The Wolf Pack

I’m back and recuperating after a brief hospitalisation with a new lease on life. I spent a few days in the Herzliya Medical Centre for the purpose of repairing a malfunctioning aortic heart valve. The procedure employed is referred to as TAVI-Transcatheter Aortic Valve implantation. This ingenious method implants a made-to-measure valve guided through one of the femoral arteries to its exact location. The hour and a half procedure was carried out by a team led by Dr. Rafi Wolff and Professor Amit Segev, two of the leading cardiologists specialising in the TAVI procedure.

At this juncture I want to mention Ein Harod’s local doctor Dr. Dganit Wolfe. Her surname was acquired through marriage. That being so, and despite the different spelling, the coincidence is interesting. Maybe not, because there are dozens of general practitioners and specialists in Israel named Wolf, Wolff and Wolfe.

Dganit referred me to a general cardiologist who in turn arranged for me to speak with Dr Rafi Wolff, just a few weeks before the TAVI.

During the brief stay at the Herzliya Medical Centre it occurred to me that there was another Dr. Wolff that neither Dganit nor Rafi had heard of. Namely, Dr. Wilhelm Wolff, better known later as Nathan Wolff. I’ve mentioned him before in a different context, so the repetition is sufferable.

I hasten to add that wolves are often perceived as vicious predators.

All the Drs. Wolf, Wolff and Wolfe I know and I know of, are very positive, pleasant people. Just the same, the title I selected for this piece- “The wolf pack” was chosen in order to group them together.

Now back to the narrative:

Wilhelm Wolff was the son of middleclass German Jewish parents who volunteered to serve in the German army during WW1. He was a first-year medical student when he was sent to the western front in Belgium where he was wounded and released from further service. After recuperating he volunteered again and was sent to the eastern front and then to Palestine. He was stationed at the German air force base adjacent to the Turkish railway line and closer still to the Merhavia cooperative. * Today when we drive to Afula, we pass the site where Wilhelm Wolff was stationed. It was here that he discovered his Jewish roots through association with the young pioneers. He wrote home to his parents asking them to send him more films for his camera so that he could document his new friends.

In his letters home, he raved about the "new true and wonderful Jews" he met.  

He didn’t stay long at Merhavia. Allenby’s forces had crossed Sinai and had advanced northward fighting battles at Gaza, Nablus, Jenin and Megiddo before taking the air force base. The German personnel made a hasty retreat and headed north on a gruelling   200km march. When they finally reached Turkish held territory, they were interned because the fickle Turks had changed sides.

After the war Wilhelm Wolff completed his medical studies, married and with his wife Dr. Malka Leshem settled in Palestine.

Later he went to Germany for post graduate studies, but returned to Palestine in 1933.

Wilhelm Wolff, (Nathan Wolff) together with other doctors, including his wife Malka, were actively involved in setting up a nationwide blood bank for Magen David Adom (MDA). The problem of preserving blood and plasma was solved innovatively. They used small steralised glass bottles from a British ketchup company and an Israeli vegetable oil company.

After Malka died Wolff spent the last years of his life at Kibbutz Cabri where his daughter Margalit Rossolio lived with her family. Dr. Nathan Wolff died in 1978 and was buried in the kibbutz cemetery.

I want make a sharp change to another topic that has far-reaching consequences for both Israel and its neighbours.

It’s an excerpt from a report published by The Washington Institute for near East Studies.

 

Ministers from Israel, Jordan, and the United Arab Emirates met to sign a landmark energy-for-water deal in Dubai today. Under the terms of the agreement, a solar power plant will be built in Jordan to provide electricity for an Israeli desalination plant, which will in turn send water to Jordan

The agreement will help address Jordan’s pressing need for water while sending more electricity to Israel in a manner consistent with regional climate change concerns. Full details about the project are not yet available, though published reports do raise practical questions. Beyond the practical, however, the deal can facilitate important diplomatic goals and serve as a model for integrating the first generation of Arab peacemakers—Jordan and Egypt—with countries that have joined the Abraham Accords.

Although security relations between Jordan and Israel grew strong following their 1994 peace treaty, relations in the civilian sphere—whether government to government or people to people—remained cold. Economic relations resulted in some bilateral deals, such as the agreement under which Jordan buys Israeli natural gas from the Leviathan offshore field. Yet such deals have typically faced significant political opposition in the kingdom.

Currently, relations are recovering well from their low point under former prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu. Yet even at their best during the 1990s, they remained limited. As a result, the peace treaty has failed to address many common challenges such as climate change, water shortages, and electricity demands. This “cold peace” dynamic is similar to the pattern established after Egypt and Israel signed a peace treaty.

