As delegates head to the United Kingdom for a key conference on Yemen, experts warn that Sanaa could become the first capital in the world to run out of water within a decade. “Water is one of the underlying challenges that needs to be addressed in order to secure the long term development and stability of Yemen,” Ginny Hill, an associate fellow at Chatham House’s Middle East and North Africa Program told The Media Line.

“Everybody is so focused on immediate concerns about anti-terrorism, but there are a number of underlying issues that are facing the Yemeni government,” she said. “Resources like water and oil are running out.”

“Oil underpins the economy and water underpins population patterns,” Hill explained. “If the challenge around oil and water can’t be addressed, the danger is that there will be less stability because the state will have less revenue and less control.”

Delegates at Wednesday’s conference, hosted by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown in London, will discuss ways to boost Yemen’s national economy and fight terrorism.

Oil reserves in the impoverished country are dwindling, while its population is growing and the water supply depleting. Civil society organizations say the conference organizers must take a comprehensive approach to the challenges facing Yemen including the water problem.

The government is establishing water-management projects in urban areas but has failed to establish water administration in areas where tribal authorities dominate.

Yemen’s army has been engaged in a protracted conflict in the north of the country with Houthi rebels since 2004. The rebels wish to restore the Zaidi imamate, which was overthrown in a 1962 coup and they accuse the Yemenite government of being too closely allied with the United States.

In addition, Yemen has also become a hotbed for Al-Qa’ida activity, a major concern for Western countries, including the United States.

Secessionist groups in the south are pressing for independence from the north. A police officer was crushed to death in a protest on Monday and eleven others were wounded. Southern separatists have declared a strike and are protesting against discrimination and lack of financial aid ahead of Wednesday’s conference.

In a report issued in September, the Carnegie Endowment warned that the capital Sanaa, whose population is growing at a rate of 7% a year, could be the first capital in the world to run out of water.

“The concern is the population growth, which means there is a higher demand on the already-stressed water resources,” Walid Salih, a water expert and regional coordinator for the MENA region at the United Nations University told The Media Line.

“Yemen has a dual problem when it comes to water resources,” he said. “They don’t have proper management and they lack the financial resources to do more water-resource-management plans. Sometimes they have floods, but if you don’t have the facilities to capture this water, it’s lost.”

“Most experts believe that the whole region will be hit as far as climate change is concerned,” Salih said. “And of course the first victim of climate change is water.”

According to the Carnegie report, the water crisis is a result of several factors, including rising domestic consumption, poor water management, corruption, and wasteful irrigation techniques.

Yemen is ranked by the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization as one of the thirstiest nations in the world, with one of the lowest rates of fresh water availability.

Extracted faster than repleted

Water is being extracted from underwater aquifers faster than it can be replaced, with extraction rates in Sanaa estimated at four times the pace of replenishment, the report said. The water basins in Sanaa and in Amran in the northwest are close to collapse.

The water table in Yemen has fallen about two meters (6.6 feet) in recent years, resulting in deeper wells being dug, which in turn affects the quality of the water.

Because of the water scarcity and lack of management, private diggers take water from depleting wells that are dug without a license.

Large amounts of the country’s water is used to irrigate Qat, a semi-narcotic plant which constitutes a major part of Yemen’s informal economy and is consumed extensively by the Yemeni population, who chew on it, sometimes for several hours a day, to achieve a rush.

The plant generates cash quickly and is more profitable than other crops such as grapes or potatoes. Farmers often over-irrigate their fields and there are few incentives given to conserve the water.

Production and smuggling of Qat is one of the main sources of income for many families in northern Yemen, including rebels who are suspected of using the revenue to finance military activities.

(This article by Rachelle Kliger first appeared on The Media Line, the Mideast News Source.)

More on the environment in Yemen:
Yemen’s Environmental Problems Based On Chewing Gat
Yemen Funnels Seawater to Drinking Water With Low-tech Watercone
Eco-tourism Hot Spots in Yemen

Image via ahron

Abuse of circus animals comes to forefront of Lebanese politics: When the Monte Carlo Circus’ lions and tigers arrived in Lebanon two weeks ago they were meant to be welcomed by beaming children, adoring parents and cooing students on field trips. But after Lebanese animal rights activists received an emergency alert from THE Jordanian border about abused circus animals en route from Egypt to Lebanon, endearing scenes of charming animals entertaining humans is not at all what took place.

“We received a tipoff from someone at the Jordanian border about some six lions and three tigers coming from Egypt to Lebanon,” Maggie Shaarawi, co-founder of Animals Lebanon, told The Media Line. “They had asked the people transporting the circus animals how long it had been since they had been fed and they said three days. They asked how many days the animals had been in cages and they were told 10 days.”

The tipoff, from the Princess Alia Foundation in Jordan, stated that the animals had been put in crates on December 11, shipped out of Egypt on December 21, and delayed for two days on the Jordanian border as the crew did not have the proper paperwork to continue with the animals to Syria. The crew admitted that the animals had not been provided with food or water since leaving Egypt, alleging that they had not been provided with funds to provide for the animals.

The Jordanian foundation purchased food and water for the animals and they were transported through Jordan, entering Syria on December 26. The animal rights group in Lebanon, meanwhile, had alerted the country’s Agriculture Ministry about the case.

“We opened a small investigation and before the animals arrived at the Lebanese border we contacted the head of animal resources at the Ministry of Agriculture and asked him to check the paperwork and health of the animals before allowing them into the country,” Shaarawi said. “He did not call us back and when we finally spoke with him he said that the animals had already arrived healthily and that the veterinarian at the border had reported that they are happy and jumping around.”

“So we went and waited all day at the circus for the animals to arrive,” she continued. “Beyond not being fed, it turns out the animals had been living in small cages for six months. The lions had recently been declawed and some of them were still bleeding and had infections. There was also an adult lion who does not move at all.”

There are no lion specialists in Lebanon, so the activists contacted Paul Hart, a specialist at a sanctuary for lions in South Africa. “He responded that the conditions that the lions are in are abysmal,” Shaarawi said. “He said that the lion cubs should be immediately confiscated.”

Less than 24 hours after arriving from the arduous journey, the animals were on stage, performing to a $40-per-seat audience aside snakes, jugglers and clowns. “We took high resolution pictures of the animals and the next day went to the agriculture ministry and showed the same man the pictures,” she said. “He didn’t care so we went to the minister himself.”

