THE RIVER JORDAN'S LAST ROAR
The campaign to stop construction of a hydroelectric station on the Jordan River is an unhappy example of an SPNI campaign that made its move too late. Most of the river has been so diverted and tapped by agricultural de-velopment projects as to make it unrecognizable in comparison with its former state. Yet in the northern Galilee, a fourteen-kilometer segment north of Kinneret Lake remained intact. Its steep gradient created the only formidable white-water rapids in the country.[150] For years this area lay below hostile Syrian snipers in the Golan Heights. After 1967 it was con-sidered too wild for most hikers and was physically inaccessible. At the end of the 1980s, however, small, entrepreneurial rafting businesses caught on. As word got out, Israelis began to taste the excitement and the raw beauty of the untamed river.
Kibbutz Kfar ha-Nasi lies a kilometer away from this river segment, which became known in Hebrew as the “mountainous Jordan.” The kibbutz was also aware of the river's potential as an electricity generator. It devel-oped a plan to divert a third of the river's water into a reservoir that sat fifty-four meters above sea level. Taking advantage of a thirty-four-meter drop, the water would be channeled through pipes to turbines. The facility would actually only generate about fifteen megawatts, one twentieth of
Kfar ha-Nasi representatives first approached the Nature Reserves Authority about the project in 1985. Tentative agreement was given after the kibbutz promised to spruce up the area around the reservoir, for tourists. After three meetings in January 1988, and agreement of the Water Commissioner, the National Planning Council changed two conflicting national Master Plans, paving the way for approval by the Regional Commission.
An environmental impact statement, prepared by Technion Professor Yorik Avnimelech, did not foresee major ecological damage to the river but expressed concerns about safety. After adding two pages of revisions based on the suggestions of the environmental impact statement, the Regional Planning Committee submitted the program for public com-ments and objections.
The SPNI and the newly formed Ministry of the Environment both filed formal legal objections. The SPNI argued that the change in the water level would damage the biological systems along the river. In dry years the kibbutz would find a way to pump more than the plan allowed, leading to irreversible damage downstream. The issue of the Kinneret's water qual-ity was also raised. Moreover, the landscape itself within two kilometers of the plant would be forever changed, and not for the better. Alongside the ecological complaints were broader issues. The kibbutz, a private corpora-tion, would benefit, whereas the public would lose yet another piece of its natural heritage.[152] And there was the underlying ethical question arising from the fact that this was the last untouched stretch of the Jordan.[153]
But the Regional Planning Committee was not sympathetic. In February 1990 it rejected the SPNI's concerns as unfounded, ruling that rather than damaging the Jordan River, the development would constitute an enormous improvement for hikers and tourists over existing condi-tions.[154] The proposal was sent to Jerusalem for the signature of the Minister of the Interior. After additional modifications, the approved plan was published on December 6, 1990.
Three months later, the bulldozers began the groundwork for the hydro-electric plant.[155] It was only then that environmentalists woke up. In its initial campaign, the SPNI brought twenty thousand people to the site, reportedly the largest rally of any kind in Israel that year.[156] It made no dent, however, in public complacency, and for most Israelis the Jordan River
The environmentalists, mostly radicalized former SPNI activists such as Danny Rabinowitz, were arrested and taken to jail in Rosh Pina. The early morning move was timed to allow television cameras to bring the sympathetic videotapes back to Jerusalem to be featured as the top story on the evening news. The coverage was dramatic and the entire country seemed to share the protesters' indignation.[157]
Officially the SPNI distanced itself from the lawbreakers. Although it opposed the facility, the organization maintained its law-abiding image. The organization had been divided over the appropriate tactics, and it reached a compromise: No top-level SPNI personnel would take part in the demon-stration, but the Society would help organize it and provide publicity.[158]
No one anticipated the reverberations of the protest. The Jordan River controversy became a permanent feature of the evening news, complete with a logo and daily update. Politicians from all sides got involved. The Knesset's Interior and Environment Committee took a field trip to the site, where it called the project a national disgrace. Avram Burg, a Labor politi-cian and later Speaker of the Knesset, went so far as to propose a law that would supersede the planning commissions' approval and cancel the project by fiat. An SPNI petition drive reflected the public's mood. From street cor-ners to book fairs around the country, Israelis called for cancellation.
