Weekly Report March 21st to 26th, 2010

• The previous week, representatives from LTER-Israel’s Arava site and LTER-Jordan met for three days in Aqaba to create joint trans-border research projects. Since the Arava region of Israel and Wadi Araba of Jordan are so ecologically similar, this collaboration is a unique opportunity to examine the different ways in which humans’ interactions with their environment can affect natural existing systems. With nearly thirty ecologists, biologists, socio-ecologists, environmental economists, and politicians in attendance, the diversity of this meeting not only allowed for the creation of transborder projects, but also much-needed interdisciplinary projects. The Arava Institute had 7 employees, 4 alumni, and 2 masters students in attendance.

• This week started out with a very important visit from a delegation representing the Premier of the Province of Ontario, Canada. The delegation was doing a pre-visit of potential sites, the Premier will visit when he comes to the Hevel Eilot region in May. Ontario is very interested in renewable energy and the delegation was very interested in hearing about what the institute is doing in the field. In addition, 4 students from the institute each spoke about their experiences. The delegation was especially interested in hearing about Ben Morgan's experiences at the institute. Ben is from Canada.




• On the same day, Uygar Ozesmi, the Executive Director of GreenPeace Mediterranean came to speak to give a lecture to the Environmental Leadership class. Uygar is from Turkey and told me that their are about 40,000 members of GreenPeace in Turkey, Israel and Lebanon. About 40% of the members are in Israel, about 40% in Turkey and 20% in Lebanon.




• Tuesday night, the students held a cultural evening where students provided their own entertainment with songs, musical performances, dance, karakoe, capoeira and other forms of entertainment. The evening was so successful that another evening is being planned for the end of the semester.




• On Wednesday, the Sababa Steering Committee organized a tour of potential alternative sites for the proposed Hotel Resort / Attraction Park near Timna Park. The committee toured a variety of sites in and around Timna Park. Later that evening the committee met and concluded that there are alternative sites for hotels on a much smaller scale then the current proposal and would require a change in the vision of the proposal to something more appropriate to a national park.

David Lehrer

Weekly Report March 14th to 18th, 2010

• Tal Goldman began work this week as the new Coordinator of the Center for a Healthy Environment in the Arava (Sababa). Tal is a member of Kibbutz Yotvata and is a professional landscape architect.
• Rodney Vargas from the UNC Chapel Hill Study Abroad Department came to the institute for a site visit. This is the final step in the long awaited agreement between UNC Chapel Hill and the Arava Institute which will allow students attending UNC to come to the institute for a semester or a year without petitioning for special permission.
• Many of you may have read Yonatan Chessler's beautiful letter describing the reception of the Palestinian students back on the campus after four days of closure on the West Bank. The background to the story is that after the closure was lifted, the Palestinian students went to Jerusalem to catch the bus to Ketura. Only one of the students got on the 10:00 am bus from Jerusalem for the 4 hour ride, via the Dead Sea to the institute. The other two students missed the bus and waited in the Jerusalem bus station for the next bus at 2:00 pm. The Egged 10:00 bus reached the IDF checkpoint on the Dead Sea at the border between the West Bank and Israel around 11:00 am. An Israeli soldier stopped and borded the bus to check passengers' papers. Though our Palestinian student had the permit which allows her to come into Israel, the soldier decided to remove her from the bus and she was told to go back to Jerusalem. The bus then left, leaving our student sitting on the side of the road in the in the Dead Sea with the next bus for Jerusalem, many hours away. The institute organized a taxi to come from Jerusalem to the checkpoint and pick her up (this took about an hour) and then take her back to Jerusalem. She met the other two students at the bus station. The three of them then took a bus to Ber Sheva and were picked up in Ber Sheva by the Program Director Moishe Siel. Moishe had decided not to take any chances so he made the two hour drive to Ber Sheva specially to pick them up and bring them back to the institute. This is what lies behind Yonatan's comment on the 12 hour trip from Jerusalem to Ketura which normally takes 4 hours. The institute is lodging a complaint with the Israeli Army regarding the actions of the soldiers at the check point. Matan Vilnai, Deputy Minister of Defense intervened on our behalf but it was too late to resovle the issue. We are deeply disturbed by these events and we appreciate the willingness of our Palestinian students to come back to the institute even under these trying circumstances. I also want to express my gratitude to Moishe Siel and to Judy Bar Lev for their efforts in getting our students back to the institute.
• On Tuesday, I went to Tel Aviv for a series of meetings that included a meeting of the Arava Institute/Heschel Center Food Initiative Team. We had a good meeting and we were able to come up with a plan for the next steps in the Food Initiative this year. After that meeting, I participated in the Arava Environmental Consulting & Technology Board meeting. Elad Topel, CEO of Arava EC&T presented the business plan for 2010 which look very optimistic with projection of almost a million NIS of revenue by the end of the year. Finally, the Arava Institute's Board of Directors met for its first Board meeting of 2010. The Board heard from Elad about Arava EC&T plans, recieved an overall report from me about events at the Arava Institute and discussed the structure of the audited financial reports.
• On Wednesday, Sarit Maagen-Rosenfeld, the new Chair of the Research and Visitors Park Steering Committee convened the first meeting of the commitee. The committee is made up of representatives of the different departments as well as representatives of the kibbutz guest house Keren Kolot. Sarit presented the architect's design for the park and committee members made comments and suggests.
• That same day, the Sababa Subcommittee for the inscription of Timna Valley as a UNESCO World Heritage Site also convened for the first time and discussed strategy for cooperation with the regional authorities.
• Finally on Wednesday, the institue recieved a site visit from a representative of the MASA program, the Jewish Agency program that encourages students to come on long term programs in Israel. The program provides scholarships to Jewish students from around the world to spend time in Israel. The institute is a recognzied program of MASA and about 9 of our North American students are MASA scholarship recipients. The visit seemed to go very smoothly.
• On Thursday, Cynthia Hirsch, an environmental lawyer from Wisconson visited the institue, gave a guest lecture to our students and met with staff. Cynthia has hosted Arava Institue students at her home in Madison and is very interested in helping the institute in any way she can.

