Pave paradise and put up a hotel complex.

Daniel Ben-Tal , THE JERUSALEM POST    Oct. 11, 2007

 http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?c…

The Timna Valley, about 30 km north of Eilat, is one of the most breathtakingly beautiful places in Israel. Safely out of earshot of the trucks and cars hurtling along the Arava highway, it is a site of desert serenity. Yet the silence may soon be shattered.

In the early 1990s, the local planning and construction committee approved a proposal to build a hotel on a 300-dunam (some 75 acres) plot in the valley, but the work never commenced and the approvals gathered dust. Some five years ago, Joab Igra, the owner, builder and architect of the opulent 330-room Herod’s Palace resort and theme hotel in Eilat, began to design a hotel complex for the site, based on the existing approvals.

Most residents of the area were unaware of the scale or location of the project until an investigative article penned by Kibbutz Samar member Yaniv Golan appeared in the local newspaper B’ktseh Hamidbar (”At The Desert’s Edge”) in early September. In fact, four hotels are reportedly planned for the site: a “prestigious” spa hotel, a “luxurious” convention center-hotel, a family-style hotel and one especially suited for jeep tours, all linked by a winding waterway for boats and gondolas. The blueprint also reportedly includes shops, restaurants, pubs, discotheques and a children’s water park attraction.

“I read Yaniv’s article and like many of my neighbors was amazed,” Timor Katz, a resident of Kibbutz Elifaz, told Metro earlier this week. “This megalomanic project evolved quietly over the past few years and involves fencing in an enormous area, not allowing anyone in. They are going to cut this beautiful place off from wild animals and people not connected to the hotel.”

“It’s the only area in the country with both sandstone hills and dunes,” Katz noted. “Beyond the objective beauty of the place, it’s a kilometer from us and I have personal sentiments - my children played there before they could walk. Members of the local kibbutzim are suddenly talking about it around the breakfast table.”

Katz is one of about a dozen activists who quickly launched a knee-jerk campaign to halt the plan. Early last week, they set up a website  www.freewebs.com), released a Hebrew Power Point presentation into the cybersphere and started signing people on an internet petition calling for a rethink (www.postool.co.il/petition.php?user=timnahotelpetition). By Monday this week, over 17,000 Israelis had already signed the petition. (The organizers hope to release an English version of the Power Point presentation “within days)”.

“The feedback has really surprised us,” admits Katz. “The core group met for the first time only three weeks ago. We’re all working people, most with children, so we don’t have a lot of free time or money to put into this. We do whatever we can, whenever we can. We’re receiving a tremendous number of supportive e-mails, but because the campaign started so late in the process we have yet to see how much leverage it will have. No established environmental group is behind the campaign, just a handful of people from kibbutzim in the area who realize that a tremendous mistake is being made. None of the ‘Green’ organizations have joined in yet - there are those who think it’s a lost cause, while others apparently think the issue isn’t sexy enough.”

Igra, who defines himself as an “ecological architect,” refutes outright the claims of environmental damage. “This is the most ecological project of its type ever built in Israel. You don’t go into the desert and build a casino - not me, at least,” he told Metro.

“The whole point of the project is to be an example of how construction should be carried out in a desert environment,” Igra insists. “Even though we have permission to build up to three stories, all the buildings will be limited to two stories in order to blend into their surroundings. All vehicles will be parked outside in order to prevent noise and air pollution. Recycled, purified wastewater will be used to irrigate the gardens. We’ll use solar energy, and the buildings will be prefabricated from only environmentally-friendly materials rather than sinking foundations into the ground - even the ceramic work will not be performed on-site.”

Udi Gat, head of the Eilot Regional Council that oversees a vast swathe of the southern Arava, says the anti-hotel campaign is based on a misunderstanding of the project. “I’m proud to say that it all started with an article in our local paper, paid for by the council itself. We made no attempt to censor it, even though Yaniv told me that he would voice his opinion against the project. We’re open to hear all opinions.”

