AN ORGANIZATIONAL OVERHAUL
Aware of past ossification, as director, Gidalizon sought to change the per-sonnel strategy of promotion from within and was inclined to seek new blood. In 1998 he began employing staffers with environmental, planning, and even legal backgrounds. Emily Silverman became director of the increasingly activist Tel Aviv branch of the SPNI. She was an example of the organization's new professionals, hired because of her experience as a consultant to grass-roots activists. Under the new management philoso-phy, she downplays past tensions created by centralized control:[104]
Today, if a branch thinks an issue is a priority, it enjoys autonomy. For example, the Jerusalem branch wants to focus on the Jerusalem Forest. The Nature Protection Department sees the Judean hills as a bigger priority, because there's more to protect there. So present thinking says: “Fine, go ahead and do it yourself.” The problem is when there is a disagreement between the headquarters and the local branch over the issue itself.[105]
This was the case in the mid-1990s, when SPNI national leadership de-cided to support Minister of the Environment Yossi Sarid's decision to ex-pand Beer Sheva's sanitary waste facility at Dudaim. The trash from the central Tel Aviv region was to be carted to the southern site. Other loca-tions proposed were deemed worse for a variety of reasons, from issues of transportation and hydrology to national heritage. In contrast, local SPNI branch activists were furious at their leadership for not backing the protests against the decision of the Ministry of the Environment to turn Beer Sheva into a national garbage dump.
The clash of interests may lead to positive results, however. During the 1990s local activists in Jerusalem influenced the headquarters' strategy to prevent development in the Arazim Valley, which lies at the city's western entrance. They argued that the issue needed to be framed in the context of
The real challenge has always been getting the branches excited about any environmental issue. During the past twenty-five years, twenty-two branches have cropped up across the country.[107] The larger ones eventu-ally came to embrace activism. For instance, the Haifa branch was a lead-ing player in coalitions that began fighting for improved air quality dur-ing the late 1980s and, more recently, for coastal preservation. The indomitable Tzipi Ron for years ran a militant Jerusalem branch that curbed development, saving historic sites such as the house that once hosted Theodor Herzl.
Most SPNI branches, however, were begun as independent initiatives by locals with their own agenda. Run by volunteers, often retired, they have their own way of doing things. Hiking, not rabble-rousing, is what they enjoy.
By the end of the 1990s, Director Eitan Gidalizon became a strong ad-vocate for more aggressive activism within the organization. During a four-year period of large budget cuts, he increased funding for the ac-tivist Nature Preservation Department threefold: from 630,000 to two million shekels.[108] A hard core of several hundred SPNI members was formed to serve as “organizational shock troops” in the field. It was this cohort who could be called upon to demonstrate on short notice. For in-stance, in the 1998 campaign to pass a bottle bill in the Parliament, dozens of them sent hundreds of empty beverage containers in the mail to key Knesset members to make sure that the issue was not forgotten.[109]
During that year, a new SPNI initiative to foster student activism on campus gained momentum. Eran Benyamini, an ebullient Tel Aviv University undergraduate, had little time to study as he established “Green Course” chapters on every campus in the country; these became increasingly independent of their SPNI patrons.
This new stage reflected the realization that action would not come from the field schools, which had increasingly become commercial entities. In its promotional literature, the SPNI describes them as outposts for con-servation work. In fact, field-school involvement and initiation of cam-paigns became increasingly arbitrary and inconsequential. The change also reflects the makeup of field-school personnel: Despite high turnover, the women soldiers continue to be exceptionally gifted guides and teachers.[110]
When the Israel State Comptroller's 1997 report reviewing field schools lambasted the Ministry of Education for offering the SPNI preferential treatment in receiving government contracts, it did not suggest that the Ministry was buying an inferior product.[111] Still, the report revealed a sagging interest among the Israeli public in the “field school package.”[112] The report offered several reasons for the drop. Most important was competition from newer and often less expensive travel companies and kibbutzim, many of whom, ironically, hire former SPNI guides. As a result, many field schools could not cover their expenses.[113]
In response, management scrambled to cut costs and make the field-school operation more efficient. Ultimately it was Director Eitan Gidalizon who made the tough decisions (and took the resulting political heat) for consolidating the field schools and culling the educational staff. The more fundamental question, however, received less attention: The field-school network plays a major role in distracting the organization from its original and officially highest mission—nature protection. As an objective observer, Israel's comptroller called field schools the organiza-tion's central activity.[114]
With the SPNI's agenda still largely one of conservation, other envi-ronmental organizations sprang up, in particular during the 1990s. Wary of competition, SPNI staff were not always thrilled with the new kids in town. During the second half of the 1990s, however, partly owing to the collegial orientation of Leshem and Gidalizon, the SPNI came to embrace publicly the pluralism that emerged among Israel's environmental groups. Naomi Tsur, a convivial British immigrant, a far cry from the stereotypical “Sabra with a backpack” SPNI activist, created a new model for the organization's chapters. Tsur galvanized a motley collection of local groups into a powerful coalition, working together as “Sustainable Jerusalem.”
