls of despair and the all-too-familiar patterns and cycles of violence and failure.

To give prominence to these NGOs will not only remind the vast majority of Palestinians and Israeli what is possible, but will strengthen their voice against the radicals in both camps that will do whatever they can to derail a peaceful solution to the conflict. I write not wearing the glasses of panacea, but know full well that as an agreement is reached there will be blood. This is even more of a reason why the majority needs to be fortified and emboldened to take them through that difficult period. If they are strengthened, this will help marginalize (though not completely eliminate) the radicals, and weaken their influence. Finally, as in all good grassroots organizing this is about the dynamic of power from the bottom up; that in this case can be used to bolster the political leaders to do what they have failed to do to date.

To allow these organizations to play the larger role, the following five points should be considered:

1) On the first visit Mr. Obama and/or Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton makes to the region, they should not only visit with the political leaders but call a conference that they will host of those Israeli, Palestinian and Jordanian NGOs who are working together.

2) There should be a number of on-sight visits to see the work of these organizations.

3) In March, there is the annual meeting in Washington of the Alliance for Middle East Peace (ALLMEP). The Alliance is the umbrella organization in the United States that represents more than 50 Israeli, Palestinian and Jordanian NGOs involved in people-to-people grassroots work in the Middle East. They should be invited to the White House to discuss with Mr. Obama, their experiences.

4) The budgets in the U.S. Agency for International Development's Office of Conflict Management and Mitigation (CMM ) and the Middle East Regional Cooperation grants (MERC) should minimally be maintained if not increased.

5) Billions of U.S. tax dollars are sent to that region for economic development. The effectiveness of that investment when it comes to promoting peace is weakened when those monies are used to develop separate economies.

In the present economic reality, it will be difficult to increase such finding. Therefore there should be a mandate that a percentage of those dollars go only toward efforts that bring the people together across borders to develop more integrated economies, businesses and projects.

The bottom line is that the role of grassroots NGOs in the Arab-Israeli conflict has for too long been underutilized. The time has come for their voice and expertise to be employed.

Rabbi Michael M. Cohen is director of Special Projects for the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies

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Reared to public service

By Ehud Zion Waldoks, December 11, 2008
Jerusalem Post, Israel

"A ship in a harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for."

Those words, on a poster of a boat that still hangs in Prof. Alon Tal's office at Ben-Gurion University 34 years after his sister gave it to him for his 14th birthday, has inspired him ever since, he told The Jerusalem Post this week.

Tal's new political party, the Green Movement, heads to primaries on Friday ahead of a run for the Knesset in February. Tal is running against party co-founder Eran Ben-Yemini for the top spot.

North Carolina-born Tal founded the Israel Union for Environmental Defense (Adam, Teva, V'din) in 1990, the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies in 1996, and as head of Life and Environment he more than tripled the number of organizations belonging to that umbrella group. And on the side, he's organized Israel's biggest environmental conference ever, on desertification, set to run for four days starting on Sunday at BGU's Sde Boker campus.

"The environmental crisis in Israel will not let me rest," Tal declared.

"I refuse to accept that trend is destiny and I know that people created the environmental problems, and people can solve them," he told the Post.

"No other political party had a cogent, professional and clear environmental-social agenda... We've built such an institution," he said.

Tal is one of three Anglos running for seats on the party's Knesset candidates list. The other two are Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information founder Dr. Gershon Baskin and Arava Power Company founder Yosef Abramowitz.

Not coincidentally, all three are alumni of the Young Judaea youth movement and credit it with turning them into people who go out and make change.

"Everything I learned in life I learned in Young Judaea," Tal quipped.

Later, Baskin echoed the sentiment almost verbatim during an interview at his office.

Growing up in North Carolina, Tal was president of his local Young Judaea chapter by 14 and vice president of the national movement by 16.

"I was flying up to New York every other week for meetings," he said. "If you tell kids to take themselves seriously, then they will."

Baskin also held several positions in the movement, eventually becoming programming and activities director for his native Long Island.

Baskin reflected that Young Judaea "indoctrinated" them with the idea that moving to Israel was about making a change. All three have a long history of leadership and initiatives behind them, and, in a sense, moving onto the national scene was the logical next step.

The Green Movement was founded by environmental movement professionals just a few months ago because they didn't see any other party advocating that which they ardently believed in. However, Tal said the Green Movement was more than just a one-issue party.

"Israel's problems go beyond the environmental. It is disingenuous and dishonest to the public to give our standing on 15 percent of the issues," he maintained. Therefore, the party's platform details their stance on peace and security, culture, education and the other pressing issues of Israeli society.

Tal, who holds a law degree from the Hebrew University and a doctorate in environmental science and policy from Harvard, said the party hoped to emulate European countries where a green party was a regular part of the political spectrum.

"Every European country has a green party and now Israel will, too," he said.

Recent polls have given a green party at least two mandates in the next Knesset though there has been speculation that the greens could be the next Gil Pensioners Party and gain as many as five or six seats.

However, as Baskin put it succinctly, "February is the target, but not the goal."

The ultimate goal, he said, was to create a long-term party which became a fixture on the political scene.

Baskin, raised in Smithtown, Long Island, has been an advocate for coexistence for 35 years. In 1975, he called for a two-state solution and approached the then-PLO ambassador to the US to propose the idea. However, Baskin recalled, the ambassador wasn't in the least bit interested, saying, "Over my dead body."

On the Israeli side, Baskin was told again and again that "you don't understand them [the Arabs]."

Taking that as a challenge, he decided to become as knowledgeable as he could.

He made aliya through the Interns for Peace program and spent his first two years in the country in Kafr Kara. At the age of 24, he petitioned then-prime minister Menachem Begin to appoint him in charge of Jewish-Arab relations. After 14 months of lobbying, he was appointed the first civil servant in Israeli history responsible for Jewish-Arab relations. From within the Education Ministry and in conjunction with the Prime Minister's Office, he went on to found the Institute for Education for Jewish-Arab Coexistence. The institute taught and trained teachers in coexistence education from 1981 up until the outbreak of the first intifada in 1987.

"In March 1988, I drove to the Dehaishe refugee camp to talk to the people. What I heard was 'Get out of our face - end the occupation,'" he recalled.

The conflict was no longer an existential zero-sum game, Baskin realized, and so he founded the Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information to look for like-minded individuals to try to bring about the two-state solution he had dreamed of more than 10 years before.

Today, 20 years later, the Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information is a bastion of coexistence initiatives that participates in Track II diplomacy (informal diplomacy, in which non-officials engage in dialogue, with the aim of conflict resolution or confidence-building) between Israelis and Palestinians and also focuses on peace education and environment and water issues.

After writing policy papers and advising politicians for 30 years, Baskin said he had found a political home in the Green Movement and decided it was time to run for the Knesset.

The party's biggest challenge, said Baskin, was to figure out how to differentiate itself from the other environmental party running for the Knesset, the Greens, as the public had difficulty distinguishing between the two. Both Tal and Baskin said the ideal solution would be a merger; there were good people in the Greens, it was just the leadership that was very problematic.

Baskin said the Green Movement hoped to reach the one million people who hadn't voted in the last national election, as well as the people who voted for the Pensioners and the Green Leaf party.

"Our strength is our link to the grassroots, because we come from there," he said.

While the new left-wing New Move group launched by Meretz recently offered the party a place, Tal said there were too many ideological differences between the parties for them to join forces. The party members voted recently to reject the offer.

One of those ideological differences was a commitment to renewable energy, an area where one man feels he can help bring about a sea change in Israeli policy.

Abramowitz has many Jewish-world credentials under his belt, including founding the Jewish Life and Family NGO, extensive work with the Ethiopian and Russian Jewish communities (for which he was nominated twice for the Nobel Peace Prize) and a previous run with the Atid Ehad Ethiopian party for the Knesset. However his self-appointed single-minded focus and role in the party is to be its renewable-energy expert.

Abramowitz uprooted his family of five from Newton, Massachusetts, two years ago and moved with his wife Rabbi Susan Silverman (sister of comedienne Sarah Silverman) to Kibbutz Ketura in the Arava. Shortly after arriving and experiencing the amazing heat of the desert sun, he started to put together the Arava Power Company.

The company has plans to provide 500 MW of photovoltaic solar energy, with the potential for 1 GW and more. According to Abramowitz, given the right conditions, the Arava Power Company could support 40% of Israel's energy needs.

"The other 40 candidates are very impressive and I really admire them. They have activist and academic credentials, but they don't have a green business background and no specific expertise on renewable energy," he said Wednesday by phone.

He already knows what he would do in the first 100 days after being elected an MK.

"I'd put together a comprehensive renewable energy act," he said. Abramowitz said 30 years of leadership had prepared him for becoming an MK. He's running for the fourth slot on the list.

"The environmental problems [in Israel] are symptomatic of a general non-accountability. I would push for serious accountability," he added.

Although the party had originally hoped to have a year and a half to launch, Tal said, they've crunched their campaign into two and a half months.

"We're picking up new members all the time. Thirty to 40 new members join every day," he said.

He added that the party was actively courting Anglos, holding informational sessions in English speakers' homes across the country every week. It had also translated its vision and platform into English, set up an English-language blog and an English Facebook group.

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November 2008

BGU shields its eyes and stares into the solar future

By Ehud Zion Waldoks, November 2, 2008
Jerusalem Post, Israel

Ben-Gurion University of the Negev has just wrapped up an intense week of solar energy events that culminated in the first ever French-Israel workshop to share research.

First up was the SP2 working group meeting of the EU-funded PERFORMANCE project, then the 15th Sde Boker Symposium on Solar Energy Production, followed by the annual meeting of the Israel Sustainable Energy Society (ISES) and finally concluding with the workshop.

On Wednesday, the first day of the French-Israeli workshop at Sde Boker, The Jerusalem Post caught up with BGU's Prof. David Fairman, who organized all four events.

"The symposium has been running for 22 years and is the longest running solar energy conference in Israel, but we've never had so many people attend," Faiman told the Post.

"We had about 150 people from all over. Lots of young start-ups and established companies like Luz II, Ormat, and Soleil. There were representatives of universities and research institutes all presenting their latest research," he said.

For Fairman, a presentation by Better Place of their electric car charging network, a critical scientific look at electric cars and a presentation of a new turbine made out of sailcloth were highlights of the ISES meeting.

Faiman made aliya from the UK two weeks before the Yom Kippur War. He started as a theoretical physicist at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, but decided he needed to get practical. He was recruited by Amos Richmond, who was founding The Jacob Blaustein Institute for Desert Research and eventually became director of the university's National Solar Energy Center and chair of the department of solar energy and environmental physics.

"We were particularly honored to have Dr. Harry Zvi Tabor [the father of Israeli solar energy] and Morton Prince, one of the co-inventors of the photovoltaic cell, the giants upon whose backs we stand," Faiman said with a pleased smile.

Faiman explained that the France-Israel workshop idea was the brainchild of the former scientific attache at the French Embassy during a visit to the university.

The workshop is backed by 500,000 Euros put up by France and matched by $500,000 put up by the Ministry of Science, French deputy scientific attache Sarah Lawangana told the Post. The money will be distributed to researchers from France and Israel working together on joint projects.

Bernard Thonon of CEA-INES, France's national institute on solar energy, who presented an overview of French interest in solar energy during the workshop said he found it helpful and would be participating next year as well. Next year's workshop is scheduled to be held in France.

"There are several points in which Israel has very good knowledge," which would supplement France's, he said. During his presentation, Thonon explained that French companies were interested in investing in solar for export use.

"The overview was fine. I did not have a view of who were the main actors and research groups in Israel," he said. Previous collaborations had been of limited duration on specific projects which had not allowed for the wider perspective, he said.

While France opted for nuclear power, they used to be pioneers in solar research and are still sitting on a vast archive of relevant documentation, Faiman explained. Recently, the French government decided to promote solar research again after a 15 year lapse, he said.

Meanwhile, one company which stopped by to check out the latest research has big plans for Monday. The Arava Power Company, based at Kibbutz Ketura, has planned a press conference to make a dramatic announcement. The company hopes to turn the Arava into a solar Silicon Valley.

"We are planning to announce something which we think will be a game changer," company president Yosef Abramowitz told the Post. He refused to elaborate.

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Sand for Sale: An Unusual Solution to Theft in the Negev

By Nathan Jeffay, November 26, 2008
The Forward, New York, U.S.

Tel Aviv, Israel — Land disputes are nothing new in the Middle East, but the latest battles are over an unexpected part of Israel’s territory — its sand.

In recent months, the Israel Land Administration, the government agency that owns most of the land in Israel, has become concerned about building contractors who have been driving large trucks into the Negev desert to cart away sand for use in the production of concrete.

In response to the theft, the ILA has put one of the last major sand dunes in the Negev up for sale, with the hope of deterring further stealing. The administration is currently preparing to decide which contractor will dig up the sand from a dune in the Arava Valley and move it to Eilat, where it will be sold to builders.

Local activists, together with the Israel Union for Environmental Defense, are mounting a high court challenge to block the move, claiming that the sale could ruin the natural beauty of the dune, as well as the habitat of rare species of plants and animals that thrive there.

Both the theft of sand and the determination of the ILA to sell a dune are symptoms of a wider problem facing Israel: The country is, in a sense, running out of sand. Though Israel is largely desert, sites where sand can be removed without damaging the environment are becoming exhausted.

“For years, sand has been thought of very lightly and taken from along the shoreline, with little thought for the future. In 50 years’ time, we are going to lack sand,” said environmental consultant Ra’aman Boral, former adviser to the Ministry of the Environment. And it’s not just the environmental lobby that is concerned. Meir Bar-El, head of the building materials division of the Manufacturers Association of Israel, told the Forward, “In the long run, we know that we face a shortage of sand. We are afraid it will be a problem.”

Sand theft is a problem that’s not entirely new. It has been a regular occurrence along the coastline, and violent turf wars sometimes erupt between criminals greedy for sand. According to official statistics, there were 100 cases of sand theft nationally last year, though many go unreported and there are no figures in the quantities of sand involved.

Builders are legally supposed to rely on official sandpits, which are operated by the government only as long as digging poses no risk to the environment. The sandpits are closed at the point that digging becomes an environmental risk. But after 60 years of heavy digging, most spots that will sustain digging without causing long-term damage have been exhausted.

Israel is not the only country to face sand crises; Indian builders face sand shortages during rainy seasons. And Saudi Arabia has measures in force to prevent sand export, for fear of shortages. Israel’s problem, however, is more acute than in most other places, given the size of the country and the speed at which it has been built.

Today there are just five legal sandpits — fewer than ever before — and they are rarely close to building projects, meaning that transport costs make their use an expensive option.

“The price of sand is going up, and with few places… builders can take it legally, there is motivation to steal,” said Nir Papay, director of the Environmental Protection Division at the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel.

It is in this context that the ILA has decided that in 2009, it will begin to sell a third of the 175-acre Samar dune in the Negev desert’s Arava Valley for building projects 25 miles to the south, in Eilat. The dune is known for its fine and soft sand and for its wildlife.

ILA spokeswoman Ortal Tsabar said that “people can’t get it in a legal way, so they steal it.”

“If it’s available legally, there will be less motivation to steal it,” she added.

Tsabar said that while a third of the dune will be preserved as a nature reserve, supplying sand from the area is necessary to keep construction costs down in Eilat and to avoid the pollution that comes from transporting sand from farther away. The tender for the removal of the sand is due to be allocated in December. Samar sand is expected to meet building needs in the tourist town for around three years. That is not enough to make it worthwhile, activists argue.

“It doesn’t matter to us whether it would last for three, five or even eight years — it is still shortsighted and spells the destruction of an important natural habitat,” said Roy Talbi, a member of Kibbutz Talbi, which sits next to the dune. Talbi, coordinator of the Arava Institute’s environmental department, which has brought to the high court the petition against the dune sale, along with the Israel Union for Environmental Defense.

Israel’s leading expert on dunes, Haim Tsoar, geography professor at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, told the Forward that “Samar is a unique field for science. The dune is one of the only dunes in the world to exist in such an arid area but to be covered by vegetation and inhabited by what I call ‘sand-loving’ animals that can only survive in this climate. This habitat will be destroyed.”

Samar’s rare species include the lesser Egyptian gerbil, the Middle Eastern short-fingered gecko and the sand fox.

Tsoar believes that Israel must look for long-term solutions. “We need something different from the current situation. One is to buy sand from Egypt — there’s lots in the Sinai.”