Lebanon’s Agriculture Minister, Hussein Al-Hajj Hassan, told the Animals Lebanon representatives that because Lebanon does not have robust animal protection laws, he did not have the legal framework to act against the Monte Carlo Circus’, which had brought the animals to perform in Beirut for six months. In the end minister agreed to launch an investigation into the health of the animals and whether the circus had followed the law.

“He told us to please go back tomorrow with the veterinarian of your choice,” Shaarawi said.

But a series of Agriculture Ministry officials tried to block the inspection, twice requiring the animal rights have their inspection permit reissued. When the inspection team finally made it to the circus grounds with the Agriculture Ministry’s veterinarian, a tense interaction ensued and the veterinarian allegedly did not take any notes.

Nabih Ghaouche, the director of animal resources at Lebanon’s Ministry of Agriculture, declined to comment on the matter when contacted by The Media Line. Various other officials at the Ministry of Agriculture, including the minister, could not be reached for comment.

The animal rights advocates claim that beyond the mistreatment of the circus animals, their permits to travel internationally were invalid.

“They didn’t meet any of the international regulations,” Jason Mier, the Executive Director of Animals Lebanon told The Media Line. “They have no valid microchip paperwork. They have no health paperwork. The animal’s transport didn’t meet even basic standards. Every single step of the way what they did was illegal.

“We are not against having a circus,” he said. “It’s a lot of work but you can do it legally, so if you want to do it, just do it legally.”

“But this circus is known for smuggling,” Mier said. “This is a bad guy and I hope someone shuts him down.”

Under pressure from the assiduous activist, the minister declared the animal’s transport to have been illegal and announced on Thursday that they would be sent back to Egypt within 24 hours, effectively closing down the circus.

“He warned them that he was being very lenient by not prosecuting the circus,” Meir said after a joint meeting with the minister and the local circus organizer. “But what they’re doing now is to try to use any connections they have to get the minister’s decision overruled.”

“They are supposed to leave today or tomorrow,” he said. “But this is Lebanon and if someone tells you they’ll be there in 5 minutes, it will take an hour.”

The story continues…

(This story is written by Benjamin Joffe-Walt and is republished with permission by The Media Line, the Mideast News Source.)

More on Middle East Zoos:
Gaza Zoo Paints Donkey to Look Like Zebra
Gaza’s “Heaven” Zoo is Untold Hell for Animals
At Tel Aviv Safari Non-kosher Turkeys Go to the Wolves

Image of caged lion cub from the Princess Alia Foundation

Dubai inaugurated Burj Dubai (now Burj Khalifa after Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed, President of the UAE), the world’s tallest building, with a spectacular display of sound, light, water and fireworks on Monday. Burj Dubai, a development of Emaar properties, stands at more than 800 meters (2,625 ft) high with 160 storeys, making it the tallest man-made structure ever built.

“This is not just a building that’s a little bit bigger than other buildings. It’s much bigger,” Christian Koch, Director of International Studies at the Gulf Research Center in Dubai told The Media Line. “Everybody will know about it. This is certainly going to represent the status of Dubai and the Arab Gulf as a whole for many years.”

Tower pointing away from oil-based economy?

Dubai’s government has been focusing its efforts on several grandiose construction initiatives, aiming to diversify the emirates’ oil-based economy towards real estate, services and tourism. It is hoped a project like Burj Dubai will help attract international attention and in turn, investment.

Construction of the Burj Dubai began in September 2004 and was completed in October at a cost of around $4.1 billion. The tower breaks several world records, including the tallest skyscraper to the top of the spire, the tallest structure and the building with the most floors, a record that was previously held by the two World Trade Center buildings which had 110 floors each. It will also be the world’s tallest structure to include residential space.

“It just shows you that projects do get completed around here,” Koch said. “The idea that everything has ground to a halt here is just not true.” Dubai, one of the seven sheikhdoms that comprise the United Arab Emirates, is currently mired in a serious economic crisis after the state owned Dubai World revealed last month it was in heavy debt. “Dubai was overreaching a bit over the last couple of years, but the Burj Dubai was planned way ahead of some of the excesses we’ve seen in 2007 and 2008,” Koch said.

“When they decided to try build three palm islands, or another ski dome, or a building even taller than the Burj Dubai, this was all overreaching, but I wouldn’t go so far as to say this is reflective of greed or the desire to have the biggest and the best. There was a vision, there was an opportunity and at the end of the day, despite the financial crises, they did it.”

Experts descended on Dubai

Monday’s opening ceremony inaugurated what will become a new icon in the world’s urban landscape and the pinnacle of Dubai’s decade-long construction boom. Experts from France, Britain and the United States collaborated on the event, which was broadcast on screens scattered throughout the city and attended by Dubai’s ruler Muhammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum. Political and business leaders hope the long awaited grand opening of the Burj Dubai will recast the city state in a new light.

“This is a city that wanted to turn itself almost overnight from a regional center to a global hub,” Abdulkhaleq Abdulla, a professor of Political Science at UAE University told The Media Line. “They succeeded, and in a way they needed the Burj Dubai to symbolize that success.

“But the Burj has come to symbolize many contradictory things,” he said. “The city is dealing with a very difficult financial situation and is full of negative energy and doubt, but has shown it is incredibly determined to realize its aspirations and dreams.

“The Dubai World crisis has created a lot of doubt and a loss of confidence in the city’s management,” Professor Abdulla said. “The city has landed. It’s not a crash landing, but Dubai has been brought back down to earth.” “So in a way the brand Dubai has a big dent in it,” he said. “In the process of rebuilding confidence and credibility, we really needed something like this to help smooth out that dent.

“The sadness,” he added, “is that the Burj Dubai was completed when the lights were still on but the party was over.”

Burj Dubai in numbers:

The spire of the tower can be seen from 95 kilometers away

The building will include 160 luxury hotel rooms and suites

During construction, concrete was pumped vertically to a height of 605 meters, breaking a world record for concrete pumping

The main service elevator travels a distance of 504 meters

The building will include 49 office floors and 1,044 residential apartments

Burj Dubai has 57 elevators It has 3,000 underground parking spaces

The tower’s service lift has a capacity of lifting

5,500 kilograms 31,400 metric tons of steel reinforcing bar was used in the construction

28,261 glass cladding panels make up the exterior of the tower and its two annexes

15,000 liters of water were collected from the tower’s cooling equipment and will be used for landscaping irrigation

The floor of the tower houses the 900-foot-long Dubai Fountain, the world’s tallest operating fountain

During the peak of construction there were 12,000 workers on site

The price of office space at Burj Dubai will be around $4,000 per square foot

(This story written by Benjamin Joffe-Walt and Rachelle Kliger was reprinted courtesy of The Media Line – The Mideast News Source. Image via Burj Dubai website.

