Last bit about Israel

Israel is a very impressive place. The Israelis are miles ahead of their neighbors Egypt and Jordan in terms of industrialization, urbanization, agricultural practice and environmental stewardship. They have lower unemployment rates and higher GDP per capita than both those neighbors. But what is astonishing about the Israeli economy is that all of the success has come since 1948 in spite of a handful of very serious wars and a lack of hydrocarbons and water.  

Today Israel’s ports are busy and so are their highways. The traffic is actually pretty bad around the central Jerusalem because the Old City is in the city center and it is jammed up every day with thousands of tourists. That is why a new Light Rail Transit system is in the offing and when we were there it was just being tested before being put into use in August of this year.

The real amazing story though is how they have beaten the Negev Desert back and made it productive again. I have read that in biblical times the whole Middle East was much greener than it is now, but over the past 2000 years the Negev has been slowly growing in size, a process that is referred to a desertification. Israel has fought this process and it was evident to me that they were reversing the tide. Egypt needs to sit down with the Israelis because the concept of reclaiming an area parallel to the Nile River Valley from the desert is something that the Israelis could probably help with.

 More than once we were told that before 1900 there were no trees in Israel. Now when you drive from Ashdod to Jerusalem or Haifa to Nazareth you can see extensive forests in the hilly areas along those highways. These are areas that cannot be farmed. If an area can be tilled in this tiny country, it will be productive farmland but where it is too hilly trees are planted.  The result of all of this hard work is lush and productive-looking fields against a backdrop of forests on the hills that frame the farms. It beats the hell out of what the Negev desert looks like in Jordan, which we had witnessed with our own eyes just two weeks before.

Here are some final picks from our extensive iPhoto Israel file. 

An example of farmland framed by forests planted in the past century

A town surrounded by hand planted trees

The lush Jordan Valley

The Sea of Galilee and surrounding orchards look
surprisingly like the Okanagan Valley in British Columbia

Could this be near Kelowna?

watered by drip irrigation hoses only at night to lessen evaporation

Beautiful Haifa - looking down the mountain to the next picture

Looking up the mountain to the last picture

Jerusalem's new Light Rail Transit system. You can see it is still being
tested because the bubble wrap is still on the seats.  

These pictures are for you Roland

Old Jerusalem Christian Quarter

I had to throw this in. The Linda got this shot. I have never seen a police car  like it.