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October 2008

Op-Ed by Yosef Abramowitz and David Lehrer: The solar vote

By Yosef I. Abramowitz and David Lehrer
Haaretz English Edition, Israel

Though the upcoming Knesset election promises to be contentious, there may be one issue all parties can rally around: solar energy for the State of Israel. Today Israel has virtually no commercial solar electricity, but it could quickly become a solar superpower if politicians can be convinced to make one key change in regulatory policy. Voters across the spectrum could make the difference.

Those who cast their ballots on the basis of security issues know how ludicrous plans are for at least two new coal-powered plants in Ashkelon, within range of missiles from Gaza. Indeed, missiles in the hands of Hamas and Hezbollah can already reach most of Israel's power plants. The best defense against Israel's national grid going down in an age of missiles is a distributed power network, meaning solar fields of 25-50 megawatts dotting the country. Even if one is hit, damage to the electricity supply and distribution network will be limited.

Those who vote based on environmental issues - and polls indicate there will be record numbers of such voters this election - know that Israel's heavy reliance on imported, carbon-based fuels is bad for the environment and for public health. Fortunately, Israel is blessed with enough sunshine: Solar power alone could fuel up to 40 percent (8 gigawatts) of Israel's anticipated electricity needs by 2020. But today, less than 1 percent of our energy comes from renewables, and our official goal for solar is to reach only a modest 10 percent by 2020. A moratorium on new conventional power plants, coupled with the building of solar energy fields, would bring Israel into compliance with developed nations on greenhouse gas emissions.

Those who will vote based on economic considerations are concerned about the implications of reduced foreign investment. Even now, in the wake of the credit crisis, the good news is that global interest in investing tens of billions of dollars in Israel's solar infrastructure - subject to one condition - remains real and enduring. An entire new power industry, with thousands of jobs, could sprout up. Israel pursuing energy independence would also keep valuable currency at home and offset imports, since solar fuel is free, forever.

Those voters with a peace agenda may know that the terms of Israel's 1994 peace treaty with Jordan include unimplemented provisions for cooperation on regional energy issues. Just this week, rising energy costs in Jordan produced rare demonstrations in Amman, and will continue to destabilize the country. For the sake of regional stability, Israel should not only develop its own solar infrastructure but coordinate such efforts with Jordan. This might even give our neighbors the incentive to reconsider their plans for nuclear power plants for their future energy needs.

Those who will be casting their votes based on considerations for the elderly fear the image of our most vulnerable citizens sweltering in the summer heat or freezing in the winter during the power blackouts anticipated in the coming years. And those voters focused on religious considerations will note that this coming Nissan 14, we will recite Birkat Hashemesh, the once-every-28-year talmudic blessing that appreciates the wonders of the sun. Also, because solar photovoltaic fields have no moving parts, they will require fewer people to carry out maintenance work on Shabbat.

Arab voters will note that most of the country's Bedouin are still not hooked up to the electrical grid, and that solar energy could bridge the country's power divide.

If all voters and parties can essentially agree that the time has come for Israel to finally go solar, what then is the ongoing obstacle?

The one piece of policy this election may be able to change - if politicians can be convinced that it's in their interests to include it in their platforms - would be the adoption, finally, of a European-style feed-in tariff for solar fields built between now and 2015, when most experts predict a grid parity between the cost of producing a solar kilowatt and a carbon kilowatt.

A feed-in tariff is a subsidy per kilowatt hour, to make solar worthwhile for investors. Spain, Germany, Italy, Greece and a dozen other countries have abandoned Ashalim-style tenders for solar plants and embraced a feed-in tariff system, making them the world's leaders in solar energy generation. Ashalim, an area in the northern Negev designated for a 250-MW solar park, has been in the planning stages for over five years and, because of the cumbersome and political nature of government-run tenders, is not expected to produce power before 2013.

Israel's current leadership has failed to implement a rational, serious or investment-friendly solar policy, despite the vigorous championing of National Infrastructure Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer. Instituting a tariff system now, however, would allow solar power to begin flowing into the grid in 2009, and could produce a gigawatt by 2015, dwarfing Ashalim.

A feed-in tariff to support the creation of 1 gigawatt of solar power (roughly 10 percent of current consumption) by 2015 would be a courageous and correct step, but it will also mean higher electricity bills. Yet voters know those costs are going to increase anyway; we might as well invest part of that increase in our future energy independence rather than in funneling money to our oil-rich neighbors.

While there are other regulatory hurdles to overcome, many key government offices are actively championing new solar-friendly policies. Yet there is still no meaningful feed-in tariff for large solar fields. Voters should demand that a solar Israel with meaningful feed-in tariffs be the first act of leadership from the next Knesset, cabinet and prime minister.

Yosef I. Abramowitz serves as president of the Arava Power Company and David Lehrer serves as director of the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies. The authors live on Kibbutz Ketura, which receives 2,274 kilowatt hours a year of sunshine per square meter.

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Arava spills on solutions to L.A. water shortage

By Lilly Fowler, October 20, 2008
Jewish Journal of Greater LA, Los Angeles, U.S.

There was a time when the actions to solve Los Angeles' water problems read like a dystrophic political novel.

At the beginning of the last century, L.A. Mayor Frederick Eaton and William Mulholland, superintendent of the city's newly created Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP), plotted to gain control of water sources in Owens Valley, which left Owens Lake dry and area farmers with little recourse.

The result was the completion of the first Los Angeles Aqueduct, which supplied the city with much of its water from 1913 until a second aqueduct was completed in 1970. (Los Angeles also draws water from Northern California via the California Aqueduct and competes with other Western states for water from the Colorado River.)

The city of Los Angeles recently began atoning for its sins by returning some of the water to the Owens region, which has forced L.A.'s 3.8 million residents to do more with less. With the city's population expected to reach 4.2 million to 4.9 million by 2020, according to the Southern California Association of Governments, solutions are needed to address the area's growing water needs.

A recent conference at UCLA's School of Law, "Transboundary Environmental Management in the Arava and Beyond," proposed that Los Angeles might gain some ground regarding its often-contentious water policies if the city turned to Israel's example.

The Sept. 9 forum, sponsored by the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies, a leading teaching and research program in the Middle East, suggested that both Israel and Los Angeles have made many of the same mistakes when trying to develop water in arid, dry lands and could learn a great deal from each other when dealing with issues of water scarcity.

"There are very strong parallels between what's going on in the Western United States and what's going on in the Middle East," said Peter Gleick, the keynote speaker at the conference.

Gleick, a MacArthur Fellow and co-founder of the Pacific Institute, an Oakland-based environmental research organization, said both countries are struggling with the issue of how to best share their water supplies with neighbors. Although Israel, according to Gleick, faces the more complicated problem of sharing water from sources like the Sea of Galilee, natural underground aquifers and the Jordan River with its Jordanian and Palestinian neighbors, the dilemma in both countries is much the same.

Moreover, Gleick said, these transboundary issues extend far beyond conflicts about water. With an abundance of vehicles and factories in both regions, combating air pollution can be an equally contentious issue.

Despite the scope of the problems, Gleick insists that each region's failure to disentangle environmental challenges stems from a lack of direction rather than a lack of attainable solutions.

"I don't think the water crisis is the result of a lack of resources, a lack of money ... but a lack of a vision of where we want to be," he said.

Gleick said experts would do well in thinking more about critical environmental goals -- like the fair and efficient distribution of water, and collaborative decision making -- rather than dwelling exclusively on questions that surround engineering or money.

After all, it is the more engineered, less ecological approach to environmental problems that has left areas in the Western United States -- like Owens Valley and the Colorado River -- in less than optimal states. Although experts hope Owens Valley is on its way to recovery, the overuse of the Colorado by the United States and Mexico has caused the river to no longer consistently reach its delta. Manipulating waterways in Israel has also caused severe problems.

"What we had in the 1950s was the beginning of a ... very technologically driven approach to how to access the waters," said Clive Lipchin, director of research at Arava. "Small-scale diversions began to be set up."

These manipulations have come at a cost, he said. The country's most significant water diversion project -- the National Water Carrier -- was completed in 1964 and was intended for irrigation in the south.

But the diversion of water from the Sea of Galilee to the Negev "has severely impacted ... the Jordan River and the Dead Sea," Lipchin said.

"The Jordan is mostly dry except for sewage and wastewater and the Dead Sea is shrinking at around one meter per year," he said.

In addition, Southern California needs to think more about desalination and the treatment of wastewater, Gleick said.

Aside from using wastewater as drinking water, as is currently being done in Orange County, he said it can be used for flushing toilets and watering lawns.

"It should be regarded as an asset rather than a liability," he said.

Caitlin MacLean of the Milken Institute in Santa Monica, an independent think-tank that aims to create a more democratic, efficient global economy, said Gleick's presentation made her think twice about her organization's efforts in Israel.

"We're looking for financial solutions to aid the river clean-up," she said, referring to several river projects in Israel.

Instead, MacLean said she came away from the conference recognizing the importance of obtaining a variety of expertise when brainstorming solutions.

The Milken Institute is holding two environmental conferences in Israel in November, and MacLean said she plans to have experts from all sectors -- environmental organizations, water authorities, engineers -- present.

"These are the people that know how to spend the money," she said.

During his presentation, Gleick said: "In the 21st century, we have to understand that water is not just an engineering question, but it's wrapped up in social values and cultural values and religious values."

Lee Wallach, president of the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life of Southern California, said Gleick's speech aligned perfectly with his organization's goal: To forge connections between Judaism and the environment.

But he added that Gleick's presentation was essentially "preaching to the choir."

LADWP General Manager H. David Nahai, who didn't attend the conference, said that Gleick's suggestion to look to Israel as an example might be a smart one.

After all, Nahai said, 75 percent of wastewater is recycled in Israel, while Los Angeles only recycles 1 percent.

When LADWP first introduced wastewater treatment plans in the 1990s, critics branded it "toilet to tap," which helped kill the effort. L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who was among those critics, has since made the reintroduction of treated wastewater into the water supply a centerpiece of his plan to address Los Angeles' water needs in the next 20 years.

Nahai hopes his push to recycle wastewater will succeed this time around.

"It's what's being done the world over," he said

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Green Movement hopes to get members into key city hall posts

By Ehud Zion Waldoks, October 16, 2008
Jerusalem Post, Israel

The new Green Movement has come on strong for the local elections set to take place across the country on November 11.

Although its official launch as a political party will be in December, the movement has been actively cultivating partnerships with local lists all over the country to advance the environmental agenda, co-founder Alon Tal told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday.

Members are running with the City4all list in Tel Aviv, which is headed by environmentalists and MK Dov Henin (Hadash) and on Nir Barkat's list in Jerusalem, and the group has endorsed lists in Ramat Hasharon and Rehovot, among others.

In Tel Aviv, Tal believes the City4all list will be the largest faction in the city council and three members of the movement, environmentalists all, have joined forces with the party.

In Jerusalem, movement member Naomi Tzur, number three on Barkat's list, is in line for a deputy mayor's post if Barkat wins, Tal said.

While Tal stressed that his organization is not yet a political party, its maneuvering in the local elections has a double purpose: To propel candidates with an environmental agenda into positions of local power, and to serve as a trial run for general elections, whenever they occur.

Tal is hoping Kadima head Tzipi Livni can form a coalition without going to early elections, so that the movement can get properly organized.

"It gives us about a year to get organized; we'd be in trouble if we had to run tomorrow," Tal told the Post during an interview in Jerusalem.

According to Tal, there are five elements that must characterize any green party:

• Transparency

• democratic norms

• professionalism

• a broad agenda, rather than a niche one

• leaders with proven records

While refusing to directly denigrate the existing Green political party, Tal said, "If you judge a party according to those criteria, then I think you'll see there is only one real environmental party."

Tal and Green Course founder Eran Ben-Yemini decided to form the new movement for three reasons.

First, the environmental movement in Israel had matured enough. "We have a social movement behind us, similar to Shas," Tal explained.

Second, they were repeatedly seeing environmental causes defeated by political interests.

Third, they believe there is no current political party willing to go as far or push as much for the environmental goals they feel are critical. While there were a few possible political homes for these professional environmentalists, none was a good enough fit.

"Meretz is talking with Livni today about joining the coalition and none of our issues is even in the top 10 on Meretz's agenda," Tal said.

"Let me give you an example: There are 40 nature reserves, about one million dunams all together, which should have been officially declared, but they haven't been yet. As soon as Israel gets smaller [through an agreement with the Palestinians], it will be impossible to get the reserves declared.

"What party is going to advocate such a thing? What party will advocate [that] 50 percent of the infrastructure budget should be allocated to public transportation?" he asked.

There was a brief period during which a supporter of green causes had the prime minister's ear, Tal said, and that was when Omri Sharon pushed through the Nitzanim reserve, the Hiriya park and the first reading of the Clean Air Act. But that lasted just a year and a half.

"We need to build this awareness in," Tal said.

While polls have said there is a chance for an environmental group to take three to seven seats in the next election, according to Tal, their goal was not to form a party to take advantage of an electoral opportunity per se.

"We are trying to create a party for the long run. It is all right even if we don't get in to the Knesset this time, although I think we have a good chance."

Tal should have a good sense of what that position is. He is the founder of the Israel Union for Environmental Defense (IUED) which is one of Israel's premier environmental lobbying and activist organizations.

He is also one of the co-founders of the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies at Kibbutz Ketura.

He and Ben-Yemini have spent the past several months recruiting leading minds to craft a balanced platform for the movement. While the platform stresses environmental issues, it also addresses democratic values, education, peace and security and other facets of governance.

The party list has yet to be decided, because it won't be set in advance. "Six months after we launch [in December], we'll have primaries. Everyone will have to run for a position. Let the majority rule. That's why Eran and and I call ourselves ad hoc leaders," he said.

At present they have about 1,000 members and more are rapidly signing up, according to Tal. "We are going to be a big surprise," Tal declared confidently. He pointed to a recent meeting where 120 people came to discuss what the movement's stance on animal rights, transportation, finance and education should be.

They had an unpleasant surprise recently as well, Tal said.

"We were appalled when we discovered that someone had set up a fictitious site [in the group's name]. They distorted our platform to paint us as crazy left-wingers intent on recycling all the tanks and things like that.

"We tracked it to a site in Arizona and we have initiated legal action which we hope will uncover the perpetrator," he said.

Tal was not unduly dismayed by the vandalism, however. "It is a sign someone thinks we are a threat," he said.

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September 2008

A lifetime of devotion

By Ehud Zion Waldocks, September 18, 2008
Jerusalem Post, Israel

It is ironic that a government ministry is giving awards to the agitators who so often managed to annoy us, President Shimon Peres noted on Tuesday night at the Environmental Protection Ministry's gala celebration marking 60 years of environmentalism.

"But you should continue agitating. Sometimes governments need agitators to get them going," he concluded.

It was a rowdy crowd of activists, both young and old, who packed the amphitheater in Caesarea for the ceremony, which was followed by a Shalom Hanoch concert. Never those to sit back and let others speak, the crowd heckled Environmental Protection Minister Gideon Ezra for his reversal on Mirsham (see box) and even urged prize recipient Prof. Uri Marinov to end his long-winded speech.

However, the audience was sincere in its applause for the 12 recipients of a lifetime achievement award from the ministry. The award itself was a fanciful butterfly alighting atop a flower, designed by artist Dudu Gerstein.

While there were certainly a lot of activist academics honored, there were also regular people who decided to step up and act in their community.

The judging committee selected the 12 from among 62 candidates. They were chosen for activities over a number of years which had led to a significant change in Israel, Alex Kaplan, who organized the event for the ministry, told the Sviva newspaper. There was near unanimity among the judges regarding the winners, he said. The committee was comprised of seven judges, each representing a different segment of society such as academia, the press or the public.

Those affiliated with The Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel (SPNI) took home nearly half the prizes.

The recipients and a summary of their activities:

• Prof. Amotz Zahavi - One of the founders of SPNI and its first head. Also founded the field schools network. Today, he runs the field school in Hatzeva to prevent it from going under.

• Orit Reich - Founded the Organization for Environment and Life in Nahariya. She has been active in discovering and removing asbestos from Nahariya and the western Galilee. Recently convinced the government to take the task upon itself after a 15-year fight. Among other things, she and her organization run environmental education programs in kindergartens.

• Bilha Givon - worked for years in SPNI's Beersheba office and educated the public on environmental issues. Later founded the organization "Sustainable Negev" which deals mainly with industry giants in the Negev mostly at the Ramat Hovav Industrial Park.

• Uri Dvir - If you've ever walked down a trail marked with three lines of paint, there's a good chance Dvir had something to do with it. Through SPNI and on his own, he has marked trails all over Israel and has written many guidebooks and maps. His crowning glory is "Shvil Yisrael," a 1000 km trail which traverses all of Israel. A fifteen year endeavor, it was opened in 1995.

