Can the Environment be a Peacemaking and State-building Tool?

Avner Vengosh and Erika Weinthal View Solving the Water Crisis in Gaza as a Potential Step Toward Collaboration

by Tim Lucas

It was the eve of the 2006 Palestinian elections, and Avner Vengosh could barely hear himself think.

Vengosh, an associate professor of earth and ocean sciences at the Nicholas School, was conferring with a longtime friend and research colleague at Al Quds University in Abu Dis, a bustling East Jerusalem suburb in the West Bank.

Sequestered in his colleague’s office in the heart of Al Quds’ sprawling campus, the 47-year-old geochemist was trying to discuss the implications of recent findings about the chemical and isotopic compositions of water contaminants in the region.

Since 1998, Vengosh has spearheaded initiatives to bring Palestinian and Israeli scientists together to find solutions to the persistent water-quality problems and water allocation disputes that plague both nations. His studious, easy-going air belies his stubborn commitment to use “good, impartial science” as a tool to help provide access to safe water for all the region’s inhabitants and to bridge cultural and political divides.

His interest in using his environmental expertise as a peacemaking tool began during the turbulent early 1980s.

“As a student at Hebrew University in Jerusalem during the war in Lebanon, I became active in the ‘Peace Now’ movement within Israel,” he explains. After receiving his PhD in the geochemistry of water resources from Australian National University, he realized his scholarship on water issues was something he “could contribute to the peace process,” a way to give voice to his belief in doing science for the public good.

But on this late January day on the Al Quds campus in Abu Dis, the politics of the volatile region were threatening to drown him out.

“From outside the campus, we could hear loudspeakers blaring Hamas election propaganda,” he recalls. “It was a strange scene. The university was partly empty, as most of the students already had gone home to prepare for the election. And there we sat, my Palestinian colleague and I, trying to discuss water science over the sound of Hamas loudspeakers in the background.”

Hamas is a fundamentalist Islamic political organization opposed to the existence of the state of Israel and to Middle East peace. It has claimed responsibility for many suicide bombings in Israel.

Disrupted but not derailed, Vengosh and his colleague pressed on with their meeting.

“Long ago, we made an agreement that though we were very aware of the politics, we wouldn’t let them affect our science,” Vengosh says. Besides, he adds, most of the pre-election polls predicted Hamas would fall short of winning a plurality of legislative seats in the next day’s elections.

It wasn’t until two days later, after his return flight from Tel Aviv touched down in New York that Vengosh learned Hamas had won 76 of the 132 contested seats.

He was surprised, and, at first, concerned. With Hamas in power, he knew continued cooperation between Palestinians and Israelis on environmental issues would be unlikely, at least in the short term.

But a perverse ray of hope also dawned on him. “In the long run, the two sides will have no choice” but to cooperate with each other, he knew. “The water crisis in the region will force them to.”

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