Gat recounted how the hotel project reached this stage: “About 13 years ago, planners sat with all the relevant governmental and environmental bodies, including the Israel Nature and Parks Authority’s southern region director Ronny Malka. They came up with a way to preserve Timna Park as virgin land, while bringing people closer to nature. They decided to include over 65,000 dunams in the park, and designated 300 dunams for the hotel - not in the park but near the park entrance in a place that cannot be seen, in a small wadi. This was the correct decision. The plan received statutory approval, but it sat in a drawer for a long time.”

“Then Joab Igra, who is a green architect himself, approached us to enact the plan that had been approved in the 90s. Three or four years ago we started to discuss this proposal in the council,” recounts Gat. “All the issues were discussed - water recycling, environmental damage, building height, etc. We hung notices on kibbutz notice boards inviting residents to public debates on the issue, but few people turned up. There was no critical mass against the idea.”

The Eilot region, covering some 2.2 million dunams (over half a million acres), incorporates 10 kibbutzim (Eilot, Samar, Elifaz, Yotvata, Grofit, Ketura, Lotan, Yahel, Neveh Harif and Naot Smadar) and two communal settlements (Shaharut and Be’er Ora). “As a council, we are in favor of preserving nature,” insists Gat, a member of Kibbutz Ketura now in his ninth year as council head. “We live in nature, and want to wake in the morning to breathe fresh air and hear birdsongs. We’re all against destroying the place we live in. I think it’s the right thing to do - and not only for the arnona [local taxes] income.”

Local residents point to a lack of inherent checks and balances in the Eilot Regional Council, which serves only slightly more than 3,000 residents while overseeing some 13 percent of Israel’s land mass. “In an area like ours, everyone knows everyone else,” pointed out one resident, who asked to remain anonymous for precisely that reason.

“This area suffers serious income problems, and the hotel is planned to counteract that. The people who made this decision had good intentions, but they didn’t realize the implications - the road to hell is paved with good intentions. We slept while the developers drew up their plans. No-one paid attention to what was going on, and now it may be too late - but there’s no bad guy here,” said the resident, who is familiar with the decision-makers. “Even members of the local council didn’t know what’s going on. It’s like a butterfly effect - each little decision along the way could eventually produce a typhoon. We all want development for the area, including a hotel in Timna, but not at the expense of destroying the desert.”

“One way of working is through the local council, where the initiative started,” Katz said of the campaign. “Such projects must be open to public debate, not deals closed between a few people in a meeting. It’s so late in terms of the statutory approvals that probably the only way to stymie the project is through a critical mass of public opinion against it. If the developers get a bad rap, maybe they’ll think twice. We will also try to explore the legal avenue, but as I understand it the project received its final approval two weeks ago so we’re not very optimistic regarding that. Until the bulldozers move the earth and scar this beautiful spot, we will continue to fight.”

This is not the first time the issue has resurfaced in recent years. A series of discussions about what to do with the Timna area was held throughout the 1990s at both local and national levels. According to the anti-hotel campaigners, when the Timna Valley was divided among the local administrative bodies some 15 years ago, the Eilot Regional Council demanded that the area between Sasgon Hill and Michrot (”Mines”) Mountain, west of Kibbutz Elifaz and south-west of Kibbutz Samar, be allocated for establishing the hotel. The Nature Reserve Authority paid the price so that other areas may be declared a nature reserve.

In the early 1990s, hotel magnate Sol Kerzner, who developed the sprawling Sun City casino-hotel complex in South Africa, reportedly proposed converting the disused Timna copper mines into a grandiose over- and under-ground tourist attraction going by the name “King Solomon’s Mines.” However, resistance from Israel’s then-fledgling environmental movement led to a compromise in 1995 under which the plan was shelved and over 65,000 dunams (some 16,000 acres) were designated national parkland (Timna Park), while commercial activity is allowed in designated areas around the park’s natural pool, and another area was earmarked for a hotel including “attractions” such as swimming pools and a subterranean visitors’ center in the ancient copper mines.

