Rejoicing in the desert life

BASYA LAYE

“Traditionally, through Tu b’Shevat, we encourage our supporters to donate money for planting more trees in various areas in Israel. This year, we are privileged to get on board a most unique project,” explained local Jewish National Fund shaliach Micky Goldwein to the Independent.

“Through Tu b’Shevat, our volunteers will call our community members, asking them to ‘give a hand’ for planting more acacia trees in the Arava,” he continued. “By doing this, we contribute to the ecosystem of the region, we help to make the Arava greener and we beautify the villages and kibbutzim of the region. What can be more attractive than to plant a tree in the desert, the only tree that can exist in this region and the tree from which the Mishkan was built during our forefathers’ journey from Egypt to Israel?”

Next week, JNF hosts Ezra Ravins, mayor of the Central Arava Regional Council, who will speak to local Jewish day schools, Hillel students and young professionals, in Victoria and at Congregation Beth Israel during a four-day visit. Ravins will introduce the Adopt-an-Acacia campaign and talk about the Central Arava, an area that covers six percent of the land of Israel.

In an interview, Ravins described the challenges that people in the Arava experience and some of the projects that are critical to the sustainability of the region.

“It’s impossible to live in the desert,” Ravins said of life-at-first-glance in the Arava. “This is a desert of 30 millimetres [of rain] a year and, the truth is, the first settlers came here in 1959 and I heard from the politicians that came down in those days, and even ministers, that they said to the first settlers, ‘You’re out of your mind; you can’t succeed to settle this region.’”

The residents of the region have proven those naysayers wrong, however, and today more than 3,000 people call the area home. As a consequence of this growth, the area will be breaking ground on a new school for the first time in 40 years. Located midway between the Dead and Red seas, much of the region is below sea level, which is an obstacle to population growth. As the mayor and as a resident, Ravins is more circumspect, however, when listing the area’s disadvantages, and for good reason: the area is home to several innovative agricultural and research and development institutions and companies that have made significant advances in a relatively short period of time.

“I’m here more than 30 years – I’m a farmer … I was the manager of Moshav Tzofar, I was the head of the research and development, I was a volunteer…. I always say that the disadvantages are the advantages of the Arava. So, the Arava is an isolated area with a beautiful desert, a very tough desert; it’s a huge challenge to develop it and to bring more people down to the region. Understanding that everything is ‘impossible’ – it’s impossible to do here agriculture, impossible to do here tourism – when someone says to me ‘impossible,’ I always like to do things ‘possible’ [instead]. I think … when you look at this region, you see how we developed it, you understand that the men and the women, the people that came to this region at the end of the ’50s and started to settle the region, they are the really special people that made the change, that took a very, very tough desert and developed it.”

One way to attract more settlement is by promoting economic growth and investment, which necessitates good relationships with Israel’s neighbors, both in the Palestinian Authority and across the border in Jordan.

Like any desert region, the number one issue is lack of water, and this is a problem that requires cross-border cooperation. “We have a problem of water in the desert, on the Jordanian side and the Israeli side…. Today, we have 52 wells that supply the water. A lot of these wells have very tough, salty water and we have to bring sweeter water [here]. When we’re talking about environmental issues, we have to be very sensitive when we’re developing the region because the region has a lot of nature reserves and we have a lot of animal issues and tree issues” that they want to preserve, he continued.

This is where the Adopt-an-Acacia campaign comes in. “Acacia is, perhaps, a symbol, it’s the main tree in the region, it’s the only kind of tree that can grow in the region,” Ravins said of the hardy species. “It’s a tree that we’re trying to save and to plant, to bring more trees into the region, because the last few years there’s been very little rain, and sometimes, because of the development of agriculture, some of these trees are dying. It’s a very important tree to the ecological system in the Arava. This is something we’re working on, on the Israeli side and, I believe, in the future we’re going to start working together with the Jordanians.”

Other projects with the Jordanians have already been undertaken and one in particular, the Arava MedFly Eradication Project, has been of great import to both countries.

“It’s a project of using sterilization techniques in insects, in Mediterranean fruit flies, that we release over the region,” he explained. “We do it once a week – we do it over the Israeli side and over the Jordanian side, and it’s a way of taking care of the Mediterranean fruit fly by a biological control. The fruit fly … exists very little in the United States, it doesn’t exist in the Far East, in Japan and other countries, and the only way to export from the Arava Valley to these countries is … to eradicate this quarantine pest that doesn’t allow us to export to other countries. We started this project about 20 years ago and slowly, slowly we got the Arava clean from the Mediterranean fruit fly and, today, we export mainly to the United States. We’re still working on opening the Japanese market.