• Prof. Alon Tal - Founded the Israel Union for Environmental Defense (IUED) and the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies at Kibbutz Ketura. IUED is one of the premier environmental organizations in Israel. The Arava Institute offers an environmental course of study to Israelis, Palestinians, Jordanians, Egyptians and others. A past chair of Life and Environment, Tal teaches at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and represents Israel at the UN's desertification forums.

• Yoav Sagi - head of Machon Deshe, past head of SPNI, Sagi convinced Israel's planners to take into account environmental aspects. He founded the Rivers Administration and has represented green groups on the National Planning Council for years.

• Dr. Yossi Leshem - Leshem put Israel on the birdwatching map. He founded an international center at Latrun and most recently organized the elections for a national bird, which brought Israel's aviary population to the attention of many of the country's human inhabitants for the first time. Leshem was attending a conference and so his young grandson Nadav accepted the prize on his behalf.

• Yosef Tamir - Journalist, Knesset member, and founder of Life and Environment, the Israel's umbrella environmental organization, nicknamed "Mr. Environment." One of Israel's first environmental activists. Was a reporter for The Palestine Post wbefore the founding of the state.

• Azarya Elon - One of the founders of SPNI, editor and publisher of the Land of Israel Encyclopedia of flora and fauna. Has written hundreds of books and articles and is the host of an environmental radio show which has been running since 1959.

• Prof. Uri Marinov - The only former government employee to receive an award, Marinov established the Environment Ministry and was its first director-general. He also established the first environmental unit in the government in the Prime Minister's Office in 1969. He was also instrumental in establishing Earth Day in Israel and preparing environmental reports on Israel to be submitted to the UN.

• Prof. Emanuel Mazor - A geologist by training, Mazor has focused on the Ramon crater. He was instrumental in getting it declared a nature reserve and constructing the Ramon Science Center for continuing study of its unique features. He is the author of over 100 master plans for protecting open spaces.

• Prof. Hillel Shoval - An environmental engineer of US origins, he was heavily involved in creating the sanitation department at the Ministry of Health in 1950. He served as its head from 1958-1965. He has been an international consultant to the WHO, the World Bank and UNEP, and has been a champion of water reclamation. He has also been involved in scientific co-existence efforts between Israelis and Palestinians. At present, he heads Hadassah College's Environmental Health Sciences Program.

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August 2008

Honorable 'Menschen'

Op-Ed by Uri Gordon and Lucy Michaels: Lessons from Climate Camp

By Uri Gordon and Lucy Michaels, August 31, 2008
Haaretz English, Israel

Camping in a field, in the rain, in the shadow of a coal-fired power station in southern England, is probably not most people's idea of a fun holiday excursion. This description, however, belies the excitement of becoming part of the United Kingdom's newest and most rapidly growing social movement.

At first sight, the Camp for Climate Action, which took place earlier this month in Kent, seemed like a festival of activism, with over 3,000 participants and dozens of workshops, political demonstrations, music, films and a level of discussion that one British MP on hand described as "more sophisticated and informed than the Houses of Parliament." Yet what the Climate Camp really represented was a glimpse at the kind of egalitarian social relations, small-scale technologies and fundamental change of attitudes toward energy use that may well be our only way to avert dangerous climate change and to cope with the recent peak in oil production.

The grass-roots climate movement in the U.K. is in part an expression of frustration with the British government's lack of meaningful action. While Britain may be talking the talk on the international stage, the latest battle revolves around plans to build two new coal-fired power stations at Kingsnorth. These would guarantee that the country does not meet its greenhouse gas reduction targets, as established in 1997 by the Kyoto Protocol.

As oil prices soar, coal, which emits the most CO2 on combustion, seems far more cost-effective. New coal mines are opening worldwide, from the United States to China. The Kingsnorth plants would be Britain's first new coal plants in 20 years, and are likely to be the first of a new generation. While the power station is expected to emit 8 million tons of carbon dioxide a year, energy supplier E.ON spins it as "clean coal" - promising that in the future, carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology will be installed to absorb the emissions. The problem is that this much trumpeted "clean coal" technology, according to EU calculations, will not be commercially viable until 2020, with a further decade required to install CCS in all existing power stations, at the staggering cost of 600,000 euros per megawatt of capacity. As a result, any proposed coal-fired station would still emit huge amounts of CO2 until CCS technologies arrive, if they ever do.

Meanwhile, Israel is also applying the same short-term and irresponsible thinking in giving the go-ahead for a new coal-fired power station in Ashkelon, without even the false promise of CCS.

This wide gap between the rhetoric and reality of climate change highlights the difficulty that most governments struggle with in addressing the trade-off between economic growth, climate change and peak oil. The general attitude in most of the developed world - Israel included - is that increases in energy demand are a given. All we need to do is throw enough money at new technologies, and human ingenuity will somehow enable us to carry on with our over-consumption of energy without destroying the conditions for our existence on this planet. However, the reality of climate change and peak oil is that we cannot simply continue with business as usual.

Technological change alone is not the solution to climate change. New technologies are definitely part of a solution, but it's a dangerous illusion to believe that climate change is simply a technical problem that must be solved. It is essentially a social problem, caused by our civilization's reliance on fossil fuels to do literally everything. The solutions will thus require widespread social, political and economic change. Nevertheless, most governments and corporations have thrown all their energy into the present "clean-tech" boom, with a market size estimated at over $55 billion, illustrating that the motivations for developing new technologies are mainly spurred by profit potential.

If we want to avert dangerous climate change we simply don't have time to wait for new technology. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has predicted that if carbon emissions in developed countries are not dramatically reduced by 2015, the "tipping point" for climate instability is likely to be approached, genuinely threatening the very conditions for life on the planet. We must act now to reduce our energy consumption, focusing on technologies that are already available, rather than dwelling on the future promise of CCS or hydrogen. More importantly, we must begin to radically restructure our societies toward sustainable models, based on diversified and self-sufficient local economies, and production for needs rather than profits. In the U.K., the Transition Town movement is another grass-roots-led movement that has seen concerned citizens across the country coming together to make "energy descent" plans for the transition of their locality to a low-carbon economy. Use of more localized systems of production and exchange should not only reduce these towns' carbon footprint, but ensure that they survive and actually thrive in an age of oil scarcity.

Israelis, alongside their enthusiasm for techno-fixes, should take note of such responses to the twin threats of climate change and peak oil, if they are genuinely interested in addressing these vital issues of our time.

Uri Gordon, the author of "Anarchy Alive!" (Pluto Press), teaches at the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies. Lucy Michaels is a doctoral researcher at the Institute for Desert Research in Sde Boker.

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12 environmental activists to be honored by Ministry

By Zafrir Rinat, August 6, 2008
Haaretz English, Israel

Twelve individuals have been chosen to receive awards from the Environmental Protection Ministry for their help in safeguarding Israel's environment, as part of the 60th anniversary celebrations of the founding of the state. The winners were chosen by a selection committee headed by former Supreme Court justice Yaacov Turkel.

Former MK Yosef Tamir, 93, is the oldest person on the list. He began his pro-environment activities in the Knesset about 40 years ago, and later founded Life and Environment, the Israel Union of Environmental NGOs. He was among the first to warn of local environmental problems such as the pollution of Lake Kinneret, the loss of open spaces and air pollution in the main cities. He remains active regarding environmental issues.

Another prominent name among the prizewinners is Ori Dvir, a doyen of Israeli nature and travel guides whose "Off the Beaten Track in Israel" made him famous among English-speakers and whose name is synonymous with the Israel National Trail project.

Other winners include Prof. Amotz Zahavi of Tel Aviv University, one of the founders of Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel (SPNI), and Prof. Alon Tal of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, the founder of the Israel Union for Environmental Defense (IUED, Adam Teva V'Din) and of the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies. Zahavi, a zoologist, earned an international reputation for his research on birds in the Arava and has worked since the 1950s to protect natural habitats.

Prof. Uri Marinov, among the founders of the Environmental Protection Ministry, played a critical role in determining standards to prevent pollution and in bringing environmental considerations into planning policy.

Two women, Bilha Givon and Orit Reich, are among those to be cited for their lifetime contribution to protecting Israel's environment. Givon, who worked for SPNI for many years, is the founding director of Sustainable Development for the Negev, while Reich was instrumental in fighting the hazards posed by asbestos exposure in Nahariya in particular and the Wester Galilee in general.

The awards ceremony will be held in Caesarea in September 16, 2008, in the presence of President Shimon Peres and Environmental Protection Minister Gideon Ezra.

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A world in a grain of sand

By Amir Zohar, August 28, 2008
Haaretz English, Israel

The good gerbil and the bad gerbil are two species of small rodents that are engaged in a struggle for survival in the sands around Samar, a kibbutz in the Arava desert. The good gerbil lives in the natural sands of Samar and Kibbutz Elifaz, in the estuary of the Timna Rift, and is content with little - a few leaves saturated in water, and golden dunes. The bad gerbil is the materialistic one. It likes large quantities of leaves, and when they are available, due to human intervention, its brutal character comes to the fore: It forces the good gerbil out of the "cultured" dunes into those on the margins.

"The balance of terror between these two guys reflects the thesis that I proved in my research," says Roi Talbi, a zoologist and expert in desert animals who is a member of Kibbutz Samar. "Wherever there was human intervention in nature, be it in the form of pumping sewage or farming, I found that the bad gerbil overcame the good gerbil and multiplied. Where there was a natural balance, the presence of the bad gerbil declined and the good gerbil multiplied. The conclusion is that the bad gerbil is incapable of living in the harsh conditions of true nature in the desert. In an analogy to our economy, the bad gerbil is like the last of the entrepreneurs, who needs state assistance in every privatization."

The struggle for survival being waged by rodents in burrows is a perfect metaphor for the bureaucratic wrangling underway directly above them. Government ministries, environmental organizations, scientists, Arava residents and their supporters from around the country are all battling, either to preserve the sand of the last great sea of dunes in the Arava, or to sell it to real-estate developers in Eilat.

The construction industry in Eilat currently has three significant sources for fine, high-quality natural sand: Mishor Rotem near Dimona, the Samar sands and the sands of the northern Arava (which were transferred to Jordan in the peace treaty with that country). Another source of sand is a quarry that has been dug near Eilat - cheaper sand, at NIS 20 a ton, but of inferior quality. Excavating and transporting a ton of sand from Dimona to Eilat costs NIS 75, but the high-quality sand from Samar and Jordan can be had for only NIS 60 a ton. The result is that the Samar site, which is about 40 kilometers from Eilat, is preferred by the Israel Lands Administration (ILA), the National Infrastructure Ministry and the developers; whereas the environmentalists and the local residents want this dune to be left alone.

The Samar site lies east of the date groves of two kibbutzim, Samar and Elifaz, on the Israel-Jordan border. It once extended across about seven square kilometers, but after allocations of land for farming and sand quarrying, barely 2.5 square kilometers remain, in a narrow strip divided into three parts: the northern segment, which has been declared a nature reserve; the central segment, which the greens also want declared a nature reserve, but which is designated for quarrying; and the southern segment, of which half has been annihilated in the wake of quarrying in recent years, and whose other half the ILA also wants to turn into a sand quarry.

"The streams in the southern Arava do not flow south to the sea, but eastward," says geologist Dr. Hanan Ginat of Kibbutz Samar, explaining how the dunes were formed. "In the past, the sand arrived from the Timna Valley in floods, as alluvium that included pebbles, fine sand and clay. The fine sand, the only type that is good for construction, was heaped into dunes by the wind that did the sorting and carried it from the mouth of the stream."

But nature is now less able to renew the sand reserves in the Arava. "There are far fewer floods, in part because of global warming," Ginat says. "And, in addition, the kibbutzim, Samar and Elifaz, planted huge date groves in the middle of the area, which also block the diminished flow of sand from the Timna Rift. The result is that the alluvial path has changed and now bypasses the area of the dunes."

Ginat launched the struggle to save the dunes in 1997. It has not always been successful, because the ILA, with the authorization of government planning departments, constantly cut into the sands. The worst affected was the southern segment, constituting about a fifth of the total, which was completely leveled. "What is left for us to propose is that they continue to quarry at the existing site, but in depth," Ginat says. "A study I conducted there, together with the geologist Dr. Amir Eidelman, proved that there is still good sand - albeit of a slightly lower quality - beneath the quarried area. The fact is that when the contractor was unable to quarry in the other segments, he simply dug deep into the existing site, even though he was forbidden to do so, proving the soundness of our thesis. But the ILA and the Infrastructure Ministry simply do not want to engage in artificial sorting, because it is expensive for the entrepreneurs. They want the ready-made dunes, in which the wind has already done the sorting naturally. Their demand is contrary to all the principles of sustainable development, which also consider the needs of future generations."

Not all the sand goes for construction. Farmers in the northern Arava also use sand, and in even larger quantities, as a base for their hothouses. The relative shortage of sand has not yet given rise to huge thefts and violent struggles for control between criminals, as it has in the coastal plain region. But here it is precisely state authorities - the ILA and the Infrastructure Ministry - that are behind the initiative to expand the quarrying, for the financial benefit of contractors in Eilat and farmers of the Arava, but at the expense of rare natural resources.

In this connection, the ILA spokeswoman, Ortal Tzabar, notes that the increasing demand for sand generated a wave of thefts, which led the ILA to step up its plan. However, a request for concrete information about the thefts went unanswered. In the meantime, a tender to quarry sands at Samar issued in May by the ILA and the Infrastructure Ministry infuriated the Interior Ministry. Officials there maintained that it was wrong to issue the tender before a number of conditions, decided on by professional bodies in January 2007, were met. "The ILA asked for a year to carry out the obligations," the Interior Ministry spokeswoman, Sabine Haddad, said. "But although more than a year and a half has passed, we have not yet received information on the subject."

The ILA, which was quick to issue a statement to the press on the success of the tender and the interest taken in it by more than 20 contractors, says it was surprised by the Interior Ministry's reaction. According to the ILA, the tender was based on an authorized plan for the territory and on an additional authorization by the committee on planning principles, which discussed the plan to build a rail line to Eilat. The Interior Ministry reacted to this curtly: "Our response stands."

The ILA position is that the state must supply the sand needed for construction in Eilat, amounting to about 160,000 tons a year, and the needs of the farmers in the northern Arava, who, the ILA estimates, will need some 10 million tons of sand in the coming decade to re-layer the hothouses. As for the conditions laid down by the professional team (digging in depth at the existing site and examining the request for the area to be declared a nature reserve), the ILA stated: "The Nature and Parks Authority obligated itself to execute drilling that would make possible laboratory tests of the subterranean material, but did not do so ... According to geological advice we received, the subterranean material is inferior to the material of the sand dunes ... In addition, deep digging is not suitable for the future route of Israel Railways ... Regarding the nature reserve, the ILA will consider its position if and when the plan is submitted to the planning committees."

Beyond the conflict with the Interior Ministry, the ILA position is not consistent with the facts, at least as they are described by the established green organizations. "We never gave the ILA a commitment to execute a subterranean sand quality examination," says Guy Alon, the director of the Eilat District of the Nature and Parks Authority. "The authority actually offered its help to the ILA in this regard, because it is important for us to preserve the territories, but our offer was rejected."

Alon, who is in charge of law enforcement against the sand thieves, together with the ILA, adds: "I am not aware of sand thefts in our region, which extends north from Eilat to Kilometer 101, nor have I heard of thefts north of our district. I don't understand the ILA's urgency - on top of which the primary momentum of building in Eilat is already over. Half the city was built without a grain of sand from Samar, which means that good solutions exist."

The director of the Southern District of the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel (SPNI), Shai Technai, discerns a disparity in the approach of the residents of the southern Arava, who are against quarrying - "because their economy is based on date groves" - and the farmers of the northern Arava, who are in favor of sand quarrying at Samar "in order to reduce transportation costs."

Nature and Parks Authority official Alon: "We are not against quarrying, and the authorized plan also permits it, but before doing damage, let's first please exhaust all the alternatives." The SPNI is also unable to fathom the ILA's moves; its legal adviser has written to the ILA asking for explanations, but has yet to receive replies. The head of the Hevel Eilot Regional Council, Udi Gat, fired off a furious letter to the new ILA director general, Yaron Bibi. "I want to lodge a sharp protest against the tender," he wrote earlier this month. After listing the violations of the professional body's decisions, he concluded: "I want to demand the immediate annulment of the tender, or at least its suspension."

