By Meira Levinson
From the early 1900’s, Israelis have had a strong emotional tie to Israel’s landscape—depicted in the writings of A. D. Gordon and Rachel the Poet and in the favorite pastime of contemporary Israelis: hiking. For pre-State Zionists, this fondness for Israel’s natural habitat stemmed from biblical liturgy, specifically verses extolling the flowering beauty of the land, and socialist ideologies, which had a marked affinity for the peasantry and farming lifestyle. Although these influences vied with the rationalist need for development, the image of the early Zionist—the hard-working, brow-sweating farmer draining the swamps and “making the land bloom”—has resonated with Israelis until today.
Despite these romantic and nationalistic sensibilities, a great deal of the early Zionist agricultural drive grew from political and financial, rather than environmental, considerations. Politically, trees acted as boundary demarcations; financially, trees served fundraising purposes as American and European Jews contributed money to Jewish National Fund (JNF) forestation. Israel’s focus on agriculture during the 1950’s can also be traced to a pragmatic motivation—Israel faced a food embargo from its Arab neighbors, and the resulting famine increased the necessity of produce autonomy.
Given these pragmatic needs, as well as the fact the country needed to sustain its fast-growing immigrant population, it is no surprise that Israel made some ecological errors along the way. One of the most glaring examples was the drainage of wetlands. Arguably, Israeli scientists were doing what they thought was right; malaria outbreaks aside, prevalent opinion at the time regarded swampland as a nuisance. Although some scientists demurred, many held that it was ecologically sound to drain swampland and replace it with cultivated farmland. The extinction of numerous native species of wildlife and vegetation and the nitrification of the soil was not clear until a few years after the drainages, and did not become publicly acknowledged until the late 1980’s. Part of this delay in recognition was due to the varied information scientists had at hand. Yet, it can also be attributed to the original Zionist mentality of “making the desert bloom,” a mentality that viewed Israel’s natural habitat of desert and swampland as a landscape to be forested.
Israel’s water development history serves as another example of early environmental miscalculation. Israel’s history of water is complex. On the one hand, the fact that scientists were able to develop pipelines to spread water throughout the country, and thus enable development and livable conditions, is, in the view of some, miraculous. Israel’s current advances in water-conservation technology—such as drip irrigation and wastewater recycling in agriculture—have garnered the praises of scientists worldwide.
On the other hand, Israel’s water resources have been strained beyond their capacity. Israel’s largest freshwater source, the Coastal Aquifer, was already over-pumped and saline by the 1950’s, and pollutants— both in the form of nitrates from fertilizers and effluents and chemicals from industrial waste-dumping—have severely lowered the qualities of numerous rivers in Israel, such as the Yarkon and Kishon rivers. The Jordan River and Dead Sea are steadily drying up due to water diversion upstream, and, regardless of all its utilizations of water for development, Israel’s current water allocations are approximately 500 cubic meters per capita. This is sadly short of the internationally recommended 1,000 cubic meters, and below which a country is considered to have “water stress.”
The need for livable conditions, as well as enforcement laxity regarding pollutant-dumping, certainly account for the exacerbation of water resources. In addition, the eco-romantic foundations of the State, as well as the early Zionists’ European-influenced aesthetic view, which longed for lush forests rather than desert, has meant that Israel promotes the image and welfare of the farmer, to the point of allocating the vast majority of its hydrological resources toward agriculture.
During the 1950’s, when imminent famine and a food embargo threatened the fledgling State, this mindset was understandable. However, Israel currently uses approximately 63% of its water for agricultural purposes, according to the World Resources Institute; yet, as of 2002, only 2% of the population worked as farmers and produce comprised only 5% of the GDP.
Israel has had some environmental achievements in recent years, among them the growth of environmental activist groups in the 1990’s and the restoration of the Hula Valley, an area that had been drained in the 1950’s. Indeed, in the water arena, innovations such as drip irrigation—which allows farmers to minimize the amount of water used for crop irrigation—wastewater treatment and recycling, and desalination efforts, have all served as examples for the international science community.
However, the question is simply whether these achievements are enough, especially in the case of water. While conservation efforts have helped, Israel may find itself with depleted water resources much sooner than anticipated if efforts remain within the framework of an unquestioned focus on agriculture. What is needed, in fact, may be a paradigm shift.
Zionism of the 20th century was visionary, idealistic, and, fundamentally, pragmatic—the inspirational words of Herzl coupled with overnight settlements, military barricades, and the urgent need for water transport in order to develop and hold the southern half of the country. Historical Zionism’s errors are understandable and excusable, since it was the Zionism of survival. The next decades of Israel’s history, however, might see a shift in the direction of reform—whether in the realm of social justice, economics, education, or environmental awareness. Making the paradigm shift from an agriculture-focused water policy to a more conservative and sustainable one could be a mark of a paradigm shift not only in environmental concerns, but in Zionist ideologies as well.
Meira Levinson was an Environmental Studies and English major at University of Pennsylvania, where she also earned an MA in English Literature. She wrote her thesis on Israel’s hydrological development, and hopes to one day live there and enjoy extremely short showers.
