Weekly Report April 25th to 30th , 2010

• Raed Samar, the Director General of the Bethlehem Rural Waste Joint Service Council for Planning and Development and Munther Hind from the Palestinian Wasterwater Engineers Group were hosted by the Dr. Clive Lipchin from the Arava Institute Resaearch Department and Shira Kronich from Arava EC&T. Raed and Munther are very interested in the Arava Institute's help the introduction of small scale wastewater treatment and reuse projects in the southern West Bank villages. In the West Bank village of Batir for example which has a lot of fresh water resources, there is no central wastewater treatment. Wastewater is mostly treated on an individual family level with septic tanks. The wastewater is seeping from the septic tanks into the ground water, contaminting the ground water, making it unusable for drinking, recreation or agriculture. Building a large scale wastewater treatment plant is unrealistic because of the required investment but also because of the need for Israeli permits and the need for a large tract of land that the village does not have. The Arava Institute has proposed implementing small scale family or building wastewater treatment and gray water reuse projects which would require less investment and not permits from the Israeli military authorities. The Bethlehem Council and the Arava Institute will seek funding for this projet (about $5,000 per family unit).
• By chance, we ran into Udi Gat, the head of the local Hevel Eilot Regional Council here in the Arava in the dining room of Ketura. I introduced Munther to Udi. who was very pleased to make Munthers' aquaitance. They compared the work of the two councils and Udi tactfully mentioned that he had visited the southern area of the West Bank but only as a soldier. Munther responed that he invites Udi to come back to the area but as a civilian and "without his tank".
• The Human Resources Committee of the institute is intensively looking for a replacement to Elad Topel as Director of Eco-Paths. Elad has been the Director since 2006. He is now going to work full time as CEO of Arava EC&T. After putting out a tender for the position the committee spent this week interviewing candidates and will hopefully be able to make a decision by next week.
• Shir Harel, our webmaster also spent a day at the institute meeting with staff regarding the website and other new media projects. We look forward to an even more interesting and dynamic website which will interface with facebook, youtube and other forms of social media.
• On Tuesday afternoon, the Arava Institute Board of Directors met at the institute. Udi Gat was invited to present the establishment of the Arava Renewable Energy Technology Center Consortium in which the Arava Institute is a shareholder (see last blog posting). The Board members also received a presentation by the institute's CPA of the draft 2009 Financial Statements. The final version of the 2009 Financial Statements will be approved in the June Board meeting.
• Daniel Bar Elli, Secretary General of UNESCO Israel, visited Timna Park in order to discuss with local residents, the process for inscription of Timna Park as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The Center for a Healthy Environment in the Arava (Sababa) is spearheading the effort in the region to inscribe Timna as a World Heritage Site in order to increase the level of conservation and protection of the region's national environmental and historical treasure.
• Sadly, last night, Ben Morgan, one of our students, broke his leg playing basketball. He is in the hospital for the weekend and hopefully will be released on Sunday. Unfortunately, it looks like Ben will not be rafting down the Jordan River next week with the rest of the students on the Water Trip. We wish Ben a speedy recovery.

David Lehrer

Weekly Report April 11th - 23rd

A letter I send last Thursday to all of our students:

Dear Students,

The period during the semester after the Jewish Holiday of Pesach is filled with national holidays and remembrance days. It is always a very difficult time at the Arava Institute where students from different backgrounds try to balance their national loyalties with a sensitivity to the feelings and narratives of their fellow students and friends. This is not an easy task and I truly admire the ability of the students and the academic staff "to hold it together" during this sometimes tense and uncomfortable period.