Roi Talbi, who is leading the struggle against the ILA, was born in Rishon Letzion to a traditionalist Yemenite family; photographs of his grandparents hang on the wall above his computer in his trailer at Samar. He arrived in the kibbutz 13 years ago as part of a Nahal paramilitary brigade group made up of former members of SPNI trekking groups. (He is the only one of the group still living in the kibbutz.) After obtaining a bachelor's degree in biology, he did his M.A., on the ecology of the sands, at the Institute for Desert Research at Midreshet Sde Boker in the Negev. He now teaches at the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies in Kibbutz Ketura and also works as a packer of the area's majhoul dates.

Talbi's pet subject is the Persian haloxylon, a plant that constitutes the axis of the natural food chain in the Samar region. In the course of drilling during his research, he found small reservoirs of groundwater at a depth of six meters. "That is the haloxylon's source of life. It is a protected plant that exists only in the Arava sands," he explains. "This bush, which has roots going 10 meters deep, gray branches and thin, fleshy leaves, is the host for a whole population of creatures: rodents, birds, insects and rabbits - all of them vegetarians that eat its leaves and fruit. But lizards eat the insects and snakes eat the lizards. The large predators - mammals such as foxes, sand cats (now extinct), wolves and hyenas that arrive from afar, prey on whatever is available to them on the surface.

"The Arava," he continues, "is considered one of the 10 hottest and driest deserts in the world, and it also suffers from a high level of radiation because of its characteristic whiteness. So during the day in the summer, the animals burrow into the sand, which is insulating and airy. But in the evening, a whole show of animals gets underway here," he says, visibly enjoying the memory of his experiences in the field.

"The Samar animals like extremes. They live only in the sands, with wind, and they dislike water and vegetation. The proof is that when water is introduced from an artificial source, such as sewage in the northern segment, where there is more vegetation, the bad animals from the Arava and the Negev go there and displace the Samar animals. This is what is happening in the northern nature reserve, because of its proximity to farmland.

"In fact," Talbi notes, "if I apply my desert thesis in full, then I am also against growing the wonderful majhoul dates, which sell in Europe for a euro each. True, I myself work with them and make a living from them, but maybe I should be kicked out of the kibbutz because I am angry at the damage the grove is causing to the zoology of the dunes."

Talbi's struggle has the professional and social backing of geologist Hanan Ginat, who has lived in Samar since 1979, when he, too, arrived there as part of a Nahal group. Ginat, married and the father of five children, was born in Jerusalem's Katamon neighborhood, and together with his son Amir took part in the initiative of fans of the Hapoel Jerusalem soccer team, who last season established Hapoel Katamon as an alternative team.

After obtaining an undergraduate degree in education and teaching, he switched to geology for his master's. He did the research for his Ph.D., which he obtained from Ben Gurion University of the Negev, in the Arava, "at a time when there were still floods here, which there no longer are, and dunes, which have now stopped wandering because of the lack of rain." He now leads SPNI training courses and serves as the scientific director of the Dead Sea and Arava Science Center. A book, "Geology of the Negev," which he co-authored with the researchers Ezra Zilberman and Yoav Avni, will soon be published. In charge of its production is Dr. Amir Eidelman, a member of the executive board of SPNI and a geological adviser to ILA.

"When the ILA wanted the land, we drew up a report together and suggested to them that they dig deep in the existing area," Ginat says. "Eidelman even brought a tractor from Eilat, with which we dug a pit and proved that the deep sand is just as good. How come he is suddenly working as a geological adviser to the ILA and changing his opinion completely? This is a salient conflict of interest."

Eidelman, for his part, says: "I started to advise the ILA 15 years ago, and it has nothing to do with my being a member of the executive board, on which I serve on a volunteer basis. In the report with Ginat, the subterranean sand sample was higher than the usual criterion for construction sand (9-15 percent, as compared to 3-5 percent). Still, it was clear to us that this sand could be exploited, and it was exploited, even though it is not the best. The report I have now conveyed to the ILA is based on the examination from that time and on a recent examination, and the results are specified in the documents of the tender. In the report for the tender I informed the contractors that only 30 percent is above ground and 70 percent is below ground."

Then why start a new site instead of going deeper with the existing excavation?

"Because of the opposition of the planning committees, since the area is designated for farming, and the objection of the drainage authorities to the creation of pits in the area."

Earlier this month, the ILA conducted a tour for contractors at Samar. Talbi and his friends had created a presentation and circulated a petition in the weeks before the visit, and about 50 demonstrators showed up in the broiling midday heat of the Arava with posters and whistles to greet the 20 candidates for the tender and the representatives of the ILA, headed by Dr. Amir Eidelman.

Talbi: "The truth is that it is hard to get Arava residents actively involved. Most of the demonstrators were not from the kibbutzim, but from all over the country. Not all the locals even signed the petition. We got most of the reactions from the north and center of the country - maybe the northerners are more developed when it comes to this issue."

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Muslim-Jew conversation

By Mehnaz Afridi, August 11, 2008
Khaleej Times, Dubai, UAE

PERCHED on a bar stool in Jerusalem, I looked around at the many Israeli men in the room, relaxing, drinking beer and playing pool. I felt serene, but the tired faces of the soldiers told a different story. For them, this was an escape from their enemies who lay intimately bound to them beyond the hills of Jerusalem.

I caught the deep blue eyes of a young man as he stood beside me with a gun slung upon his shoulder and proceeded to order a beer.

He began to ask me personal questions. I told him I was from New York and was studying archaeology and the Bible. He asked me why I had chosen such an esoteric topic, and I reminded him that in Jerusalem it was a common topic; everyone came here to seek and understand the roots of the land.

His eyes widened as he gulped his beer, "But surely you know as a Jew that this is our ancestral homeland?"

I realised then, to my amusement, that he had assumed that I was an American Jew visiting my "home".

"Well, no.... First, I am not Jewish, and second, I am not quite sure whose land this is..." I replied calmly. "If you're not Jewish, then you're Catholic, right?" he asked, downing his drink. I took a long breath and responded, "No, I'm a Muslim from Pakistan."

He smiled, hoping that I was joking with him, "Come on.... No Muslim comes here to a bar, or for that matter, to Israel.... Especially not a woman!"

To prove it to him, I untied the pocket of my backpack and produced my flashy green passport that read, in Urdu and English gold lettering, "Islamic Republic of Pakistan". He took one look at the passport and shouted something in Hebrew to the others in the bar. Incredible as it sounds, in a flash, everyone but the bartender disappeared. I sat frozen on my stool, both confused and saddened by the disappearance of my former conversationalist.

Eighteen years have passed, and I have since made it my life's goal to foster mutual understanding between Jews and Muslims, so that both sides might overcome this fear of the "other". Today, working with Jews and sharing their hopes for peace has been an illuminating experience.

I have visited Munich and the Dachau concentration camp in Germany, worked with non-profits, such as the Arava Institute and Muslims for Progressive Values, that show mutual respect for Jews and Muslims, and was invited by the Levantine Cultural Center to speak with Muslims who are embittered by the Israeli Defence Forces' policies towards Palestinians, and with Jews who mistrust Muslims because of the violent actions of Muslim extremists.

Along the way, I have found that Jewish-Muslim co-existence and trust has to be rooted in a basic mutual respect for one another's faith. Common ground exists. In both Islam and Judaism, the community looks to respected religious leaders for spiritual direction. And while there are differences in form, the two also share the central practices of prayer, fasting, almsgiving, dietary laws and ritual purity. These similarities are most evident when comparing Islam to Orthodox Judaism.

As Muslims, we are well served by learning from Jewish history, especially how Jews survived during their tribulations, before and after the Holocaust.

Jews can help Muslims navigate in a post-9/11 world by sharing with them the difficulties that they too faced in Europe and the United States and their attempts to overcome them. At the same time, Muslims can make a better effort to include Jews in their own communities, helping to deconstruct the negative stereotype of Jews as working against them.

If the Jewish soldier I met 18 years ago would have taken the time to understand that I was in Jerusalem to sort out my feelings, not only about Israel but also about Palestine, we could have seen the shared commonalities in our faiths, our national loyalties, and our love for home... and perhaps even established a friendship.

Mehnaz M. Afridi (www.mehnazafridi.com) teaches Judaism and Islam at various Southern California universities. This article is part of a series on Jewish-Muslim relations written for the Common Ground News Service

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July 2008

Israeli, Palestinian win Monaco scholarship

A princely invitation

By Greer Fay Cashman, July 27, 2008
Jerusalem Post, Israel

TWO STUDENTS, alumni of the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies located at Kibbutz Ketura, met up with royalty last week when they traveled to Monaco as the personal guests of Prince Albert II. Eitan Amiel and Lina Ismail were awarded a joint scholarship of €22,000 by the Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation, and flew there with Executive Director of the Arava Institute David Lehrer to meet the Prince.

The students are among the first to be awarded scholarships from the Foundation. Prince Albert II, who has visited Israel, said that: "It is important that countries of the Middle East cooperate in protecting the environment." The prince pledged to support the activities of the Arava Institute on environmental issues. During their three-day sojourn in Monaco, Amiel and Ismail met with various representatives of academia, business and government, to whom they spoke at length about challenges in the field of environmental protection in the Middle East.

WILL THE famous name Kollek once again grace a city hall in Israel? According to an interview that he gave to Yediot Aharonot, filmmaker Amos Kollek, the mayor's son, is seriously considering following in his late father's footsteps. When he was younger, said Kollek, he used to resent being referred to as Teddy Kollek's son, but now has a different perspective and is giving much thought to entering the political arena - not for the upcoming elections, but in five years time. Meanwhile in Tel Aviv, it looks as if Ron Huldai will comfortably walk into another term of office because no one seems to want to run against him.

COMME-IL-Faut, the fashion company that advocates social responsibility and environmental awareness through its marketing campaigns, is releasing an 85-page report on social responsibility dealing with political issues, ethics, marketing, social agendas, environmental influences, and other matters of significance. In some respects, the philosophies generated by Comme-il-Faut founder Sybil Goldfiner are similar to those of Benetton and have had as much impact on the local scene as Benetton on the international scene. The essential difference is that Goldfiner is a committed feminist and much of what she does is prompted by a feminist agenda which is translated into fashion design and her business approach.

Comme-il-Faut was founded some two decades ago in Tel Aviv where it now operates three stores, plus seven others in Jerusalem, Givatayim, Haifa, Ra'anana, Rehovot, Ramat Aviv and Ramat Hasharon. Its flagship, Bayit Banamal, is on the ever trendier port of Tel Aviv and includes a waterside café, a fashion house, art gallery and jewelry store all under one roof.

SHENKAR COLLEGE is used to having its students and graduates singled out for prizes and other honors, but they still get excited when it happens. That was the case when jewelry design students Tehila Levi and Doron Taubenfeld were chosen by the Galerie Marzee in Nujmegen, Holland - one of the most prestigious jewelry galleries in Europe - to exhibit with alumni of other design schools. The Galerie Marzee exhibits the works of some of the world's top jewelry designers.

JERUSALEM BASED entrepreneur Erel Margalit, who is the Chairman of Jerusalem Venture Partners and is involved in many of the capital's cultural endeavors, now has an extra feather to his bow. He is also chairman of a foundation that looks after the interests of Jerusalemites studying at Haifa's Technion-Israel Institute of Technology. When the late Teddy Kollek was mayor of Jerusalem, Margalit spent some time as the city's director of development, during which period he brought more than 70 high-tech firms to the capital, thus radically changing the city's image and status. To ensure that Technion-educated Jerusalemites would return to the city to boost its technological human resources, Kollek, together with the late Yitzhak Cherniowski, in 1977 launched the organization which Margalit now chairs. It's almost like the closing of a circle.

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June 2008

Botanists making a date with history

By Anne McIlroy, June 13, 2008
Globe and Mail, Canada

Three years ago, a team of Israeli researchers took an ancient date seed collected from one of King Herod's palaces and planted it in a small pot.

It sprouted, and Methuselah, as they dubbed the sapling, is now 1½ metres high. Radiocarbon dating shows the seed was 2,000 years old, by far the oldest ever to have germinated, the scientists report in today's edition of the journal Science. The researchers say they hope the plant will help resurrect a long-extinct species known in biblical times for the sweetness of its fruit.

"This was a very special tree, very medicinal, with huge dates," says Sarah Sallon, a medical doctor at the Louis L. Borick Natural Medicine Research Center, part of the Hadassah Medical Organization in Jerusalem.

It is also special because of where it was found. Masada, a mountaintop fortress overlooking the Dead Sea, is where Jewish forces made their last stand against Roman troops after the fall of Jerusalem in the year 70.

Built by King Herod 2,044 years ago, it was part stronghold, part pleasure palace, and it was decorated with opulent frescoes. After King Herod died, a Roman garrison was stationed there, Dr. Sallon says. A group of Jews took control of it in AD 67 and began stockpiling food.

When Jerusalem fell three years later, a group of resisters from the city fled through the desert to Masada. After a year-long siege, the Jewish men chose to die rather than be captured. They killed their wives and children before committing suicide.

"After all this, we have a date tree," Dr. Sallon says.

She pictures a boy eating a date and spitting out the pit as he watched the Roman soldiers prepare for their final assault. The remains of a boy, a man and a woman were discovered not far from where a number of seeds were collected in the early 1960s by archeologists excavating the fortress.

They stored the seeds at room temperature for nearly four decades. Dr. Sallon, who investigates the medicinal properties of ancient plants, was determined to see whether she could get at least one of them to grow.

Ancient texts describe how the dates were used to treat tuberculosis, heart problems, worms and infections.

They didn't just plop the pit into a pot. Elaine Solowey, with the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies in Israel, bathed three seeds in fertilizer and enzyme-rich solutions before they were planted.

"Two of them came up," Dr. Sallon says.

She and her colleagues weren't sure exactly how old the seed was when they planted it. But when the sapling was repotted after a year and a half, they found seed fragments clinging to the roots and sent them to Switzerland to be dated.

Markus Elgi at the University of Zurich's Radiocarbon Laboratory analyzed the fragments and two other seeds that had been found at the same spot, but hadn't grown. He found they were 2,000 years old, give or take 50 years.

The plant appears normal, although some of its early leaves had white patches on them. Dr. Sallon won't know whether it will bear fruit until about 2010.

The date palm was domesticated more than 5,000 years ago, and the Judean Dead Sea region was famous for its high-quality fruit.

When the Romans crushed the revolt, many Jews went into exile or into slavery in Rome. The Judean date palm died out, probably from a lack of attention, she says. For centuries, all that remained of the historic tree were images on ancient coins and mosaics. She is hoping to reintroduce it in Israel, where date species that now grow have been imported from other countries.

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Op-Ed by David Lehrer: A moment before you jump into the canal

By David Lehrer, June 22, 2008
Globes, Israel

The Dead Sea Canal Project, as came up for discussion lately, presented the Israeli public with a number of new hopes. An economic hope for a region with new jobs, a diplomatic hope for Israeli-Palestinian-Jordanian cooperation, hope to solve the water shortage in Jordan, Palestine and Israel and environmental hope with the channeling of water into the Dead Sea, which might stop the drop in its level. But there are a number of things that should be checked before we celebrate the solution of the Dead Sea's problems.

First of all it is important to check all existing alternatives to save the sea. The Dead Sea Canal is one proposal which ultimately it might be important to advance, but it would be desirable not to rush into the economic and diplomatic discussion and neglect the main reason for the project, which is saving the Dead Sea.

When the program was presented at the president's conference it was declared that within two years after starting the work the water can begin to flow. It is very tempting to move forward, to run and realize Herzl's vision, but there are some questions that we should ask first such as, do the plans also include solutions to the problems of the Jordan River and the Kinneret and what are the consequences of transferring the water from the Red Sea?

Let's say the canal will solve the problem of the drop of the Dead Sea level. What are the environmental consequences of pumping 1.8 billion m³ of water a year from the Gulf of Eilat, carrying the water through the Arava and dumping 1 billion m³ of very salty water into the Dead Sea? Will pumping the water from the Gulf, whose coral is already in danger, effect streams in the Gulf? Is there a risk to the Arava ground waters from leaks from the planned carrier or explosions as a result of the predictable earthquakes in the area? Can dumping 1 billion m³ of brine (the water that remains after the desalination process) adversely affect the chemical composition of the Dead Sea and cause the proliferation of seaweed or unpleasant smells? The canal solution seems promising but it is not necessarily the optimal alternative and we cannot know which option is better if we do not look at other options.

The drop of the Dead Sea level is not the real problem but a symptom of the real problem which is an arid region with an increasing population and the not always wise use of the rare water resources in the area. The real solution for the drop in the Dead Sea level and the shortage of water in Jordan and the rest of the area must include not only supplying new water (such as the Dead Sea Canal Project) but also water demand management.