In contrast to the Voice of America campaign, where litigation was es-sential, in the case of the Jordan River campaign it would prove detrimen-tal. The SPNI and other environmental groups had chosen not to file legal actions, primarily because the chances of winning seemed extremely re-mote. The kibbutz had gone strictly by the book.
But suddenly, the Council for Quality Government jumped into the fray. The Council usually serves as a watchdog for good government, filing high-profile suits against corruption and political excesses. It had never been involved in environmental issues before and never would be again. Yoav Sagi beseeched the Council's well-known attorney, Aviad Shraga, not to file the petition, telling him, “If you lose on procedural grounds, people won't understand. When the Supreme Court doesn't stop a project, [people] just assume that it's fine.”[159] But his protestations went unheeded.
The suit was more ideological than legal, except for a dubious procedural argument claiming that preliminary decisions were made before the impact
Once the court became involved, the issue became sub judice, and the press backed off. Politicians, with their keen sense of the spotlight, also lost interest. Why be accused of circumventing the court? And the public's at-tention span, already stretched beyond its normal capacity, dissipated. The ruling came less than three weeks after the court began deliberations, but that was enough. The Jordan River reverted to its previous “nonissue” sta-tus. By the winter of 1992 the station was in full operation, and the SPNI's symbolic protests, staged at the formal dedication in May, only highlighted the failure of the campaign.[161]
The bitterness of an unnecessary loss does not quickly go away, and there have been many retrospective evaluations of what went wrong in the Jordan River campaign. All point to the early “complicity” of the Nature Reserves Authority with developers as a major hurdle in the early stages. But in other campaigns that did not stop the SPNI's more princi-pled position from prevailing. Uri Marinov, Director General of the Ministry of the Environment, argued that once the plant was formally approved, the entire campaign was ill advised. In a 1992 Tel Aviv sympo-sium dedicated to evaluating the Jordan experience, he reproached the SPNI for launching an unwinnable battle that served to publicize environmental vulnerability and weaken the movement as a whole. Developers should never have been given the impression that they could so easily ignore environmental concerns.
Political scientist Avner De-Shalit sees a connection between the outcome and the philosophical basis of the SPNI's campaign. Unable to hang the deci-sion on a public-health issue, it never clearly enunciated an anthropocentric position that framed the problem in human terms.[162] To be sure, these dam-ages were presented from the perspective of people, but De-Shalit doesn't be-lieve the message got through. Danny Rabinowitz views the loss as part of a sluggish strategy and an overall lack of tactical innovation that deprived the issue of the passion it deserved: “If Azariah Alon had begun a hunger strike in front of the Knesset, they never would have built the power station.”[163]
None of these views is wholly satisfactory. For example, in the past, the SPNI never really needed human health damages to win campaigns. Fear about the impact of “lost battles” on Green deterrence is a formula for paralysis, reflecting a governmental rather than a nongovernmental per-spective. Planning commissions are often rigged against ecological inter-ests. If the SPNI accepted unfavorable rulings as final and called off the
The greatest irony in comparing these two campaigns of the early 1990s is that, in many ways, once it got rolling, the Jordan River campaign was more successful than that of the Voice of America. The rallies were bigger, the press coverage was more dramatic, and the swelling of public support and involvement of politicians were certainly more extensive.
The great “what if” of the case involves the ill-considered extraneous lawsuit: Would the outcome have been different if the political campaign had run its course? In short, one could argue that in this case the SPNI was simply unlucky. But when a campaign begins after the bulldozers have al-ready removed most of the vegetation at the project site, there is no mar-gin of error for bad luck.