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Israel's influential role in the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification since the agreement's inception is explored. Several factors can explain the country's successful diplomatic interaction. A combination of: low international interest and competition for expertise about the issue; Israel's unique, achievements in combatting desertification as part of its agricultural and forestry activities; and Professor Uriel Safriel's extraordinary stature in the field—contribute to its exceptional involvement. The case constitutes a “proof of concept” for Israel's potential to be effectively engaged in other UN programs. This will require greater government commitment and contribution to international initiatives, along with a willingness to authorize experts and academics to represent the country in additional global frameworks.

Israels historic demographic policies are no longer sustainable and the country must actively change direction, according to award-winning Israeli environmental activist and Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) Professor Alon Tal in his new book, The Land is FullAddressing Overpopulation in Israel. In a recent Op-Ed in The New York Times, Tal explained that \"It is Israels high fertility rate 50 percent higher than most other Western countriesthat puts it on an unsustainable course. This didnt happen naturally; it is the result of decades of government programs that encouraged large families. As the country fills up, Israel needs a change of direction, with economic strategies to empower women of all communities in its diverse society.\"

Israel, a developed nation, may be hitless hard by climate change. About 60% of the country is desert, bringing its own challenges. The Mediterranean Sea helped avert a water crisis in Israel. Engineers built several plants just like this one, which now produces most of the water that Israelis use at home and drink. Desalination of sea water now provides 70% of Israel's domestic consumption, and it's relatively cheap. The problem is it's a technology that hasn't been adopted in other parts of the Middle East, leaving scientists worried much of the region is unprepared for the coming climate change storm.

The coordinators staffing headquarters were doing what they've been doing throughout the campaign - recruiting, organizing and sending out the party's volunteers to hand out campaign materials. Staff and volunteers were busy recruiting other volunteers for Election Day, e-mailing their friends to vote for the party, or contacting everyone they knew on Facebook and urging them to come out and vote \"Heh\" (the party's election symbol). \"When people receive a card from our volunteers on the street, they get more than a flyer, they get that there's a sense of purpose,\" he said. \"We don't have hired teenagers handing out pamphlets, just our volunteers.\" \"[Modi]'in is like a village and I am going to be outside the polling booth talking to people, doing an 'I want to be your congressman,'\" he said as he walked to the back room to start another round of phone calls.

The ceremony will take place on September 16 in Caesarea, in the presence of President Shimon Peres and Environmental Protection Minister Gideon Ezra. A member of the Mitrani Department of Desert Ecology of BGU's Jacob Blaustein Institutes of Desert Research in Sde Boker, [Alon Tal] is the founder of the Israel Union for Environmental Defense (Adam, Teva v'Din) and of the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies. His primary research focus is on water management and policy, with an emphasis on joint Israeli-Palestinian environmental projects. This spring he coauthored and signed a model for an agreement on environmental cooperation with Dr. Mohammad Said Al-Hmaida from Bir Zeit University. The agreement covers all aspects of the shared environmental issues, including environmental impact statements, hazardous materials, air quality, nature preservation and solid waste, and has been submitted to the Environmental Protection Ministry and the Palestinian negotiating team on the environment. Tal is currently completing a new book titled, WaterWisdom - Cooperative and Sustainable Water Management in the Middle East, coauthored with Dr. Alfred Abed-Rabbo from Bethlehem University, which looks at final-status possibilities for resolving the water conflicts with the Palestinians.

[Tal Alon] was the son of Ralph and Linda Alon (formerly Oakfield), who made aliya from Leicester, UK, in 1975. Aged 23 at his death, Tal was born and raised in Mei Ami, a former moshav shitufi of some 60 families that is currently undergoing privatization and expanding as second-generation members build new homes. \"On the day of the disaster I was helping my daughter Danit and her husband Yuval move some things into the old house they're renovating on the moshav,\" sighed Ralph Alon, having risen from the shiva period. A popular teenager, Tal attended the Democratic school in Hadera. \"There he became a mensch,\" his father recounted. \"He overcame his learning difficulties and succeeded in his studies, as well as making some wonderful friends. He loved the school; and when he was in the army, he'd go there in his uniform to chat with the kids before coming home. Tal joined the Nahal fighting unit, unlike some of his school friends who didn't serve in the army.\" Tal met his girlfriend, [Liat], from Givatayim on Rosh Hashana, when a group of Israelis made dinner together in their guesthouse. \"She joined him and [Billy] as traveling companions. Gradually a stronger friendship developed between Tal and Liat, and they became closer. She returned for studies in September [2005], and Tal continued with Billy to Thailand,\" recounted the father.