According to the campaigners, the Nature and Parks Authority agreed to give up an area of rare natural value because the kibbutzim had political clout as the main inhabitants of the Arava, and mainly kibbutzniks comprise the local authority. “In an area of such sparse population, everybody knows everybody, everybody works with everybody, and there is no opposition,” reads the campaign’s e-mail presentation.

An oft-overlooked gem
The U-shaped Timna Valley opens eastward towards the Arava, is straddled by yellow sandstone hills about 300 meters high from three sides, and features the red volcanic Mt. Timna in its center.

Timna Park features some amazing natural phenomena, such as King Solomon’s Pillars carved by water erosion, the red sandstone “mushroom” rock and arches hewed by winds, fascinating remnants of primitive cultures including rock carvings, and ancient copper furnaces of King Solomon’s Mines where ancient Egyptians first began mining copper over six millennia ago.

Copper has been mined and smelted in the Timna Valley ever since the sixth millennium BCE, when humans discovered how to turn rock into malleable metal. Extensive remains of ancient human activity can still be found in the rugged hills, and there is evidence of copper mining in shafts and galleries and copper smelting in furnaces of various types, remains of camps and several cult sites, including an Egyptian mining sanctuary.

Copper production has a long and complex history in Timna, dating from the Late Neolithic period to the Middle Ages. Mining activities in the valley peaked during the reign of the Pharaohs of the 14th-12th centuries BCE, as Egyptian mining expeditions collaborated with Midianites and local Amalekites to create a large-scale copper industry.

In the 1930s, US-born archaeologist and educator Nelson Glueck attributed the copper mining at Timna to King Solomon (10th century BCE) and named the site “King Solomon’s Mines,” although this theory has not been subsequently verified.

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From: http://www.israel21c.org/bin/en.jsp?enDi…;

US-Israeli developer brings golf to Israel’s historic Mount Arbel.
By Nicky Blackburn, March 11, 2008

It was when the bottom fell out of the US real estate market in the early 1990s, that Joseph Bernstein first got the idea to open a luxury golf course in Israel.

It wasn’t an overnight revelation, more of a gradual process of discovery. Bernstein, an Israeli who had immigrated to America as a child, had been involved in a number of large real estate developments in New York through his company, Americas Partners, including the $500 million development Americas Tower, the US headquarters of Bank Hapoalim and world headquarters of PriceWaterhouseCoopers.

When the market tanked in 1991, he decided to forget about work for a while and take up golf. He spent the next year devoting himself to the sport. He traveled widely in pursuit of his new interest and one day found himself teeing off on Israel’s only golf course at Caesarea.

“I looked about me and realized that Israel is a prime golf market because of the weather,” Bernstein tells ISRAEL21c, from his home in Florida. “The country has great weather nine months of the year, and could attract snow birds (people who live in cold climates) from all over Europe and the east coast of America, and yet there’s only one golf course. I started to see enormous potential in building golf resorts here.”

More than 15 years later, Bernstein’s dream is about to become a reality after news that the Israel Land Authority has given his development company, Israel Resorts & Clubs, the final agreement necessary to develop a new five star golf resort on the stunning Mount Arbel overlooking the Sea of Galilee.

The new $150 million resort, which should open in 2011, will have an 18-hole championship golf course sculpted by Robert Trent Jones, Jr., a renowned golf course designer. There will be social, golf and residence club programs, with cultural, spiritual, sports and touring activities organized for members.

The development, on land owned by the agricultural farming cooperative Moshav Kfar Hittim, will cater to between 600-900 people in large suites and villas. It will be home to a world-class spa, a culinary program, an organic farm, a winery, a beach club, and a tennis academy.

With an eye to its location - Mount Arbel is the Galilee’s most prominent landmark, with panoramic views, and cliffs rising 400 meters to a large plateau that includes the vast Mount Arbel Nature Reserve - Bernstein intends the resort to be environmentally friendly.

