Last year, when the Trump administration was still trying to entice the Palestinians into peace talks with Israel through cooperation rather than coercion, it encouraged the two sides to team up on small-scale infrastructure projects as a way to rebuild trust while improving conditions in the here-and-now.<\/p>\n
Deep in the Negev Desert, a group of Israeli and Palestinian civilians did just that. They hammered out creative ways to bring solar power, sewage treatment and clean water to the impoverished Gaza Strip, where the lights are out more than they are on, the aquifers are befouled, and raw sewage has been pouring into the Mediterranean \u2014 sometimes overwhelming a nearby Israeli desalination plant with pollution.<\/p>\n
Their plans were aimed at creating jobs, improving public health and, above all, sustaining hope in a place where that is in short supply. But in the time it took them to see to the nuts and bolts \u2014 business plans, site selection, Israeli military approvals, and the hiring of engineers and workers in Gaza \u2014 the political context changed radically.<\/p>\n
The Trump administration recognized Jerusalem as Israel\u2019s capital. Angry Palestinians began regularly denouncing the White House, and the administration\u2019s approach to them became no-carrot, all-stick.<\/p>\n
A series of punitive American diplomatic moves followed, including cuts of hundreds of millions of dollars in aid. Among the casualties: $10 million in start-up grants that the Israeli-Palestinian partnership had been counting on for its package of small-bore Gaza initiatives.<\/p>\n
Clashes between Israel and Gaza, in months of protests and in repeated rounds of rocket attacks and airstrikes like the ones earlier this week, only added to the obstacles.<\/p>\n
Now, an on-again, off-again cease-fire is once more being embraced by both Israel and Hamas, the militant group that controls Gaza. And the people behind the small-scale energy and environmental initiatives are trying to find an alternative source of seed capital and hoping that the latest brush with war this week will persuade nations that could supply the money to act quickly.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are ready, and our proposals are ready. What is needed is donations,\u201d said Ashraf al-Ajrami, a former Palestinian minister of prisoner affairs who is a key partner in the Gaza projects.<\/p>\n
In a sense, the timing couldn\u2019t be worse.<\/p>\n
The violence that began with a botched intelligence operation and gunfight in Khan Younis and wound up with hundreds of rockets raining down on Israeli cities led on Wednesday to the resignation of Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman, whose aides had indicated their willingness to let the Gaza projects proceed. And early elections in Israel, in which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s handling of Gaza is expected to be a central issue, would put any progress on hold.<\/p>\n
Still, the diplomats, academics and eco-entrepreneurs who met this week at the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies, based at the tiny kibbutz Ketura in the Negev desert, said they wanted their projects to be shovel-ready whenever the time is ripe.<\/p>\n
To be sure, proposals for Gaza infrastructure projects are commonplace: In February, Israel called on international donors to fund a billion-dollar rebuilding plan, including big-ticket items like two desalination plants, a natural gas pipeline and a new electrical transmission line into Gaza from Israel.<\/p>\n
But major projects can take years to complete, leaving Gaza\u2019s ills to fester.<\/p>\n
Moreover, Israel and international donors, loath to do business with Hamas, have insisted that the more moderate Palestinian Authority, which governs the West Bank, oversee any projects. But between the Palestinian Authority\u2019s feud with Hamas, and the Trump administration\u2019s feud with the authority, the result has been a Catch-22. And nothing is getting done.<\/p>\n
What sets the Arava group\u2019s projects apart, officials say, is that they could get underway immediately, with projects up and running in a few months and with most financed in large part by private investment.<\/p>\n
Another risk of ambitious infrastructure projects is that, once completed, they become tempting targets for Israeli airstrikes in wartime. So the Arava group\u2019s strategy is to stay small and spread out.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n