A New Israeli Leader: but Can She Address Environmental Issues

With the recent election of Tzipi Livni to the leadership of Israel’s Kadima Party (the leading party in Israel’s ruling coalition), she has the opportunity to become Israel’s first female Prime Minister since Golda Meir and its second ever.

And Israel truly does need new leadership (regardless of its gender): it is important for the nation to move beyond the existential security-based questions of their relationship with the Palestinian people and their other Arab neighbours, as well as the still-ongoing formal state of war with Lebanon and Syria (there was a 1983 Lebanon-Israel peace treaty that was never formally implemented; and a Syria-Israel disengagement in 1984). Similar to other nations around the world, Israel faces environmental, economic and social challenges that its government is hard-pressed to address. Currently however, national issues tend to be addressed through a security framework, which is not always the most effective manner in which to tackle these issues.

Unfortunately, leaders in Israel tend to be elected primarily based on one criterion: their capability at protecting Israel. That protection may entail protection against attacks from Hezbollah across the northern border, sabre rattling against and from Syria, or protection from strikes from Hamas and the myriad other Palestinian terrorist/freedom fighters (depending on your political leanings). What this means is that environmental issues, if they are addressed at all, are addressed from the point of view of security.

So, the very serious issue of water consumption in Israel for industrial and residential use; and the resultant lowering of water tables (both those under Israel and the Palestinian Territories), the water level of the Sea of Galilee, and the catastrophic decline in the water level of the Dead Sea are serious issues that are not addressed seriously by Israeli politicians, nor are those politicians held accountable. If the issue is addressed at all, it is addressed through the framework of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict (if you don’t believe me, try googling “Israel water consumption” and then read through some of the invective that pop up from both sides of the conflict).

As I argued in a post last month, environmental issues can very easily get tangled up in larger security/resource utilization debates. Israel is a great example (as are the resources available in the Arctic circle) of how an issue such as water consumption can become subsumed within a security debate.

For More on Security Issues and the Environment:

• The Politics of Security and the Environment
• Putin, Russia and the North
• Preview of US Intelligence Report Offers Bleak Environmental Outlook

Photo Credit: Chalky Lives via Flickr’s Media Commons

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