It will be built to LEED specifications, he asserts, using natural building materials. Guests will eat organic food. An $8 million water treatment plant to accommodate the needs of the project has already been completed.

“We intend to build everything with attention to protecting the environment and nature,” asserts Bernstein, president of Israel Resorts & Clubs. “This is one of the most gorgeous sites in Israel and we want to do everything in keeping with it. Today the site is used for agriculture. The resort - which falls short of the peak - will bring beautiful green golf courses that will be surrounded by the nature reserve.”

Bernstein believes the new Mount Arbel development will help transform tourism to the Galilee region. “The Galilee is a very beautiful part of Israel but it gets few visitors. The Jewish travelers who come tend to focus on Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Eilat. There’s strong Christian tourism, but this is low end and people don’t stay. They come in by bus and leave at the end of the day.”

Tiberius, on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, is the main resort town of the region, but as Bernstein admits, it’s pretty run down. “It caters to the budget conscious,” he says.

He believes part of the problem is that up to now tourism in the north of Israel has been based on a ‘take what comes’ attitude. “Tourists are only offered low-end facilities so they may come once, but they won’t come back. We have to bring them back with the things they like - golf, the beach, culture, the vacation experience,” says Bernstein. “The Sea of Galilee could be a huge vacation area and our resort could really spark it.”

With this in mind, he says he is determined to make the new Mount Arbel golf course one of the best links courses in the world, so that it can host international golf tournaments.

The lure of golf should not be underestimated, adds Bernstein. In the US alone, there are 40-50 million golfers. “It’s not a rich man’s game like it used to be,” he says. “Today everyone is playing it. America has 10,000 golf courses, even Sweden has 500. Israel has one.”

With approval to build now signed and sealed, Bernstein is looking for financing. The New York firm, Cushman & Wakefield Sonnenblick Goldman has been engaged to raise money. This is expected to be finalized in the second half of the year, and building will begin shortly afterwards.

The development, which will employ between 300-400 staff, is designed as a club, where visitors pay an annual membership fee. Memberships will be offered initially in England, France, Israel, and the US.

Now Bernstein, who visits Israel every month - often with his six children - is planning similar golf resorts elsewhere in Israel. His goal is to build three or four at various locations across the country. He is already tying up a deal with Beit Nir Kibbutz located between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Initial approval has been granted, and Bernstein is now awaiting approval from the Ministry of Tourism and the Land Authority.

“The Mount Arbel resort will dramatically and immediately change the image of the Galilee. It will get people to focus on this area. It’s a whole new direction and will have a profound long term impact,” he says.

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Who stole my beach?

By Zafrir Rinat, HAARETZ, March 19, 2008.
 http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/9653…
Tags: Moshav Beit Oved, Adi Lustig

For Adi Lustig, a resident of Moshav Beit Oved, nearby Palmachim Beach was the place to forget about everything and connect with nature. But concern for the beach’s fate has caused this young woman of 18 to become deeply involved in the struggle to save it. In recent weeks she has gotten to know concepts such as tendering for the sale of land and the law on the preservation of the shore environment.

Last month Lustig discovered that a large area of the beach had been surrounded by a fence before the construction of a new vacation village. Until then she had been busy studying for her matriculation exams, but the discovery of the fence turned her priorities upside down. “The beach is one of the most important things in my life,” she says. “I’d been going there recently every day to watch the sunset.”

With the help of her friend Hanni Amos, Lustig set out to strengthen and widen the opposition to the construction plan. About a month ago Lustig, Amos and a group of environmental activists pitched protest tents near the fence to prevent further construction work. The two young women stay there night and day. They say the contractors do not yet have the final permits to build the village, but the work they have done has already seriously damaged the beach and more fencing will cause more damage.
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The activists have established the Committee for the Rescue of Palmachim Beach and have organized protests that have grabbed the attention of planning officials and Knesset members. The Knesset Interior and Environment Committee, headed by Labor MK Ophir Pines-Paz, toured the beach this month and held a discussion on the matter last week. The committee has asked the Interior Ministry to consider moving the vacation village to a different site.

