ISRAEL

The Flip Side of Zionism's Success:
Israel's Environmental Woes

by Alon Tal
Dr. Alon Tal is the director of the Arava Institute of Environmental Studies at Kibbutz Ketura and the board chair of Adam Teva V'Din: The Israel Union for Environmental Defense.

Naomi Shemer's 1967 song Jerusalem of Gold spoke of "mountain air as pure as wine." Today, a thick haze hovers over the Holy City. Scientists predict that Jerusalem's air will soon be as polluted as that of Mexico City.

Zionist farmers have made the desert bloom, and Israel has become an exporter of world-class produce. Yet pesticides now contaminate groundwater, taking a serious toll on the health of both wildlife and Israeli farmers.

The State of Israel has enabled the ingathering of millions of Jewish exiles. Yet urban sprawl threatens to pave over much of the promised "land of milk and honey."

And when the bridge over the Yarkon River collapsed during last summer's Maccabiah games, one athlete drowned - and three died of toxic poisoning. Today, many of the nation's rivers are full of sewage and its wells draw upon a legacy of industrial pollution and excessive use of fertilizers and pesticides.

To understand Israel's present environmental reality, one must dig even deeper than its 50 years of political independence. Israelis were the players who acted out the rebirth of a Third Jewish Commonwealth in the land of the patriarchs. One hundred years of unyielding Zionist determination and achievement unwittingly wrote an ecological script that is, unfortunately, in many ways a tragedy.

The story goes back to the days in which the modern Jewish state was envisioned by Theodore Herzl, who brought the inclinations and aesthetics of a lifetime in Vienna to his only visit to Palestine in 1900. After witnessing "the barrenness of the land" firsthand, Herzl called for the planting of 10 million trees in Palestine.

The "green" shades of Herzl's vision were, however, overshadowed by other more pressing tasks of nationhood. He wrote of enormous water development projects that would tap the sources of the Jordan River, mining operations around the Dead Sea, and a "high-tech" industrial economy that would rival Switzerland's watch trade. All of these predictions came to be. But even the prophetic Dr. Herzl did not grasp that the Zionist movement he spawned would also produce a severe environmental crisis.

Israel's ecological reality reflects a curious hybrid of "third world" geometric population growth with "first world" industrial technologies. The country is small and, for geo-political reasons, will only grow smaller. Yet its citizens already live in one of the most crowded nations on Earth. Resource scarcity, in particular water, has always been a salient issue; massive pollution only makes it more acute. As development spills out of Israel's major cities into the countryside, farmland and scenic vistas are supplanted by suburban neighborhoods and malls. Open space, perhaps the most valuable natural resource, is rapidly being destroyed.

Israel's environmental crisis is particularly ironic because Zionism was born with an unusually strong naturalist inclination. Poets and pioneers waxed romantic about the new relationship between Jews and the natural world. Zionism began as a quest to redeem a land that showed the cumulative impact of two thousand years of foreign domination and neglect. Deforestation, erosion, and unregulated hunting left a landscape that was typically described as desolate.

European Jewish settlers brought with them a commitment to afforestation that made trees an integral part of national aspirations. The Jewish National Fund's afforestation projects took on astonishing dimensions after independence. Today, ecologists are critical about the type of pine trees selected as well as the dense patterns of planting. But the ten percent of Israel's territory designated as forests reflects a uniquely Zionist commitment to land reclamation and to "greening" the Jewish homeland.

Ironically, another JNF project, the draining of the Hula swamp, set the stage for Israel's powerful conservation movement. Protests by a group of scientists and naturalists could not stop the draining of the remarkable wetlands and preserve its ecosystem. But the efforts led to the creation of a tiny Hula Nature Reserve (Israel's first) and in 1953 galvanized the group to form the Society for Protection of Nature in Israel (SPNI).

Israel's 2,600 plant species (including 130 which are endemic to Israel) and almost 700 vertebrates (including 454 bird species) prompted Herbert Samuel, the first Commissioner of the British Mandate, to praise "the diversity of a continent within the area of a province." The richness in flora and fauna reflects a unique biological juncture where Africa meets Europe and Asia.

By the 1960s, trends suggested that precious little would be left of Israel's biodiversity. When the SPNI successfully lobbied the Knesset to establish a Nature Reserves Authority, its members were uncharacteristically pessimistic about successfully preserving the tiny nation's diverse ecosystems.

Yet, through a far reaching effort, almost all extinctions have been stalled and some species are recovering. The Nature Reserves Authority's first director, Avraham Yaffe, was a retired general. His "war" to save Israel's wildlife became an extension of his previous battles to defend Israel's borders. The Israeli public was highly supportive. They flocked to the nature reserves and heeded the calls to stop picking the wild flowers that had once blanketed the country's meadows each spring. The flowers made an astonishing comeback as did several animals, such as the fallow deer and the oryx, which were reintroduced into a reserve system that now covers over twenty percent of the country's land.

Alongside this success in creating nature reserves, Israel's rapid population growth and industrialization led to severe ecological degradation. The millions of Jews who heeded the Zionist call to settle in Israel needed jobs, and the industrial infrastructure that met this challenge was given a carte blanche by government decision makers. Indeed, the largest (and often, most polluting) industries were government-owned, such as the electric company or oil refineries.

Despite obvious environmental problems, it would take until 1989 for Israel to establish a Ministry of Environment. Even then, it suffered from a paltry budget and inadequate statutory authority. While many of the larger polluters eventually began to ratchet down their emissions, the growing range of small sources was much more difficult to regulate. And as the economy became more privatized, it created powerful incentives that continue to drive ecologically destructive development.

Both grassroots and national organizations began to spring up during the 1990s to fight the scourge of urban pollution. Organizations like Adam Teva V'Din: The Israel Union for Environmental Defense, a public interest law group, sued polluters and lethargic government agencies with some success. But it will take more radical change in regulatory orientation, greater commitment of resources, and creative policies to reverse Israel's unsustainable trends.

Zionism's basic impulse to resettle the land of Israel and open it up to Jews everywhere was successful. It is time, therefore, for Zionism to face its ecological legacy. And just as international Jewry has been a partner in establishing the State, it too needs to play a part in the next stage of Zionist evolution.

Israel holds its valleys, seashores, mountains, and towns in trust, not only for Jews, but also Christians, Moslems, Bahai'i - indeed, for all humanity. The River Jordan, the hills and valleys of the Galilee, the Judean Desert and Jerusalem resonate with spiritual meaning for people around the world. While much of this landscape remains today, it faces increasing and unprecedented threats from rapid population growth, economic interests, and even development spurred by the peace process.

Jews around the world have always had a unique bond with the environment in the "Holy Land." During the first half of this century, it was manifested in the "blue box" of the JNF. Planting trees was as much a vehicle for expressing solidarity with Zionist aspirations of stewardship as it was for the ingathering of exiles. Today, the same impulse endures. It should be expressed as solidarity for Israeli environmental efforts.

Just as Zionism is actively striving for a more mature, symmetrical relationship between Israel and the Diaspora, so too Zionism must also redefine its approach to the environment. Jewish individuals and communities throughout the world need to be part of this process-for they and their children are among the most important stakeholders in the Zionist dream and experiment to bring security, peace, and health to the Land of Israel and all of the people and creatures that dwell therein.