Israel is already marching forward by using recycled wastewater for farming but we still subsidize water for farmers and thereby encourage wasting water on non-economical crops. Is public gardening in cities appropriate for a country that suffers from a water shortage? Do we do enough to conserve water at home? In order for there to be enough water for the Jordanian, Palestinian and Israeli population we must find new water but also change our behavior.

Additionally, the drop in the level of the Kinneret and turning the Jordan River into a sewage canal are just as worrisome and the solution must be comprehensive. I think the optimal plan should restore the entire Dead Sea area including the Kinneret and the Jordan River. The Red Sea Dead Sea Canal presently has no advantage over any other plan, especially because the other ones have not been examined. Any Israeli would check at least three televisions in different places before deciding which one he wants to put in his living room. We must do so all the more when we are talking about a grandiose plan whose final price might be especially high.

The author is the executive director of the AIES at Kibbutz Ketura

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Op-Ed by Clive Lipchin: Sink or swim together

By Clive Lipchin, June 20, 2008
Haaretz English, Israel

If Israel is facing a water crisis - and "crisis" is indeed the word for it - then so are its neighbors. After all, a significant proportion of Israel's water resources are shared with Jordan, the Palestinian Authority, Syria and Lebanon. And the crisis is only exacerbated by a lack of regional cooperation over the management of these resources. But in the discourse on water, the State of Israel still largely relates to its water sources as if they were solely national assets, rather than considering them in the regional context. And until we begin viewing them as a shared resource that must be managed in real partnership with our neighbors, it's unlikely that there will be any pragmatic solutions to the water crisis.

To date, Israel's unilateral approach to the problem has focused on desalination, which is far from a panacea. Israel already has two desalinization plants, one in Ashkelon and the other in Palmahim, which between them produce some 150 million cubic meters of water per annum, and at least three more plants are in the planning stages. Despite the fact that desalinization technology is today economical, it has significant associated costs. Most significantly, the plants consume large amounts of energy. In addition, the highly saline wastewater that is a byproduct of the process is ordinarily dumped into the sea, polluting it, and posing a risk to sea life.

Reliance on desalination leaves Israel's water management policy a captive of the availability of energy and its fluctuating prices. Even though this technology should have a role in water policy, it should be but one solution among many. The importance of conservation, wastewater treatment and more efficient management of agriculture, for example, cannot be overlooked. However, the most viable long-term solution should be based on regional cooperation between Israel and its neighbors.

Now is the time, therefore, for the public discourse on Israel's water crisis to stop focusing solely on the national level and to begin acknowledging that water does not recognize borders, and must rather be treated as a regional issue, with solutions based on trans-boundary cooperation with our neighbors.

Otherwise, the ecological systems (the Jordan River watershed and associated aquifers) that are the foundation of these shared water sources may be irreparably damaged. Even though Israel has agreements on water with both Jordan and the Palestinian Authority, in the best case they manifest a bilateral view, rather than a comprehensive one. The need for an overall, regional perspective on water management policy will become even more significant, if and when future agreements with Syria and Lebanon are on the agenda. Nonetheless, Israel does not have to reinvent the wheel: Earlier successful efforts have already taken place in Europe, for example, where the Rhine and Danube Rivers serve as significant water resources for the countries through which they pass, and are cooperatively managed. The 10 countries that share the Nile, too, belong to the Nile Basin Initiative, which attempts to coordinate the use of the river on a regional basis, in spite of the tense relations between Egypt and Sudan and Egypt and Ethiopia over the issue.

Compared to these complex and large river systems, joint management of the Jordan should not be so far out of reach. In February of this year, the first seminar of its kind on the subject to be held in the Middle East was organized by the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies, in cooperation with researchers from the Jordan University of Science and Technology. Participants in the seminar, among them water professionals from Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority, studied the situation in the field, traveling to sites in Israel, the West Bank and Jordan. They also had a rare opportunity to build personal relationships with colleagues from the region. The seminar provided the participants with a deeper understanding of the issues on the other side of the river, and of the challenges faced by their neighbors.

There is also no reason to wait for the politicians to reach an overall political agreement before tackling the regional water crisis. A case in point is the recently agreed upon World Bank-sponsored feasibility study on the proposed Red Sea-Dead Sea conduit. In fact, joint research and professional study by water professionals at universities, research centers and NGOs from Israel, Jordan and the PA has been a fixture for over 10 years. Yet most of these initiatives took place in parallel, unlike the most recent seminar, which was fully integrated. The fundamental need of water for life requires more of the latter, however. An integrated regional focus to solving the water crisis may even make the call for the heavy investment by Israel in desalination less pressing.

Dr. Clive Lipchin is research director of the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies, at Kibbutz Ketura.

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Date seed, 2000 years old, is successfully grown

By Roger Highfield, June 12, 2008

The Telegraph, UK

An ancient date seed that is 2000 years old has been successfully germinated, marking the most ancient ever to have been grown into a plant.

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The seeds had been recovered from Masada, the foreboding, cliff-side fortress where Jewish Zealots killed themselves to avoid capture by Roman invaders.

The plant grown from the 200 year old date seed

One was planted in January three years ago - the traditional Jewish New Year of Trees - and an analysis confirms today that the resulting plant, nicknamed Methuselah, had indeed grown from the oldest seed ever germinated.

Today, in the journal Science, a dating study shows that the seed surpasses the prior record of 1,300 years for a lotus seed by seven centuries.

The date seed was discovered 40 years ago by Prof Yigal Yadin during the archaeological excavations of Masada, the palace built by King Herod on the shores of the Dead Sea.

The fortress was stormed by the Romans in 73 AD, after the inhabitants had committed suicide.

The seed was planted by Israeli scientists in January 19, 2005 and more than two years later the resurrected Judean date palm tree had reached a height of nearly four feet.

Coaxed to germination by plant specialist Elaine Solowey, Methuselah remains healthy, says the initiator and director of the project Dr Sarah Sallon, with only a few white spots on early leaves.

advertisement"It is the oldest seed ever to be grown," she says, adding that it was the extremely dry and hot local conditions which probably kept the seed in good condition.

Dr Sallon, Director of the Louis Borick Natural Medicine Research Centre, Hadassah Hospital, Jerusalem had suspected that Methuselah grew from the oldest seed ever germinated but she couldn't be sure until co-author Dr Markus Egli at the University of Zurich analysed two unsprouted seeds as well as original seed-shell fragments clinging to Methuselah's roots.

In particular, he studied the seeds to gauge levels of a form of carbon (carbon 14) found in all living things that decays at a predictable rate.

Now, Dr Sallon reports that Methuselah is indeed 2,000 years old, give or take 50 years.

Since Masada was built some 2,044 years ago as King Herod's pleasure palace, then destroyed roughly a century later, Methuselah's parents likely provided fruit for the Jewish Zealots, Dr Sallon contends.

The Judean date palm - also known as the "Tree of Life" - once formed thick forests throughout the Jordan River valley. Over the centuries these forests vanished in to history and today, Israel's modern date industry is based on imported date palms.

Preliminary genetic studies suggest some differences from modern dates but "we need more ancient dates and genetic material before we can say just how different it really is," says Dr Sallon.

So, if Methuselah is female, it might support species-restoration efforts. Dr Sallon - who is interested in medicinal plants - also wants to know if the plant lives up to its reputation as a treatment for lung infections such as TB, for cancer, and bacterial infections, as the ancients believed.

"Our next stage will be to grow more dates, in the hope of better understanding their genetics, and possibly breeding the ancient Judean Date as a modern one", says Dr Sallon. "We need to reintroduce ancient crops and plants that once flourished in this region, and to scientifically investigate them for their properties".

But, she won't know the plant's gender until about 2010. If it bears fruit, Dr Sallon said she will rename it "Mrs Methuselah."

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Date palm tree grows from 2,000-year-old seed

By Wendy Hansen, June 13, 2008

L.A. Times, Los Angeles, US

Scientists using radiocarbon dating have confirmed that an ancient Judean date palm seed found in the ruins of Masada and planted three years ago is 2,000 years old – the oldest seed ever to germinate.

The seed has grown into a healthy, 4-foot-tall seedling, surpassing the previous record for oldest germinated seed – a 1,300-year-old Chinese lotus, researchers reported Thursday in the journal Science.

The little tree has been named Methuselah after the oldest person in the Hebrew Bible. It is now the only living Judean date palm and the last link to the vast date palm forests that once shaded and nourished the region.

Sallon, who directs the Louis L. Borick Natural Medicine Research Center in Jerusalem, became interested in the ancient date palm as a possible source of medicines. She enlisted Dr. Elaine Solowey of the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies at Kibbutz Ketura to coax the seeds out of dormancy.

One sprouted. Scientists initially estimated its age at about 2,000 years old based on carbon dating of other seeds found at the site, but they had no way of directly testing the planted seed without risking its chance of survival.

After the Methuselah seed germinated, Solowey found fragments of the seed shell clinging to the roots – enough for dating.

The shell fragments initially dated to AD 295, give or take 50 years, but a small percentage of “modern” carbon incorporated as the seed germinated made it appear 250 to 300 years younger. Correcting for this factor, the researchers reported that the seed dates from 60 BC to AD 95, similar to the other seeds from the site.

That placed the seed at Masada around the Roman siege in 73, when, according to the ancient historian Josephus, nearly 1,000 Jewish Zealots in the fortress committed mass suicide rather than capitulate to the Romans. They burned most of their food stores, leaving a single cache to show that they did not starve to death.

“These people were eating these dates up on the mountain and looking down at the Roman camp, knowing that they were going to die soon, and spitting out the pits,” Sallon said. “Maybe here is one of those pits.”

Archaeologists excavating the ancient fortress of Masada originally unearthed the seeds in 1965, but they sat in storage for four decades before being planted.

The seeds probably survived for so long due to the extremely arid conditions of the Masada mesa, said Cary Fowler, seed preservation expert and executive director of the Global Crop Diversity Trust, which maintains the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway.

Preliminary comparison of Methuselah’s DNA to modern date palms shows a 20% to 50% difference from currently cultivated varieties, differences which may include lost traits for resistance to pests and diseases.

Sallon and her colleagues hope to cultivate more ancient date seeds and eventually reintroduce the Judean date palm to area. “It should be there because that’s where it belongs,” she said.

They also plan to test the tree for the medicinal properties hinted at in historical writings. “Is it really the tree of life?” Sallon asked.

That question won’t be answered until around 2010, when – if female – Methuselah may bear fruit.

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Extinct Tree From Christ's Time Rises From the Dead

By Clara Moskowitz, June 13, 2008
LiveScience, US

The new sapling was sprouted from a 2,000-year-old date palm excavated in Masada, the site of a cliff-side fortress in Israel where ancient Jews are said to have killed themselves to avoid capture by Roman invaders.

Dubbed the "Methuselah Tree" after the oldest person in the Bible, the new plant has been growing steadily, and after 26 months, the tree was nearly four-feet (1.2 meters) tall.

The species of tree, called the Judean date, (Phoenix dactylifera L.), is now extinct in Israel, but researchers are hoping that by reviving the plant they may be able to study its medicinal uses.

"The medicinal plants from this region are very important because they are historically mentioned in the Bible and the Koran," said Sarah Sallon, director of the Louis L. Borick Natural Medicine Research Center at the Hadassah Medical Organization in Jerusalem, which initiated the experiment to grow the tree as part of its Middle East Medicinal Plant Project.

"The Judean date was very valuable and very famous, not just as a source of food but as a source of medicine," Sallon said. "When I heard there were ancient seeds found in the archeological dig, I thought it would be interesting to see if we could try to grow them."

Carbon dating of the seeds found at Masada revealed that they date from roughly the time of the ancient fortress' siege, in A.D. 73. The seeds were found in storage rooms, and appear to have been stockpiled for the Jews hiding out against the invading Romans.

"They were buried under mounds of debris on the top of the archaeological site of Masada," Sallon told LiveScience. "The Jews all committed suicide rather than give in to the Romans, and the Romans pretty much destroyed the site after that. It was more or less left for the next 2,000 years."

The seeds were excavated about 40 years ago, along with skeletons of those who died during the siege. Since then, the seeds had been languishing in a drawer until Sallon and her team decided to attempt to grow them anew.

They turned the project over to plant specialist Elaine Solowey at the Arava Institute of the Environment in Kibbutz Ketura, Israel. She pretreated the seeds in fertilizers and hormone-rich solution, and then planted them. So far, Methuselah is the only one to sprout.

Though a few trees have been planted from seeds that are rumored to be older than the Masada ones, the Methuselah tree holds the record for the oldest directly-dated seed to be germinated. Scientists determined its age from control seeds taken from the same batch, and from shell fragments from the sprouted seed itself.

Beyond being exciting as a piece of history literally come to life, Sallon said, the new date plant may hold the key to rediscovering ancient healing techniques.

"When we look at ancient sources and Hebrew texts, the dates were used for all kinds of things — pulmonary problems, tuberculosis, dysentery, cancer. We think of it today as just a food. But in fact the date wasn't just a food."

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2,000-year-old seed set to bear fruit in three years

Judy Siegel-Itzkovich, June 13, 2008
Jerusalem Post, Israel

A 2,000-year-old date seed discovered at Masada four decades ago may provide new cures to numerous ailments, Israeli scientists say, after making significant advances, against all odds, in producing fruit from the seed.

Having been germinated, astoundingly, by an Israeli team more than three years ago, and kept alive since, the "Judean date" sapling appears likely (but not certain) to yield a now-extinct species of date that was renowned in ancient times as a treatment for heart disease, chest problems, the spitting of blood, weakened memory and other medical conditions, possibly even symptoms of cancer and depression.

The seed was discovered during the 1960s archaeological excavations of Masada by Prof. Yigael Yadin, an eminent Israeli archeologist, political leader and the second IDF chief of General Staff.

The Judean Dead Sea region was famous for its extensive and high-quality date culturing in the first century CE. High summer temperatures and low precipitation at Masada contributed to the seed's exceptional longevity.

The plant's current location is being kept secret because of its great scientific and financial value. It could produce fruit at the age of seven years, according to Dr. Sarah Sallon, a physician and director of Hadassah University Medical Center's Louis Borick Natural Medicine Research Center (NMRC) in Jerusalem's Ein Kerem.

She heads the team that succeeded in planting, germinating and growing the date seed and describes its findings and hopes for it in the Friday issue of the prestigious journal Science.

The date project is part of the NMRC's Middle Eastern Medicinal Plant project aimed at conserving, developing and researching the rich legacy of medicinal plants in Israel. The extinct "Judean date" is regarded by NMRC as having particular importance.

The ancient seed in Sallon's experiment was procured from Bar-Ilan University, and germination was handled by Dr. Elaine Soloway, an expert on desert agriculture at the Arava Institute of the Environment at Kibbutz Ketura, in the Arava valley.

When the seedling was 15 months old, direct radio-carbon dating on shell fragments performed by Dr. Egli of Zurich University showed an age compatible with the Roman siege of Masada almost 2,000 years ago, thus making it the oldest seed ever to be germinated.

Early genetic analysis of the seedling - performed by Dr. Yuval Cohen of the Volcani Institute at Beit Dagan - shows differences from modern cultivated date species.

Further analysis is planned in the hope of discovering particular genetic characteristics that made the Judean dates famous both as a prized source of food and as a valuable medicine, Sallon told The Jerusalem Post.

"Our next stage will be to grow more dates, in the hope of better understanding their genetics and possibly breeding the ancient date as a modern one," she continued.

"We need to reintroduce ancient crops and plants that once flourished in this region and to investigate them scientifically for their properties. As much as Hadassah is involved in the most modern medical technologies, it also promotes our desire to discover new cures for diseases out of ancient sources."

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Israel 'surprised' at brouhaha over Gazan students

By Ehud Zion Waldoks and Herb Keinon, June 1, 008
Jerusalem Post, Israel

Officials in the Prime Minister's Office Saturday night expressed "surprise" at State Department criticism of Israel for reportedly not letting seven Gazan students leave the Gaza Strip on Fulbright scholarships, saying that the State Department did not directly contact the PMO about the issue.

According to the officials, there is an individual in the PMO whose job it is to facilitate the passage for humanitarian needs of certain individuals from the Gaza Strip.

"Israel has an interest in seeing future Palestinian leaders go to Western democratic countries to study," one official said.

"In the past, many countries have approached us, and we have made it possible to facilitate study abroad. In this case they just did not approach us, and assumed it would be impossible."

On Saturday night Israeli officials said the students would be allowed to leave for their studies.

On Friday, US Consulate official Stacy Barrios told The Jerusalem Post the US government had "redirected" the Fulbright scholarships it awarded this year to seven Gazan students because Israel would not let them leave the Strip. The seven students received letters informing them of this decision on Thursday.

