CHAPTER 3: PALESTINE'S ENVIRONMENT, 1900–1949
1. Efraim Orni and Elisha Efrat,Geography of Israel (Jerusalem: Israel Universities Press, 1971), p. 96. [BACK]
2. Gideon Biger and Amnon Kartin,“The Emeq Yizrael Swamps—Legend or Reality,”Cathadra on the History of Eretz Israel and Its Settlement, vol. 30, 1984, pp. 179–182; also see recollections of Akiba Ettinger, “The Development of the National Fund in Ten Year Periods,”Eretz Israel (New York: Jewish National Fund, 1932), pp. 46–47. [BACK]
3. Zeev Carmi, “Description of a Journey, 1910,” as quoted in Adam Ackerman,The Deeds of The Pioneers in Eretz Israel, 1840 – 1940 (Jerusalem: Good Times, 1982), p. 25. [BACK]
4. Gertrude Bell, letters of 1905; see Ackerman,op. cit., p. 25. [BACK]
5. Nahum Benari, diary as quoted in Ackerman,op. cit., p. 35. [BACK]
6. In this chapter, the “land of Israel” refers to the geographic boundaries of the British Mandate, specifically from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River and from the Galilee to the Sinai desert's edge. [BACK]
7. Statistical Abstract of Palestine, 1944–1945, p. 17. [BACK]
8. Paul Ehrlich and John Holdren, “The Impact of Population Growth,” Science 171 (1971): 1212–1217; see also Paul Ehrlich and Anne Ehrlich, Healing the Planet (Reading, Mass: Addison-Wesley, 1991), p. 7. [BACK]
9. Shoshana Gabbay,The Environment in Israel (Jerusalem: Ministry of the Environment, 1994), p. 3. [BACK]
10. Yosef Weitz,Ha-Ya'ar v'ha-Yi'ur b'Yisrael (Ramat Gan: Masada, 1970), particularly Chapter 1, “Forests in Biblical Times.” [BACK]
11. H. Weiss, M. A. Courty, W. Wetterstrom, F. Guichard, L. Senior, R. Meadow, and A. Curnow, “The Genesis and Collapse of Third Millennium North Mesopotamian Civilization,”Science 20 (August 1993): 995–1004. [BACK]
12. Jared Diamond,Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (New York: Norton, 1997), p. 312. [BACK]
13. Arnold Blumberg,Zion before Zionism (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1985), p. 158. [BACK]
14. Yehoshua Ben-Ariyeh, “Population of the Land of Israel and Its Settlements on the Eve of the Zionist Settlement,”Research in the Geography and Settlement History of the Land of Israel, ed. Y. Katz, Y. Ben-Ariyeh, and Y. Kaniel (Jerusalem: Ben Tzvi Institute, 1991), pp. 1–14. [BACK]
15. Hazem Zaki Nuseibeh,Palestine and the United Nations (New York: Quartet Books, 1981), p. 15. [BACK]
16. Edward Said,The Question of Palestine (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980), pp. 79–81. [BACK]
17. For example, Laurence Oliphant,Life in Modern Palestine (Edinburgh: Blackwood and Sons, 1887); Gertrude Bell, “The Wilderness of Judea” (1903) in The Sierra Club Desert Reader, ed. Greg McNamee (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1995). [BACK]
18. Yoram Yom-Tov and Heinrich Mendelssohn, “Movement and Distribution of Vertebrates in Israel in the 20th Century,” in The Plants and Animals of the Land of Israel, ed. Azariah Alon (Tel Aviv: Ministry of Defense Press, 1990), p. 67. [BACK]
19. Interview with Gideon Biger, Tel Aviv, April 29, 1998. [BACK]
20. Uzi Paz,Eretz ha-Tsvi v'ha-Yael (Land of the Gazelle and the Ibex),I (Givataim: Masada, 1981), p. 21. [BACK]
21. Interview with Gideon Biger, Tel Aviv, April 29, 1998. [BACK]
