Planning for environmentally sound transport in Israel and
Palestine faces major uncertainties and challenges. As income
levels and expectations rise, will planners be• able to learn
from - rather than replicate - the past transport mistakes of other
parts of the world? Can Arab communities in Israel overcome their
relative lack of resources to cater for their population's special
needs and circumstances through forward-looking planning, or will
their struggle for equality be an attempt to join the general
Israeli rush toward mass motorization and car-dependent
lifestyles?1 How will global transport trends and patterns play out
in the region's unique spatial and demographic circumstances? What
kind of physical configuration, political constraints, and
population are Palestinian transport planners to plan for? Will the
region continue to approximate an island in transport terms, or
will the borders open so that it once again serves as a land-bridge
between continents? Can such regional expansion of transport
systems be done in environmentally sound ways?
Israeli Transport at a Crossroads
Israel itself is currently at a transportation crossroads. Over the
last decade or so, the country has been embracing the kind of
mass-motorization trends that other advanced countries are,
belatedly, coming to regret and attempting to reverse.2 The number
of vehicles on the country's roads is growing at 6-7 percent a
year, while use of public transport (primarily diesel bus) is
rapidly declining, with eroding prospects of rail taking up a
substantial portion of this decline in the short and medium range.
Land use is increasingly catering to and generating car-dependent
lifestyles, in which travel to work, shopping, and recreation
involve large amounts of private car travel. An increasing portion
of transport is based on environmentally inefficient modes; all
these trends fly in the face of the aspirations of the emerging
generation of sustainable transport planning. This aims to reduce
the total amount of travel required for satisfying lifestyles, to
ensure that as much of this travel as possible is conducted on more
environmentally efficient modes (rather than private cars), and to
make sure that all modes are as environmentally efficient as
possible.
This lack of policy vision is particularly worrying in a small,
hyper-dense country like Israel, where even today's relatively low
motorization rates (cars per thousand people) translate into
exceptionally high motorization impacts (cars per square
kilometer). Israel's "lag" in motorization is a golden opportunity
to leapfrog over outmoded technologies, a gift rapidly being
squandered.
Because car-based and sustainable transport solutions compete with
one another for funds, passengers, and land-use patterns, the
investments made over the next five years will shape Israel's
transport future for a generation or more. The country can little
afford a "realism" that throws up its hands in the face of
motorization trends; these trends are anachronistic and
unsustainable, and international experience has shown that they can
be slowed and reversed with imaginative and bold policies and
planning.3
Arab Communities within Israel: Aiming for More Than Just a Fair
Share
Arab communities within Israel have different motorization and
land-use patterns, less access to resources and planning
facilities, and different travel needs, so that their transport
future deserves separate discussion.4 Currently, the number of cars
per 1,000 people in the Arab communities is 35 percent that of
Israel as a whole (due in part to larger-than-average family
sizes), though the rate of motorization is growing twice as
fast.
The 1948 emptying or near emptying of the larger Arab towns now
within the Green Line truncated the upper end of the
settlement-size spectrum, with remaining populations living
primarily in villages. These were characterized by low-density
single- or double-story homes on relatively large plots, and low
levels of mobility between villages, except for the men who
traveled for employment rather than working their land. Many of
these villages are still usually connected to the outside world
with a single large road (often bisecting the village). Smaller,
winding streets feed into this with little hierarchical ordering of
size. Residential quarters and markets are historically designed
for pedestrian and animal traffic, not motor vehicles.
Today, the increasing number of cars moving and parking is
incompatible with these villages and with traditionally styled
urban areas. As vehicle use rises, congestion becomes a major
problem, and with pedestrians ill¬separated from traffic,
accident rates are high. Widening and straightening these roads
invariably infringes heavily on property, leading to conflict, and
in some cases destroys the character of a town's historic
core.
Adequate public transport has been hampered by the lack of access
to national resources and by a transport system oriented toward
Jewish needs. Buses are often limited to a service leaving the
village to a Jewish population center in the morning, and returning
after work (a pattern particularly restrictive for Arab women). In
many cases, a single bus line will pass through many villages,
making travel slow. There is little radial connection between
villages, and buses are often old models that have been phased out
of the fleets that serve Jewish cities.
