Compiled by Carmi Wisemon, Renee Halpert, and Dror Mizrachi

Tens of activists from the city of Beit Shemesh and the Mateh Yehuda region kicked off the Green Now pre election campaign at a meeting in the Ramat Beit Shemesh Alef Matnas to learn how to effectively place environmental issues on the agenda of all of the mayoral candidates in the coming elections in Beit Shemesh and in Mateh Yehuda.

This local Green Now pre-election campaign is part of a national effort initiated  by the "Life and Environment " organization, the umbrella group of all of the environmental organizations in Israel , to bring environmental issues to the forefront of our mayoral candidates  and is being organized in our area by Sviva Israel- a national educational environmental organization based in Beit Shemesh and Shemesh Yehuda - an environmental forum of volunteers which was established within a community-building process initiated by Partnership 2000 of the Jewish Agency.

In this first Green Now meeting, leading experts in the environmental field spoke about how to actively lobby mayoral candidates to become more committed to protecting public health and quality of life. Naor Yerushalmi, Executive Director of Life and the Environment, described the growth of the environmental movement in Israel. It is interesting to note that the ministry of the environment in Israel was founded in 1989 while the environmental movement in Israel has been active since the 1950's and already had an umbrella organization in 1974. 

Adv. Keren Halperin Mosari presented valuable information concerning the legal rights of citizens who wish to advocate for environmental quality-of-life issues. Gilad Heiman, a nationally acknowledged media advisor, shared advice on running effective media campaigns to promote quality of life issues both nationally and regionally.

During the latter part of the meeting, members of the group brought up many of the environmental and quality of life issues which the residents of Beit Shemesh and Mateh Yehuda are facing. Participants decided to focus on promoting the following four issues in the context of the upcoming Beit Shemesh elections:

(1) The high level of air pollution in the area, which the group believes is causing many cases of respiratory diseases and cancer amongst area residents. Specifically, The group is advocating that a city wide health survey be carried out in order to determine how severely air pollution is affecting public health, and what steps need to be taken to minimize these dangers.

(2) The natural open spaces surrounding Beit Shemesh are quickly disappearing and becoming building developments. The roads in town have  become increasingly congested and the population density has risen significantly. Group members see no infrastructure to meet the living requirements of both the pre-existing and new residents, and are seeking a freeze on further building in the area.
(3) Group members view the state of city parks, streets and shopping centers as alarming. They argue that parks and promenades, that were originally built with funding from the Ministry of Housing, have had insufficient maintenance work done for them and have consequently deteriorated. They advocate that clean neighborhoods, shopping centers and parks are a basic quality-of-life requirement.
(4) To enable implementation of these initiatives, the group advocates that the budget allocated for environmental projects in the city be increased significantly.

Members of the Green Now campaign plan to present these issues to all of the mayoral candidates, and to encourage them to incorporate environmentally-sensitive goals and policies within their political platform.

The views expressed in this article are the writers sole responsibility and do not necessarily represent the views of Partnership 2000 or the Jewish Agency for Israel.