Dr. Alon Tal, from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev's Blaustein Institute for Desert Studies, was awarded the prestigious Charles Bronfman Prize last week in recognition of his work to advance the environmental movement in Israel and the Jewish world.

The Jerusalem Post, which last week revealed the legal forum's controversial efforts to lobby for the \"safety net\" of land at Nitzanim, between Ashdod and Ashkelon, has been told that neither the government nor Sela, the government- established Disengagement Authority, considers this a viable option for the thousands of settlers who would need new homes after the summer's planned evacuation. \"Nitzanim is not a viable option,\" said Sela spokesman Haim Altman. \"It would take five years to get the new communities started, and where would they [the evicted settlers] live until then? I don't think they are ready to move into mobile homes stuck on dunes.\" National Union MK Zvi Hendel, one of the most outspoken opponents of the disengagement plan and the only Knesset member who lives in the Gaza Strip, confirmed to the Post last week that he backed the effort by the legal forum, which he helped initiate, to secure the Nitzanim land for the relocation of Gush Katif settlements \"if we lose this struggle, to ensure that we stay a community.\"

[Alon Tal]'S WELL-WRITTEN account contains many anecdotes and portraits of the key players in Israel's environmental history. He begins with the 1997 tragedy at the Maccabiah Games, when a bridge over the Yarkon River collapsed, plunging a number of athletes into the water. Four of them died and a number became ill because the river was seriously polluted. Water and air pollution are problems throughout the country, but there have been a few successes in cleaning up the environment. The impact of such organizations as the Jewish National Fund and the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel are carefully and fairly examined. Tal attributes some of the environmental problems to the early Zionist ideals of aggressive development. Zionism also stressed immigration, and Tal boldly raises the question of overpopulation with its impact on the environment. He points out that the continued growth encouraged by subsidizing immigration and large families ensures that \"today's levels of suffocation will be remembered as the good old days.\"

Showing us the park at the start of a tour of environmental \"hot spots\" in Tel Aviv - \"a microcosm of trends throughout the country\" - is American-born environmentalist Dr. Alon Tal, 45. There's hardly a better source on the subject, as Tal has been at the forefront of Israel's perennially dissatisfied green movement for the past 15 years (see box). Frankly, therefore, we're expecting to hear an unbroken litany of gripes against the powers that be, national and local, for failing to fix the damage done by a national mindset so long fixed on rapid development that it has often allowed the environment to be victimized. But Tal, who himself now has one foot planted in the \"establishment\" as a member of the executive board of the Jewish National Fund (JNF) - which is mandated to strike the proper balance between sustainable development and protection of the environment - chooses to accentuate the positive. All the years of toiling to raise public and government consciousness about the imperative of improving the quality of Israel's air and water, while preserving open spaces in its heartland, are paying off. Tal is convinced that Israelis still don't appreciate the toll that air pollution takes on their lives. A recent study done by the independent Israel Union for Environmental Defense (IUED), the Ministry of Environment and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, for example, showed that in 2003 - when 200 Israelis died as the result of acts of terrorism and 500 perished in traffic accidents - 1,100 citizens died of pollution-related diseases in the 35-mile coastal corridor from Tel Aviv down to Ashdod alone. \"Clearly we must start addressing pollution with the same level of urgency and commitment as we do these other life-threatening issues,\" Tal concludes. But creative approaches adopted by other Western cities - from car-pooling incentives and park-and-ride shuttles to levying congestion fees on vehicles entering downtown zones - have yet to be seriously considered. Tal took leave to complete a doctorate in environmental sciences at Harvard and, upon returning to Israel in 1989, founded the Israel Union for Environment Defense (IUED), an NGO that has spearheaded the legal struggle on green issues. In 1996, as a member of Kibbutz Ketura north of Eilat, he set up the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies, which is affiliated with Ben-Gurion University. Today, Tal lives with his wife and three daughters in the town of Modi'in, halfway between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, and is on the faculty of BGU, specializing in research on desert ecology. In January, in recognition of his endeavors, he was awarded the $100,000 Charles Bronfman Prize, with which he intends to create a foundation to support organizations promoting the green cause in Israel.