22. Yom-Tov and Mendelssohn,op. cit., p. 67. [BACK]
23. Mark Twain,The Innocents Abroad (New York: Oxford Press, 1996), p. 495. [BACK]
24. “Woods and Forest Ordinance,”Laws of Palestine, October 1920, pp. 92–102; see also Richard Laster, “Israel,”Environmental Law (Deventer, The Netherlands: Kluwer Publishers, 1993), p. 84. [BACK]
25. Interview with Gideon Biger, Tel Aviv, April 29, 1998. [BACK]
26. Shaul Ephraim Cohen,The Politics of Planting (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), pp. 44–47. [BACK]
27. Paz,op. cit., p. 85. [BACK]
28. J. V. Thirgood,Man and the Mediterranean Forest (London: Academic Press, 1981), p. 114, as quoted by Cohen,op. cit. [BACK]
29. Yom-Tov and Mendelssohn,op. cit., p. 64. [BACK]
30. Paz,op. cit., p. 22. [BACK]
31. Blumberg,op. cit., p. 3. [BACK]
32. Ackerman,op. cit., p. 50. [BACK]
33. M. Lilian and H. Shuval,Ten Years of Sanitation in Israel (Jerusalem: Ministry of Health, 1959), p. 15. [BACK]
34. Theodor Herzl,Diary, Jerusalem, October 31, 1898, http://www.cet.ac.il/ ~history/herzl/yoman17.htm. [BACK]
35. Sneier Levenberg, “History,” in Israel, ed. Muriel Manuel (London: St. James Press, 1971), p. 15. [BACK]
36. Ronald Storrs,Orientations (London: Nicholson and Watson, 1945), pp. 286–310. [BACK]
37. Ackerman,op. cit., p. 46. [BACK]
38. Ibid, p. 46. [BACK]
39. A. J. Sherman,Mandate Days (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1997), p. 74. [BACK]
40. Ibid, pp. 42–43. [BACK]
41. Nachum T. Gross,The Economic Policy of the Mandatory Government in Palestine (Jerusalem: Falk Institute, 1982), p. 4. [BACK]
42. John Marlowe,The Seat of Pilate: An Account of the Palestine Mandate (London: Cresset Press, 1959), p. 108. [BACK]
43. Storrs,op. cit., p. 417. [BACK]
44. See Eli Shaltiel,Pinchas Rutenberg, 1879–1942: Life and Times (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1990). [BACK]
45. Tony Travis, personal communication, March 3, 1998. [BACK]
46. Alon Tal, “Citizen Suits to Improve Sewage Treatment in the Poleg River: The Limitations and Potential of Legal Actions,”Ecology and Environment 2 (1995): 151–158; see also Alon Tal, “Law of the Environment,” Israel Law and Business Guide, ed. Alon Kaplan (Boston: Kluwer Publishers, 1994), p. 341. [BACK]
47. Laster,op. cit., pp. 23–37. [BACK]
48. Hillel Shuval,The Inspection of Environmental Sanitation in Israel (Jerusalem: Ministry of Health, 1960), pp. 3–4. [BACK]
49. Palestine Gazette 1065, December 20, 1940, p. 191. [BACK]
50. Palestine Gazette, vol. I, 1936, p. 74. [BACK]
51. Dr. A. Y. Levi,Sanitation: A Guide for Food and Beverage and for Installing Comfortable and Healthy Conditions at Home and Outside (Tel Aviv: Ahiabar, 1936). [BACK]
52. Lilian and Shuval,op. cit. Notes / 443 [BACK]
53. Palestine Gazette, 1937, p. 667. [BACK]
54. Laws of Palestine, vol. III, Rotenburg, Tel Aviv, 1933, pp. 852–860. [BACK]
55. Laws of Palestine, vol. 1, p. 710, amended in the Palestine Gazette, no. 600, January 22, 1937, p. 1. [BACK]
56. Palestine Gazette, 1940 II, p. 66. [BACK]
57. Simcha Blass,Water in Strife and Action (Givataim: Masada, 1973), p. 136. [BACK]
58. Laster,op. cit., p. 6. [BACK]