More on Burj and Dubai:
Burj Dubai and the Tower of Babel
Burj Dubai a Steep Investment in Tough Economic Times
Mega Construction Projects in Dubai a Disaster Waiting to Happen

Government incentives and intensive planting of vast new plantations hope to set Turkey on path to topple rivals Italy, Greece and Tunisia for number two olive producing slot in the world.

Turkey is working hard on overtaking its Mediterranean neighbors to become the world’s second largest producer of olive oil.

Currently the world’s fifth largest producer, Turkey is expected to cater to the growing global market for olive oil in North America and the Far East, while leaving Spain, Italy and Greece to sell in Europe.

“For the past decade we have been increasing the number of cultivated olive trees,” said Metin Olken, Deputy Chairman of the Turkish Olive and Olive Oil Publicity Committee. “Today we have young trees but we are expecting to triple our total production and become the number two olive oil producer in the world.”

About 95% of the world’s olive trees are in the Mediterranean region. Turkey currently produces about 200,000 tons of olive oil annually. This is dwarfed by the world’s largest producer, Spain, which currently makes over 1.2 million tons of oil.

“In two or three years we will be very close to producing half a million tons of olive oil,” Olken told The Media Line.

This would put them above Italy, Greece and Tunisia, who are currently second, third and fourth respectively.

According to Olken, the government helped boost the production of olives by offering financial incentives and subsidies to help cover the cost of planting and cultivation in the first few years before the trees begin to bear fruit.

The olive oil industry in Turkey employs hundreds of thousands of people. Turkey has already become the world’s largest producer of pickled table olives.

“The main market for the olive oil will be North America,” Olken said. “But Japan, China and Russia [will also be important].”

Turkish olive oil exports are not likely to try penetrating the European market directly since it is subject to heavy duties aimed at protecting the EU member states of Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece.

“The Turks certainly have the ability to get a large chunk of the market,” said Tzuri Shtevi, an Israeli olive plantation owner who has extensive business ties with the Turkish olive industry. “They don’t lack farmland and their government is supporting them.”

According to Shtevi, standardized international quality control will ensure that Turkish olive oil will be able to compete in terms of quality with European producers in North America and the Far East.

“But really there is a lack of olive oil in the world,” Shtevi said. “Producers can’t keep up with demand.”

Shtevi said the advantage Turkey had compared to, say, Israel was that it’s large land mass allowed less intensive yields than in Israel.

“They are content with a yield of about 800 kilos a dunam,” Shtevi said. “While we in Israel are trying to get 50% more since we have such a small amount of land.”

(This article is reprinted with permission by the Media Line – the Mideast News Source).

More on olive oil on Green Prophet:
Poor olive crop beset by theft in the West Bank and in Israel
The United Nations Help Syria Squeeze Out More Olive Oil
Palestinian Fair Trade Olive Oil

(Above image of olive trees in Greece via byrdiegyrl)

Mention Lod to anyone in Israel and more often than not it conjures up images of crime-infested slums, religious tensions and cultural backwardness.

Five minutes from Israel’s ultra-modern international airport is the city of Lod. Smack in the heart of the country, and rich in history, Lod has been Israel’s shameful backyard, the reference place for what Israelis didn’t want their cities to become, and a place most Israelis would never want to visit.

Today’s reality is not a rosy one. Lod has one of Israel’s poorest communities, with a sizeable high-school dropout rate and an enormous drug problem. The World Monument Fund recently included the city on its list of heritage sites, but its culture remains buried by neglect and decay. Indeed the municipality of the mixed Arab-Jewish city was found to be so corrupt and bankrupt that the government threw it out and imposed a former army general as acting mayor.

“We’ve got a terrible image and some of it is justified,” Lod resident Mira Marsiano tells The Media Line. “But a lot of good things are starting to happen in the city now.”

The community has been coming together to shed the stigma, launching a grass-roots campaign to transform the face of the city into a capital of multiculturalism and a new model of Jewish-Arab partnership.

Enter the Lod Community Foundation

The foundation aims to revamp the city, solve cultural disputes and put it back on the tourist map, beginning with a visitors’ center. It aims to get all the neighborhoods, in the city of 75,000 residents, to work together to clean up the urban space around them.

“People themselves began to believe they could do something,” says Ruth Lande Wasserman, a Lod resident. “Even though this may sound like a very improbable dream, these people sit in our own living room. We both live in the city, and they sit together, religious, nationalist, Jews, Muslims, and talk about how they will both create this visitors center.”

Wasserman, a former diplomat and adviser to President Shimon Peres, is one half of a dynamic young couple who have recently moved to Lod to organize the rebranding effort.

Her husband, attorney Aviv Wasserman, answered a personal appeal by the Mayor of Lod, Brigadier General (res.) Ilan Harai to help the city. “I saw Lod not as other people see it,” Wasserman says. “I didn’t see it as the capital of crime and drug dealing but as an opportunity, an opportunity to create the success story that the Middle East needs, that can show that Jews, Christians and Muslims can not only live together but can develop their city together.”

Using their political and cultural contacts, the Wassermans were able to garner support from across the country and energize the city’s residents to action. Renowned singer and activist David Broza was an early supporter.

“I didn’t just come here to sing,” Broza says. “I’m here helping the new foundation that has been created by the people of Lod without the interference of the mayor or the government or any political bodies here …We need time, all of us, the Arabs the Jews, everyone needs time to understand how to communicate with one another. This is the time to start applying what we know.”

Plans are underway to renovate an abandoned Turkish oil-press into a visitors’ center to attract more tourists. The foundation is helping establish a municipal kibbutz and student dormitories to attract idealistic young Israelis and affluent families to the city. Even empty car lots, often filled with rubble and rusted automobiles, are slated for development and forestation.