The Palmachim activists’ relative success is surprising because they are acting almost alone: Neither the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel (SPNI) nor the Environmental Protection Ministry has objected to the plan because they believe it helps promote tourism. But at least the girls have Green Course on their side - the group started the first wave of activism in Israel about a decade ago, winning support against plans such as the Sea and Sun project in Tel Aviv and the Trans-Israel Highway.

The beach and adjacent cliffs are among the few remaining between Ashdod and Herzliya. All the other beaches have long been sites of residential neighborhoods, hotels, and prestigious homes for the wealthy. At other beaches, promenades cover the approach to the water in concrete and asphalt.

In the Palmachim area, too, the area for the public is shrinking. North of Kibbutz Palmachim, equipment for producing concrete has been put up, and a desalinization plant stands next to the beach. To the north and east, large areas are taken up by the Israel Defense Forces. And more tourism projects are planned for the area.

Despite the young people’s efforts, the chances for canceling the building plan look faint because the plan has already been approved (before the law on the preservation of the shore environment went into effect). Amos and Lustig promise, however, that they will remain at the site until the plan is called off.

“We are trying to raise donations and find legal bodies that will try to examine the entire process of decision-making that led to the plan’s approval,” says Lustig. “We will try to act in every possible way, whether though demonstrations or disseminating information. We want people to stop being like a herd that is told that the beach is being taken from them - and they agree.” Lustig also notes that they have decided to join Green Course to continue the struggle.

“It’s hard for us to see what they have done to nature here in the wake of the fencing work,” says Amos. “At night we see the jackals and the foxes that don’t understand what has happened to the area near the shore, which is their home.” She says she cannot understand “who agreed to approve a building plan in a place where there is supposed to be a national park, where there is a wealth of animals and wild plants and also archaeological sites.”

Scare campaign

Pini Malka is one of the two entrepreneurs who won the Israel Lands Administration tender for the land where the vacation village will be built. “We are planning a vacation village in the style of old Acre,” he says. “We will leave access to the beach open, and also to the village itself.”

Malka says he was recently subjected to a “scare and threat campaign” by the activists against the building plan: “They have called me and my partner ‘corrupt’ and ‘people from the underworld.’ We have received threats, and a stink bomb was thrown into the yard of my home.”

Lustig says in response that “we aren’t doing anything illegal. When tractors were working here to put up the fences, we didn’t block them - we talked to the drivers and they stopped the work.”

Malka believes that the environmental activists represent mainly themselves. “I am certain that if they asked the public, the vast majority of people will say that they are in favor of the vacation village, which will take up only a tiny part of the beach,” he says.

Even so, Tal Dieri, a 30-year-old from Rishon Letzion who belongs to the group of activists, stresses: “This village will make it possible for only a small group of people to enjoy almost the last beach that remains natural.”

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Battle for the Beach.

Michael Green , THE JERUSALEM POST    Feb. 17, 2008

 http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?c…

Crouching precariously on a small outcrop of rocks 20 meters from the shore, Sameer Mabjeesh grasps his rod, hoping to catch one of the fish swimming off the Israeli coast in the Mediterranean Sea. “I didn’t catch so many today,” he concedes. “But I don’t really come here just for the fish, it’s for contact with nature. I’ve been coming to this beach for over 20 years. I know this place, I love it.”

As the waves lap at his feet, the orange glow of the setting sun signals that it is time for Mabjeesh and half a dozen other fishermen to pack up and go home for the day. Today’s catch will be mostly for his mother, he says before setting off for the 15-minute drive back home to Rehovot, where he works at the Faculty of Agricultural Science on the Hebrew University’s satellite campus.

