Nature Has No Borders

Four graduates of the Arava Institute, an academic center dedicated to environmental studies at the highest level, were guests of Israel's ambassador in Amman, Jordan. A tale of good neighbors

7 באוגוסט 2014

The Arava Institute, an a multidisciplinary academic center dedicated to the highest level of environmental and ecological studies is located in the heart of the desert, at Kibbutz Ketura in the Arava. Founded in 1996, a few years after the Oslo Agreements, it set itself a goal: Educating and training a generation of leaders to live in peace with the environment in the widest interpretation of the concept – the human environment as well as the natural one. So, from the beginning, the philosophy has been that if nature has no borders it also forbids its defenders to have boundaries or barriers between them. As a result, the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies is the only academic center in Israel with lecturers, researchers and students from Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority. They live cooperatively in the kibbutz, study and work side by side and experience what every one of them calls a life-changing experience. Yes, the dialogue continues under fire.

Photo courtesy of PR
Photo courtesy of PR

Members of the public council, who are prominent figures from the worlds of business, culture, academia and public life in Israel, traveled to Jordan in order to verify with their own eyes the significance of the bridges this continued cooperation has built with Jordan. Many of the institute's 150 Jordanian graduates have assumed key environmental positions in government institutions, municipalities and private companies. They brought with them not only excellent professional knowledge, but also an awareness of the trans-border dimensions of the environment's challenges and the need for a regional point of view in seeking solutions.

Fields of study at the Arava Institute include renewable energy, management of water resources that cross borders and a range of biological topics, principally connected with desert agriculture. Alongside a unique experimental farm for innovative energy devices and an area of some 100 dunams, Dr. Elaine Solowey's various plant varieties are able to survive and thrive in an arid environment. The institute's pride is the Methuselah, a palm that was sprouted from a 2,000-year-old seed found in the Masada archaeological excavations.

Members of the group also heard about the institute's contribution to the environment and to Israeli-Jordanian neighborly relations from more senior members of the Jordanian kingdom's leadership and naturally from Ambassador Nevo.

Photo courtesy of PR
Photo courtesy of PR

“When I heard the studies were in Israel I slammed the telephone down.” Those are almost the exact words used by Yara, Sauson, Sa'id and Suleiman, four graduates of the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies who met during a visit to Jordan. After “slamming down the phone,” all of them thought about whether to continue their studies or stop just because of their preconceptions about Israel and Israelis.

They traveled to the place to see and talk to its managers. All were captured by its magic.

Without exception, the graduates relate that since returning to their own communities they have become ambassadors of good will and cooperation between Jordan and Israel. Arava Institute executive director David Lehrer often says that many people erroneously think water is our region's scarcest resource. The reality, he says, is that credibility is even rarer. Eight hundred Arava Institute graduates spread out over the region and the world are agents of credibility in service of the future. Academic studies taught them to live in harmony with the environment and the mutual human experience sharpened their tolerance and gave them the ability to live with disagreements without affecting the need for living together. Like the members of our delegation to Jordan, they believe that in the final analysis peace is made by people and the more people on both sides of the border who get to know each other, the better the chances of overcoming decades of hostility and building a future together.