"We are neither postponing nor canceling the Fulbright grants, but the funds have been redirected to other recipients in other places because of the difficulty in securing exit permits for the Gazan recipients," Barrios told the Post.

"US officials are very concerned about this issue and raise it in both Washington and Jerusalem, and has urged Israel to allow such individuals to leave Gaza," she continued.

"We are absolutely committed to continuing exchange programs of all kinds," Barrios added.

Sari Bashi, executive director of Gisha - the Legal Center for Freedom of Movement, an NGO active on behalf of Palestinians' rights was outraged that the situation had deteriorated to this point.

"If the US can't convince Israel, its closest ally, to let seven students out of Gaza, what chance do the rest of them have?" Bashi told the Post on Friday afternoon.

"Preventing students in Gaza from studying is reminiscent of a painful point in Jewish history. We are a nation that for years was prevented from studying - how can we do the same thing to another people?" Knesset Education Committee Chair Michael Melchior demanded late last week. "Trapping hundreds of students in Gaza is immoral and unwise," he added.

The committee met to discuss the new report by Gisha.

According to the report, and confirmed by representatives of the security establishment present at the committee meeting, no student has been allowed to leave Gaza to attend university overseas since January. According to the report, fewer than half of those who applied were granted permission to leave in 2007.

"I received a permit to leave Gaza today to attend a visa interview, and tonight I return to Gaza. I don't know if I'll be able to leave again, in order to reach my studies," Obaida Abu Hashem, an 18-year-old Gaza resident seeking to reach his studies in mechanical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the United States, told the committee.

"The field I want to study does not exist in Gaza, and study abroad is my only opportunity."

Security officials clarified that exit visas were only granted "for exceptional humanitarian and urgent medical cases." They also noted that the universal right to education did not extend to higher studies.

MK Dov Henin (Hadash) declared "The logic of the security apparatus is warped - they are denying education to students who want to study in order to contribute to the entire region."

Meretz MK Avshalom Vilan added that the military's policy preventing education was actually causing "tremendous damage to the security of the state of Israel."

Melchior argued from a pragmatic standpoint, saying that the policy was unwise for two reasons. "First, in terms of Israel's foreign relations, the academic institutions to which these students are slated to go will never understand and never identify with the decision [to prevent them from leaving].

Second, the students who are forced to remain in Gaza, their depression and anger won't turn them into advocates for peace."

Melchior also argued that the policy contravened international conventions and the values of the Jewish state.

According to Gisha's report, the higher education system in Gaza is patchy at best - there are no doctoral tracks at all and many subjects are not even offered. The report cited an Israeli policy stretching back years that severely limited academic exchanges to and from Gaza.

Since Hamas took over, that policy has tightened even more, the report noted, and by January of this year even the overworked mechanism which had granted some students exit visas was no longer operational.

Gaza City resident Wissam Abuajwa, 31, has been trying to get a visa to leave the Strip to study for a masters degree in environmental studies since 2001, according to a vignette in the report.

He was accepted to the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies at Kibbutz Ketura, but could not get a visa into Israel to attend. Last year, he was accepted to Nottingham University and offered a full scholarship, but could not get a visa to go to England, either.

This year, Nottingham agreed again to award him the scholarship and he is desperately hoping to attend.

"There is no environmental studies program in Gaza. My dream is to come back after studying abroad and open an environmental research center in Gaza," he was quoted as saying, "There is an urgent need for environmental experts, especially in light of the recent deterioration in infrastructure and the standard of living of the residents."

Gisha will appear before the Supreme Court on Monday to plead Abuajwa and another students' cases.

The committee called on the prime minister, the defense minister and the security cabinet to reevaluate the policy and allow those students who were not a security threat to leave Gaza for higher education abroad, provided it could be accomplished in a way that did not threaten IDF soldiers and civilians.

The committee said it expected a reply to its demand within two weeks.

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Solar power + brain power = Jewish energy reform

By Yosef Abramowitz, June 13, 2008
Jewish News Weekly of Northern California, US

The convenient truth about the Jewish people is that when we put our minds and capital to work, we can make miracles happen. There is no more noble cause than saving humanity itself, ensuring that God’s covenant not to wipe out the planet with rising waters will be, in some small measure, because of our actions.

Saving the earth itself from global warming, and the billions of people and animals on it, is not just environmentalism — it is global survival. Of the trillions of cosmic opportunities for life to flourish, this third rock from the sun may be the only expression, the only experiment, to grace the universe with the possibility of collective moral choice.

Watching Al Gore’s movie “An Inconvenient Truth” recently with Arab and Jewish students at the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies, on the kibbutz where I live, put into context this challenge. Are Arabs and Jews going to keep fighting on the deck of the sinking Titanic? Or will a greater vision for humanity transcend immediate conflicts?

As Jews, we must transform ourselves from the Light Unto the Nations, as Isaiah beckoned, to a Renewable Light Unto the Nations. Our first fundamental challenge is to ensure that the Jewish state, which is home to about 7 million people, becomes carbon neutral. Unfortunately, the government’s stated goal is for only 10 percent of Israel’s energy to be generated by renewables by 2020 — primarily solar energy. This is unacceptable. The European Union, most of whose member countries have half the sunshine of Israel, has set a goal of 20 percent renewables by 2020.

If Israel sets a goal of 40 percent renewables by 2020, it would capture the imagination of our youth, entrepreneurs, scientists, philanthropists and financiers. It would cast Israel not only as a responsible nation but also as a shining example of what can be accomplished by coordinated global action.

There is plenty of sunshine and land in the Negev and Arava deserts to power this revolution. We need, though, the political will of world Jewry. Linking United Jewish Communities and Keren Hayesod allocations to Israel’s compliance with at least a 20 percent renewables goal would send a powerful message to Israel’s leadership, as well as to the next generation of Jews. Such linkage should be accompanied by a World Jewish Action Plan that offers Jews and Jewish institutions worldwide carbon offset opportunities.

Imagine that each year on Tu B’Shevat, Jewish families and institutions calculate their carbon footprint and then invest in efforts in the Jewish state to offset that footprint. For example, planting trees in Israel has long been a global Jewish effort. And although forests breathe in the carbon dioxide, which is a powerful carbon offset activity, the majority of trees planted up until now are pine trees, which throw off acidic needles. After a century, the pine forests essentially poison their own roots and die. Future plantings should emphasize Mediterranean oak and other trees that will work better with the Israeli ecosystems.

Synagogues, Jewish community centers, schools and other institutions should figure out their footprints, put solar panels on the roofs — great new naming opportunities — and also set aside funds to invest in Israeli renewable science centers or companies.

Furthermore, Partnership 2000 communities (created between Israeli and world Jewish communities) could adopt mirror strategies. When the solar panels are named in Boston, a similar array can be named in Haifa, Boston’s sister city. Jewish buildings worldwide and Israeli homes and buildings should adopt green building codes, for which they can have the privilege of hanging on their doorpost a green mezuzah that certifies to the world that the building complies with the best environmental practices.

Israel must renounce nuclear power as an option and challenge others in the region to do the same. The Middle East must become a nuclear-energy-free zone. We live in an age of accurate long-range missiles and of daring terrorism. The planet, and especially the Middle East, does not need any radioactive power targets. Nuclear energy is the power of war; solar energy is the power of peace.

Israel, as a public face of world Jewry and Jewish values, must not only declare itself a responsible member of the world community when it comes to greenhouse gas emissions but also provide leadership on this front. It is notable that major accomplishments in this field — such as plans for electric cars and Israeli-built solar thermal plants in California — so far have come only from private industry.

The truth is that the plans for renewables in Israel do not reflect the aspirations or potential of the Jewish people.

What would Isaiah say?

Yosef Abramowitz serves as president of Global Sun Partners and the Arava Power Company. He also is the executive editor of Sh’ma, where this piece previously appeared.

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Blooming Green Party already faces new rival

By Ehud Zion Waldoks and Gil Hoffman, June 4, 2008
Jerusalem Post, Israel

Polls predict that the environmentalist Green Party could replace the Pensioners Party in the next Knesset as the dark horse that will win the support of young and disgruntled voters.

But the Greens already face the same sort of internal strife that has plagued the Pensioners, whose seven-MK faction formally split in two on Monday. An alternative environmental party that is getting set to launch at the end of the month will try to win support away from the older Green Party before the Knesset race has even begun.

A source close to the leadership of the new party said there was a need for a new green party, because the Greens had never made it into the Knesset and because of disputes between them and environmental organizations.

"For many years, there was a schism between the Israeli environmental movement and the Greens," he said. "They are widely perceived as being opportunistic, unprofessional charlatans. Our party will be more centrist and professional - a noncorrupt alternative."

The new party will be co-headed by Ben-Gurion University of the Negev professor Alon Tal and Eran Ben Yemini of the Green Course student environmental organization. Tal is the founder of the Israel Union for Environmental Defense, one of the founders of the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies at Kibbutz Ketura, and was part of Israeli delegations to the United Nations on water and desertification issues.

Several hundred people are involved in putting together the party's platform, which will encompass positions on all the major issues of the day and not just the environment. A source in the party said its positions and organization would be democratic and transparent.

Green Party chairman, Peer Visner, who is the deputy mayor of Tel Aviv, responded by recounting the party's environmental achievements in Tel Aviv and nationwide, and inviting the new party to compete democratically.

"Our achievements prove that we are neither opportunistic nor charlatans," Visner said. "We did not wake up in the morning and decide to form an environmental party because it's a hot issue. But it's a democracy, and whoever wants to form a party can. We invite everyone to join our effort to change the environment in Israel."

Visner said his party had withstood a hostile takeover effort in the past. He accused the people involved in forming the new party of accepting international funding for the environment and then using it for politics.

The Green Party was formed in 1997 after the Maccabiah Bridge foot bridge collapsed, killing two Australian athletes and injuring 60 people. Its achievements include forcing the Reading Power Plant in north Tel Aviv to use natural gas instead of crude oil. Polls have shown the party winning four seats in the next Knesset and perhaps more if it can bring in a charismatic leader to head the list.

Labor MK Ophir Paz-Pines has confirmed that he was asked to head the list, but has denied that he seriously considered the offer. MK Michael Melchior (Labor-Meimad) has reportedly been approached by both environmentalist parties.

Visner said he would head the Green Party in the Knesset race as he has in the past, but this time make it into the legislature.

"We don't get intoxicated by the polls," Visner said. "We just try do our work. The public realizes that the Greens will be in the next Knesset with real power, which we use all the time, not just before elections. Only the real Green Party can stand up to the polluters."

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May 2008

On your bike: Americans and Israelis cycle for peace

May 25, 2008

Israel21c, Israel

It's physically challenging, but for the 150 Israelis and Americans taking part in the Arava Institute Hazon Bike Ride from Jerusalem to Eilat, it's also about some of the toughest mental challenges facing us today - peace, coexistence, and the environment.

Set up and run by the Arava Institute of Environmental Studies, an organization that teaches coexistence through environmental cooperation in the Middle East, and Hazon, which works towards creating a healthier and more sustainable Jewish community, the annual 450-kilometer bike ride is a yearly fundraising effort designed to promote environmental protection and regional cooperation in the Middle East.

As part of the seven-day road trip, which set off yesterday, the riders will leave from Jerusalem, cycle through the hills of the Jerusalem forest, descend to the Mediterranean Sea, then climb up to the Negev desert. On the final day, participants will follow the Egyptian border and descend into Eilat.

During the trip the cyclists will visit the rocket-stricken town of Sderot in a show of solidarity to residents there, have a Shabbat layover at Mizpe Ramon, and swim in the Red Sea.

The bikers are aged from 17 to 70 and include Israeli Arabs and Jews, and 120 American Jews and Christians from Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, and New York. A few riders will also be joining the event from Australia and Italy. The riders range from strong advocates for Israel to those whose trip to Israel will be their first.

"There are few bike rides that promote peace and coexistence or the environment, and a ride that combines all of those is unique," says Elad Topel, who is organizing the ride on behalf of the Arava Institute. "The trip brings riders from all ends of the political spectrum together with the single goal of promoting a sustainable environment in the Middle East."

On the ride itself, there will be an attempt to offset the carbon footprint of those who flew to Israel from the US. Riders will use personal drinking bottles throughout the ride - instead of environmentally unfriendly plastic bottles, and leftover food will be composed. Participants will also learn firsthand about pressing environmental issues, as environmental educators from the Arava Institute will be present at stopovers to add their insights.

The Arava Institute has been sponsoring the cycle ride for some years and many of the staff and students serve as crew for the trip. The institute's campus at Kibbutz Ketura plays host to Israelis, Palestinians and Jordanians who live together and learn about environmental issues.

In the past, the institute has worked to manage joint water resources in the Jordan River, held workshops to cultivate young environmental leadership for Jewish and Arab youth, and publicized joint research by Israelis, Palestinians, and Jordanians on air pollution in the Middle East.

In addition to the Israel ride, Hazon also sponsors the New York Jewish Environmental Bike Ride. Another similar Israel ride is scheduled for November this year.

"This is the next generation of environmental services," Topel tells ISRAEL21c. "The ride is, first of all, a challenging and athletic experience. But beyond that, the riders will become familiar with an entire new world of environmental issues and will also begin to understand the complex regional challenges that Israel faces today in crafting an environmental policy."

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Op-Ed by Lucy Michaels: Climate for change

By Lucy Michaels, May 25, 2008
Haaretz English, Israel

When Al Gore visited Israel this week, he presented compelling arguments for Israelis to address climate change through serious economic and lifestyle changes. But how ready are Israelis to adopt more environmentally friendly behavior, such as car-pooling, and flying less? Or to pay more for gasoline to reduce the use of fossil fuels that emit greenhouse gases? How much do they even know about climate change and its causes?

Preliminary research conducted by Ben-Gurion University and the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies this past December suggests that, in fact, Israelis are both informed and concerned about climate change. In a telephone poll of almost 300 Israelis, 87 percent of respondents claimed to have at least a basic knowledge of climate change, and 66.7 percent agreed that "major steps" need to be taken "very soon" to reduce the human activities thought to cause the phenomenon. Furthermore, a significant 84.7 percent agreed that this would require individuals to make lifestyle and behavioral changes.

These results may be surprising, but they are consistent with a November 2007 BBC World Service poll of 22,000 people in 21 countries, including China, Nigeria and France, which revealed that on average, 65 percent supported taking "major steps very soon." While Israel's yearly greenhouse gas emissions of 73,000 kilotons are tiny when compared to those of the United States and China, it is still ranked 29th globally in CO2 emissions per capita (10.8 tons), above most European countries. In fact, Israel is surpassed only by the Gulf States, the United States, Canada, Australia, Norway and the smallest of developed countries, such as Luxembourg and Singapore.

At least half these emissions derive from everyday activities of private citizens, including electricity consumption in residential and commercial properties, and transportation. This includes the 62 percent of working Israelis who regularly commute to work by car and the average office building, where cooling and heating contribute up to 70 percent of energy consumption.

Although the Israeli government has hardly made climate change a priority, these results suggest a highly favorable policy environment for seriously addressing the issue. They also suggests a likely rise in grass-roots activities to reduce emissions, even in the absence of decisive government action.

There is, however, a catch. For, while the survey revealed overwhelming support for "doing something" about climate change, Israelis are less enthusiastic about the more challenging aspects of what reducing emissions would actually mean. Only 24 percent, for example, were willing to fly less. Aviation is a significant contributor to the greenhouse effect: CO2 emissions at high altitudes make this greenhouse gas 2.7 times more potent, and planes release water vapor (contrails), another greenhouse gas. One round trip between Tel Aviv and New York emits two tons of CO2 per passenger, roughly a fifth of the average Israeli's total yearly emissions.

Furthermore, only half of the Israelis surveyed supported price rises for gasoline and electricity, a measure widely seen as the most effective means to encourage people to switch to less carbon-intensive and wasteful behaviors. This figure, however, would rise to 65 percent if price hikes were accompanied by tax cuts elsewhere, and to 68 percent if the revenue was used to fund renewable energy. It is also revealing that fewer than 30 percent of Israelis take easy but less obvious energy-saving measures, such as unplugging their unused cell-phone chargers. Even when not in use, a charger plugged into the wall continues to draw electricity from the grid, known as a "phantom load." Although the quantity for a single charger is small, when multiplied by Israel's reported 7 million mobile phone accounts, the energy wasted consumes the equivalent of 5,000 barrels of oil a year. Any appliance left on "standby" mode also draws a phantom load.

This gap between environmental attitudes and behavior is widely noted in research. Some argue that the popular media's portrayal of climate change has, in fact, frightened and guilt-tripped people into inaction. Instead, people are more likely to be inspired toward necessary lifestyle changes if these are presented as the means to a safer, healthier and fairer future.

