By Oded Eran and Gidon Bromberg

The Israeli-Palestinian political process has been stalled for too long. It could soon be replaced by a third Intifada or a Palestinian version of the Arab Spring. If the renewed Obama Administration wants to try and avoid this possible turn of events, it has to change the paradigm that has guided all previous efforts to reach a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since the 1993 Oslo Accords. All of these efforts were predicated on the premise that a simultaneous solution to the three core issues — Jerusalem, borders and refugees — is attainable. It is time to change the paradigm.

Israelis remain divided between those who wish for a two state solution and those who want just one state all under Israeli control. Palestinians remain divided geographically and politically, between Gaza/Hamas and West Bank/Fatah. The longer it takes to resume the negotiations, the more difficult it will be to attain the two-state solution. Tackling the toughest issues first, such as Jerusalem, have proven to only prolong the stalemate.

We suggest renewing negotiations between the two sides on key issues that present immediate benefits for both sides, if a solution is found. Water is an excellent case in point. Given the dire Palestinian need for more water; Israel’s increased water supplies due to large scale desalination; and a joint need to deal with untreated sewage; advancing water as a first priority makes economic, ecological, and not least importantly, political sense. An agreement on water would concretely improve the current living conditions of both peoples. For Palestinians increasing fresh water availability will improve living conditions in every home and for Israelis water cooperation would remove pollutants that originate in the West Bank from rivers and streams that flow through our main cities.

Politically, the two sides can proceed with minimal political cost. The Palestinian President, Abu Mazen could present an achievement in the form of additional much needed water for the Palestinian people. The Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu could show progress in dealing with the conflict. We well understand however that increasing water availability to Palestinian cities and villages and removing sewage from Israeli streams will not suffice. The agreement struck would need to be not only a ‘Final Accord on Water’ and not another interim process, building much needed trust, but it must be time linked to negotiations on the tougher issues. This is where the U.S. will be most needed: creating the roadmap and the timeline linking agreements such as the one on water to the end result — two states, Israel and Palestine. We call on President Obama when next month here in the Middle East to ‘walk on water’ and create a real chance for serious peace negotiations beyond just the photo-op.

Oded Eran is a Senior Researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies, Tel Aviv. Gidon Bromberg is the Israeli Director at EcoPeace/ Friends of the Earth Middle East (FoEME) and Chair of the Alliance for Middle East Peace (ALLMEP). The views expressed are those of the authors; this post originally appeared on The Huffington Post.

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By David Lehrer and Dr. Clive Lipchin

In the Middle East, as in most parts of the world, environmental issues cross borders.  Israelis share groundwater and watersheds with Palestinians, Jordanians, Syrians and Lebanese, air pollution travels without regard to political boundaries and animals do not halt or present a passport when they arrive at an international border.  In order to meet the environmental needs of growing populations in the region, there is no choice but to work in close concert with our neighbors.

Cross-border environmental cooperation cannot wait until a final peace agreement is signed.  The end of the occupation and a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians is far from sight, but cross-border environmental degradation is ongoing.  More people continue to die from air pollution-related diseases in Israel and Palestine than from car accidents. Most of the rivers that originate in Palestine and cross into Israel are polluted, resulting in cross border pollution that has an impact on both sides. Aquifers, which are also shared, continue to be degraded from excessive pumping and seepage from domestic, agricultural and industrial sewage, causing massive damage to the drinking water consumed by both peoples.

If unsustainable development continues at its current rate without significant and meaningful cross-border coordination, we will quickly destroy the very land and natural resources that are in dispute.  While sustainable solutions cannot wait for a final political agreement, environmental cooperation cannot completely disregard the political realities.  Real environmental cooperation includes meetings, conferences and information exchange, and that can only occur if the atmosphere between both parties is open, honest and transparent; such interaction must be based on equality, symmetry of power and recognition of rights.

This does not mean that all political disagreements need to be resolved, but that discussions must take place on a level playing field – at present, that field is far from even. Take Item 40 of the Oslo agreements on water and sewage, for example. Item 40 called for an exchange of all relevant data on water resources. Such an exchange never took place, leaving both sides unable to develop a regional plan for water management.  In addition, Item 40 established a Joint Water Committee, which oversees the digging of new wells and water-related infrastructure.  According to the Oslo Agreements, all decisions must be made by mutual agreement between Israel and Palestine, which gives Israel a virtual veto power over any new water infrastructure project in the West Bank.

The Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the closure on Gaza make environmental cooperation extremely difficult; but not impossible.  Cross border cooperation on the environment and on other issues of human welfare such as health, education and natural resource management can and do take place when both sides acknowledge that there must be an equitable and just solution to the Palestinian/Israeli conflict – a solution that guarantees an end to military occupation and conflict and provides freedom and security to both parties.

If the actions of one side, however, signal a disregard for the rights of the other side or a lack of commitment to a just solution, no cooperation can take place and the environment will continue to suffer.   Any joint work on the environment will not be effective, or will not even take place, if Israel excludes Palestinians from participating in the forums designed to promote environmental cooperation among both parties.

The recent “Cross Border Environmental Conference” held in Ariel in the West Bank, was one such example.  The conference was organized by Israel; but holding the event in a settlement – a symbol of the occupation – the organizers excluded any serious participation on the part of Palestinians. That led to a situation of Israelis talking about cross-border cooperation among themselves.   Those courageous Palestinians who choose to stand against the current anti-normalization movement might have joined the conference if it had been held in a more neutral place. But to attend a conference in a settlement would have meant a tacit consent to the Israeli government’s settlement policy, and that would place them in even further jeopardy, which must not be allowed.

A conference initiated by Israelis that by its nature excludes Palestinian participants is at the very least a cynical use of the concept “cross border cooperation.” It perpetuates the delusion that environment can be separated from politics.

Given how badly this cooperation is needed, Israel should hold such conferences, workshops, information exchanges and coordination meetings of conservation efforts in areas where Palestinians feel comfortable, such as East Jerusalem and inside Israel proper. And we must continue to forge an atmosphere of trust, mutual recognition and respect.

David Lehrer is the Executive Director of the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies.  Dr. Clive Lipchin is the Director of the Arava Institute’s Center for Trans-boundary Water Management. This article represents the views of the authors and does not represent the views of the Arava Institute.

Project photography: Oren Ziv / Activestills

An event of somewhat historic proportions is about to take place in Saint Petersburg in the coming days: for the first time ever, the annual UNESCO convention is to discuss a request to recognize a world heritage site that was put forward by the Palestinian Authority, which itself was accepted as a full member of the international agency last October despite Israeli and American protest. If the request is accepted, the ancient agricultural terraces of Battir will become the first site to earn this international prestige in the whole of West Bank and Gaza Strip, not including the Old City of Jerusalem. It would also mean that Israel would likely be forced to change the planned route of the wall in the last section where construction is still ongoing, which the Ministry of Defense considers “a dangerous gap” allowing “free entrance to Jerusalem by terrorists,” as a spokesperson recently told Ma’ariv.

“The villages of Wadi Fukin and Battir are threatened by the construction of 13 kilometers of a barrier, which would gravely harm agricultural terraces and natural springs that have been serving man for some 3,000 years,” explains Gidon Bromberg, Israeli director of Friends of the Earth – Middle East. “In Battir alone, there are about half a million stones laid down by people over the course of thousands of years, taken care of and rearranged every winter due to natural erosion. The result is a unique cultural landscape, the most perfectly preserved in all of Israel and Palestine, and the only one to be used consecutively throughout the ages.”

A farmer and a natural spring in Wadi Fukin. Background: Betar Illit (Oren Ziv / Activestills)

A long 70-meter wide strip of concrete

The separation wall is not the only threat to the two villages’ agriculture, but it is definitely the central one. In Wadi Fukin, surrounded in three directions by the rapidly expanding settlement of Betar Illit, hydrologists hired by both NGOs and the army say that construction of the wall in the last remaining clear territory around the village is likely to prevent water from seeping into the underground basin that fills the 11 springs on which local agriculture has been based for decades. Along with Friends of the Earth and Israeli residents of the nearby Tzur Hadasa, villagers are trying to stop the wall, and demand Israel use cameras and other technical systems instead in this section of the barrier. A petition against the route of the wall was filed with the Civil Administration several years ago, and construction cannot commence before it is rejected.

In nearby Battir, Israel sees a more pressing need to erect the wall, but a petition against it is still pending a High Court of Justice decision, and villagers are hoping that UNESCO recognition of their terraces’ historic value will tip the scales for the better. The petition and the request, which were filed using a special emergency procedure after some deliberation by the PA and was supported by the UNESCO delegation to Ramallah, claim that not only would construction damage the complex water system – it would also destroy the ancient terraces themselves. “For thousands of years locals knew how to build houses in a way that would not stop the water from seeping, but the wall leaves no such option,” says Bromberg. “The problem is that with either a fence or a wall you still have a long 70-meter wide strip with a road on each side and concrete buried underground to strengthen it and prevent digging under it. This would quite surely cause irreversible damage of the water springs.”