The small, secluded bay where Mabjeesh comes to catch fish three or four times a week is surrounded by the Palmahim Beach National Park and lies immediately south of Kibbutz Palmahim, halfway between Tel Aviv and Ashdod. The beach itself may be small, but it is much loved by the fishermen and beachcombers who seek a refuge there from the urban sprawl of other parts of the country.

“It’s special because there are no people. The beach is better [the way] it is now,” says Oded, who is playing matkot (paddleball) with his girlfriend on the larger, commercial Palmahim Beach a few minutes’ walk south. Indeed, the intimate spot, known to locals as the “fishing” or “wild” beach, seems forgotten by the rest of the country, all but deserted except for a handful of amateur fishermen and a small boat - until now.

Construction has recently begun on a 350-room resort, Kfar Nofesh Palmahim. Fishermen, beach visitors, and locals fear the project will destroy what they say is one of the last open, “wild” spaces on the country’s coast.

Plans for the resort include low-rise villas as well as a spa, health club, swimming pool, conference center and an 18-dunam public parking lot. Although the Gan Raveh Regional Council approved the Palmahim beach for tourism development several years ago, many were shocked when building commenced a few weeks ago.

“I live very close to Palmahim and try to go there every day to watch the sunset,” explains Adi Lustig, 18, a high-school student from nearby Moshav Beit Oved. Lustig says she first saw the construction about three weeks ago. “It was so sudden… [Local] citizens didn’t know anything about the construction work until they put the fences up.”

In an attempt to rally people around her cause, Lustig organized a demonstration at the fishermen’s beach last Sunday. Over 100 people participated. “It’s our beach. We don’t want the buildings there. I don’t want them to ruin it - I want to stop them,” says Lustig, who has been protesting the construction by sleeping in a tent on the beach for over a week. “They’re going to ruin everything here. This place is the only [unspoiled] beach we have.”

Kibbutz Palmahim residents were also taken by surprise. “The situation is very unclear. The building has been going on for just a few weeks. It started quietly, so many local people don’t know about it,” says R., who prefers to remain anonymous. “It’s very strange. It took me a long time to realize what was happening.”

While some parts of Palmahim Beach already feature showers, lounge chairs and cafés, the “fishermen’s beach” has remained practically untouched. But access is already being limited and fishermen can hear the hum of vehicles razing the ground. A two-meter-high metal fence has recently been erected where the fishermen used to park. Now, many of them park at the main Palmahim Beach, which charges NIS 20 during the peak season, and carry their equipment to the bay on foot. “They’re taking the seashore away from us, literally,” says Mabjeesh.

Anyone enjoying a winter stroll along Palmahim’s sun-drenched shore could be forgiven for forgetting that this is February, and two weeks ago parts of the country were covered in snow. According to locals, summer sees as many as 200 fishermen a day flocking to the tiny bay. Fishermen are worried about the effect that unprecedented volumes of tourists will have on their occupation. “It will be bad for the fish, because fish like the quiet. If there are cars, noise, lots of people and children, it will disturb them and frighten them away,” says Zaven Vartanian, who has been fishing here for 30 years. “There are fewer fish [at the commercial beach] because there are people there all the time.” The 55-year-old Ramle resident says he didn’t catch much today, but it’s not just the fish he comes for. “I come here three times a week. It’s quiet here, and you don’t have the chaos of the city - there’s just you, God and water.”

The rugged look and leathery skin of Shlomi Menahem, from Ness Ziona, bear testimony to the hours he has spent out on the rocks, in the salty spray. “I come here for fun, to spend time here and be with nature. It’s quiet today, because people are at work during the week, but on Shabbat, it’s full of people. It’s amazing.”

The Environmental Protection Ministry deems guarding the Mediterranean coastline from the demands of tourism and urbanization a national priority. The ministry’s Web site states that: “The coastal strip serves a vital role as open space. Yet much of Israel’s 190-kilometer shoreline is closed to the public, [taken up by] national infrastructure, defense, and building… While in 1948… each citizen had an average of 31 centimeters of coast at his disposal, this amount has shrunk to 2.5 cm of coast per person.”