“There’s some research done with the Jordanians,” as well, he added, “but the biggest obstacle is the politics of the Middle East. Every time we have a crisis with the Palestinians, immediately the relations between the Israelis and the Jordanians go to a very low volume. They don’t want anyone to know about it, everything has to be quiet, but we have negotiations with the Jordanians, we have small projects with them and the last few months, when what we call the Arab Spring started to spread around the Middle East, there were also a lot of tensions in Jordan, and we had to go down to low-profile relations. But we have, for example, at Open Day [2012], we have a delegation of very important people that will come from Jordan, they will meet with the ministers that will come down to the region.

“Also, we have relations with the Palestinian Authority. Just yesterday, we had small delegation that came from Ramallah, from the West Bank. They are very interested in developing the West Bank and they want our help, they want our experience how to build the R&D, how to work with an extension service. I think that we have] built here an agricultural model that serves the development of the agriculture, the farms, in this region, but it’s a good model that they can take to the Far East, they can take to the Palestinian Authority, they can take to countries in Africa. We’re always happy to help other countries.”

It was during his tenure as head of Arava Research and Development that the idea for Open Day was born. “The idea was to attract the farmers from the region and to bring them one day to the experimental station, show them different kinds of experiments that we’re doing in R&D,” Ravins explained. “After the first year, I started to realize that there is a huge potential to bring the whole community, to bring the children, to bring the families, to bring other companies that are involved in the region, and to bring other farmers from all around the country. It started from a small event of 500 people and today it’s a huge event. It’s the biggest agriculture event in Israel, over 30,000 people ... it’s a huge happening to the farmers in Israel. A lot of ministers come down, ambassadors, it’s really a great day. We’re proud of what we’re doing in the region, and we’re planning in 2015 to have what we call the Agritech – the international annual agriculture fair in Israel that we have every three years – to have it in the Arava, and that means to bring thousands of people from overseas to the Arava for one week to spend on the farms, to see the experimental station and to do a lot of business and also help the tourism in the region, in Eilat, in the Dead Sea and also in the Arava.”

A crucial element in developing the region is working with residents, neighbors and partners abroad. It’s an element that challenges Ravins and his community to continue to become more sustainable and to work on joint initiatives.

“I think, at the end of the day, the most important thing is working together … and thinking together and solving all kinds of problems. Sometimes people say, a lot of people say, ‘it’s impossible to grow in salty water’ – we grow in salty water; ‘it’s impossible to eradicate pests’ – we do it; ‘it’s impossible to do biological control in peppers’ – we built a biological control protocol in peppers.”

In fact, the Arava’s is the first Israeli regional council to meet the international ISO 14,000 Environmental Standard, an accomplishment of which the mayor is particularly proud.

“We understood immediately that what we call agriculture ‘culture,’ that’s the only way to get to the best markets in the world, when the customers come to the Arava and they want to see the conditions that we grow in and they want to see the way we treat the waste and they want to see that we use biological controls, they want to be sure that the fruits and vegetables that we send them are safe and clean, and we understood years ago that we have to develop the ISO 14,000 to get the whole region under one standard that can let us export to the best markets in the world.”

While here, Ravins hopes to inspire those who are planning to visit Israel to include a trip to the Arava, to support the region and to experience its beauty and diversity. “I think it’s a wonderful area, it has a huge potential, it’s worthwhile coming to visit. When they come to Israel, they go to Jerusalem, they go to the Galilee. When we’re talking about coming to the desert, I think it’s one of the most important places – that it’s worthwhile to come to.”

Goldwein originally met with Ravins last year on a tour of the region. “Born in Israel, I know quiet well the Negev and in particular the Arava region … though only through a professional JNF tour last year, which involved our directors in Canada. I was exposed to the extraordinary work, in so many fields, done in this remote area,” he said.

“I met with Ezra last summer at noon time in Tel Aviv. He left the Arava that morning, drove to Jerusalem, then to Tel Aviv. From our meeting, he was heading to Eilat and was supposed to reach home late at night. He drove that day some 1,200 kilometres ... nothing special,” Goldwein joked. “I put much pressure on him to come and visit us…. I feel very strongly that it is highly important to expose to our communities the exceptional enterprises that take place in a relatively big area in size, with only 3,000 people living there. Who would believe that 60 percent of the vegetables being exported from Israel derive from this area? Would you imagine that under routine regulations, set between Israel and Jordan, we are allowed to dig wells on Jordanian territory and use the water for agricultural purposes?

“Many of our community members [have gone] to Israel several times, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Galilee are obvious. Who has travelled the long way from Tel Aviv via the Arava to Eilat, and who has stopped there? Ezra’s task will be to broaden our horizons with pioneering stories, high-tech inventions and the many challenges that the area residents are going through.”

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