Lod has been settled continuously since the Stone Ages, making it over 8,000 years old. In ancient times Lod was a key road junction between Egypt and Babylon; nowadays it’s on the way between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

Nothing symbolizes Lod’s multi-cultural coexistence better than the Triangle of Peace. It is here that a church, synagogue and mosque actually share walls.

The World Monument Fund recently included Lod on its list of heritage sites. To mark the occasion, the city held an “open house,” inviting local business leaders, potential investors and international donors.

City youth, Arab and Jew, proudly escort visitors, showcasing the crown cultural attractions of the ancient city, including the church where St. George is buried, an ancient Mamluk mosque and a synagogue.

Nassiri Hasuna proudly welcomes some of the guests to his spacious home.

“There are problems in this city,” he bemoans. “There are outsiders. There are drug dealers and I can’t fight them. But the true Luddites don’t have any problems. We respect each other. We love the Jews and they love us.”

Sharing of ethnic dishes and musical entertainment capped the evening. This depressed city shared a proud moment for one night.

Minister of Minorities, Avishay Braverman, who blasted previous governments for neglecting Lod, promised that things would now be different.

“If we can work together,” he said, “we can create essentially a Holy Land which is holy for all, fertile for all and with justice for all.”

But in Marsiano’s eyes Lod has been the country’s proverbial drainpipe, collecting all the country’s cultural, criminal and religious refuse in one convenient location.

“We are the backyard of the state,” Marsiano says. “It seems that those higher up are actually kind of glad for all the worst woes of the country to be concentrated in one city. This has to change and I believe it will. My dream is that those on the outside will grasp our city for all of its benefits and help us really change. We are after all, the first thing you see when you arrive into the country.”

Located just 15 minutes from Tel Aviv, this ancient crossroad town has its work cut out for it but the residents are ready for action and hope that Lod will no longer be a place you just pass by – it will become a destination.

“We do have problems but we’ll overcome them,” says long-time resident Ze’ev Tzur. “Little by little, I believe that Lod will be an exemplary city in this country.”

(This story by Arieh O’Sullivan & Felice Friedson was reprinted courtesy of the The Media Line, the Mideast News Source.)

Image via zeevzeev

Green Prophet had reported on Rawabi (for Hills), the first “planned” city for Palestinians back in 2007; We are not sure if the Israeli or American urban-style mortgage model is the one to follow for a sustainable community (as Daniella asks in her article about Palestinian malls). Now Felice Friedson editor of The Media Line, the Mideast News Source, looks at new developments in the project:

For many Palestinians, the norm is tight-quartered living with barely a garden in sight, no defined sidewalks and a poor water system. But this is about to change with an ambitious plan for a new way of living.

Just six miles north of Ramallah, Palestinians have begun planting thousands of evergreen tree saplings as part of a major greening project to grow a forest to hug the edges of what will be the first planned Palestinian city.

The city is already named Rawabi, Arabic for “hills”. For Palestinians it presents a new kind of urbanism, which aims to draw middle-class professionals away from smoggy towns and villages towards a better way of life.

Besides being the first planned city, it also marks the first planting of a major forest by Palestinians in the territories since Israel took control 42 years ago. It is also the first time serious arrangements are being made to provide Palestinians with American-style mortgages.

Palestinian entrepreneur Bashar Masri is the force behind Rawabi. A chemical engineer by training, he is the human bulldozer who aims to turn his vision into a reality and modernize the heart of the Palestinian territories.

Building from scratch

“There is a great shortage of housing in Palestine,” Masri said during a tour of the planned site. “As you can see there is hardly anything here. That required setting the city up from scratch, which made the project much bigger and much more sophisticated and complicated, but we love it.”

It will be home to about 40,000 residents who aspire to own an affordable apartment. Neighborhoods will be spacious and green. They’ll have sidewalks and parking garages, something unheard of in most Palestinian communities. The town center will be a hub of high tech, mainly IT businesses, to provide jobs for the educated but underemployed Palestinian work force.

“A project like this can create 8,000-10,000 jobs in construction alone,” Masri said. “In addition, we are working on creating permanent jobs (in Rawabi) so this won’t be a bedroom community […] dependent on political closures and checkpoints.”

According to Rawabi’s main designer, architect Shireen Nazeer, the city is breaking away from old urban traditions in many ways.

“Really we are creating history and we are also creating affordable houses for a new generation of Palestine,” Nazeer said. “We have integrated this new idea of how we can live in neighborhoods and how to share all the public and open spaces inside the neighborhoods”

Just as Israeli apartment dwellers in crowded cities like Tel Aviv opted for suburban living in areas that came under Israeli control after the 1967 war, Palestinians are looking for a more rural existence in Rawabi, where 60% of the town will be green areas.

Although not quick to admit it, several aspects of the Rawabi package, from environmental awareness to mortgages, mirror Israeli urban planning. Recently Moshe Safdie, the Israeli architect who designed Israel’s planned city, Modi’in escorted Masri’s staff around Modi’in to learn about the failure and successes of his city.

Agreeing to work on water cooperation

But Rawabi collegial cooperation with Israelis is not entirely a matter of benevolence. The city itself is to be constructed on land in Area A, which according to the Oslo Agreement is completely under the Palestinian Authority’s control and therefore needs no Israeli approval. Still, the city rests on Israeli permits to move forward, particularly regarding water allocation and access routes that pass through Area C, which is controlled by Israel.

According to Bayti Real Estate Investments Company, which oversees the Rawabi project, Israel’s Civil Administration in the West Bank has granted the permits necessary for the “Grow-for-Greener Palestine” project, which will see the planting of 25,000 trees. The first 3,000 trees were provided by the Jewish National Fund, who also provided consultants on growing forests – an area the Palestinians have been unable to develop experience in.

“There are 170,000 dunams of (existing) forest in the West Bank and it has been illegal for Palestinians to plant until now” said Oren Blonder, Director of Agriculture, Water & Environment for the Peres Center for Peace.

Construction has yet to begin as Masri waits for Israel’s permission to move the jurisdiction of the necessary access road to the Palestinian Authority, a road that currently winds through Israeli controlled Area C.

Masri is open to Israeli co-operation on a business to business level.

“We realize Israel is one of the most advanced nations in the area, especially in technology and we will co-operate with them,” he said.

But that stops cold when it comes to Jewish settlers in the West Bank. Looking out across the valley Masri points out the Jewish community of Ataret.