59. A primitive series of industrial effluent standards were promulgated as part of the licensing of business system but never really enforced. Indeed, sewage treatment itself was hardly regulated. The Municipal Corporations (Sewerage, Drainage and Water) Ordinance of 1936 (Palestine Gazette, 1936, p. 560) essentially threw the problem at local governments. [BACK]
60. Laster,op. cit., pp. 7–8. [BACK]
61. Howard Sachar,A History of Israel from the Rise of Zionism to Our Time (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1975), p. 230. [BACK]
62. Walter Clay Lowdermilk,Palestine, Land of Promise (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1944), p. 90. [BACK]
63. Sachar,op. cit., p. 230. [BACK]
64. “Woods and Forest Ordinance,”Laws of Palestine, October 1920 (sec. 14), p. 96. The ordinance was amended in 1926, but the above activities still were allowed only after receiving a permit. [BACK]
65. Laws of Palestine, vol. 1, p. 710, amended in the Palestine Gazette, no. 600, January 22, 1937, p. 1. [BACK]
66. “Review of the Agricultural Situation in Palestine,” p. 54, as quoted in Weitz,op. cit., p. 44. [BACK]
67. Weitz,op. cit., pp. 44–45. [BACK]
68. Nili Lipshitz and Gideon Biger, “Afforestation Policy of the British Government in Land of Israel,”Ofakim B'Giographiah 40–41 (1994): 5–16. [BACK]
69. Nili Lipshitz and Gideon Biger,The Rise and Fall of the Jerusalem Pine as the Primary Tree in the Land of Israel (Jerusalem: Jewish National Fund, 1994), pp. 13–14. [BACK]
70. For instance, in March 2000, local activists prevented the conversion of the Shaked Forest, an old British forest reserve, into a military base that was to be moved as part of the peace agreement. [BACK]
71. A. Y. Goor,Forest Reservations in Palestine December 31, 1946, ISA A403/F/26/12/4, sheet 1, as quoted in Cohen,op. cit., p. 53. [BACK]
72. Government of Palestine,Annual Report for the Year 1947, Department of Forestry, as cited in Lipshitz and Biger,The Rise and Fall of the Jerusalem Pine, pp. 13–14. [BACK]
73. Department of Forests,Report of the Period 1936 – 39, ISA AF/41/39, p. 11, as quoted in Cohen,op. cit., p. 57. [BACK]
74. Gideon Biger and Nili Lipshitz, “Protected Trees and Flowers in the Mandate's Land of Israel,”Ariel, A Journal of Israeli Geography (April 1994): 242–246. [BACK]
75. Heinrich Mendelssohn, personal interview,Tel Aviv University,August 27, 1997. [BACK]
76. Paz,op. cit., p. 22. [BACK]
77. Iris Milner, “The Rabbit's Foot,”Ha-Aretz, August 22, 1998. [BACK]
78. Heinrich Mendelssohn, personal interview,Tel Aviv University,August 27, 1997. [BACK]
79. Ibid. [BACK]
80. Laurence Oliphant,Life in Modern Palestine (Edinburgh: Blackwood and Sons, 1887). [BACK]
81. David Gilmour,Dispossessed: The Ordeal of the Palestinians, 1917–1980 (London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1980), p. 33. [BACK]
82. Evelyn Abel, “Righting the Record,”JNF Illustrated, Spring 1994, pp. 30–33. [BACK]
83. Baruch Kimmerling and Joel Migdal,Palestinians: The Making of a People (New York: Free Press, 1993), p. 23. [BACK]
84. Ibid., p. 31. [BACK]
85. “Although much slower than the tractor, the horse-pulled plow does not cause the stirring up and erosion of the shallow hilly soil in the rocky and sloped land of today's West Bank.” Said Assaf, “Overview of Some Traditional Agricultural Practices Used by Palestinians in the Protection of the Environment,”Our Shared Environment—The Conference 1994, ed. Robin Twite and Robin Menczel (Jerusalem: Israel-Palestine Center for Research and Information, 1995), pp. 12–13. [BACK]