The survey results also suggest that government policy must focus on education to prevent energy wastage. The survey illustrated that only 30 percent of respondents regularly used energy-saving light bulbs, which can increase efficiency by up to 80 percent, and that only 48 percent of respondents regularly put on more clothes when they feel cold, instead of turning the heating on or up. Policy must also focus on transportation and construction sectors. Taking a cue from Europe and the U.S., this could include market-based incentives such as promoting energy-efficient appliances and green building certifications.

Not only do such economic incentives reduce bills, but in the long term, taking action now will be substantially less costly than the eventual price of addressing the impacts of climate change in the future, such as extreme and unpredictable weather and sea level rises on the Mediterranean coast.

Admittedly, Israel's location will make it hard to address aviation emissions, although it should be noted that the ferry service from Haifa to Cyprus and Greece resumed this month, after a seven-year hiatus.

Let's hope that Gore's visit will be the catalyst for government and popular action toward mitigating this dangerous threat facing humanity.

Lucy Michaels is a doctoral candidate at the Desert Research Institute of Ben-Gurion University.

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Op-Ed by Uri Gordon and Lucy Michaels: Food troubles are here to stay

By Uri Gordon and Lucy Michaels, May 4, 2008

Haaretz English, Israel

The government sends calming signals and says no dramatic shortages are expected. The Economist says do nothing, market forces will sort it all out. But as the global food-price crisis hit Israel this week, something told us we are not being told the whole story.

Around the world food prices are soaring. Since January 2006, the price of rice has risen by 217 percent. Wheat, corn and soybean prices have more than doubled, and in several countries, milk and meat prices have also doubled.

Food prices and falling wages have sparked riots in more than 30 countries from Bangladesh to Egypt to Haiti - where the prices of rice, beans, fruit and condensed milk have gone up 50 percent over a few months, while the price of fuel has tripled.

The poor are being hit the hardest. The steep price rises make a huge difference in countries like Indonesia, where food purchases alone eat up over half of a family's disposable income (compared to 7.3 percent in the United States, and close to 20 percent in Israel).

With Israel's high dependence on food imports, it is no surprise that prices are rising. The country imports over 90 percent of its cereals, 70-80 percent of its fish and beef, and half of its pulses, oilseeds and nuts. We may soon be relying far more on Israeli potatoes, fruit and vegetables, since the present crisis appears to be part of a worrying long-term trend.

The striking fact is that from 1974 to 2005, real food prices dropped by 75 percent globally. So what can explain this sudden and aggressive upturn? Though it has been played down in official reactions, the obvious explanation is staring us in the face: the dramatic rise in oil prices.

In January 1999, crude oil cost $8 a barrel. Today it costs $119. Oil is vital for every stage of industrialized agriculture: from synthetic-pesticide and fertilizer production, to fuel for farm machinery and international freight. All of these have seen steep price hikes, and not surprisingly, food prices have risen with them.

The reality is that we are effectively "eating oil." The shift to industrial agriculture over the last 60 years has left our food systems dependent on a nonrenewable resource. Now we are paying the price.

The rise in oil prices betrays a genuine market concern about "peak oil." Most geologists today agree that world oil production is reaching, or has already reached, its point of historical maximum. Like with any other nonrenewable resource, once the peak is passed, oil availability begins to decline and prices rise to reflect the growing scarcity.

Western governments don't publicly talk about peak oil, but they have been quietly and efficiently subsidizing the massive expansion of biofuels: converting the use of millions of acres of land from food to fuel crops, such as maize and canola, again contributing to rising food prices. Meanwhile, land previously used to grow food is increasingly converted to grow animal feed, as the globalization of the American diet results in an increasing demand for meat worldwide.

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization hopes that a projected 2.6-percent increase in world cereal production next year will ease the crisis. But this depends on favorable weather. This year, droughts in Australia and unseasonable rains in India caused crop failures that contributed to the crisis. If these events represent a new era of erratic and unpredictable weather patterns driven by global warming, the projections may fail to materialize.

Between peak oil and climate change, this may be the "perfect storm" that marks the beginning of the end of our civilization in hyperdrive. At the very least, the situation forces us to recognize that our modern industrial food system is extremely vulnerable and cannot be sustained on the current model.

The good news is that around the world, and in Israel, too, people are creating solutions that can make our future less precarious. Intelligent, small-scale and organic-farming methods, together with a resilient local economy, can help us weather the storm. This will require some serious transitions, but it is entirely possible.

Cuba survived its own version of peak oil with the collapse of the Soviet Union - its major source of food and oil imports. In response, the Cubans swiftly turned their gardens over for food production, and switched from industrialized agriculture to cooperatively owned organic farms.

Israel will also need to confront the challenge of self-sufficiency. Connecting the dots, the food and fuel crisis this year will only be exacerbated by the serious water crisis caused by the cold dry winter. Israel's clever "techno-fix" for the water crisis, desalinization, is not the solution, since it is hugely energy intensive. Breaking the addiction to oil is clearly a necessary step in a transition to a healthier and more sustainable society.

Dr. Uri Gordon teaches at the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies, and is the author of "Anarchy Alive!" (Pluto Press). Lucy Michaels is a doctoral environmental policy researcher at Ben- Gurion University.

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Op-Ed by Daniel Orenstein: We changed our minds ...

By Daniel Orenstein, May 9, 2008
Haaretz English, Israel

Over Passover, I visited a small public beach south of Kibbutz Palmahim called Dayagim (Fishermen's) Beach, along with about 50 other activists and citizens. A dozen tents dotted the half-kilometer of shoreline, children played in the tidal pools, and fishermen cast their lines into the sea from out on the rocks. Behind me to the north and south were kurkar (hardened sandstone) ridges covered by a diversity of sand dune plants. In between the ridges was the proverbial poke in the eye: an area recently cleared by bulldozers and surrounded by a graffiti-splattered, two- meter-high metal fence. That fence is a prelude to the potential fate of the beach.

A lawyer explained to our group the process by which development rights for the beach had been sold on the cheap, about four years ago. According to our interlocutor, during the second intifada and in the midst of an economic slump, the Israel Lands Authority was eager both to generate revenue and to stimulate economic growth. Selling off development rights to create a vacation village on this beach was part of that effort. By 2009, a 350-room resort, replete with parking lots, shopping centers and boardwalks, will replace the sandy ridges and empty shore.

Israel is blessed with 190 kilometers of Mediterranean coastline. Of that, 50 km are closed off for military, industrial and infrastructural use. The rest includes 60 km of urban shoreline, 40 km of nature reserves and parks, and another 40 km of open space. While that sounds like a lot for public use, according to a 2000 Ministry of Environment report, "massive pressures from both developers and municipalities for coastal sites have led to repeated breaches of the coastal master plan, particularly in relation to the prohibition of construction within 100 meters of the coastline." The report goes on to note that in such cities as "Tel Aviv, Haifa, Herzliya, Ashdod, Ashkelon, Netanya and Nahariya, private developers, together with municipalities, economic development companies and the Israel Lands Administration, have transformed coastal resources into real estate destined for high-income residential development."

Indeed, Israel - a country with great environmental laws and rather poor enforcement - has succumbed to many aggressive violations of coastal development standards. A particularly blatant example, the Le Meridien Hotel in Haifa, stands like a solid wall between a working-class neighborhood and the view its residents used to have of the sea. The contractors violated their development rights in several ways, and were it not for the vigilance and actions of neighborhood activists and the Israel Union for Environmental Defense, who appealed to the courts to halt expansion of the construction, this scar on the Haifa coast would have been extended thrice.

Activists opposing the development of the Dayagim Beach also believe that even the approved development plans for the holiday village will spill over to development of the shore. They also believe that the plan, though it's been approved, violates the spirit of a law that was passed just weeks after the approval was granted. That law - the Law for the Protection of the Coastal Environment - states in strong words that the Mediterranean shoreline must be protected from development as a natural asset for public use and enjoyment.

A growing number of citizens now feel it was a mistake to grant development rights to build here. The mayor of Nes Tziona has gone so far as to offer to buy the beach back from the developers in the name of the public. And environmental activists would like to stop the project cold. The problem is that approval for the work was granted through a legal and transparent process. So either the public was just too slow in responding to the threat of development, or we changed our minds. Either way, the coastal protection law is not on our side in this case, since it was approved only after construction rights had been approved.

Knesset Member Dov Khenin (Hadash) is considering stepping in to address the quandary of what to do when development rights are granted - legally and fairly - but the public then changes its mind about a project's wisdom. He is considering introducing legislation that would empower the public with the ability to revisit approved development proposals, and to cancel them, if need be, to protect a vital public resource. Needless to say, fair compensation must be given to developers who had already invested time and money in the proposal.

This idea has direct relevance to the Dayagim Beach controversy, as well as others, including the proposal to build a hotel in the Timna Valley in the southern Arava. This is another project in which developers followed an honest and transparent path toward approval, but where a growing number of local residents and sympathizers now regret that decision and seek to preserve the geological treasure.

There is an intrinsic justice to Khenin's idea. In the conflict between development and open-space preservation, the long-term trend is always toward increased development. While open space preserved today may be compromised tomorrow, land developed is never returned to its former state. As good as our laws are to preserve open space, only the pace of development is affected by legislation and planning - never the direction. If successful, new legislation could provide a crucial tool for the growing number of citizens who understand the ecological, recreational, historical and aesthetic reasons for preserving some of Israel's open space for us and future generations.

Daniel Orenstein is a postdoctoral fellow at the Technion's Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning, and a lecturer at the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies.

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April 2008

Creating their own energy

By Mijal Grinberg, April 23
Haaretz English, Israel

In every neighborhood supermarket and grocery store you can already feel the constant increase in the prices of staple foods, but it is hard to notice that the rising prices of oil are responsible for it: The more the world price of oil increases, the more farmers are forced to turn to producing ethanol to create a substitute for petroleum fuel at the expense of growing the food itself. Today food crops such as corn are being used for ethanol, and this is happening all over the world. The food we might eat is being directed to other uses.

Dr. Elaine Solowey, a researcher at the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies near Eilat, may have a solution: producing fuel from agricultural waste instead of from agricultural produce. Solowey has developed a chemical method for breaking down agricultural waste (the plant parts not needed for food) into simple sugars, from which the ethanol is distilled.

"This method enables us to produce ethanol from wood and from palm fronds and to turn them into fuel," she says. Now she hopes to bring about the opening of a local plant for producing ethanol this year. But that is only one step being taken by Arava Institute researchers on the way to the ultimate goal: turning the entire region into an autonomous energy economy, one that is more economical and more environmentally friendly.

The institute is located in Kibbutz Ketura, about half an hour from Eilat. It was established in 1996 by members of the kibbutz under the leadership of Dr. Alon Tal, an environmental attorney and the founder of Adam Teva V'Din, The Israel Union for Environmental Defense.

"It was established to create environmental leadership in the Middle East, and to teach that nature has no limits," says David Lehrer, executive director of the institute. The institute specializes in developing renewable energy to bring about local production of energy and reduce dependence on a centralized system.

Its researchers are also involved in formulating environmental policy on these issues and in promoting environmental cooperation among the countries in the region. That is also one of the reasons why among the 40 students studying there, only about a third are Israelis, another third are Palestinian or Jordanian and the rest are from the United States and other countries. Among other things, the students learn how to administer natural and water resources located on the border between the countries, such as the Dead Sea, and are involved in comparing the air quality of Amman and Hebron, and of Aqaba and Eilat.

"The Arava can be the Silicon Valley of renewable energy," says Lehrer, in an attempt to outline the future of the region as envisioned by the kibbutz and the Arava Institute. At present the institute is promoting a master's degree program called Renewable Energy. This course will promote research on two planes relating to the production of solar energy: the first is providing information to companies that are interested in producing solar energy, and the second is promoting the conversion of private homes into producers of energy, through green construction and the installation of solar panels on roofs.

Electricity from the sun

The building of a solar electricity plant is already being promoted in the Arava. Kibbutz Ketura is a partner in the Arava Power Company, which was founded a year and a half ago. As of now, they have approval for constructing a solar farm on 80 dunams of kibbutz land. Another 20,000 dunams are in the process of having their zoning changed, with the goal of becoming one of the largest solar farms in the world.

How much electricity will it produce? The project is now facing two main obstacles: one is the change in zoning, and more problematic, the company is demanding that the Israel Electric Corporation refunds for solar energy NIS 2.04 kilowatt-hour -be refunded to the company as well. As of now the law is designed only for private consumption and for business consumption up to 50 kilowatt-hours. One of the goals of the project includes a future plan for cooperation with the Jordanians.

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Israeli talent and technology to create world's first renewable energy park

By Karin Kloosterman, April 1, 2008
Israel21c, Israel

Israel's developments in renewable energy have been like the cobbler who doesn't own shoes. Established leaders such as Ormat Technologies are generating power abroad, but back home Israeli citizens still rely on fossil fuels for most of their energy needs.

Times are about to change. The Arava Institute of Environmental Studies, based in Kibbutz Ketura in the south of Israel, recently announced its plans to establish what could be the world's first renewable energy park - the Center for Renewable Energy and Energy Conservation.

The center is expected to make the most of Israeli innovation and invigorate the barren desert. It will attract local and foreign talent to co-develop new technologies in the field, while plans call for R&D facilities, an incubator for startup companies, and education centers for both locals and tourists.

Says David Lehrer, the director at the Arava Institute to ISRAEL21c: "I think that if there is any country in the world whose interest it would be in weaning itself away from fossil fuels it's Israel. Not only do we have the motivation, we have the natural and human resources to do so.

"The technology for renewable energy most prevalent in the world has been developed by Israel or Israelis," he adds.

Lack of government foresight, policy and incentives has prevented the mass adoption of home-grown technologies, suggests Lehrer, who is researching the economic impact of invasive species on sand dunes.

With infrastructure already in place, the new center will not only power the Eilat/Eilot regions - eventually providing up to 300 MW of energy - but it will also be a model of sustainability the world over, organizers hope.

Among the projects to be realized in the next two years is a solar panel station to power Kibbutz Ketura (2 MW), with the ultimate goal to power the entire region, including the city of Eilat.

Lehrer says that significant developments in biofuels will be made within this short window of time, making use of the region's agricultural waste, such as cow manure and date palm waste.

Lehrer also expects the center to develop green communities in the region, where buildings fitted with solar panels and mini-wind-turbines will become homes that are "energy producers," not consumers.

The park is an initiative of both the Arava Institute and the Arava Power Company, and it will draw on research talent from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and the Weizmann Institute. It will be named after Middle East solar energy pioneer Bryan Medwed, who was killed in a car accident in 2002.

And of course, educating children - the next generation - will be part of the center's scope. "We will be teaching our children from kindergarten to high school about renewable energy," Lehrer explains.

With a joint solar energy project already in place with Jordan, the new center is expected to have far-reaching implications in creating not only clean power, but peace, for the entire region.

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Institute Places 'No Boundaries' When It Comes to Environment

By Michelle Mostovy-Eisenberg, April 24, 2008
Jewish Exponent, US

Ahmed "Jemie" Dababneh glanced out at his audience during a recent presentation at Congregation Adath Jeshurun and recounted his childhood growing up outside Amman, Jordan. Standing on the bimah, with a few dozen religious-school students in attendance, Dababneh spoke of how, when he was their age, all he knew about Israel was what he heard on television. Although he lived only 40 minutes from Jerusalem, he said he couldn't call or drive there, because "there was no peace" then.

But thanks to his participation in a multinational environmental program at the Arava Institute in Israel, Dababneh said he came to realize that he shares many traits with his Israeli neighbors.

The Arava Institute for Environmental Studies is located in southern Israel, in the desert area that gives the school its name. It is a top-ranking environmental teaching and research program in the Mideast, which prepares students from Israel and Arab nations, including Jordan and the Palestinian Authority, among other locales, to become leaders in the environmental movement, in the hopes that they will tackle the serious challenges now facing the region.

Dababneh, who had a Christian background, noted that he even attended synagogue and participated in Shabbat services with his Jewish host family while attending the institute during the spring 2000 semester.

The experience "opened ... doors and my eyes," said Dababneh, 31, now an engineer in Harrisburg. "[It] made me decide what I wanted to do in life."

'We All Have an Interest'

He shared his story with a crowd of about 70 people at the Elkins Park shul on April 15 during a program titled "Building Peace in Israel Through Environmental Cooperation." It was presented by A.J. and Congregation Kol Ami, and was funded by a grant from the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia, administered through the Kehillah of Old York Road.