Israel's Independence celebrations start with a full day of remembering the fallen soldiers who sacrificed their lives for the sake of their country. Memorial Day is a very emotional day and one of the more difficult days for students at the institute. It is a day which we Israelis spend looking inward at our own pain and suffering. During this year's kibbutz ceremonies, I was strongly struck by the fact that little was mentioned of the other side, neither as the enemy or as the victim. It was as if the other side did not exist and all of those soldiers died in a vacuum disconnected from our struggle with the Arab people. Finally at the end of the Memorial Day ceremonies on Ketura, a quote was read from the speech of then IDF Chief of Staff, Yitzchak Rabin, on the occasion of receiving an honorary doctorate from Hebrew University in 1967 after the Six Day War:
"Moreover, the elation of victory has seized the whole nation. Yet among the soldiers themselves a curious phenomenon is to be observed increasingly. They cannot rejoice wholeheartedly. Their triumph is marred by grief and shock, and there are some who cannot rejoice at all. Those battling in the front lines saw with their own eyes not only the glory of victory, but also its cost -- their comrades fallen beside them soaked in blood. I know that the terrible price the enemy paid has also profoundly affected many of our men. Perhaps the education and the experience of the Jewish people has never brought it to feel the joy of the conqueror and the victor, and therefore the matter is accepted with mixed feelings."
Yitzchak Rabin, Hebrew University, 1967
So it took the Israeli Army's Chief of Staff to remind us of the terrible price that not only Israelis paid but the price the Arab people paid in this struggle. Recognizing the other sides pain and suffering is not a simple matter. We somehow feel that if we recognize the other sides' s pain and grief, we are justifying their actions. At the Arava Institute we continue to struggle to look for an appropriate way to recognize the pain of both sides. As such, we will soon commemorate Naqba Day and we will once again be reminded of the terrible toll this struggle has taken on the Palestinian people.
If it is difficult to share in each other's grief and suffering, how much more difficult is it to share in each other's joy? Yesterday was a day of celebration for the Israeli/Jewish people. The day we celebrate our freedom and independence. In Hebrew there is something we say to people who congratulate us on a joyous occasion. We say to them – "Bakarov etzlecha" – literally meaning "soon by you" but really meaning "may you too have a similar reason to celebrate".
So to our Israeli and Jewish students I say "Hag Sameach" – Happy Holiday and to our Palestinian students I say "Bakarov etzlecha!". To all our students I wish a blessing of peace.
David

• During this intense and tense period of time, students and staff grappled with the issues around the Holocaust Remembarance Day, the Israeli Memorial Day and Israeli Independence Day. The height of intensity was on the evening of Israeli Memorial Day when a group of Palestinian, Israeli and American students organized a memorial service which honored and remembered Israeli soldiers and Israeli and Palestinian victims of violence. Not a simple feat and not without disagreements and tender emotions. Yet as I said in my letter, the students and staff manage to hold it together which is a feat in itself.


• On Wednesday, April 13th, the new Arava Center for Sustainable Development in Arid Lands invited Sivan Borowich-Ya'ari, founder and President of Jewish Hearts for Africa, a non-profit organization that is trying to bring appropriate and sustainable Israeli technology to help rural villages in Africa www.jhasol.org. After presenting the work of the Arava Institue and Jewish Hearts for Africa we discussed how the two organizations could work togehter. It seems like there are many possibilities including working together on supplying sustainable technology, organizing teaching and volunteering as well as the possibility of working toegether on an ecovillage in Africa. We will continue to be in touch with Sivan in order to see how partnering can create synergy.


• Pua Bar-Kutiel, the new Academic Coodinator appointed by Ben-Gurion University spent a few days at the institue, teaching Ecology class, meeting with students about continued studies at BGU and meeting with staff in order discuss how to move forward on the Minor in Environmental Studies and a new Masters in Environmental Policy. Pua had an excellent visit and seems very enthusiastic about working with the institute.


• On Thursday, Lucien and Yehudit Bronicki, the founders and heads of Ormat Technologies, an Israeli company that is a world leader in geothermal energy brought 200 employees from their Israeli headquarters in Yavne down to visit the Arava Institue and other renewable energy projects in the region. After a lunch served by Keren Kolot, the kibbutz guest house, Dr. Tareq Abu Hamed from the Arava Institute's Center for Renewable Energy and Energy Conservation and Noam Ilan and William Weistinger from the Eilat Eilot Renewable Energy Initiative gave the Ormat Technology employees a tour of the new Technology Validation Center.

Lucien and Yehudit Bronicki with Tareq Abu Hamed

• On the following Sunday, the members of the Arava Renewable Energy Technology Center Consortium that is competing for the Israeli Ministry of Infrastructure's tender on the establishment of a renewable energy technology center (incubator) in Israel visited the institue and held its first Board Meeting at the offices of the Hevel Eilot Regional Council. Members of the consortium include Ormat Technologies, Elbit, Rafael, the Eilat Eilot Renewable Energy Initiative, a number of investment and finace companies, Ben-Gurion University and the Arava Institue for Enviornmental Studies (0.78% equity). If the consortium wins the Ministry of infrastructure's tender, a renewable energy technology center will be set up in the Arava. The purpose of the center is to enable start-up's in renewable energy by providing funding, space and know-how. Most of these start-ups will end up nowhere but a small percentage will succeed and the consortium will then own part of these successful new business.


• Elli Groner, the Director of the Academic Programs, celebrated with his wife Zoe and their two children, Andy and Alona, the birth of a new baby girl, Yasmin. On wednesday, we raised a toast to Zoe, the new baby and the population explosion at the Groner house.