“The only exception to that is Israelis who are settlers,” Masri said. “We will not deal with settlements. We will not work with settlements. Hopefully, that settlement will one day be a suburb of Rawabi and will be inhabited by Palestinians and will be welcome to Jews who want to live in a Palestinian state.”

This ambitious $800 million project is the largest to have been undertaken by Palestinians. It is funded by Qatari Diar Real Estate Investment Company and Massar International, of which Masri is chairman.

Five thousand inhabitants are expected to move in during the first phase. At that point a local mayor and council will be elected. Massar’s role ends here with the exception of the leasing of the town center.

Masri is trying to woo back Palestinians living abroad, which he estimates will account for 10% of the potential buyers of deluxe homes and boarding school places. Real estate prices will range from $140,000-$150,000.

Middle East mortgages, American-style

The home sales plan aims to transform the Palestinian clan based culture, which has traditionally seen men steadfast in their hometowns. The Middle East Investment Initiative is setting up the first American-style mortgage company to provide young Palestinians the opportunity to purchase affordable homes. With 10% down, the average monthly cost of a mortgage will be about $700 – approximately one-quarter of a typical monthly middle-class wage.

Mahmoud and Nora Ibrahim, potential Rawabi buyers, are look to the futures of their two young boys.

“Living in a crowded city like Ramallah it is not safe for us to keep our children anywhere, but we feel that Rawabi will mean a bigger home for us, having our children in safe places and public gardens,” Mahmoud Ibrahim said, but added he hoped the mortgage terms would be adequate.

“I hope we will find good offers from Rawabi that can meet our needs and capabilities as an average family in Palestinian society. I hope to see affordable prices and affordable payments,” he said.

Rawabi is home to a number of “firsts” for Palestinians — the first planned city, the first attempt at reforestation, and the first mortgage program for buyers – none of which come without risks.

“There are risks all over the project. There are political risks, commercial risks, and social risks,” Masri said.

Masri cautioned that lack of progress on the political front could deter investors, but that the project will continue regardless.

But Masri is betting that the lure of suburban life which is markedly safer and infinitely more aesthetically appealing will make Rawabi another “first” – the first of many planned cities to follow.

(This story is printed with permission from The Media Line)

More on urban planning for Palestinians:
Rawabi Is First Planned City for Palestinians
Palestinian Mall in Jenin Could Bring Suburbia to the West Bank

::Rawabi website

This story has been reported by the Mideast News Source, the Media Line: There was a time when Kalkilya was the focus of bomb making and terrorism but a new program is aiming to turn this Palestinian city into the strawberry capital of the West Bank.

The first crop of the ruby red fruit in this pilot program is halfway to harvest. The Palestinians hope to be able to cash in on the lucrative Christmas markets in Europe and possibly sell strawberries to a major international ice cream producer.

“I grow strawberries here, and this is where it starts,” said Ahmed Zed, 31, a Palestinian carrot farmer who decided to take up the risky endeavor and grow strawberries.

“Inshallah (God willing) we’ll get the support we need and we’ll become millionaires,” he told The Media Line during a visit to his fields, adjacent to the security barrier Israel set up five years ago.

This is the first attempt to grow strawberries in the West Bank. In the shadow of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, this pilot project, backed by international donors, has seen Israeli agriculture experts helping the Palestinian economy by developing a new “cash crop” highly in demand both in Israel and abroad.

Watch the video:

For the past few months, Israeli agriculture advisers have been training Palestinian farmers in growing these delicious, but highly sensitive fruit. Sponsored by the Flemish Foreign Ministry and facilitated by the Peres Center for Peace, Israeli experts have been supplying Palestinian farmers with irrigation equipment, nylon, pesticides and training that will help them raise the high-quality strawberries required for export.

“We strongly believe that the only solution for peace is a two-state solution,” said Oren Blonder, Director of Agriculture, at the Water and Environment Department of the Peres Center for Peace. “In order to do that we believe that one of the tools needed is to strengthen the Palestinian economy.”

“We chose strawberries because it is a high value ‘cash crop.’ But more than that, this is the first time that strawberries have been introduced into the West Bank and we hope that it will lead to the establishment of a new industry there.”

Berries for Ben & Jerry’s?

Blonder said that the demand inside Israel far surpassed supply and any future Palestinian strawberry yields would not harm local Israeli market, quite the contrary.

The Peres Center for Peace and others have approached various ice cream manufacturers as possible industrial markets.

Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream Company in Israel confirmed that it has examined the possibility but that no agreement has yet been reached.

Strawberries thrive on loamy sand and the fields around Kalkilya are the first place where they are being cultivated by the Palestinians in the West Bank.

Israel has developed the prized Yuval, Orly and Hadas varieties and cultivates some 4,000 dunams (1,000 acres) of strawberries. In the past, Israel trained Palestinians in the Gaza Strip to grow them and production there peaked at about 3,000 dunams due to the near-perfect conditions. But that market fell apart when violence erupted after the 2005 Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, and Israel’s subsequent blockade of fruit exports.

Reaping  a “peace crop”

“Our hope here is if this situation will continue that Kalkilya will stop being the capital of terrorism and bombing as it was before and will become the capital of strawberries,” said Lt. Gal Levant, Israeli Liaison Officer for International Organizations in the Civil Administration.

In another month, the harvest of the new crop will begin in Kalkilya. A successful strawberry crop is expected to have a major impact on the local economy. In a society with relatively low labor costs, it is particularly profitable. The goal is to produce some 800 dunams (200 acres) of strawberries which will provide some 1,500 jobs and support over 300 families.

Moaddi Sameer, Agriculture Liaison between Israel’s Civil Administration and the Palestinian Authority, has been with the project since its inception, despite a personal tragedy. His son, Yusef a soldier in the Israeli army, was killed in fighting with the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip earlier this year.

“The main thing is to help them make a living,” Sameer said during a visit to the fields.

“No less important are the friendly ties and cooperation which are very important to strengthen the relations between us and the Palestinians. After all, we are fated to live side by side and when your neighbor is satisfied then you can live in peace and quiet.”

Muhammad Sayid Lahham, head of the Flower and Vegetable Division at the Palestinian Authority Agriculture Ministry, said the Israeli help was needed “in order to acquire expertise and develop skills among Palestinian farmers.”

