A delegation including 11 Palestinians and 11 Jordanians from Friends of the
Earth Middle East took part on Tuesday in the Knesset’s environment day. They
attended the afternoon environmental caucus and met individually with government
officials.
The Palestinians and Jordanians, accompanied by their Israeli
colleagues, also attended an open environmental caucus led by MKs Dov Henin
(Hadash) and Nitzan Horowitz (Meretz) and attended by Knesset Speaker Reuven
Rivlin (Likud) and Environmental Protection Minister Gilad Erdan (Likud), where
translators brought in by Friends of the Earth Middle East allowed the delegates
to understand the discussions in simultaneous Arabic.
“There’s never been
a delegation like this, of Israeli, Palestinian and Jordanian residents, who are
working together on environmental issues and have never before come to the
Knesset. This is a first,” Friends of the Earth Middle East director
Gidon Bromberg told
The Jerusalem Post, just before the caucus began. “We’ve
come with a very clear message: The current mechanism of how we are managing our
shared water resources is shooting all of us in the foot.”
The
delegation, dubbed Trans-boundary Advocacy for Parliamentarians, also met in
small groups separately with MKs Henin, Horowitz, Eitan Cabel (Labor), Ahmed
Tibi (United Arab List-Ta’al), Yoel Hasson (Kadima), Shlomo Molla (Kadima), Afo
Agbaria (Hadash) and Tzipi Livni (Kadima), as well as with Rivlin and Erdan. At
these meetings, two Palestinians, two Jordanians and two Israelis joined
together in presenting the group’s 55- page proposal for water sharing among
Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority.
The current approach to
water distribution, according to Bromberg, has “failed Israelis because it
hasn’t given an incentive for the Palestinians to truly deal with sanitation
issues, which means polluting their groundwater and our groundwater.” It has
also “failed Palestinians because it hasn’t provided them with enough water. All
of the residents speak of a terrible water shortage,” he said.
“Our
Bethlehem staff, for instance, doesn’t have water; they haven’t had water for
three weeks,” Bromberg continued, noting that Bethlehem residents now rely on
buying water from tankers. “That means they’re paying 10 times what they would
pay from the municipality.”
The mutual water crisis is currently at a
stalemate, however, because the idea of water cooperation is “being held hostage
by the failure to move forward in the peace process,” according to Bromberg. The
report presented to MKs was on what a shared agreement might look like in
reality. Bromberg expressed hopes that the politicians would see that water
should no longer be used as a “playing card” and should be entirely separate
from political issues.
“We need the leadership, the government of Israel
and the PA, to agree to allow the two water authorities to change the structure
of their cooperative regime, which is the Joint Water Committee, and we’re
presenting today in the Knesset what that change in structure could look like,”
Bromberg told the
Post. “It cannot be that in the shared mountain aquifer Israel
takes 80 percent and leaves the Palestinians 20%. It cannot be that the
Palestinians get no access to the Jordan River when the West Bank borders the
Jordan River.”
Palestinian and Jordanian representatives from the group
told the
Post they were unable to speak with the media about their involvement
due to the sensitive nature of their participation.
Throughout the rest
of the Knesset’s environment day events, special discussions were also held on a
variety of subjects, including solar licenses and quotas; water pollution and
regulations; the dangers of cellphone radiation; sewage systems; and
environmental economics, led by parties that included the Internal Affairs and
Environment Committee; the Environment and Health Committee; the Science and
Technology Committee; the Labor, Social Affairs and Health Committee; the
Economics Committee; and environmental NGO leaders.
MK Robert Ilatov
(Israel Beiteinu) led an Economic Committee discussion about a potential cabinet
decision to reimpose a freeze on solar installations, an idea that he said
“contradicts the previous decisions and is unacceptable.”
In agreement
with Ilatov, Henin said that “there is no doubt that the quota program is a
mistake that is disabling the sector from developing.”
In an open forum
on biodiversity led by Science and Technology Committee chairman Meir Sheetrit
(Kadima), Sheetrit expressed dissatisfaction with the government’s treatment of
animals and of open spaces.
“Every animal has a role even if we don’t
always understand this role,” he said.
During the larger environmental
lobby attended by the Palestinian and Jordanian delegates, Green Movement
cochairman Prof. Alon Tal of Ben- Gurion University presented Rivlin with a new
report about the status of Israel’s environmental organizations, which
highlighted the economic struggle of the country’s green groups, among other
issues.
At the same meeting, Amit Bracha, executive director of the
Israel Union for Environmental Defense (Adam Teva V’din), introduced a report
about the privatization of natural resources, specifically looking at the risks
involved with privatizing beaches, open spaces, the Samar sand dunes and
portions of the Dead Sea.
“Production of natural resources, gas and
minerals of Israel is executed today by large private companies, and begs the
question as to whether the state is capable of enforcing its policies on these
companies, for whom the bottom line as far as they are concerned is achieving a
profit,” said Nir Papay, director of environmental protection for the Society
for the Protection of Nature in Israel. “Without a clear policy and firm
regulation from the government, everyone’s natural resources are in
danger.”
While the country’s – and the region’s – environmental issues
clearly were not going to be solved in one day, Bromberg was pleased with the
progression of events and marveled that he was able to bring his delegation to
the day’s events.
“When we were consulting as to how we could go about
this, Knesset lobbyists were saying, ‘Oh it’s impossible, you’re not going to
succeed to bring Palestinians and Jordanians to the Knesset,’” Bromberg told the
Post. “We’re seeing that all members of Knesset that we’re meeting are
flabbergasted, to say the least, about such a delegation.
However, as for
those members of Knesset from the Right, we are having really serious
discussions – we’re particularly telling the members of the coalition that they
must show the leadership that we desperately need to stop holding the water
issue hostage.”