Land of milk & honey, flowing springs-and a once pristine desert

What do the words “nature reserve” conjure up in your mind? To most people, the first association is ethereal images of forests, lakes, streams, gamboling fauna and blossoming flora, but there is another kind of nature reserve, one located in the desert, with its own fascinating ecosystem and vast, unbroken vistas.

Our heightened sensitivity to how much damage man has caused by interfering with the earth’s environment makes us extra sensitive to the trampling of the few unspoiled areas where crass utilization of the earth’s treasures for profit is forbidden. It makes us extra furious at those whose often irreversible illegal acts serve commercial or nationalist goals (or a combination of the two) that ignore legally mandated preservation.

That is why this story will shock and appall you – but don’t despair, there is still hope. There may even be a happy end.

More about that later.

First, the story.

The Judean Desert begins east of Beit El and Jerusalem and continues southward, becoming roughly parallel to Gush Etzion on the west and the Dead Sea on the east. It is marked by natural terraces, hills and ravines, and dramatically, is bordered by a steep escarpment – more exactly, a cliff - dropping sharply to the Jordan Valley and then, as it continues farther south, to the Dead Sea, it has wadis flowing west to east and a rain-fed aquifer following the same direction. It is notable that the Bible mentions that David, the shepherd who became King of Israel, fled to the Judean Desert from the wrath of King Saul.

Well into the desert there is a beautiful and unique, internationally recognized nature reserve, a small part of that historic region, filled with expanses of white and yellow sand, rocky escarpments, ululating winds, changing dunes, a fascinating desert ecosystem and a contrasting view of the Dead Sea.

Who is in charge of preserving this priceless reserve? Well, in October 1998, then US President Bill Clinton convinced Israel that a good will gesture in the ongoing peace talks with the Palestinian Authority, created in the 1993 Oslo Accords, would be to hand over another 13% of Area C to the then newly-established Authority. The territory in Judea and Samaria - aka “West Bank”- allotted to Israel in the Oslo Accords is called Area C, as opposed to Areas A and B (A has Arab civil and security control, in B Israel controls security) which make up the Palestinian Authority. That 13% was to become part of Area B, with 3% of it the untouched Judean Desert nature reserve.

This sign of goodwill – as one-sided as the rest of the Accords turned out to be - was sealed in the Wye Memorandum signed in the White House by Benjamin Netanyahu and Yasser Arafat on October 23, 1998. It was approved by the Knesset and went into force ten days later, on November 2nd and it clearly stated that the integrity of the nature reserve was to be preserved. There was to be no construction, no development and no roads in its close to 41,000 acres.

Israel hoped for better times, but the years since the festive signing taught the Jewish nation a bitter and bloody lesson about peace agreements with Palestinian Arabs. Now, Israel is beginning to realize the dimensions of the destruction wreaked not only on people, but on the land – the land those very same Arabs claim they yearn to turn into a Palestinian state.

Incendiary balloons flown from Gaza and arson in Israel turned forests and fields into ashes with nary a thought to ecology and environment. But what about the untouched Judean desert nature reserve in their own Area B? The havoc wreaked there is so very shocking, that after repeated warnings of the PA’s irreversible treaty violations in the reserve, Israel’s cabinet retook sovereignty of the area and reinstated its enforcement authority several weeks ago.

Following the cabinet decision, for which we have MK Simcha Rothman of the Religious Zionism party to thank, the head of IDF Central Command signed orders allowing for Israeli law enforcement in the reserve. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, in his Defense Ministry civil governance role over Judea and Samaria, said that the very least Israel can do is fight to uphold whatever is left of the Oslo Accords.

Why the unusual enforcement decision? A lacuna in the Wye Agreements is the lack of actions to be taken if either of the signers does not adhere to the agreement’s content, so what has been retaken is not the land, but law enforcement.

But why retake it at all, I wondered? A staunch believer in the adage that seeing is believing, soon after the Cabinet decision, I accepted Regavim’s invitation to tour the area with other journalists. Regavim is an NGO dedicated to the protection of Israel's national lands and resources throughout the country. Founded by Bezalel Smotrich before his entering politics, its persistent lobbying is what caused the cabinet to act. And reading the order issued by the new Chief of Central Command (technically the army is in charge as Area C has not yet been annexed) for enforcement, pursuant to the government decision to reinstate enforcement authority, made me curious to see what had caused this unusual step.

The tour began with MK Simcha Rothman addressing our group, saying: “It is not going to be easy to enforce this decision, but I hope the Civil Administration will now act. The entire system needs to be restarted.”

And I soon saw what he meant with my own eyes.

Note: The yellow area is the nature reserve. Once all yellow to symbolize sand, the red dots record the myriad PA violations since 1998. Places not on the map: The Dead Sea is the body of water to the east, Jerusalem is a short drive north of Maale Adumim, Bethlehem is slightly north of Efrata in Gush Etzion. Cliffs dropping to the Dead Sea are in brown.