Not only has there been a legacy of proportional under-investment
in Arab communities, but it is doubtful whether a sufficient
portion of Israel's planned transport investments over the coming
years is designed to serve the special needs of the one-fifth of
the country's population that is Arab. In response to this, some
planners emphasize greater investment in the road system in order
to relieve the growing transportation stresses in Arab villages:
constructing a hierarchical system of straight, wide roads
according to national standards, multiple road entries into
villages, and ring roads around them.5 "The solution for the
transportation problems in these settlements," claims one of the
few overviews of the topic, "demands a correct planning, similar to
that which is done for Israel's large cities."6
No doubt in some cases there is a need for new roads to serve new
centers arising from a much-needed investment in Arab economic
growth, and to divert traffic that is ruining town centers. But
should catching up and leveling standards of road capacity be the
primary emphasis? The challenge is not simply to attain a fair
share of the development pie, but to use this share for a transport
system that is forward-looking and suited to inhabitants' needs,
not just mimicking of prevailing trends.
Thus, portions of some Arab villages retain the kind of pedestrian
livability that contemporary transportation planners are struggling
to achieve, and these will be threatened by mass motorization
trends. Israel's car-dependent suburbs are hardly a model for
emulation. Can Arab villages and towns take advantage of their
"lag" in motorization levels to build more sustainable transport
planning? The priorities would seem to be the following: town
planning that lessens the need for travel (retaining and
strengthening mixed-use zoning and opportunities for local work
while removing hazardous economic activities away from residential
and commercial areas); accommodating and encouraging pedestrian and
bicycle access for daily needs, especially in town centers; and -
while the potential is still very high - building a solid public
transport system responsive to the Arab community's travel
needs.
An Immediate Issue: Planning for the Trans-Israel
Highway
The proposed Trans-Israel Highway, Israel's largest-ever transport
infrastructure investment, to run the length of the country from
the border with Lebanon to south of Beersheba, has been much
debated because of its environmental implications for Israel. There
are those who argue that the massive uncertainty as to the road's
cost, value, land-use and environmental impacts, and its
questionable priority with respect to other urgently needed
transport investment, all demand that the project be frozen pending
the comprehensive analysis that was never done?
But if the road goes ahead despite its flaws in conception and
evaluation, it will raise additional questions for the Arab
communities along the road's right-of-way on both sides of the
Green Line, and for the relation of Jews and Arabs within Israel.
While land for the road will be appropriated from both Jewish and
non-Jewish settlements alike, the consequences for Arab villages
may be particularly severe as they have suffered a series of
expropriations over decades, and have less access to other land and
to non¬agricultural forms of income. Similarly, as has been
the case in the past, Jewish kibbutzim and moshavim may be in a
better position to plan around and utilize the road's consequences
to their benefit, through the construction of shopping and business
areas alongside.8 And beyond the Green Line, the implications of
the road - a massive magnet for future development - are still
unclear, as is the extent to which the project is being
incorporated into Palestinian Authority planning (See Figure
1)
Transport for Palestine: Planning in the Face of Uncertainty and
Occupation
The transport planning realm within the occupied territories is
hampered by massive political constraints, uncertainty, and lack of
resources. Severe management of Palestinian mobility, coupled with
the preservation of freedom of movement for Israelis within the
territories, is a cornerstone of the occupation.
Planners must work with uncertainty regarding critical questions:
will the transport-related components of the peace accords (safe
passage between the West Bank and Gaza, a port, an airport) be
implemented fully? Will Palestinians have control over their
ability to travel between the currently fragmented pieces of their
own country, and will they be able to travel into Israel? Will a
dual infrastructure designed for occupation continue? (Currently,
extensive new high-quality roads allow settlers to live in the
territories without encountering Palestinian residents, who
themselves rely primarily on an old, inconvenient and
poorly-maintained road system.)
They must also provide guidance for some hard choices. Without a
sustainable emphasis, it is likely that transport improvements will
focus on improving the extent and quality of the road system
(accommodating and encouraging private use) and on autonomy-giving
port and airports, at the expense of less obvious and longer-term
measures. The former is the principal emphasis in the few existing
planning documents, which predict that political independence will
bring a drastic rise in income levels, car ownership and use, and
volumes of traffic. Measures of equal or greater importance - such
as public and non-motorized transport, and the design of
pedestrian-friendly city centers and mixed-use neighborhoods that
reduce the demand for travel- receive far less attention.
