You can’t really ask a drought to stop at the border, flash its passport and dump any fresh fruit into a plastic bucket.
That’s the idea behind Arava Institute for Environmental Studies. When it comes to environmental protection or management of land, wildlife or vegetation, the Israeli institution figures the Jewish state and its Arab neighbors can either hang together or hang separately.
“Jews, Arabs, Israelis, Palestinians — they’re all together to study an issue that affects all peoples,” said David Lehrer, the institute’s director, in town earlier this month on a fund-raising tour.
Lehrer — who is often confused with the deposed former Los Angeles director of the Anti-Defamation League of the same name — is a 49-year-old North Carolina native who made aliyah in his early 20s and joined a Zionist organization whose name translates as “seeds.” So it’s only fitting he now runs a largely agricultural organization located on Kibbutz Ketura near Eilat and affiliated with Ben-Gurion University.
In his Sept. 8 fund-raising appearance in San Francisco organized by the Jewish National Fund, Lehrer wore a suit and tie and sipped on a pumpkin latte in a local coffee shop. But he looked like he’d be much more at home in shorts and a T-shirt, getting his hands dirty under the blazing Mideast sun.
His programs bring together Israeli Jews and Arabs, Jordanians and international students (many of whom are North American Jews) to study the environmental problems besieging the region — and they’ve got a lot to choose from.
Problem No. 1 is water, or, more accurately, the lack of it.
Jordan, Lehrer said, is the most water-stressed region in the world. Israel is overtaxing its subterranean water table, causing saltwater to seep in. Overuse is also drying up the Dead Sea, Sea of Galilee and Jordan River. Palestinians, meanwhile, are polluting the aquifers that provide drinking water for both Palestinians and Israelis.
Problem No. 2: When you’ve used the water (and other stuff), where does it go?
Lehrer is happy to report that Israel has started to take the problem of wastewater (the polite way of saying “sewage”) seriously, and has kicked off efforts to construct multiple reclamation plants. Before long, one-quarter of Israel’s water will be derived from reclaimed sources, he said.
But environmental education is only part of Arava’s mission. Landau’s real joy is watching friendships and working partnerships form across cultural divides. Arava graduates have formed their own projects, including efforts to bring municipal services (especially trash collection) to undocumented Bedouin villages in the Negev, or foster rooftop rainwater collection in Acco, a mixed Arab-Jewish city north of Haifa.
“People can disagree on borders, history and religion, but they need to agree to protect the environment,” he said.
While many organizations bring together Jews and Arabs for social get-togethers — Landau refers to such meetings as “hummus parties” — at Arava students aren’t allowed to ignore the ongoing tensions that make their situation so unique.
In addition to graduate- and undergraduate-level work, participants are required to attend weekly meetings in which they discuss, sometimes testily, the Middle East’s social situation.
The meetings lead to some of Arava’s most confrontational moments, but also its most rewarding.
“Students may fight each other and may disagree,” said Landau. “But, in the end, they all must go home to the dorm and live together or to the pub to drink together.”