“This is a beginning as you can see,” Lahham said as he examined a small strawberry bud poking out of the nylon ground covering. “But it’s going to grow and the yield is going to be excellent.”

The entire visit to the field was escorted by Palestinian security forces. It was important for them to show that the situation on the ground was calm.

“The crop will be harvested right before Christmas,” said Blonder, “and we hope it is marketed as a peace crop.”

(This story written by Arieh O’Sullivan was first published by The Media Line, The Mideast News Source.)

Images via noborder

Israeli Itzhak Moreno holds a sack of freshly picked, plump Israeli olives, purple and ripe for the press. For the past year, he has been toiling in an orchard off the main road to Jerusalem, waiting for the right moment to harvest his olives and produce extra virgin olive oil. But the sack he holds does not contain fruit he collected. He confiscated it from thieves from a nearby Arab village who stole his fruit in middle of the night.

“We need to guard our olives during the day, evening and night,” Moreno says. “There are a lot of Arabs around here and they come and steal olives from us. This is our reality.”

Across the mountains, deep in the West Bank, Palestinian farmer Fadel Ahmed Narwajeh looks dejectedly into his half-filled bucket of olives. Above him stand armed Israeli soldiers. But Narwajeh is actually pleased to see troops, as they are there under a Supreme Court order to protect him and his grove from Jewish settlers who have laid claims on the land and have damaged his olive trees.

The olive trees are more than just a source of fruit. They symbolize a claim to the land, and as such have caused huge problems between the Palestinians and Jewish settlers.

“This year we only have 150 kilos because the Jews took all of the olives from here,” Narwajeh says. “This is our land. We have deeds. Only today the soldiers are guarding and only because the court said it was the Arabs’ land. But the Jews don’t recognize the court. They want our land.”

In Israel and the Palestinian territories, the olive is more than just the fruit one finds in a martini; it’s a delicious part of the Mediterranean diet and its oil has been valued since ancient times. But this year mother nature has provided a poor harvest, driving up both the price of the olives and the level of friction between those fighting over what few olives there are.

In Israel, the consumption of olive oil has risen sharply in the past decade. Local farmers produce some 7,000 tons of olive oil but the Israeli market consumes over twice that much (16,000 tons). Due to the cyclical nature of the trees and last year’s drought, the estimated olive oil yield will only be some 2,000 tons.

“Olive oil is not a luxury anymore; it is a way of life and a necessity in the kitchen,” says Eli Basher, a delicatessen owner in Jerusalem’s Mahaneh Yehuda market. “The expectation is that there will be a great shortage of olives and that the price will go up by more than 50%.”

Last year’s price was about $12 a liter. The coming season’s premium oil is already fetching upwards of $20 a liter. Imports from Spain, Italy, Greece and Turkey are expected to meet the demand.

For the Palestinians, the olives are the mainstay of their economy but this year’s small harvest could mean that they too will have to import oil from Jordan to meet their needs.

The olive harvest is traditionally a festive occasion, but in the West Bank it has become a bitter season as Jewish settlers and Palestinian olive pickers are involved in frequent clashes.

Palestinian farmer Fadel Ahmed Narwajeh from the village of Sussia has been able to harvest his olives thanks not only to the Israeli army, but also to international peace activists. It was largely due to legal action by human rights groups that led to the court ordered protection of the Palestinians.

Learning from previous years and acting on the orders of the Supreme Court, the Israeli army coordinated with the Palestinian farmers and village representatives a schedule for the harvest. There are over 10 million olive trees spread out across the West Bank but even here the scale of the forces allocated to guard the Palestinians was severely cut following the drastic reduction in harvest.

With his whole family, toddlers included, clambering in the low branches of the olive trees to pluck the fruit, Narwajeh walks through his grove and points out stumps and stunted trees, which he claims Jewish settlers destroyed.

Organizations, like Rabbis for Human Rights, have joined the Palestinians to serve help them with their harvest and shield them from the confrontations.

“I feel good about that because that is an achievement of our organization,” says Rabbi Yehiel Grenimann, Field Director for Rabbis for Human Rights. “The real test of a Jewish democracy is the ability to enforce human rights…. That Jews can behave decently in their own democracy is the most basic correction of past history. And the behavior of people who abuse that or use that to attack people who are weak I find more than offensive. I find that spiritually disturbing.”

In the middle of the harvest, Narwajeh invites the families and volunteers to gather as they eat sharp goat’s cheeses and dip freshly baked bread into olive oil.

“These are good people for helping the Arabs a lot here. If there is a problem with the Jews they help us,” Narwajeh says.

Realizing that some of the volunteers were also Jewish he quickly added: “Not all of the Jews are the same. The Arabs too. We all aren’t the same either.”

Rabbi Grenimann says that the clash over the olive is a microcosm of the Arab-Israeli conflict, where normal agricultural disturbances take on biblical dimensions.

“It is about land. It is about religious faith. The settlers here are fundamentalists. They say God gave us the land. The way they understand the bible, which we disagree with of course, is that non-Jews in this area can be suffered but are in some sense second class citizens. These people don’t believe in democracy.”

In nearby Jewish Sussia, residents refused to be interviewed on record. Danny Kapach, the head of security for the Jewish communities in the region, said that the Palestinians were encroaching on Jewish land with the help of international volunteers. His comments were echoed by other residents who also expressed anger at the volunteers.

Human Rights groups like Bet’selem have documented abuse by some settlers, including burning down or cutting down trees and assaulting Arab olive pickers and volunteers.

The violence and theft, however, is not limited to the West Bank. In the Elah Valley region between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, the fields are filled with olive groves and vineyards.

Itzik Moreno is glad to harvest his crop but he too, often finds his year of hard work lost to thieves.

“We’re just trying to make a living,” says Moreno as he operates a powered, hand-held rake that pulls the olives off the branches into waiting nets laid out on the ground. “Thank god we have olives and we will make extra virgin olive oil with them.”

In both Israel and the Palestinian territories it’s increasingly difficult to find traditional stone wheeled olive presses. Today, most mills are imported from Italy and produce high quality oil with grinders and centrifuges. Moreno is part of a growing trend in Israel to develop a boutique olive oil business. This is his first season that he will be operating his mill.