Here is the most succinct description I can provide:

The nature reserve has been the victim of wanton violation of basic axiomatic conservation principles despite their being specified in a signed agreement. Anyone who cares for this planet would be reduced to tears or turn livid with anger at what the reserve has become.

Newly paved asphalt roads wind along inside the reserve, cutting the area into marked off areas dotted with ongoing construction. In some places, wells have been dug, water lines laid, although no homes or residents are visible, providing evidence of advance official planning.

In other places, piles of materials are at the side of the road. We did not have to wonder long about what they were for. We saw trucks drive into the roads (that were not supposed to be built), leaving enough building materials to build a home. Why? Bedouin and other Arabs simply come in and build themselves a place to live or vacation. Most of the homes are still empty, but it is easy to see a pattern that adds up to a large town or city in the works.

And the money? From the EU, European countries, Japan and the US through USAID. The UN symbol can be seen on some of the sheds. That means these countries and an international union are blatantly transgressing international law to promote Palestine Authority illegal destruction of a nature reserve - and they don’t even bother to hide it.

That is a new low, surpassing the EU funds that helped construct over 90,000 illegal buildings in Israel’s Area C – because it is not only against the law, but against all the “green” conservation principles Europeans claim to uphold. (Where is Greta Thornberg when we need her? Marching against Israel somewhere, I believe.)

The height of chutzpa is a caravan serving as a real estate office with private contractors coordinating additional building with that same European financing.

It is almost as upsetting as the resort vacation complex with a view whose 10 units are nearing completion in the middle of the reserve.

And the most painful of all is to see the large, blackened areas, evidence of burning trash and old electronic devices. Imagine the substances working their way underground to pollute the aquifer and eventually the Dead Sea.

“As a result of the construction, the animals here have limited food and water sources. P.A. residents have started hunting animals here, including deer. There is raw sewage in the streams floating down to the Dead Sea,” said Roi Drucker, Regavim’s field coordinator.

Naomi Linder-Kahn, director of Regavim’s International Division, answered someone’s question wondering if possible lack of room for the growing PA population led to the building. “It is not lack of space,” she said, “because 70% of areas A and B are untouched and available for construction. It is certainly not lack of money that is forcing them to live in the hot and arid desert. The P.A. is one of the largest recipients of foreign aid in the world. EU money would be better spent on building homes where there is an employment infrastructure, not in a barren desert.”

So why? Why is the PA destroying the beautiful unspoiled nature reserve they were handed on a platter made in USA? How did they get away with it until Israel finally took action?

There is more to this than meets the conservationist eye.

Moshe Coblentz, an independent Judean Desert researcher and expert, said the P.A.’s goal, as spelled out in the 2009 Fayyad Plan, “is to connect Bethlehem with the Dead Sea, draw a straight line from Gaza to Lebanon, and from Arad to Jericho (see the map at the beginning of this article as well as a map of all of Israel, and draw the connecting lines, R.S.). The Dead Sea then would become its water route to Jordan, something that should never be allowed to happen.”

That is what the roads, now prevented from reaching their final destination by the Cabinet decision, are for.

“Israelis won’t be able to cross the Judean Desert from Jerusalem or Ma’ale Adumim to the Dead Sea or Jordan Valley if the road construction, now stopped, is allowed to continue. Gush Etzion’s Jewish communities will be cut off from the Dead Sea as well.”

Coblentz suggests Israel build a crucial road to head off the creeping encroachment, going from Ashdod to the Dead Sea through Gush Etzion.

Naomi Linder-Kahn added that the route built through the reserve, if continued down to the Dead Sea area, would also become a route for terrorists to enter Israel as well as for smuggling arms to the Arabs in Judea and Samaria just as the Philadelphi Corridor served Hamas.

Yes, it is very obvious that MK Rothman is on the mark. The Israeli way of looking at the region must recalibrate. As he said emphatically, “anyone who doesn’t understand after Oct. 7 that a quiet village can become a base for terrorism didn’t get the memo.”

And the hoped-for happy end? It can happen.

Israel’s Civil Administration must implement its courageous decision. Linder-Kahn says that Regavim and concerned MKs and citizens are waiting to see how and when that will happen. Construction must be halted immediately, and demolition orders must be issued and carried out on the illegal homes and roads (Perhaps in Area C as well..). Construction equipment must be confiscated if offenders are apprehended in action.

In the Book of Genesis, we read of G-d putting Adam in His world, commanding him to “preserve it” – and that is reason enough for protecting its treasures, but the Palestinian Authority’s drive to create territorial contiguity not only threatens the nature reserve and its ecosystem’s future, it also poses a threat to the people of Israel.

Rochel Sylvetskymade aliya to Israel with her family in 1971, headed the Mathematics Dep't at Ulpenat Horev and was academic coordinator at Touro College Graduate School in Jerusalem. She served as Chairperson of Emunah Israel and CEO of Kfar Hassidim Youth Village. Upon her retirement, Arutz Sheva asked her to be managing editor of the English site, until becoming Senior Consultant and Op-ed and Judaism editor eight years later. She serves on the Boards of Orot Yisrael College and the Knesset Channel and was a member of the Israel Prize Committee.