Even if today it personifies Israel's green establishment, the SPNI experi-ence remains a highly relevant adventure for many Israelis. Membership lev-els, one indicator, remain remarkably high. In the mid-1990s, when numbers dropped 20 percent below 1986 levels, the SPNI responded by offering a basic membership for 20 NIS (six dollars). It allowed for basic affiliation without corresponding services. The move seems to have returned membership to previous levels, which sits steady at thirty-four thousand families.[115] Ultimately membership has more political than economic significance.
Despite an increase in support from international Jewish foundations, money remains a perennial problem at the SPNI. It is, of course, much easier to smugly criticize an organization's source of support than it is to find alternative funding for it. And given the expectations of the increas-ing numbers of those hoping to build careers at the SPNI, as well as the growing costs in areas ranging from field-school maintenance to sound systems at demonstrations, new moneymaking schemes need to be hatched. One of the early innovations involved the Society's serving as an agency for international travel. This arrangement was reasonably prof-itable and offered a bonus to the SPNI guides who led the trips. Some of the old guard, predictably, could not reconcile themselves to the organi-zation's transformation into something like a business.[117]
International travel packages were just the tip of the iceberg, however, and people questioned what seemed to be a growing commercialization. During the early 1990s it seemed that SPNI sponsorship was available to almost anyone, for a price. Some deals were decidedly ill-advised:
The cellular Pelephone and later Cellcom companies enjoyed the Society's endorsement despite growing concern about the technol-ogy's possible association with brain cancer and growing public dis-comfort with the proliferation of relay antennas.
During Passover vacation in 1993 the trails of the Galilee were lit-tered with bottled-water containers that bore the SPNI logo.
Recently, with much fanfare, the Electric Company cosponsored bird conservation initiatives with the SPNI, although people con-cerned about air quality have historically considered Israel's Electric Company to be environmental enemy number one.
Distasteful “greenwash” perhaps, but these efforts may be critical for reducing SPNI dependence on government funding, which hovers around 30 percent of the overall budget.
When the issue of government funding arises, Director Eitan Gidalizon invariably would tell about his meeting with then Minister of Finance, Avraham “Beige” Shochat. In 1993 the Supreme Court upheld a ruling that required the organization to pay four million dollars to Johnny Cohen, a young American tourist who had become paralyzed in 1981 through negligence on the part of an SPNI guide during a hike.[118] It was a very harsh verdict. Bank credit to make the huge payments was available only if the government of Israel would cosign the loans.
The portly Shochat greeted the SPNI delegates at his home in Arad, clad in undershirt and shorts. On his table were a series of full-page color advertisements that the SPNI had sponsored, lambasting the Trans-Israel Highway, one of the Rabin government's flagship infrastructure projects. “Don't you think it's a little cheeky,” chastened the Minister, “coming to us for help when you're printing this sort of stuff?” Gidalizon calmly told him that one issue had nothing to do with the other and proceeded with the presentation.[119]
The dependence of the SPNI on governmental funding may not affect organizational priorities and positions, but it does make the Society vul-nerable to changes in government proclivities. When Netanyahu's new Likud administration, led by Minister of Education Yitzhak Levi, cut back on SPNI funding and school visits to field schools during the late 1990s, the organization was financially devastated, and hundreds of employees had to be released.
It is not uncommon, or necessarily unhealthy, for organizations to resolve cognitive dissonance by coming to favor what began as a neces-sity. Financial interactions (and personal friendships) during the 1950s cemented close bonds between the SPNI and government managers. Today an “insider's” orientation is a central component of SPNI strategy to influence planning decisions. This reached a peak during Yossi Sarid's tenure as Minister of the Environment in the mid-1990s. Mickey Lipshitz, the SPNI's Director of Nature Protection Department, took a job as deputy director at the Ministry of the Environment. At the same time, Chairman Yoav Sagi headed the government's River Reclamation Committee and was drafted to serve as the environmental consultant on the peace-negotiating team with Jordan.
Since its inception, the SPNI has faced a continuous onslaught of challenges surrounding preservation issues. Like the scrambling hero in an arcade video game, no sooner does the organization fend off one mon-ster than it is beset by three more. It is difficult to identify the specific ramifications of a given effort. Sometimes the ripple effect of a given campaign clearly runs beyond the specific resource in question. For example, starting in 1978, a ten-year fight to reduce the landscape dam-age caused by the Karmiel-Tefen road did far more than just prevent an unsightly scar along the karstic hillsides of the southern Galilee.[120] It also revolutionized the environmental sensitivities of Maatz, Israel's highway construction agency.[121] An in-depth look at three of the leading SPNI campaigns in the past decade reflects the organization's capabilities