October 9th

Shalom!

Wow, it has been almost one month since I arrived at Kibbutz Ketura,
and already it has started to feel like home. My life here, while
small and intimate, has thus far been extremely diverse. I am getting
to know the members of my group on a deeper level, beginning to
explore the region, working on cool projects, and delving into intense
discussions with people who have different views, yet incredible
respect for each other.

I’ve finally gotten started on a couple research projects! My primary
project (entirely my own) is to conduct an energy audit on Israel’s
water policy. The idea is that wastewater treatment, desalination,
and water conveyance from the North to the South are all very
energy-intensive processes, and a study has not yet been conducted to
understand the burden that these technologies place on the energy
sector, and the associated emissions caused by the coal that serves as
the primary source of energy. Currently, I am just gathering
information and teaching myself about Israel’s water and energy
infrastructure, but I am very excited about this project!

I am also writing a grant to the European Union, in which the Arava
Institute is applying to be a coordinator of an Initial Training
Network (ITN) in the field of Integrated Water Resources Management
(IWRM). The idea is to create a partnership of public and private
sector organizations that will collaborate on the design and
implementation of a research-based curriculum aimed at better
preparing doctoral students to enter the job market. It would be like
a study abroad program for doctoral students (researchers) to learn at
another research institution and also work with the private sector to
round out their education in the field, and learn something that they
wouldn't have had the chance to learn at their own school. IWRM is
super cool! As defined by the Global Water Partnership (GWP), “IWRM
is a process which promotes the coordinated development and management
of water, land and related resources, in order to maximize the
resultant economic and social welfare in an equitable manner without
compromising the sustainability of vital ecosystems.” It is now
accepted globally as the preferred alternative to a fragmented,
sector-by-sector approach to water management in which parties
responsible for managing water used for people, agriculture, industry,
and the environment, work in partnership to best meet the needs of the
human and non-human (natural) beneficiaries of a given catchment
basin.

Finally (for now), I am helping to design a 9-day training program for
professionals from the Lake Victoria region in Eastern Africa. The
program focuses on Integrated Water Resource Management in the
Israel-Jordan-Palestine region as a means of teaching IWRM for the
Lake Victoria region. The conference will be held here at the
Institute in the beginning of November, and we are planning lots of
exciting field trips to the Dead Sea and elsewhere. I am really
looking forward to it!!

In our Peace Building seminar last week, the focus shifted from our
own individual narratives, to the larger narratives of our respective
countries. To facilitate this discussion, we used the speeches given
to the U.N. General Assembly last week by Israeli PM Netanyahu, Barack
Obama, and President of the Palestinian Authority Abu Mazen as a tool
to understand our own and each other’s nation’s narrative and
perspective. Our group split up into three groups based on our native
language (English, Hebrew, Arabic) and worked to understand the
underlying motivations behind each speech.

The Americans diagnosed Obama’s speech as safe – as he presented no
concrete solutions to the issue of Palestinian statehood, only
encouraging direct negotiations between Israel and Palestine as a
means of achieving peace. Perhaps because next year is a presidential
election, it seemed to us that Obama was avoiding making any
controversial statements in regard to Palestinian statehood.
Additionally, we understood a large part of the American narrative as
being one of profound global responsibility. There is significant
pressure from the international community to solve (or at least
address) issues of global health, poverty, democracy, security, and
human rights, and at the moment, the U.S. is burdened with too many
issues at home to be able to focus on the world’s problems. In other
words, we’ve got bigger fish to fry at this moment. We drew this
conclusion based on the fact that Obama discussed the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict on pages three and four in a seven-page
speech, sandwiching the issue between many others. Another part of
the American narrative is this “unshakeable commitment to Israel”. So
while Obama claims to support the idea of a Palestinian state, the
speech paid more attention to Israeli suffering than it did to
Palestinian suffering perhaps because of the deep influence of the
Israel lobby in American foreign policy. American also relies on
Israel as a democratic light in the Middle East, and is perhaps one of
the only countries that have Israel’s back.

The Israeli group, interestingly enough, had a very difficult time
articulating the Israeli Narrative (as expressed by Netanyahu), mostly
because the Israelis in our group do not agree with the general
sentiment in Israel regarding the conflict. Eventually, though, they
were able to express the narrative of a post-traumatic nation that
seems to be trapped in a state of fear. There is the feeling that
Israel cannot trust any neighboring country (all Arabs hate Israel and
want to see the country destroyed) and so Israel is hesitant to make
steps toward peace. Yes, Israel wants peace and claims to be willing
to negotiate (although this is debatable), but they will not forget
that in the past, whenever Israel has ceded land to Palestine, they
have been targets of attack by Palestine.