“The olive is very related to the Earth, to this country and nowadays a lot of people are trying to find their roots and get this feeling of belonging to the country. The olive oil symbolizes this connection of the Jewish people to this place. And it’s tasty and it’s healthy. People use it. They love it and they love to talk about it. There is a lot of buzz about the olive now. Basically it was always the situation here, we just forgot about it for the past few decades,” Moreno says.

When the olives finally do reach the mill, it’s a joyous occasion for both Arab and Jewish farmers. Because of the shortage, this year’s precious oil will be fetching double the price from last year. But with olive oil the main staple of most dishes, it’s a price people are willing to pay.

(This article by Arieh O’Sullivan is reprinted with permission by The Media Line, the Mideast News Source.)

Image via Karen Horten

A severe water shortage in Syria is forcing farmers to look for alternative means of livelihood but the drought’s impact doesn’t end with the crops.

Around a quarter of a million Syrian farmers have been forced to abandon their land over the last two years following three years of drought and failed crops. It’s one of the worst water crises in recent years with residents in Damascus and other major cities putting up with periodical water cuts during off-peak hours.

The crisis is not only the result of several years of below average rainfall but also the rising needs of a growing population, in a country with more than 20 million people and an estimated growth rate of 2.1%.

Syria’s main sources of water are the Euphrates River, the Tigris River, the Orontes River and ground water. Syria’s economy relies heavily on agricultural export, a strategy which is being called into question by experts.

“Syria has previously, and is still, subsidizing wheat production to quite an extent,” said Dr. Anders Jagerskog, project director at the Stockholm International Water Institute. “But this is getting increasingly impossible to uphold, because more people need to be fed by agricultural produce and water is needed in other sectors as well.”

Almost a fifth of the country’s GDP is made up of agricultural output and the declining yield is having a knock on effect on the rest of the economy. Syrian officials estimate that up until a few years ago, almost 90% of Syria’s water supply was being invested in agriculture.

Jagerskog said agricultural policies were being reexamined throughout the Middle East to make water conservation more effective, but were encountering obstacles.

“The agricultural lobby in Syria, as in most countries in the Middle East, is forceful, and there is a historic reason at play, in that these countries have traditionally produced most of the foodstuff they need themselves,” he told The Media Line.

“On top of that, there is a security reason. One would not like to rely too much on imported food, especially in this region. You’d like to have food secured by your own supplies.”

It should be noted that Syria is not the only drought victim in the region. Turkey and Iraq are also facing a water crisis, with Iraq blaming the reduced water flows on Turkey and Syria, which has heavily dammed some areas.

In early September, irrigation ministers from the three countries met in Ankara to discuss water shortages and the management of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, which run through all three countries.

The discussions came on the backdrop of a diplomatic row between Syria and Iraq over allegations that Syria is harboring terrorists, after suicide truck bombings in Iraq last month killed more than 100 people.

Both Iraq and Syria want Turkey, the upstream country, to increase the flow through its network of dams, but the meeting was said to have ended without any significant results and without a pledge from Turkey to increase water flows.

Walid Saleh, a water expert and regional coordinator for the MENA (Middle East and North African) countries at the United Nations University, said that talks of a major water crisis may be exaggerated and this could be no more than a routine dry cycle.

“In the past few years we’ve noticed the rainy season shifting,” Saleh told The Media Line. “In previous years the rains started in early November and continued until April or May, but recently we’ve seen only a few sporadic rainfalls until December and then in February and March there will be more rainfall. For farmers this is not good news, because if you don’t have the rainfall early in the year, in November and December, then you will have a bad season because wheat and barley need the rain early on.”

In the past, Syria exported wheat to Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, but in 2006 and 2007 Damascus was forced to import wheat.

In order to reverse this, Saleh said, measures should be adapted based on an in-depth analysis of the weather pattern.

“If the rainy system is shifting the way it has in recent years, then maybe [farmers] also have to shift the way they cultivate their land. Instead of sowing seeds in November and waiting till February without rain, the pattern could be shifted to sow the seeds in February just before the rainy season starts.”

But a change in cultivation patterns also has wider security and socio-economic implications.

“The number of people affected in 2007-8 was about one million, this represents people who depend on agriculture, and for whom this is their livelihood. But in addition, the socio-economic dimension has to be taken into consideration. If there is a shift, like importing virtual water by importing wheat, at the end of the day you’re talking about one million people who have lost dependence, this is the only income they have,” he said.

“When a country is forced to meet the demands of its people for wheat and barley, they have no choice but to import, but this is a short-term solution. You meet the demand, yes, but what will you do about employing those people? How will you compensate them? How will you train them to do something else? This takes a huge amount of effort and money and some policies and regulations have to be put in place.”

A Syrian water engineer with extensive experience in the public sector said there have been major changes in the past two years to meet the water demands in the country and change irrigation habits among farmers.

One of the changes is to introduce modern irrigation methods such as drip irrigation, which is more pinpointed and is less wasteful than flooding.

The government is already witnessing a decrease by almost 10% in water used in Syria for agriculture, and the produce yield is higher. The government is giving farmers interest-free loans and offering other financial incentives to use more modern and more economical irrigation methods.

“At present it is not compulsory but we will make it a law,” the engineer said. “We are changing the kinds of crops we grow to ones that don’t consume a lot of water. We’re lessening the amount of cotton irrigated areas and we are only applying our interests to strategic crops like wheat and sugar beet.”

As to desalination, Syria is currently experimenting with desalination on a small scale, though at present, the technology makes a cubic meter of desalinated water too expensive to be worthwhile.

But Saleh says desalination is the only viable alternative for the water industry in the future.

“The whole region is moving in that direction,” he said, “and in a few years we will see more desalination plants in Jordan and the lower parts of Syria. I don’t see any other option. I think that because water is a trans-border resource, regional cooperation is needed to solve the problem of meeting the demands for water, whether for agriculture or for drinking water.”

This article by Rachelle Kliger was republished with permission of The Media Line, the Mideast News Source.

More on drought in Syria:
Syria Suffers Severe Water Shortage
Has Climate Change Killed 160 Syrian Villages? Mass Evacuation
Syria and Jordan’s Dam Will Cut Off Israel’s Supply

Image of Syrian beehive villages by upyernoz

Dubai, United Arab Emirates – “The short version of the story is that we’re not doing a very good job of managing waste,” says John Roosen, Technical Director of AECOM Environment Middle East. “Nowhere in the world does. We are going to drown in waste.”　

