A SAFE PLACE FOR NATURE
When the NRA was created, Amotz Zahavi perceived it as an implement-ing body, with the SPNI providing direction and overall ideology. Because they were already filling government enforcement and inspection func-tions, it seemed natural for SPNI workers to continue working in this ca-pacity. So Zahavi proposed a hybrid unit to be called “Shachal,” an acronym for Society/Authority Cooperation.
The experiment lasted a year. Once he took over, Yoffe's approach quickly became, “The Society is all well and good, but I'm in charge here.”[72] Many workers, with a foot in both worlds, found the experience particularly wrenching.[73] From the Society's perspective it was always clear that Shachal was a transitional stage. Although the new and under-staffed agency needed the reinforcements, Zahavi told his SPNI recruits, “The second they feel strong, they'll throw us out.” It was hard for Zahavi to imagine that it would happen so quickly. The split presented the SPNI with an identity crisis. Until then they had had a clear hands-on activist mission to go into the field and protect nature. Suddenly the organization had created a competitor that had more resources and au-thority and could therefore do the job more effectively. The story of the child who outgrows the father may be common but still involves painful transition.
In retrospect, though, environmentalists have few regrets that Yoffe ran the Authority “his way.” The Authority's immediate task was to get as much land under its protection as possible. Without Yoffe's unique
The law requires a tedious process of consultation prior to an area's ac-tual declaration as a protected reserve: The Minister of the Interior can make a declaration only after consulting with the Minister of Agriculture (today the Minister of the Environment). He must receive feedback from all affected local authorities and, in the event that the reserve might affect a holy or ancient site, the Ministers of Religion and Education. The site has to be approved in all relevant zoning schemes, requiring the cooperation of the slow-moving local planning committees. The law also holds that if a reserve is proposed on a site that has significance for national security or that might potentially be used for military training, the Minister of the Interior must comply with any directives from the Minister of Defense.[74]
The bureaucratic hurdles were deliberately designed to ensure a balance of interests, and they successfully clipped the Authority's wings. Despite the enthusiasm and momentum after the unanimous Knesset vote, during the Authority's first year, only three sites were declared nature reserves.[75] Yoffe, after taking over, not only increased the number of sites but their size as well. For example, in the largest undisturbed area of the north, Mt. Meron, the Alexandron Committee recommended three separate reserves that collectively did not exceed twenty-four thousand dunams.[76] On December 9, 1965, Yoffe pushed through Ariyeh Sharon's integrated ninety-six-thousand-dunam reserve and then began work on expanding it.[77] To this day, the Meron Reserve is the jewel in the NRA crown. By the end of his tenure, close to one hundred reserves had been declared.[78]
Strategically Yoffe was faced with a dilemma. On the one hand, he could create as broad a network as possible, meaning that most nature reserves would be small, capturing pockets of particular natural and scenic value. Alternatively he could concentrate on the larger re-serves.[79] A decade before the so-called “SLOSS” debate raged among American conservation biologists over the ecological advantages of a “single large” reserve (SL) versus “several small” reserves (SS), Yoffe faced one of the seminal questions of nature preservation. Typically, he decided to reject what he perceived as a “false dilemma” and pursue both routes simultaneously. In doing so, he knowingly subjected his staff and its successors to the painstaking bargaining and minutiae that accompanied the declaration of each reserve. It also meant spreading thin his modest staff of rangers. At the same time, however, he would preserve a much richer variety of resources. The results can be seen in some basic statistics: Of existing and planned reserves in Israel, 63 per-cent are less than one square kilometer in size and 25 percent are between
While Yoffe took the lead at the national level, the local political wheel-ing and dealing behind the declarations were not trivial. Most of the lands were located in rural areas, so it was important to gain the support of the surrounding communities. Dan Perry, an SPNI recruit, had been a general secretary and business manager of a kibbutz. Yoffe assumed that he could relate to farmers and sent him out to make peace with these communities. Perry describes the climate of the 1960s and early 1970s:
In general the country was very naïve in those days, and the agricultural settlements saw nature preservation as something positive. Every kibbutz had some members who were known as enthusiasts, and they were natural allies. The country was less greedy during this period; there was a willingness to sacrifice for the public good.[81]
Not all communities were completely altruistic, however, and deals had to be cut. For instance, Kibbutz Dan gave up land, in return for which it re-ceived a promise to allow development near the Tel Dan reserves. Other kibbutzim got grazing rights.[82] The SPNI was critical of some of the con-cessions, but without the agreement of the local planning commissions, controlled by representatives of the same kibbutzim, declarations could be stalled indefinitely.
While he could bank on the goodwill and public support that the SPNI had built up over the years, it was Yoffe's personal connections that were of paramount importance. This was particularly so in the NRA's many dealings with the military. Nervous underlings would often caution Yoffe that he was being too ambitious and that his grandiose proposals would backfire. Anticipating the competing bureaucracies' tendency to nibble away at his initial request, however, his typical reply was, “If you've got mice in the pantry, you have to start with a very big cake.”[83] Usually his maximalist strategy proved right.[84] In one crucial area, however, he may have miscalculated.
Yoffe haggled over the creation of reserves only in the northern half of Israel. Regarding the southern Negev region, he backed a broader vision, proposed by Azariah Alon, that turned the usual presumption on its head: The entire Negev would be declared a reserve, and any settlement there would require the permission of the Authority.[85] Here Yoffe encountered opposition. Haim Kuberski, the powerful Director General at the Ministry of the Interior, generally sympathetic to environmental interests, felt that it was too much. Nothing came of the plan. In a sense,Yoffe went for broke