On the other side, the Arabic speakers representing Palestine (this in
and of itself was controversial – shouldn’t Arab Israelis be able to
represent the Arab contingent in Israel, even if Arabic is their first
language?) presented a narrative of being the victim in this conflict.
The speech articulated the Palestinian sentiment that Israel was not
acting in a way that shows they are ready for negotiation, and that
the U.N. request for statehood was the only way to put pressure on
Israel to expedite the peace process. While the Palestinian Authority
in the West Bank is separate from Hamas in Gaza, Abu Mazen made no
mention of the attacks on Israel, and did not seem to be apologetic at
all about its actions.

In the end, the exercise was really enlightening, if only to see that
sometimes governments reflect the opinions of the people, and
sometimes they don’t.

On a completely different note… Last weekend, I traveled in Jordan
with Elena, Gillian, Shannon, and Tamer. On Tuesday night, we walked
across the border from Eilat, Israel into Aqaba, Jordan, and ate
hummus and falafel and shewarma and many kinds of rice at an outdoor
restaurant, and then knaffeh – signature Arab cheese-filled honey
butter pasty cake – which is baked in round trays two feet in
diameter. On Wednesday we drove to Wadi Rum, a desert valley of sand
and mountains that look like melted wax dripping off candles. On a
Jeep tour with Hamed (a local Bedouin man) and Lydia (his fiancée from
France, and Algerian by descent) as our guides, we explored canyons
and dunes and cooked fresh lamb and onions and tomatoes on a fire on
the sand. We arm-wrestled and sipped herbal tea, and Hamed told us
the story of how he and Lydia met on a tour he guided two years ago.
And at night, we watched the sunset from the top of a small mountain,
shared a silent dinner beneath a blanket of stars so intense that you
could see the shimmering dust between them, and spent the night in
Bedouin tents. It was magical!!!!!!!!!

On Thursday and Friday we explored the capital city of Amman. We
walked through different neighborhoods, in and out of beautiful
Mosques, filled our stomach with delicious hummus and baklava, and
strolled past coffee shop after coffee shop where men sat for hours
smoking argila (hookah). And every few hours, for a brief moment, the
city seemed to stop with the enveloping sound and feeling of the
Muslim call to prayer.

A few days ago, Lukas arrived from Poland on his bicycle. At first I
thought he was a friend of one of the students here, but I soon
learned that he is a welcome stranger who was brought here via the
magical world of couch surfing! Lukas, with his mohawk-mullet haircut
and “resistanbul” t-shirt, has been traveling around the region on his
bike for the past 16 months – and this is “just the beginning.” Today,
he will leave the Kibbutz and cross the border into Egypt on his way
to Eastern Africa. He hopes to see every country by staying in
people’s homes, and it seems that this is indeed possible. When I
first started traveling on my own (not on family vacations) and
meeting people on similar journeys, I was inspired and in awe of their
commitment to an adventure of this magnitude, but I wondered if these
global escapades weren’t a waste of time, and a procrastination of
“real life.” Now, when I hear people’s stories about yearlong
adventures around the world, I am not as taken aback, or as
judgmental, as I used to be. Now, more and more, I am able to see
intrinsic value in seeing the world, meeting people from all different
cultures and traditions, even if it means not working. How did I, as
part of the American culture, acquire this capitalist mentality that
my life gained value according to my work, rather than (and often at
the expense of) what I see, learn, experience, feel, taste, and who I
meet?

After a month, the experiences that stand out in my mind as
significant are moments where we, as a group, shared with and teach
and challenge and learn from each other, and when we laugh together.
Last night on the grass by campus, a dialogue between three people
about the religion of Islam turned into the evening’s entertainment
for fifteen of us. Transitioning from one question, concern or
opinion to the next, we discussed the fundamental beliefs of Islam,
and how they have been corrupted by the traditional Arab culture. I
learned that much of what I associate with the Muslim religion –
including the subjugation of women – is not part of Prophet Mohammed’s
teachings, but rather a product of Arab culture that has existed long
before the Koran was passed down as the word of God. I would like to
read the Koran.

More than these ideas, what I loved about our conversation was the
friendly banter back and forth – the fact that we can so openly and
honestly pay tribute to the beautiful aspects of each other’s
traditions and beliefs, and admit to the ridiculous, unjust,
hypocritical aspects as well. We can yell at each other with smiles
on our faces, and I realized this more acutely last night with Lukas’s
presence in the conversation. Our group has now been living together
for almost a month, and while politics and religion are a central part
of our lives here, and permeate much of our discussion, we have moved
beyond these national and religious and political boundaries and
labels. We eat together in the dining hall, dance together at the
Kibbutz pub, travel together, and study together, and so first and
foremost, we are humans together – friends and family who appreciate
and respect each other. And with the introduction of a new person,
someone who does not know that we have these kinds of conversations
all the time, and that we have reached a deeper level of comfort with
one another (so that we are not worried about offending each other, or
about “winning” the argument), our humanity becomes all the more
apparent to us.

That is all for now. I hope all of you are well, and I would love to
hear all about what you are up to and how you are feeling and what you
are thinking.

Love from Israel,

Erica