"The environment is something we all have an interest in," declared Rabbi Elliot Holin of Kol Ami, in his introductory remarks, noting this event's timeliness and its close proximity to to both Passover, which began at sundown April 19, and Earth Day, which took place on April 22.

David I. Weisberg, executive director of Friends of the Arava Institute, a Harrisburg-based nonprofit group that supports the Israeli school, likened the institute to Earth Day, which started as a small movement 38 years ago and has become an occasion celebrated in more than 130 nations around the world. He noted that the institute has grown tremendously in only 12 years; its 450 alumni, he declared, are "starting to make great changes in Israel and the Middle East."

The many environmental problems that Israel faces, noted Clive Lipchin, director of research at Arava, are not limited to its small terrain.

Rather, he explained, Israel and its Arab neighbors all have limited resources, especially water, and so all citizens must work jointly to overcome problems.

The evening's speakers highlighted some of the programs and projects under way at the institute, such as efforts to rejuvenate an extinct species of palm tree native to Israel. Seeds were excavated a few years ago, and a researcher at Arava was able to make them sprout into a tree.

If the tree germinates, which could happen by 2010, Weinberg said, the native Israeli dates mentioned in the Torah may be tasted for the first time in more than 2,000 years.

Itay Greenspan, 34, a native Israeli, an alumnus of Arava and currently a candidate for a Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania, noted a particular course he took where he and several classmates had to develop and implement an environmental curriculum for an elementary school.

His group, which consisted of two Jewish Israelis, an Arab-Israeli and a Jordanian, devised a program to teach about bird migration. The fact that his Jordanian colleague spoke no Hebrew made little difference, Greenspan noted; the three Israelis simply taught him the necessary words, such as "beak" and "wing."

The name of the curriculum they developed? It was appropriately called "No Boundaries."

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Let’s start fixing Israel’s environmental woes now

By Naomi Kaye, April 25, 2008
The Jewish Weekly News of Northern California, US

There’s the postcard version of Israel — knotty olive trees, pristine blue Mediterranean water, dramatic desert landscapes, snow-topped Mount Hermon.

And there’s the other Israel, the environmentally taxed nation — landfills filled with plastic bags, factories churning dark smoke into the heavens, the polluted Kishon River, poor sewage treatment in the West Bank.

I’ve been studying at Hebrew University in Jerusalem for the past couple months. My class on environmental law and policy in the Middle East is teaching me about the destruction occurring in Israel. And whenever I’m in disbelief about what I’m learning, all I have to do is venture outside and see for myself — the littered beaches, the choking fumes from Egged buses, the trash-strewn streets.

Both here in Israel and back home in the Bay Area, I’ve heard lots of talk of love for the land of Israel. What’s not to love? It has a rich history, great people, delicious food and beautiful scenery. Love of the land, though, hasn’t translated into a widespread love for the land. And because of this (despite the good work of some Israeli environmental activist groups, such as the Arava Institute and Zalul), the environment is being trampled. Instead of a land dripping with honey, it’s a land oozing with pollution. Not too delicious, I’m afraid.

These problems have frustrated me on a day-to-day basis. For example, there are very few places where I can recycle my paper. And just like in many places in the United States, shoppers in Israel are always offered plastic bags when they purchase groceries or other items. Buy a melon, get a plastic bag. Whatever happened to canvas bags? Or carrying something by hand?

Most of these plastic bags, of course, are simply thrown away (but not always in a waste bin). The poorer neighborhoods of Jerusalem have litter strewn about everywhere.

But these are small things compared to other environmental issues befalling Israel.

Eilat’s gulf, shared with Aqaba, has beautiful and unique coral reefs. But bilgewater, oil and recreational diving activities have eaten away at the underwater tapestry. Today more than 70 percent of the coral reef is dead.

Fish farming also has done its part to destroy the reefs (the fish are fed antibiotics and hormones; when they expel their waste, the nutrients destroy the coral). Though the fish farming factories have been told to remove their farms from the coral, they have not yet done so. The reefs continue to disappear, and Israel is in danger of losing one if its primary draws to one of its most important leisure spots.

If only that were the extent of Israel’s water issues. The Middle East has been plagued with water scarcity problems for years. Now thanks to international climate change, water issues will get worse and could lead to increased levels of conflict between nations.

By 2030, Israel is projected to have about 10 million people — not including the residents of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Let’s face it: Israel is a small country, and that’s a lot of people and a lot of water — but where is it all coming from?

Water is seen as an essential right. Surely it is for survival. But we seem to believe we have the right to use water for other things besides drinking.

Last month there was a heat wave in Tel Aviv. During the peak heat of the day, the municipality decided to water the lawns. It wasn’t the wisest of environmental choices. What would be wise is to let the lawns turn brown and appropriate the water for better purposes.

The Jordan River no longer flows to the Dead Sea, which is shrinking, as is the level of the Kinneret. Lots of water is used for agriculture, which only makes up 2 percent of the country’s economy. More and more out-of-the-way housing developments are being built, creating the need to divert water to reach these developments.

I’m not trying to present a doomsday scenario; I’m just saying there are many reasons to be concerned — alarmed, in fact.

Israel’s got the right idea about several environmental issues: Almost every house has a solar heater that boils water; the country is a trailblazer when it comes to using desalination; and there is a pretty solid public transit infrastructure, with a Jerusalem-to-Tel Aviv train line in the works.

But for a truly secure future for the land of Israel (and the state too), there are many more problems that need to be tackled. I don’t have the answers myself, but I’m firmly behind the person who does.

Naomi Kaye grew up in Oakland and is an undergraduate at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, N.Y.

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Testing PV in Israel's Arava Valley

By Andrew Burger, April 14, 2008

RenewableEnergyWorld.com

Last week, RenewableEnergyWorld.com introduced Arava Power Company (APC) and its plans to turn Israel's Arava Valley into a solar energy hub. The company is working with the government, private investors and other interested stakeholders to make its planned scalable 500-megawatt (MW) solar power plant a reality.

While advocating for political change both locally and in Tel Aviv, Arava Power is also working with students and faculty at the Arava Institute of Desert Studies — a Kibbutz Ketura resident organization — to gear up for its anticipated project launch.

Conventional silicon and thin-film PV panels with and without solar tracking devices are being tested in the field along with solar concentrators to find out what yields the greatest generating efficiency in the particularly harsh and demanding environmental conditions found locally, where high ambient temperatures, along with wind-driven sand and dust, can pose difficulties.

"We're technologically agnostic — it just has to work for our business plan and in our environment and it has to be a stable long-term supply," Yosef Abramowitz, a transplanted Bostonian and former media company head who is now Arava Power's president said during a tour of the small testing area outside the Arava Institute of Desert Studies' administrative center.

Companies sell solar panels (mono or polycrystalline) with 20-year certifications but performance is based on optimal atmospheric conditions of 25 degrees Centigrade. Average temperatures at APC's site are far above that and performance (typically with 15% efficiency ratings, meaning that 15% of the sunlight directly hitting the panel will be converted to electricity) degrades a small percentage with every degree above 25.

Some of the test results have been very encouraging, however, Abramowitz said. APC is getting 28% above one manufacturer's claims for its conventional solar PV panels while Arava's researchers are recording a 7% boost in output from thin-film panels without tracking devices, and a 19% boost with them.

Thin-film PV hasn't been the favorite of solar power producers in Europe and the U.S. due to its relatively low efficiency — typically around 6% — but it offers advantages for APC in the Arava Valley, Abramowitz pointed out.

Located in a relatively sparsely populated desert region with large areas of unoccupied, unused land, space isn't as tight a constraint for Arava as it is more generally speaking in terms of acquiring land and zoning rights. As it happens, Kibbutz Ketura, the planned site, had previously obtained the requisite industrial zoning classifications for APC's initial 20 square-acre site and is in the process of doing the same for a larger 200 square-acre parcel of land it owns.

Solar concentrators are also being tested. Arava Power has a Letter of Intent with a solar concentrator systems vendor in California and is expecting to sign one or two others in the near future.

High local temperatures tend to degrade the performance of concentrators to an even greater degree than is the case for the crystalline silicon and thin-film panels, however, to the point where the PV cells are in danger of melting, according to Abramowitz.

That and the fact that manufacturers have not yet obtained certified 20-year equipment guarantees — which makes banks and investors balk at financing them — means that APC will move briskly out of the gate installing thin-film PV panels on its "proof-of-concept" solar mini-farm should the PUA increase the feed-in tariff rate structure and revise its solar power development program to allow kibbutzim and other collective communities the right to participate in it on an equal basis. The "proof of concept" plan is for a 2-4 MW grid-connected solar mini-farm on approximately 20 square acres of scrub and desert at the fringes of Kibbutz Ketura.

Arava Power figures it can generate electricity at roughly US $5 per watt installed with thin-film PV as compared to US $8-10 per watt with crystalline silicon panels, "which means we don't need as high a feed-in tariff, say, as in European countries," Abramowitz stated. "If in the next week the PUA includes kibbutz members equally in the Solar PV proposal at IS2.04 (US $0.58), we'll have bulldozers here by May 1 preparing the first field."

Andrew Burger is a RenewableEnergyWorld.com International Correspondent currently working out of Israel.

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March 2008

Arava to get $2.5b solar station

By Avi Bar Eli, March 4, 2008
Haaretz English, Israel

An international project management firm has recently signed a memorandum of understanding for construction of a $2.5 billion solar power station at Eilot Region in the Arava desert. The extravagant project, which is expected to continue over a five-year period, involves installation of photo-voltaic (PV) panels which will eventually supply up to 500 megawatts of electricity. The agreement was signed by Arava Power of Kibbutz Ketura located in the southern Arava.

Representatives of the international firm have visited Israel on a number of occasions to promote the project. The project, however, is contingent upon the Electric Company paying a higher price for the solar energy that the power station produces. An electricity producer currently gets 22 cents per kilowatt-hour electricity produced by all types of technology. Sources say that PV production of electricity becomes financially feasible at rates of 37 cents per kW/hr. According to the plan, solar panels are to be installed along thousands of dunams the length of the Arava and on the border with Jordan, and may in the future cross the border. Meanwhile, Arava Power, lead by entrepreneur Joseph Abramovich is promoting a power station that will supply 2.5 megawatts from an 80 dunam area on Kibbutz Ketura designated for industrial use.

The Eilot Regional Council has been lobbying for a move that will allow kibbutzim in the area to sell electricity at NIS 2.04 per kW/hr, the new rates issued by the Electricity Authority for home and industrial consumers who install solar panels for production of electricity.

The arrangement is meant for private consumption, with any surplus being transferred to the electrical grid. Home consumption facilities are limited to 15 kW-hr, and 50 kW-hr for industrial consumers.

Through Abramovich and the supervisor for alternative energy in the Eilot Regional Council Noam Ilan, at least 10 kibbutzim in the area have argued that since electricity usage on kibbutzim is measured on a single meter, they are entitled to bundle the rights of all members, to be considered as a single power station and enjoy the same high rates for sale of electricity to the Electric Company.

As regulation to promote alternative energy sources develops, including solar energy, kibbutzim in the Arava are awash with proposals coming from Israeli and foreign energy companies, including Suntech, First Solar, Sharp and Solar Power, among others.

Interest in collaboration with kibbutzim in the Eilot region has recently increased after the recent establishment of the first research and development center for alternative energy and energy conservation was established on Kibbutz Ketura under the auspices of the Arava Institute, which is planning to raise about $10 million to fund its activities.

Guy Leshem adds: While solar power is gaining momentum, not all "green" objectives win the day. The Trans-Israel Highway is a stellar example of a battle the greens lost. After the works began in 1999, several grass-roots organizations rose to the occasion in towns along its proposed route, claiming the highway would ruin the view, the quality of the water and ground, and would be bad for plant and animal life too. The greens tried their luck in court, and tried to inspire public outrage, to no avail. The ribbon was cut in 2002 and today work is progressing on its northern segments.

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Phrasing technicality blocks flowering of solar energy industry in southern kibbutzim

Ehud Zion Waldoks, March 18, 2008
Jerusalem Post, Israel

The newest cash crop for kibbutzim in the south - solar energy - appears to be blocked by a bureaucratic technicality.

Ten kibbutzim in the Arava and many more in the Negev are eager to become the "sun farmers" of Israel and plant their unused fields with photovoltaic (PV) panels. If allowed to do so, they could make the South entirely energy self sufficient during the day and even eventually export energy to the North. Such a capacity would also significantly reduce Israel's dependence on foreign oil.

The Public Utility Authority (PUA) recently put together a plan for the private production of solar energy through rooftop units. However, because of a glitch in the phrasing of the plan, kibbutzim may not be able to join the program. If kibbutzim cannot participate, then companies like the Arava Power Company (APC), which is part of Kibbutz Ketura near Eilat, will have to wave goodbye to $2.5 billion in potential investment it has reportedly been negotiating to bring to Israel.

PUA's plan is to offer individuals the opportunity to install a photovoltaic panel on their roof. The panel would generate enough electricity to power the apartment or house and the state would buy the rest of the electricity. Aside from the private initiative aspect, the plan also proposes to raise the price the state would pay for each kilowatt hour from 87.6 agorot to NIS 2.04, which would begin to make it feasible for a private individual to operate such a household station. According to PUA's plan, a two kilowatt-peak station for private homes would cost NIS 62,000. The price of a strong solar infrastructure in the South could be up to $1.2b., according to some estimates.

The Arava Power Company would like to take advantage of this plan on a much larger scale. Instead of one panel, they'd like to put up thousands, APC President Yosef Abramowitz told The Jerusalem Post. They are ideally suited to do so because the Arava is one of the sunniest parts of Israel and much of the land is not suitable for farming. Instead of fields of vegetables, they would cultivate fields of solar energy. According to reports, the company is in the process of recruiting foreign investment to the tune of $2.5b., which could potentially cover the cost of installation in the South. Abramowitz said they had held meetings with 10 other kibbutzim in the area that were also excited about the idea, and that kibbutzim in the Negev had also expressed interest.

"The key is for the kibbutzim to be able to join the program on the exact same terms as every other citizen of the country," Abramowitz, a recent immigrant from Boston, concluded.

But that's just where the technicality comes into play. The plan as currently written limits the individual or company to one panel per electricity meter of low wattage. This would mean that every homeowner in an apartment building could theoretically install one on the roof. However, a kibbutz is a collective, and receives all of its electricity through one high-wattage meter. In other words, a 200-house, four-company kibbutz would be able to put up just one panel. Moreover, because their electricity comes in a high wattage, greater than the normal input of an apartment or house, they may also be disqualified from participating in the program.

Ilan Suleiman, PUA's spokesman, told the Post Monday that "a kibbutz represents one collective consumer. However, we are aware of the problem and we are dealing with it. When we've figured out a solution, we'll publicize it."

A revised version of the project's plan is due out sometime later this month.

Abramowitz said there were technical solutions to the problems that they had already suggested to PUA.

Kibbutz Movement Secretary Zeev Schorr was adamant that the country's 280 kibbutzim be granted equal access under the program.

"We will not stand by while the kibbutzim are discriminated against. We have a meeting with Fuad [National Infrastructures Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer] soon to discuss the issue. If we see that we cannot resolve this through political channels, we'll have to resort to legal ones," he declared to the Post on Sunday.

Schorr may have an ally in the minister, according to a letter obtained by the Post. In that letter, the minister assured the recipient that the kibbutzim would be provided for under the initiative.

The reasons for PUA's seeming recalcitrance on the matter are twofold, a source close to the matter said. Their policy is based on the belief that PV is not economically feasible. Four years ago they discussed the matter in depth, the source said, and have not reevaluated their basic position, even as the cost has dropped and continues to drop due to the development of new thin film technology.

The second reason, which is understandable, according to the source, is the fear that a few kibbutzim will grow to dominate the entire supply of what is supposed to be, at heart, a rooftop initiative. The authority is afraid that what should be a program for 10,000 individuals will be gobbled up by a few well-situated kibbutzim. Electricity for the entire project is capped at 50MW. However, the source said, exceptions could easily be made, or the project expanded to accommodate both kibbutzim and individuals.

Noam Ilan, head of the Sustainable Energy Department of the Eilat-Eilot Environmental Unit, has also been a big proponent of kibbutz involvement.

"In the Arava there is a lot of sun and a lot of interested residents. It has great potential," he told the Post.

Ilan characterized the problem as a technical one and was convinced that the state was eager to solve it. He sent a letter of his own to PUA stressing the importance of including the kibbutzim. He noted that the project would assuredly help Eilat become "the first solar energy city in Israel."

Solar energy has become a hot topic recently, as Ben-Eliezer has made renewable energy the top agenda item for his ministry. The government has set a goal of producing 10 percent of Israel's energy from renewable sources by 2020.

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