fbpx
 
Home / News, Videos & Publications / News / Desert & Water Research /

Israeli School Makes Link Between Healthy Planet, World Peace

Israeli School Makes Link Between Healthy Planet, World Peace

April 16, 2010

Desert & Water Research

JERUSALEM (April 21) — 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.”