Staff Writer

Could global warming help bring peace to the Middle East? Some students and graduates from the Arava Institute of Environmental Studies say that working together to solve environmental problems just might pave the way for Arabs and Israelis to live together in peace.

"With the environment, all lines, divisions and borders are wiped away and you are forced to work [with] the other side," one of those students, Palestinian Dana Rassas, said last week in an interview in Washington, D.C. "The environment doesn't know ... borders."

"The elevated scarcity" of water in the region, accelerated by climate change, "might be a lever for more cooperation," said her fellow student, Israeli Roey Angel. "There is an opportunity, with all the parties facing ... crisis."

Rassas, 27, and Angel, 26, were joined by Jordanian Arava student Suleiman Halasah, 28, in the United States last week, making a presentation on Wednesday of last week at the United Nations' 60th annual DPI/NGO (Department of Public Information/Nongovernmental Organization) conference, which this year dealt with climate change.

"It was not as scary as I thought" it might be speaking at the U.N., Rassas said about the experience.

Invited to the U.N. conference by Hadassah, the students spoke about their research into how climate change is affecting the Jordan River.

Although dropping water levels are due to the lack of any cooperative agreement between the surrounding countries on how to distribute water and its resultant overuse, Angel said, he also blames the effects of global warming for exacerbating the situation. "We're already seeing less precipitation" because of the resultant weather changes, he said.

Angel has been working with professionals from both sides of the conflict on a "watershed" research project, which takes into account all the factors that affect the river ‹ including the various streams that flow into and out of the river from the West Bank, Gaza and elsewhere. Such a "holistic" approach, he said, has never existed in the region.

Angel recently earned a master's degree at Arava, located on Kibbutz Ketura in Israel's Southern Arava Valley near Eilat and the Gulf of Aqaba. The institute brings together young people from various nationalities to study environmental issues from a regional, interdisciplinary perspective while also learning about leadership and peace building.

After the U.N. conference, the crew came to Washington for meetings with environmental groups; a visit to a couple of congressional offices, including that of local Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.), and a meeting with the Jordanian ambassador to the U.S.

The group also talked with State Department officials. Arava has received grants of $150,000 to $400,000 in recent years from the Agency of International Development, and, as part of a coalition of NGOs called the Alliance for Middle East Peace, is hoping to increase that aid in the future.

While the students are learning about the environment at Arava, they are also learning about how to live with each other. "You see the result of working together [and] understand what peace means," said Halasah. "Peace comes as a result of working together."

Halasah, however, said his enrollment in Arava has cost him some friends back in Jordan, who see what he's doing as cooperation with Israel and don't approve. The 28-year-old said what he's doing now is more important. "That kind of friendship, I don't need it," he said.

All of them are planning to go into careers working on environmental research and policy, as most Arava graduates already do. And they all believe that working together on those issues is an important first step to a greater peace.

"We share the same environment, same sun, same water resources," said Halasah. "If we still cannot understand all [that] we share and work together to preserve it, it's a big problem."