• Last week we recieved sad news when we heard that one past members of Garin Hashachar and a good friend of the Arava Institute, Howie Katz, passed away suddenly. We would like to express our condolences to Howie's wife, Jackie, to his family and his friends.

David Lehrer

Weekly Report March 28th to April 9th, 2010

Dear Director's Blog Fans,

After months of intensive non-stop action at the Arava Institute, the past two weeks have been incredibly calm, quiet and relaxing. I for one, have really enjoyed the spring break. There are still a few important things to report about the past two weeks:

• Elad Topel, the Director of Eco-Paths for the past 4 years has announced his intention to leave the position by June in order to work full-time as the CEO of Arava Institute subsidiary, Arava Environmental Consulting and Technology (Arava EC&T). Eco-Paths is the department at the Arava Institute which runs the Israel Ride. The Human Resources Committee has begun to look for Elad's replacement. The institute wants to thank Elad for his incredible committment and energy to Eco-Paths and to the Israel Ride and wishes him luck as full-time CEO of Arava EC&T.
• Gail Osman, Director of the Development Department is leaving this week for a Fellowship Program sponsored by the Quebec-Labrador Foundation. The program is called, Developing Strategies for Community-based Natural Resource Managment and is funded by the U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. Participants in the 2 week program come from Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, the West Bank and North America. The program takes place in Massachussets, Maine and New Hampshire.
• The students left for their spring vacation two weeks ago and regular classes only resume on Sunday. Some students, however, returned early to participate in the short-course, Biodiversity of the Sand Dunes, run by Professor Uri Shanas of Haifa University. The course is a jointly run for Haifa University students and students of the Arava Institute. About 10 students participated in this year's course, half from Haifa and half from the Arava Institute. The students get up early in the morning in order to trap gerbils, lizards, beetles and spiders. Professor Shanas has been working together with the Arava Institute on biodiversity research of the Arava on both sides of the border for many years.
• On Thursday, a number staff members from the Arava Institue attended the monthly regional research seminar jointly sponsored by the Dead Sea Arava Science Center, the Southern Arava Agricultural R & D Center and the Arava Institute. The forum brings together researchers engaged in research in the southern Arava and Eilat. Thursday's seminar was attended by about 30 researchers and included lectures by both Professor Uri Shanas on the biodiversity of the southern Arava and by Dr. Reuven Yosef, Director of the International Birding and Research Center Eilat and one of Israel's leading ornothologists. Both Uri and Reuven are part-time lecturers at the Arava Institute.
• Uri revealed some amazing results of the studies he has been conducting for the past 6 years with Arava Institute students and with Haifa University students, on the biodiversity of the Arava on both sides of the border. One conclusion of the research is that nature apparently does know borders. Uri's research found that, probably due to the cultural differences between the human populations on the Jordanian side of the border from the Israeli side of the border, there is a greater abundance of species on the Israel side, while there is a greater diversity on the Jordanian side. There are certain species which only appear on one side of the border or the other. In addition, Uri and his research assistants have found that some species inhabiting the Samar Sand Dunes have a closer genetic relationship to animals in North Africa then they do to animals living in other adjacent sandy habitats in the Arava. Uri could not give a definite explanation to this phenomenon but emphasized the global scientific importance of this discovery.
• Dr. Reuven Yosef then spoke to the seminar about the importance of the establishment of the International Birding and Resarch Center Eilat on the old Eilat garbage dump. Reuven showed aerial photographs of the Eilat region prior to the establishment of the State which revealed a florishing salt marsh eco-system that was destroyed by the development in the region and agriculture. The salt-marshes at the northern tip of the Gulf of Aqaba were a critical refueling station for birds flying from Africa back to Europe during the spring. The first researcher to make this connection was Professor Uriel Safriel in an article he wrote in 1968. In 1993, Dr. Yosef was able to get permission from the Eilat municipality to reestablish a small nature reserve on a city garbage dump at the entrance to Eilat. Over a half a million birds fly through Israel to and from Africa every fall and spring. Much of Reuven's original research in Eilat was done with the aid of students from the Arava Institute. Using solar radiation data to create a multi-year GIS map of Africa, Reuven showed the seminar how the migrating birds from Europe move in a circular pattern from Europe, to Western Africa, then as the winter progresses, on to Southern Africa and finally when spring arrives heading back towards Europe via Eastern Africa. The first refueling station available to the birds after flying across barren North African deserts is Eilat, thus making the Eilat Israel Birding Center a critical part of the global highway for migrating birds.

David Lehrer