c. 1998 Religion News Service

JERUSALEM _ It’s a quixotic battle by environmentalists to preserve Israel’s biblical landscapes against what appears to be the insurmountable will of government, real estate developers and road-builders.

But in an eleventh hour move timed to the current Jewish holiday of Sukkot and its overtones of nature’s bounty, a coalition of grassroots environmental groups has urged American and Canadian Jews and Christians to help save the ancient landscape, which may soon be altered forever by massive development.

The cause of concern is a proposed 200 mile-long, north-south, 10-lane Trans-Israel Highway, complete with massive interchanges, eight new intersecting roads, and parallel development of suburban-style shopping malls, superstores, business parks and housing subdivisions.

The orange groves and olive orchards of biblical lore are about to disappear, warns Israel’s small environmental movement.

The $3-billion super highway _ Israel’s biggest public works project ever _ will begin in the south in the Negev desert, where the Patriarch Abraham once roamed with his tents and flocks. It will skirt the olive-terraced foothills of central Israel, the biblical Judea and Samaria, where many of the dramas of early Jewish history were played out. Moving north, it will fork in two directions through the Galilee, where Jesus preached and the early Talmudic scholars taught, reaching all the way to the Lebanese border.

Critics say the privately built toll-road, backed by an Israeli government loan guarantee, will open much of Israel’s rapidly dwindling countryside to massive real estate speculation and sprawl.

Indeed, John Beck, a Canadian Jewish developer whose company, Canadian Highways International, is a leading partner in the project, has already announced his interest in participating in the real estate boom expected to occur along the highway corridor.”I don’t think this road is going to destroy anything. What it does is allow development to take place outside of the main (population) center, which is Tel Aviv,”Beck said.

Environmentalists see it differently.

They believes Israel should instead develop a Dutch-style pattern of compact cities and towns, eschewing greater reliance on the automobile for”sustainable”forms of travel _ rail, bus, cycling _ to better protect the historic landscape.”This is an issue that everyone in the world who considers themselves part of the Judeo-Christian tradition must raise urgently,”said Henry Gold, a Canadian-born Israeli environmentalist who has urged North American Jews to boycott one of the project’s key financiers, Israel’s Bank Hapoalim.

Gold said the bank was chosen as a boycott target because thousands of Jews outside Israel maintain accounts with the institution, enabling them to make their views known on the road project. Moreover, completing the financing package _ made more difficult by the current global economic crisis _ is the key hurdle remaining before construction commences.”It is here in this biblical landscape that the Judeo-Christian tradition originated,”Gold said.”The landscape is so much a part of our upbringing that it is mythical. But if this road is build, much of what remains of Israel’s open spaces will be turned to asphalt and drunken real estate development.” (BEGIN FIRST OPTIONAL TRIM)

For years, mainstream environmental groups like Israel’s Society for the Protection of Nature have waged a legal and public campaign against the road, arguing that transportation alternatives were never weighed seriously. Some of Israel’s best-known planners and scientists have branded the road a mistake that will generate massive air pollution and irreversibly change.

Even Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in his 1996 election campaign promised to reconsider the road. However, since elected he has failed to follow through on that promise.

Meanwhile, a prolonged appeal to Israel’s Supreme Court by the Israel Union for Environmental Defense was rejected, not surprisingly. Israeli law covering public review of land use planning is weak, and government bureaucrats, often aligned with powerful special interests, wield overwhelming control.

Despite that, the tide seemed about to turn against the road last winter when 30 of Israel’s 120 Knesset members called for a legislative review of the road’s feasibility. But the effort to bring the road issue before the parliament for debate was blocked by the Knesset’s deputy speaker, Meir Sheetrit, a leading member of Netanyahu’s Likud party.

Sheetrit’s wife, Ruth, runs a public relations firm employed by the multi-national consortium awarded the concession to build and operate the road.

(END FIRST OPTIONAL TRIM)

With the zero-hour for road construction increasingly near,environmentalists have removed their kid gloves and are resorting to more militant means of protest.

In late September, as Israel prepared for Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement and Judaism’s most solemn holiday, youthful”Green Action”activists scaled down the Tel Aviv skyscraper that houses Bank Hapoalim headquarters while carrying a huge sign calling for a boycott of the bank.

This week, as Jews around the world mark the fall harvest festival of Sukkot, which ends Monday (Oct. 12) and celebrates God’s gift of the natural world, Israeli environmentalists banding together as the Committee for Public Transportation have extended the boycott call to American Jews and Christians.

The appeal includes an open letter to American Jewish rabbis and their congregations written by Israeli Orthodox Rabbi Micha Odenheimer, a writer and social activist who played a key role in the secret exodus of Ethiopian Jews to Israel in the 1980s and early 1990s.”We are the caretakers of this holy land for many, many people,”said Odenheimer,”and if we have a right to be here it is also predicated on preserving this landscape as a sacred landscape, as much as possible. But instead of creating a model of how to live within such a landscape, we’re going to let private developers change it for at least the next millennium.” The road will deepen already serious rifts in Israeli society between rich and poor, Odenheimer said, by creating”a country of suburbs”that will trigger urban flight and the kind of American-style urban decay just now becoming a social problem here.”For those of us who are Jews, or members of other `monistic’ religions who believe that everything is interconnected, we can see how things such as environment, health and poverty are related,”he added.”By destroying the landscape, we create rifts in society, and by preserving the integrity of the landscape, we can also keep our society more whole and more united.” (BEGIN SECOND OPTIONAL TRIM. STORY MAY END HERE)

In addition to Bank Hapoalim, the project’s other key backers include Africa-Israel Investment Ltd., controlled by the Israeli businessman Lev Levayev; Canadian Highways International Corp., controlled by Beck; the U.S.-based Raytheon Highway Transportation Management Systems, and the French Societe Generale D’Enterprise.

But so far Hapoalim is the lone boycott target. Bank officials say their involvement is ethically neutral, and they are an inappropriate target.”The bank is not a party to the struggle over the Trans-Israel highway,”said Hapoalim spokeswoman Ravital Ron.”It is only giving a line of credit to the group that is implementing the project.” But environmentalists say that there are no ethically neutral parties when a landscape of such historic proportions is at stake. “Bank Hapoalim wants to free itself from all of the ethical issues, but they’ll still be making the money from the project,”said Green Action’s Ronnie Arnon.

Gold, meanwhile, admits environmentalists’ chances of success appear small given the money and power behind the road plan.”It’s a kind of David and Goliath kind of battle,”he said.”I guess you could say that on the one hand, I am looking for a miracle, but on the other hand, God helps those who help themselves.”

IR END FLETCHER