Comments on: Jordan Authorities To Flag and Key Red Sea Green Beach Projects

By: Daniella

Daniella — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 16:01:55 +0000

Guillaume – Environmental problems do cross international borders, however, they are not created in a vacuum. For example, the regional water shortage is exacerbated for Jordanians and Palestinians, who get a much smaller per capita share of regional water resources than Israel, which overconsumes and even exports water from the Golan Heights to Scotland.

For now, organizations such as Friends of the Earth Middle East (foeme.org) do work across the divide by joint Israeli-Palestinian-Jordanian projects addressing the Dead Sea and regional water and land quality. There is also an Israeli-Palestinian project to protect local aquifers by jointly treating Palestinian sewage, and IPCRI has some sewage treatment projects,too.

But the unresolved status of the Palestinian territories, including the environmental damage of the Israeli settlement project, as well as the different backgrounds – Western, urban, liberal Israeli values versus Eastern, rural and traditional ones in places like the West Bank and Jordan make the gaps hard to bridge. Moreover, when a political situation makes it difficult for you to even fuel your oven (see post below on the situation in Gaza) it is asking a lot of people to think out long-term environmental solutions.

By: Karin Kloosterman

Karin Kloosterman — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 07:35:02 +0000

Guillaume, we try all the time. The problem is that most Arab countries are not willing to sit at the table with Israel. If you can broker the meetings, maybe peace will come…
– Karin

By: Guillaume Foutry

Guillaume Foutry — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 23:43:01 +0000

Very interesting article. Do you think it would be possible for the countries in the Middle East to sit on the table and to overcome all the hatred?? I mean the Middle East appears to me as a very fragile ecosystem, so regional cooperation is more than needed. In this article you mention that Israel is still perceived as the enemy, but how strong is that??