David Lehrer

Weekly Report March 7th to 12th, 2010

• A television film crew from Finnish TV came this week to interview Dr. Elaines Solowey, students and me. The crew was fascinated by our work and hopes to come back to do other stories. I don't know when the piece will be aired but as soo as I do, I will let all of our fans in Finland know when they can see the Arava Institute on TV.
• The Finish TV crew had the opportunity to catch a glimpse of this week's PELS session PELS hosted Dr. Walim Saleem and Dr. Eyal Naveh who gave the students different perspectives on the current Israeli Palestinian conflict.
• On Tuesday afternoon, we held the second meeting of the Arava Center for Sustainable Development in Arid Lands (ACSDAL). The Center headed by Dr. Shmuel Brenner is a partnership between the Arava Institute, the Southern Area Agricultural Research and Development Center at Yotvata and the Dead Sea Arava Science Center. ACSDAL's pupose is to help transmit the knowledge developed by these three institutions to developing countries around the world suffering from desertification and poverty. Working with Israel's Foreign Ministry, the ACSDALwill use applied research, training and extension services to reach out beyond Israel's borders to people provide appropriate technology for sustainable agriculture, water management and renewable energy solutions.
• At the same time as the ACSDAL meeting, Dr. Tareq Abu Hamed, head of the Center for Renewable Energy and Energy Conservation met with representatives of the British Embassy who came down to look at the Arava Technology Validation Center and the other work the Arava Institute is doing in Renewable Energy. The British Government is interested in promoting bilateral research between Israeli and British scientists similar to programs Israel has with the US. They are especially interested in clean-technologies.
• As busy as everyone is at the institute, the whole day Wednesday was set aside for a staff workshop. The day was arranged by Miriam Sharton and Sharon Benheim as part of their responsibilities on the Human Resources committee. With the help of an outside faciliator, the staff spent the day dealing with issues such as team work, decision making, communication and institutionall growth. This is the second year in a row that the institute has held this type of seminar and it seems that there is a concensus that this is an important element that needs to be on our calendar every year.

David Lehrer

Weekly Report February 28th to March 5th, 2010

• This was the first full week of studies. This semester students have the opportunity to take such courses as Alternative Energy with Dr. Tareq Abu Hamed, Environmental Mediation with Dr. Yaron Ben David and Doctoral Student Timea Spitka or Environmental Economics with Dr. Nir Becker and yours truly. For a full list of courses go to Spring 2010 Course List.
• The Green Course, the local branch of the national environmetal student organization, held its first meeting of the new semester and heard about some of the environmental issues facing the area. The next evening Sarah Cohen, the General Secretary of Kibbutz Ketura welcomed the students at the Student Life meeting.
• Monday evening, the newly formed Local Committee to Save the Samar Sand Dunes created under the auspices of Sababa (The Center for the Environment in the Arava) met to plan a strategy to create public awareness about the threat to the future of the Arava's last large block of sand dunes on the Israeli side of the border. The Israeli Lands Authority has given permission to a contractor to mine part of the dunes. For more information go to Samar Dunes.
• Amy Rosnblatt-Lui, Director of the Beverely Foundation which participated in the Jewish Funders Network matching grant program visited the institute, meeting with staff and students. Amy seemed very excited about what she saw and will try to strengthen our relationship with the Beverly Foundation as well as help us reach out to other foundations.
• On Wednesday, I joined other environmental activists at the Knesset for a meeting of the Green Lobby headed by Member of Knesset Dov Hanin. I had the opportinity to speak about the hotel that is planned to be built in Timna Park. The Lobby discussed many threats to open spaces all over the country and the proposed planning reform law which will make it easierier for developers to build and more difficult for those who are concerned about open spaces and the environment to protect them.
• Thursday morning, Miriam Sharton, Associate Director of the Institute flew off to Barcelona to participate in the Anna Lindh Forum 2010 in Barcelona. The 4 day conference will include over 500 representatives from member organizations of the Anna Lindh Foundation. The purpose of the conference is promote cooperation among civil society organizations committed to intercultural dialogue in the region and to increase its impact on the establishment of the Union for the Mediterranean while enriching the activities of the national networks and the work of the foundation.
• This week, the region is holding the Hevel Eilot Football Tounament (Soccer for you Americans) at Kibbutz Ketura in memory of Pini Lutman, a member of Ketura. While the Institute students and staff suffered defeat last night at the hands of the Uvda Airforce Base soccer team, the score was only 1 - 0 and we put up a good fight. Meanwhile in less than an hour the female staff and students have the opportunity to return honor to the institue bydestroying the Kibbutz Ketura female squad. I'll let you know what happens.
• Well sports fans, I am back from a thrilling game in which the Arava Institute Women's Team whipped the Kibbutz Ketura Women's Team 2-0 enabling the Arava Institute to bring home a regional championship for the first time.

Victory Dance

David Lehrer