One can imagine a scenario of continued high population growth
rates, increased incomes and social stratification, and the easing
of Israeli restrictions on building and travel, together
contributing in short order to a wave of unregulated and
car-dependent sprawl that will precede and soon preempt more
sustainable alternatives. Such planning issues would challenge any
society, so with scarce resources, high uncertainty, and massive
external constraints, Palestinian transport planners have their
work cut out for them.
Yet, precisely because it is starting late, this fledgling state
can avoid building yesterday's transport solutions into its future.
In doing so, it will reduce the long-term liabilities of mass
motorization, which have become clear over recent decades. Lessened
car dependency would reduce travel¬related health costs, slow
the destruction of open areas and communities through
road-building, free up salaries for investment rather than car
purchase and maintenance, and avoid building into the economy a
constant drain of foreign currency for the purchase of cars and
fuel. An increasing number of experts from around the world show
that progress and motorization need not be equated.
To the extent that this fledgling state can avoid building its
future using yesterday's transport solutions, it will reduce its
travel-related health costs, slow the destruction of open areas and
communities through road-building, free up salaries for investment
rather than buying and maintaining cars, and avoid building into
the economy a constant drain of foreign currency for the purchase
of cars and fuel. An increasing number of examples from around the
world show that progress and motorization need not be
equated.
In Gaza, these issues are especially pointed. With astonishing
population densities, any rise in motorization rates will make life
there even more hellish, especially since these vehicles are, and
will most likely continue to be largely older and more polluting,
acquired second-hand from Israel. Gaza, being flat, with reasonable
weather, low incomes in the foreseeable future, and very high
densities, is an ideal site for non-motorized and public transport.
Unless demand for sustainable transport arises from within Gaza,
and is recognized as cutting edge and compatible with raised
standards of
living (it is in Tokyo and Amsterdam that one finds high
percentages of trips to work on bicycle), any talk of animal - and
human - powered transport may be rejected as an attempt to preserve
"backwardness."
Roads to Peace?
While such talk may seem premature now, the transportation
consequences of future peace and the opening of borders must be
thought about with sustainability in mind. At this point, the
imagination of forward-looking politicians falls too readily to
circum-Mediterranean highways, and "peace roads" linking the
regional capitals.9 When Ehud Barak held the position of foreign
minister, Israel's current prime-ministerial candidate defended his
party's negotiations with Syria by painting a picture of "full
normalization," in which "tourists can travel from Israel to ...
Turkey and to Europe in their own cars," while a popular
progressive columnist ended his plea for peace with Syria saying,
"What more do we need in order to be convinced that peace is a good
deal? To give every Israeli a free lifetime supply of gas for trips
via Damascus?"
Some of the grander regional road projects initially proposed will,
no doubt, evaporate as soon as more careful feasibility studies are
done. They are based, in part, on an image of Israel as "the
cross-roads of the Middle East," destined to become a regional
transport hub. This image may be a largely mythical holdover from
the past. Before motorized transport, when trade was far less
global than today, foot and animal traffic relied on the land route
through Israel with its unambiguous terrain and frequent water
stops.10 Today, however, the volume of trade between Arab countries
is relatively small (only 2 percent of Egypt's imports are from
other Arab countries, for example), and they have developed a
transport network quite capable of handling traffic between them,
despite the post-1948 closure of the traditional route through
Israel. Even the connection between Africa (Egypt and to some
degree Libya) and Arab countries to the east is now made via the
Sinai-Aqaba ferry. If anything, the "desert route" of Jordan is
more likely to become the regional transport avenue.
Thus the motivations for sweeping "peace roads" proposals may be
located not so much in real transportation demand as in
international donor enthusiasm for projects that link the region's
countries - especially Israel with its Arab neighbors.11 This lack
of real demand, combined with the stalled peace process, means that
the massive proposed regional network of peace roads is not an
imminent danger.
Environmentalists must raise questions that are still barely heard.