86. Palestine: Report on Immigration, Land Settlement and Development (London: HMSO, 1930). [BACK]
87. Adolf Reitenberg, translated by Cyril Leonard Whittles,The Soils of Palestine (London: T. Murby, 1947), p. 161. [BACK]
88. Kimmerling and Migdal,op. cit., p. 33. [BACK]
89. Reitenberg,op. cit., p. 158. [BACK]
90. ISA 672/AG/38/1/2, November 10, 1941, as quoted in Kimmerling and Migdal,op. cit., p. 52. [BACK]
91. Ibid. [BACK]
92. Ibid., p. 52. [BACK]
93. Kimmerling and Migdal,op. cit., p. 28. [BACK]
94. Lowdermilk, op. cit., p. 152. [BACK]
95. Gilmour,op. cit., p. 45. [BACK]
96. Ibid. [BACK]
97. Tom Segev,1949, The First Israelis (New York: Free Press, 1986), p. 78. [BACK]
98. Reitenberg,op. cit., p. 157. [BACK]
99. Kimmerling and Migdal,op. cit., p. 117. [BACK]
100. Report of the Royal Commission (London: HMSO, 1937), p. 127. [BACK]
101. Yoram Yom-Tov and Heinrich Mendelssohn, “Altered Landscapes,” Eretz Magazine, November 1985, p. 55. [BACK]
102. Josef Tamir, personal communication, June 3, 1998. [BACK]
103. Kimmerling and Migdal,op. cit., p. 329. [BACK]
104. Reitenberg,op. cit., p. 166. [BACK]
105. Kimmerling and Migdal,op. cit., p. 329. [BACK]
106. Reitenberg,op. cit., pp. 162–163. [BACK]
107. Kimmerling and Migdal,op. cit., p. 329. [BACK]
108. Reitenberg,op. cit., p. 164, Table 87. [BACK]
109. Abraham Mercado, “The Coastal Aquifer in Israel: Some Quality Aspects of Groundwater Management,” in Water Quality Management under Conditions of Scarcity: Israel as a Case Study, ed. Hillel Shuval (New York: Academic Press, 1980), p. 99. [BACK]
110. Interview with Ra'anan Weitz, Jerusalem, January 12, 1998. [BACK]
111. Ibid. [BACK]
112. Efraim Talmi and Menahem Talmi, “Yizhak Elazari-Volcani,”Lexicon of Zionism (Tel Aviv: Maariv Library, 1982), p. 21. [BACK]
113. Interview with Ra'anan Weitz, Jerusalem, January 12, 1998. [BACK]
114. Lowdermilk,op. cit., p. 90. [BACK]
115. Simcha Blass,op. cit., p. 136. [BACK]
116. Richard Laster,The Legal Framework for the Prevention and Control of Water Pollution in Israel (Jerusalem: Ministry of the Interior, 1976), p. 26. [BACK]
117. Paz,op. cit., pp. 21–22. [BACK]
118. Lowdermilk,op. cit., p. 219. [BACK]
119. Ibid., p. 6. [BACK]
120. “A Man Who Cared for the Earth,”The Jerusalem Post, July 5, 1976. [BACK]
121. Assaf,op. cit. [BACK]
122. Interview with Gideon Biger, Tel Aviv, April 29, 1998. [BACK]
123. Paz,op. cit., pp. 94–95. [BACK]
124. Tamar Keinan, Director of Information Systems, Israel Water Commission, personal communication, March 5, 1998. [BACK]
125. Ackerman,op. cit., p. 49. [BACK]
126. “The Year in Palestine,”Eretz Israel (New York: Jewish National Fund, 1932), p. 93. [BACK]
127. Sachar,op. cit., p. 190. [BACK]
128. Josef Tamir, personal communication, June 3, 1998. [BACK]
129. Sachar,op. cit., p. 190. [BACK]
130. “The Year in Palestine,” p. 101. [BACK]
131. Lowdermilk,op. cit., p. 3. [BACK]
132. Ackerman,op. cit., p. 58. [BACK]
133. Marlowe,op. cit., p. 109. [BACK]
134. Aaron Baroway, “Palestine's Mineral Wealth,” in Eretz Israel (New York: Jewish National Fund, 1932), p. 93. [BACK]
135. Sachar,op. cit., p. 190. [BACK]