While none of the locals doubt that the resort will permanently alter the area’s atmosphere and ecological balance, the property developer, Evelon, maintains that the villas will harm neither the environment nor the fishermen. “There won’t be any pollution. According to our contract, we have to be connected to the sewage system, so waste won’t be going into the sea,” claims Offir Asher, one of Evelon’s project partners. “The beach will always stay open. By law, it’s a public area. The fishermen are still going to have access, one way or another… We definitely won’t stop people from coming to the beach - we want them there. People will be coming to stay [here] from all over the world, and we… want them to interact with Israelis.”

But for many users of Palmahim Beach, Evelon’s assurances fall on deaf ears. R. is “very concerned [about] the project. It’s very close to the kibbutz and eating away at [our] free space for [the benefit of] people from the cities. It’s the only public open space in this area; the land north of the kibbutz is reserved for military use.”

Mabjeesh is equally skeptical: “In the summer, people come with their families and camp. It’s a very nice atmosphere. I think it will be destroyed, they’ll put up fences and private guards. It’ll be just like the Kinneret.”

“They want to destroy it all - the beach, the fish, the coyotes, all this nature. When I used to come here 20 years ago, I would see all kinds of wildlife - foxes, gazelles, and even crabs on the beach at night. But most of this has already been destroyed and what’s left it is going to be destroyed too,” believes Mabjeesh.

And not only the pastoral fishing beach will be affected by the new development, locals predict. They say that the larger, already developed stretch of Palmahim Beach will not remain unaffected by the influx of hundreds of tourists. “We’re worried about the whole [of Palmahim] Beach,” Lustig says.

A number of people have also questioned the development’s legality. The border of the complex is slated to extend as close as 25 meters to the shoreline, although the buildings themselves will remain a distance of 100 meters from the water, according to Evelon’s Web site.

“Something stinks. It feels dirty,” Lustig maintains.

However, the Israel Nature and National Parks Protection Authority says the resort is as “legitimate as they come” and that the site does not lie within the Palmahim Beach National Park. INNPPA spokesman Omri Gal says that while the Parks Authority would “love” to turn Palmahim Beach into a nature reserve, the complex was authorized before the Law for the Protection of the Coastal Environment was passed in 2004 and before the interministerial Committee for the Protection of the Coastal Environment was established.

“The committee is usually very aggressive, and doesn’t allow any building on beaches, but they don’t have any power on this issue,” says Gal. “The plan was authorized years ago by every committee it had to go through… Our job now is to minimize any [environmental] impact, especially on the adjacent National Park. The contractors have actually been quite cooperative with our demands.”

Kibbutz Palmahim, founded in 1949 and now home to some 500 people, stands near the remains of an ancient city. The kibbutz’s Beit Miriam Museum contains many archaeological artifacts from various historical periods. Museum director Dror Porat explains that the site slated for development contains a Hellenistic-period winery. “[Evelon] understands the importance of the site and wants to include archaeology in the [resort’s] activities.”

Evelon says it is “working as a team” with both the kibbutz and the government. “We are working closely with the Kibbutz Palmahim Museum. We’ll allow them to bring people here, and our tourists will visit their museum, too,” says Asher. “The Culture Ministry and the Israel Antiquities Authorities are completely behind the plan. We are in the process of debating whether to leave the winery in the Village, or move it.”

The fishermen are skeptical: “Why is there going to be an archaeological site in a hotel? Will we even be able to go there?” Mabjeesh wonders. Further along the beach, Vartanian points to the notices designating the surrounding area a National Park: “Why build on history?” he asks.