By contrast, when the UAE spearheaded the Abraham Accords last year, it seemed to usher in a new approach to Arab-Israel peace agreements. Unencumbered by the history of direct conflict that constrained Jordan and Egypt’s ties with Israel, civilian relations between the UAE and Israel have made great progress in a short period of time, building on their existing record of discreet ties. In 2009, for example, the UAE won the role of hosting the new International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) on condition that it allowed member-state Israel to establish a representative office in the Emirates—this despite the fact that the two countries had not yet formally recognise each other. Today, they have signed agreements in the commercial, tourism, medical, cultural, and other fields.

When last year’s UAE-Israel peace initiative first came to light, it directly affected an issue of broad regional concern: namely, heading off Israeli plans to annex parts of the West Bank. Afterward, however, their bilateral initiatives focused largely on bilateral issues. Despite bringing a few other parties into the Abraham Accords, UAE-Israel normalisation did not have much impact on Israel’s relations with its immediate Arab neighbours. The new deal with Jordan may represent a step toward changing that pattern.

In recent years, climate change and a large Syrian refugee population have worsened Jordan’s chronic water shortages. This year alone, six of the country’s fourteen dam reservoirs have dried up as rainfall dropped to 60 percent of its annual average. Israel transfers 50 million cubic metres of water to the kingdom each year pursuant to their peace treaty, and occasionally sells additional amounts as needed (e.g., an extra 50 million cubic metres this year).

The new solar-for-water announcement comes at a time when several other energy-related initiatives are underway in the Middle East. On November 11, Syria signed an agreement with Emirati companies to build a solar power station near Damascus. In October, Jordan agreed to provide electricity to Lebanon via Syria. Similarly, Egypt announced in September that it would provide natural gas to Lebanon via Jordan and Syria. These arrangements have more political, economic, and technical complications than the Israel-Jordan-UAE deal and will be more difficult to implement.

According to an unofficial report cited by an Israeli news outlet the deal calls for the Jordanian solar farm to be operational by 2026 and produce 2 percent of Israel’s energy by 2030, suggesting a capacity of 460 megawatts.

Admittedly, that’s not much, but it’s a start and could be increased later.

Israel will apparently pay $180 million per year, to be divided between Jordan and the UAE. It is unclear what Israel will be paid for building the extra desalination plant and sending more water to Jordan. No details are available regarding supply routes for the electricity or water, but in all likelihood, they will be fully integrated into Israel’s existing grids.

The new deal furthers two U.S. foreign policy objectives: addressing climate change and strengthening the Abraham Accords. Although the agreement was driven by the parties concerned, U.S. officials played an important role in facilitating its conclusion.

Once implemented, the deal could bolster Jordan’s stability by addressing its severe water shortage and providing help to the cash-strapped government. Israel, the UAE, and the United States all see the kingdom as an ally and are invested in its stability.

The deal also demonstrates additional ways to build on the Abraham Accords. So far, most of the diplomatic activity surrounding the accords has focused on adding new countries or deepening bilateral relations between Israel and its new partners. These efforts should be continued, but the solar/water deal shows how the accords can simultaneously deepen Israel’s relations with the first generation of Arab peacemakers.

With the trilateral deal, the UAE will not only provide all-important financial resources, but also help create a context in which Jordan-Israel relations can proceed in a less-charged political environment. Criticism of Israel is common in the Jordanian media, but commentators tend to be more cautious when discussing a friendly Arab country such as the UAE, arguably Amman’s closest Gulf ally. Abu Dhabi’s role may have a similar effect on the Israeli domestic scene. Although Israel has traditionally been keener than Jordan to develop bilateral civilian ties, signs of politicization have emerged there as well. For example, Netanyahu recently criticized the current government’s decision to sell more water to Amman. Framing the bilateral relationship within the Abraham Accords—which are immensely popular in Israel—can blunt some of that politicization.

Depending on its final details, the new trilateral agreement may highlight how Arab parties to the Abraham Accords can facilitate numerous areas of cooperation in Israeli-Jordanian (and Israeli-Egyptian) relations. Amman, Cairo, and Jerusalem seem ready for such progress, and the Abraham Accords countries are poised to assist in this regard. This dynamic also creates an opportunity for U.S. diplomacy to advance a more cooperative Middle East.

 

Take care

 

Beni,                                                                           21^st of November, 2021.

 

 

*Footnote: The Merhavia Cooperative that Wilhelm (Nathan) Wolff mentioned in his letters home was a one-of-a-kind cooperative farm. It was founded in 1911 by Jewish immigrants to Ottoman Palestine using a plan for agricultural cooperation written by Dr. Franz Oppenheimer. The project eventually failed and Merhavia became a moshav in 1922.