Can we ensure that the pricing of freight haulage reflects the full
social and environmental costs of transport, rationalizing
decisions of local production versus import? Can rail (with the
kind of inter-modal container-transfer now being developed) provide
more efficient long-distance haulage than trucks in the long term?
How will emission standards of heavy commercial vehicles, which
will contribute the majority of pollution from cross-border travel,
be coordinated among the region's nations? Can we ensure that
increased mobility is not simply achieving flexibility for
corporations at the expense of people and places?
Given wage disparities between Israel and the surrounding
countries, eased travel could increase firm efficiency, but also
overall travel volumes and labor exploitation. As current processes
in the textile industry indicate, Israeli firms may choose to
relocate labor-intensive portions of their production cycle in
Jordan and Egypt, leaving knowledge and technology intensive
portions in Israel, increasing the overall haulage volumes, the
bulk of which is likely to be road-based.12
Conclusion
In a region so troubled, environmental criteria and careful
planning have often been secondary to more "pressing" agenda. Yet
in different ways, each of the sectors mentioned (Israel, the
emerging Palestine, Arab communities within Israel, and the region
as a whole) will need precisely this kind of long-term systemic
thinking if they are not to waste the moment of opportunity offered
by a still-low motorization levels. Without imagination, each can
declare it impossible to argue with the demand for car travel, and
so scramble to build the infrastructure that will meet and thus
encourage this demand; each can regret not having the luxury to put
long-term livability ahead of more urgent things. With imagination,
on the other hand, policy levers and wise investments might shape,
rather than follow, demand; examples of successful and often
less-costly alternative practices can be emulated from around the
world - including those in places grappling with their own
constraints and emergencies. "Lags" can be turned into gifts:
relatively clean slates from which to build a different kind of
future.
Endnotes
1. Terminology reflects the current political flux and
difficulties. Some of the Arabs who came under Israeli rule in 1948
prefer to call themselves Palestinians, rather than Israeli Arabs,
highlighting their historical and cultural affiliation. Yet, as the
likelihood of a Palestinian state nears, "Palestinian" is likely to
carry national connotations that will stand in tandem with these
cultural/historical ones. For this reason, I retain, for now, the
admittedly problematic usage of "Israeli Arabs" for those within
the Green Line, and Palestinians for those who came under Israeli
rule in 1967.
2. Michael Wegener, "Issues for a European-American Research
Program on the Future of Transport," Journal of Transport Geography
5, no. 1 (1997): 60. John Whitelegg, Transport for a Sustainable
Future: The Case for Europe (New York: Belhaven), 1993.
3. See Elaine Fletcher with Yaakov Garb and Gary Ginsburg,
Transport, Environment, Equity:
Trends, Prospects and Policy. Adva Institute, 1998.
4. This section relies on the "Israeli Arab Sector" in Fletcher and
Garb (1998) and Rassem Khaimaisi, The Development of Transportation
Infrastructure in Arab Localities in Israel (Jerusalem: The
Floersheimer Institute for Policy Studies), 1995.
5. Khaimaisi, ibid.
6. Khaimaisi, p. 6.
7. See Yaakov Garb, The Trans-Israel Highway: Do We Know Enough to
Proceed? Working Paper #5 Oerusalem: Floersheimer Institute for
Policy Studies), April 1997.
8. See Khaimaisi, report to the Ministry of the Interior, and
Floersheimer report, forthcoming.
9. EcoPeace brochure on peace projects; and Shimon Peres, The New
Middle East (New York:
Henry Holt), 1993.
10 Gideon Hashimshoni, "Surface Transport Development Policy for
the State of Israel," report submitted to the Ministry of
Transport, January 1998, p. 88.
IIan Cohn, "Environmental Evaluation of Regional Transportation
Projects: The Case of the Middle East," manuscript, April 19, 1997,
notes iii and iv.
12. For a reflection of the environmental implications of European
Union transport integration, see Chapter 8 in John Whitelegg,
Transport for a Sustainable Future: The Case for Europe. While such
levels of integration lie far in the future for the Middle East,
the patterns described there are suggestive.
Excerpted with permission from an article from World Transport
Policy and Practice (4)1, 1998.