Roosen’s words hardly overstate the scale of the problem faced by the engineers, scientists and government officials gathered this month at the first annual IQPC City Waste forum in Dubai.

According to a recent report by the Arab Foundation for Environment and Development (AFED), the Arab world produces approximately 250,000 tons of solid waste every day, most of it dumped untreated in makeshift landfills, if it is collected at all.　

Skyrocketing income levels in areas such as the UAE have resulted in increased consumer spending which has had a direct effect on waste levels.

To drive home the point, Roosen pulled out his briefcase, which he found in a Dubai dumpster unsoiled, in the original packaging and with the tags still attached.　

The per capita production of solid waste in Arab cities such as Kuwait, Riyadh, and Abu Dhabi is over 1.5 kg per day, placing them among the highest waste producers in the world.

In urban areas, waste management is particularly pressing. Over the last few generations the Arab world has seen a rapid increase in its urban population, with some countries, such as Kuwait and Qatar’s population being urbanized at over 90%. Governments in those regions are struggling to keep apace with population growth.　

Consumer waste, however, is not the only, or even the main, culprit.

“Construction waste is hugely dominant. It’s the main component of waste in the region,” said John Wigham, CEO of Cracknell, a sustainable landscaping firm.

At the height of the building boom, 2500 trucks a day made their way to Dubai’s landfills loaded with waste from building sites. Among the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), 55% of waste is estimated to come from construction and demolition.　

Less than 5% recycled

Across the region overall, less than 20% of solid waste is properly treated, and less than 5% is recycled.　

Most waste ends up in landfills, most of them poorly managed and doomed to pollute their surroundings for years to come.  Glenn Platt, a Senior Project Manager for KEO International Consultants, cautioned that poorly ‘capped off’ landfills can produce, among other dangers, toxins that leach into groundwater and nearby lakes and streams, ‘virtually unstoppable’ fires, vermin, and injury from buried objects protruding from the land.

According to Platt, planning for landfill sites should incorporate the capping off strategy and include the costs for the monitoring of the site for 30 years after it closes.　

There is a cheaper option though, which is gaining currency in the Middle East.

“For thousands of years, people have been composting material, and now there is tremendous opportunity for using that material,” said John Roosen. The agricultural domain would particularly benefit, since the region’s sandy soils often lack the requisite level of organic material for optimal plant growth.　

Counting on the economics of composting

Sayed Ali Shah, Head of the Compost Plant for Sharjah Municipality, said that the economics of composting were straightforward for the Emirate, since “every ton of waste we divert is accounted for. We save on the disposal side and we save on the compost itself…we produce compost almost free, and our main customer is the municipality.”　

In most cases, governments are forming strategic partnerships with the private sector. In some areas, waste management is the province of specific segments of society. For instance, for over 50 years the streets of Cairo have been cleaned by a majority Christian caste of self-appointed waste collectors called the Zabaleen, who recycle solid waste and use the organic waste to feed their herds of swine.

According to The National Newspaper, there is now a major backlog of waste since the Egyptian government undertook a major swine cull this summer. Foreign companies hired by the government have not been able to do the job as effectively. 　

In affluent regions, the government has stepped in with lucrative tenders. Sharjah has signed an agreement for a 25 million cubic meter recycling plant called Al Saja’ah, which will turn an existing landfill into a waste management solution, while Qatar has awarded two multi-billion waste contracts to international firms.

Most specialists agree that looking at waste as an income generator is the key to combating the problem. 　

“We must make changes to encourage businesses to sort waste…perhaps waste handlers could be encouraged to sort waste as a financial bonus,” John Wigham said. “If you can find ways of keeping the profit motive in the process, the private sector will stay involved.”　

Start with sorting and collecting

The initial sorting and collecting is key to the success of any recycling program, he maintained, since it is the most labor intensive stage of the recycling process and also the most crucial.　

A success story in this regard is Dubai’s small-scale paper recycling industry, which allows entrepreneurs to collect paper waste, package it, and sell it to a larger company for recycling.

Wigham pointed to plastic as another kind of waste that could be processed using this model. The plastic sheeting used to coat the half-constructed glass towers dotted around Dubai’s landscape is worth AED800 a ton, but, he asked, “how do we get the relatively small values back to the guy who would actually peel the waste plastic off the building and put it somewhere?”

Numerous businesses have sprung up in the Emirates to make innovative use of the massive quantities of plastic that would otherwise fill landfills around the country, particularly the ubiquitous plastic water bottles. A company called EcoWood uses them to make a wood-like material that is durable, weather proof and can be used and worked exactly like wood.　

Getting hold of the raw material is an issue however. Plastic water bottle recycling is labor intensive: the cap, the ring around the neck, and the label all need to be separated from the bottle itself. Recyclers rely on private sector collectors and environmental NGOs like the Emirates Environment Group to fill the gap.　

Many municipalities have embraced bus-stop recycling bins in a bid to encourage the population to dispose of waste responsibly. However, specialists like Wigham and Roosen say that curbside recycling bins are not a panacea. Recycling bins often confuse users if they are not adequately labeled, and they require a great deal of regular collection and transport for what amounts to a small haul.　

Looking for public action in Arab world

Clearly, the issue will require public action, which will in turn require that consumers in the Arab world pay attention to an area of life that receives little attention.

Most of the specialists at the conference concurred that consumers in the Arab world were still not motivated to take action.　

“Environmental issues in general and waste management in particular are recent issues on the Arab World’s agenda,” said Dr. Mohammed Aboelenein, Chairman of the Department of Sociology at UAE University.

“Currently, there aren’t clear environmental policies in most Arab countries…perhaps some Arab governments think that environmental issues are trivial compared to severe economic conditions and the economic problems they face.”

The recently announced mega projects announced by governments around the Gulf are heartening, but in the end the race against waste will rely on individual consumers　moving toward ‘zero waste’ solutions. Dr. Aboelenein advocates a three-pronged approach combining education from the grade-school level, awareness-raising campaigns in major media, and the profit motive, where consumers would be given cash incentives to sort or recycle their trash. 　

“Attitudes are not easy to change. It took years for the US to alter people’s attitudes towards waste. The Arab governments should study –and maybe copy- successful models around the world.”

This story is written by Jane Meikle, a correspondent for The Media Line, the Mideast news source. Image via aheram under a Creative Commons license.