136. EcoPeace,Dead Sea Challenges: Final Report (Jerusalem: EcoPeace, 1996), p. 7. [BACK]
137. Alon Tal, “Methyl Bromide and the Ozone Hole,”Eichut ha-Sviva, 1994. [BACK]
138. Meir Shalev,Primarily about Love (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1995), p. 31. [BACK]
139. Numbers 13:32. [BACK]
140. World Health Organization, web site, www.who.ch/programmes/ ctd/diseases/mala/maladis.htm, 1997. [BACK]
141. Ibid. [BACK]
142. T. Talitranick, “Malaria and Stages of Its Eradication in Our Land,” Public Health (1963): p. 356. [BACK]
143. H. Joffe, “Campagne antipaludéenne en Galilee, 1914,”p. 2, as quoted in T. Talitranick,op. cit. [BACK]
144. Talitranick,op. cit. [BACK]
145. I. Klinger,Epidemiology and Control of Malaria in Palestine (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1930). [BACK]
146. Talitranick,op. cit., p. 362. [BACK]
147. Meir Dizengoff,On Tel Aviv and Its Life Styles (Tel Aviv: Yediot Iriyat, 1934), pp. 3–4. [BACK]
148. Ibid. pp. 3–6. [BACK]
149. Dror Avisar, personal communication, March 5, 1998. [BACK]
150. Tom Segev,The Seventh Million:The Israelis and the Holocaust (New York: Hill and Wang, 1993). [BACK]
151. Josef Tamir,Haver Knesset (Jerusalem: Ahiabar, 1987). [BACK]
152. David Heller and Azariah Alon, “Nature Researchers of the Land of Israel,” in The Plants and Animals of the Land of Israel, ed. Azariah Alon (Tel Aviv: Ministry of Defense Press, 1990), pp. 55–63. [BACK]
153. Ofer Regev,Forty Years of Blossoming (Tel Aviv: Society for Protection of Nature in Israel, 1993), pp. 8–9. [BACK]
154. As quoted in Paz,op. cit., p. 41. [BACK]
155. Heller and Alon,op. cit., pp. 60–61. [BACK]
156. A. Brotzkos, “The Possibilities and Functions of National Planning,” Ha-Binyan (1938). [BACK]
157. Regev,op. cit., pp. 9–10. [BACK]
158. Heinrich Mendelssohn, personal interview, Tel Aviv University, August 27, 1997. [BACK]
159. Hillel Shuval, “Israel's Impending Water Crisis,”Selected Papers on the Environment in Israel, no. 9 (Jerusalem: Israel Ministry of the Interior, 1982), p. 47. [BACK]
160. Interview with Gideon Biger, Tel Aviv, April 29, 1998. [BACK]
161. Benny Morris,The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987). [BACK]
162. The United Nations estimated the number of refugees in 1949 to be between 716,000 and 726,000, but Palestinians claim the number was higher. See George Kossaifi, “Demographic Characteristics of the Arab Palestinian People,”The Sociology of the Palestinians, ed. Khalil Nakhleh and Elia Zureik, (London: Croom Helm, 1980), pp. 18–26. [BACK]
163. Storrs,op. cit., chapter 15. [BACK]
164. Lowdermilk,op. cit., p. 174. [BACK]
165. Lipshitz and Biger,Rise and Fall, p. 15. [BACK]
166. “Israel 2020, A National Master Plan for the Year Two Thousand,” Biosphera 24 (1994): 6. [BACK]
167. Avner De-Shalit and Moti Talias, “Green or Blue and White? Environmental Controversies in Israel,”Environmental Politics 3 (1994): 278–280. [BACK]
168. EcoPeace,op. cit., p. 4. [BACK]
169. Interview with Gideon Biger, Tel Aviv, April 29, 1998. [BACK]
170. For example, Yizhak Bar-Yosef, “The Military Industries Are Polluting the Water in Ramat ha-Sharon,”Yediot Ahronot, March 3, 1998. [BACK]
171. The National Parks, Nature Reserves, Memorial Sites, and National Sites Law, 1992,Sefer ha-Hokim, 1397 (sec. 23), p. 230. [BACK]