Porat says the resort could benefit the local economy. “People here are not unemployed, but it will open good opportunities for kibbutz members… It will put us on the map… We want people to know about the area. It’s an interesting place with a rich past.” Porat says that the archaeological site isn’t well-enough known. Calling himself “optimistic,” he says he hopes for good relations with the resort. “The only thing I’m concerned about is the environment. I hope they’ll preserve the coastline,” he adds.

Campaigners against the resort believe that Palmahim Beach’s intrinsic ecological and public value far outweigh any potential gain from development. “The beach is one place where we don’t need [shopping malls and restaurants.] Work and money have to stop controlling our lives,” complains Lustig.

Mabjeesh predicts that where one development springs up, others will follow. “I think it will be very commercial… It will be like the beach at Rishon Lezion. I don’t know if tourists will be happy that [the resort] was built on [unspoiled] nature,” he says.

Ultimately, however, the question at the heart of the battle for the beach isn’t about jobs, fish swimming in the sea, or archaeological discoveries; it is whether a resort is necessary in the first place. “For sure, the resort is going to be beautiful for the tourists, the archaeology will be nice for them, but it doesn’t serve the public interest. What makes the beach beautiful is that it’s far from the city… That’s what makes it different from Tel Aviv, Holon or Ashdod,” Mabjeesh stresses.

Last Sunday afternoon, as the crowd of protesters began to disperse, Lustig returned to her beachside tent, which she says will be her makeshift home for “as long as it takes.”

The Parks Authority believes that chances of stopping the development are slim. Gal says that people should have objected to the development plans when they were first presented, years ago. He says that at the time, the military could have weighed in and suggested that the resort not be authorized. “I think maybe some people didn’t [protest] because they didn’t think it would actually happen,” Gal explains.

Evelon says that construction will start in earnest in April. “[The resort] is scheduled to open in September 2009, and has already been delayed. We signed an agreement with the government and must open according to the contract,” Asher says.

Despite the prevailing feeling that the fate of Palmahim Beach is sealed, activists believe their battle is not in vain. “I really think it’s possible to protect the beach,” declares Lustig. “We can’t give up, we have to stop it.”

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Save all the beaches? Starting with Palmachim beach?

From “Altneuland”

It is generally accepted that the green movement (in the broadest sense) in Israel is less mature than in other western countries, and that this is mainly due to Israel’s longstanding security concerns (in our blacker moments, her struggle for survival). While the safety and security of Israel and its citizens is far from being a “done deal”, Israeli’s have started allowing themselves the “luxury” of focusing on other issues, including the environment and social justice in general.

One trend that I find quite interesting is that the initiative is now frequently being taken by young, informal, local activist groups, often concerned with a single, specific issue. These groups have tended to make use of both activity on the ground (e.g. camping out at Palmachim beach) and innovative use of social networking tools such as Facebook and YouTube to further the cause. Venerable conservation bodies are then left floundering to explain why they have not acted, or in same cases signed off on some plundering of the common wealth by rapacious developers.

I have the highest regard for Israel’s esteemed conservation bodies, such as the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel (SPNI), who carried the torch of the environment during long decades of official and public neglect. For a variety of reasons (mainly centered around budgets and resources), they are unable to tackle every single environmental ill; they are forced to choose, and in some cases compromise. Where other groups do take the initiative, however, it is important for the established bodies to lend support (even if only moral), or risk becoming irrelevant. Formal and informal/issue-specific bodies should form a “tag-team”, each using their strengths to compensate for the other’s weaknesses.

Those involved in conservation tend to have (or develop) one of three mindsets:

Save everything!

We can’t save everything (we need to pick our fights)

They’re destroying OUR beach/park/river/trees!

We each need to decide which of these approaches suits us best and adopt an organisation that mirrors our approach. There is much wisdom in the time-honoured conservationist saying “Think Globally, Act Locally”. We would like to save the planet (eventually), but for now maybe we could “just” save all the beaches? One at a time? Starting with Palmachim beach? Even if we end up losing that fight, hopefully we’ll learn lessons we can apply to the next one. And there will always be a next one…