Similar risks are also likely to affect the neighboring village of Walajah, whose case was described in depth earlier in this series, and Bromberg estimates that had that village also used the environmental argument in its petitions to the courts – it would have been more likely to stop the wall which is now being built all around it.

A farmer in the fertile lands of Wadi Fukin. Background: Betar Illit (Oren Ziv / Activestills)

The fight for the desert

The plight of Battir and Wadi Fukin may well make headlines in coming days due to the UNESCO convention. But the wall has many more damaging effects on local eco-systems, the others being severe harm to fauna and flora, the mass uprooting of trees to make room for the wall, the forced neglect of fruit-bearing trees on the “Israeli” side of the wall, and the scarring of miles of natural landscape in the country and the desert.

In a story published in 2006, Ha’aretz correspondent for environmental affairs Zafrir Rinat mentioned that construction of the wall signifies the first time in history that this land is completely divided as a geo-ecological unit (as opposed to political, economic and other divisions, which do not exist, as Yuval Ben-Ami and I mentioned in our joint podcast on borders). “The wall makes me frustrated and depressed,” Rinat was told by Society for Protection of Nature’s Avraham Shaked at the time (Hebrew only). “In addition to the dramatic injury to the landscape, this means a complete stopping of movement for some animals, which is essential to the survival of several species, and is the foundation of nature preservation.”

In another piece, Rinat notes that it took environmentalists in Israel a very long time to realize the effects of the wall. While this delayed start made it too late to change anything in the northern part of the route – the south was and still is relevant for a struggle. In recent years, NGOs have aimed their criticism mainly at the route in Wadi Qelt (the part of the wall engulfing the Adomim Plain, where construction has been stopped for political reasons), and at the route in the Judean Desert, the southeastern most part of the wall. In 2007, then Minister of Defense Amir Peretz ordered construction of that part be stopped, promising to consider suggestions for using the difficult terrain combined with electronic detection devices as an alternative to the wall. Construction has not resumed there since.

A gap in the wall near Jerusalem. A meeting point of two eco-systems (Oren Ziv / Activstills)

The environmentalists’ arguments on these two sections of the wall focus on the disruption of migration routes of deer, mountain goats, hyenas, wolves and leopards, the latter being endangered in Israel. Side effects would also limit plant seed distribution, due to the  animals that carry them, and a risk of extinction for the Bonelli’s Eagle in our parts – all of this in a region considered unique due the meeting point of desert and irrigated mountains and fields. Around the northern parts of the wall reports are already mounting on its actual harmful effects on wildlife and plants, although in certain places west of the wall animals have been said to be better protected now from Palestinian farmers.

An important political issue worthy of mentioning in this context is settlers’ involvement in environmental struggles in the West Bank, linking “green” rhetoric with opposition to a wall that leaves parts of the “promised land” outside Israeli boundaries. In one case the Kfar Etzion Field School petitioned the High Court in order to change the route of the wall where it would have led to the partial uprooting of a forest. Once accepted by the state, the petition led to a new route being drawn – one which uproots more Palestinian agricultural fields (Hebrew).

UNRWA: Severe impacts on farmer communities

More ecological effects of the wall, ones which also harm Palestinian communities, are described in a special report published by UNRWA about two week ago. The report mentions the uprooting of thousands of trees along the route of the wall (12,000 near Qalqilia alone), and a decline in productivity of those that remain on its western side – a result of farmers being denied access to their lands (as described earlier in this series). UNRWA also elaborates on the damage caused to water wells, springs and cisterns, and the flooding of neighborhoods adjacent to the wall caused by rain being unable to flow freely as it used to. In one instance in Beit Hanina in the winter of 2012, the water rose several meters high.

In a Jerusalem press conference for the publication of the report, its authors called upon the world to intervene and make Israel abide by the ICJ ruling on the wall and stop all construction within the territories. However, at least as far as nature goes, building the wall on the green line might have some minor positive effects – but won’t counter most of the damage.

Uprooted trees outside the Qalqilia wall. 12,000 have been uprooted for its construction in this area alone (Oren Ziv / Activestills)

Previous chapters in this series:

Part 1: The great Israeli project
Part 2: Wall and Peace
Part 3: An acre here and an acre there
Part 4: Trapped on the wrong side
Part 5: A new way of resistance
Part 6: What has the struggle achieved?
Part 7: A village turned prison
Part 8: A working class under siege

Next:

Part 10: My encounters with the wall in space