Occupation and the Environment with Mazin Qumsiyeh

<p>Join SWANA collective members Rana Sharif and David Lloyd in a conversation with Professor Mazin Qumsiyeh, Founding Director of &nbsp;the Palestine Institute for Biodiversity and Sustainability (PIBS) at Bethlehem University. A couple of weeks ago, SWANA Region Radio covered Israel’s recent “deal” with the United Arab Emirates and its actually ongoing project of annexation by way of housing demolitions, settlement and infrastructure expansion. Today we continue our coverage of Occupied Palestine with a wider lens. What has been the impact on historic Palestine of Israel’s occupation and much vaunted “development” of the region on the delicate and fertile ecology of this ancient land? Does Israel’s spurious and well-worn propaganda claim to have “made the desert bloom” actually mask its ongoing destruction of Palestine’s environment, its uprooting of ancient olive groves, or its extensive plantations of pine forests to rapidly cover the ruins of the Palestinian villages it has destroyed? Is its massive water consumption exhausting the limited groundwater available even as it denies Palestinians equitable access to that precious resource? What is the impact of its intensive agricultural projects on the Jordan Valley, the Naqab and elsewhere on both the ecology and the flora and fauna of this fragile environment? How has Palestine been impacted by the process of desertification that affects the larger region, from Syria to Yemen and East Africa?</p> <p>Professor Mazin Qumsiyeh, by training a Zoologist and Geneticist, teaches and researches at Bethlehem and Birzeit Universities. He previously served on the faculties of the University of Tennessee, Duke, and Yale Universities. He and his wife, Jessie Chang, returned to Palestine in 2008 starting a number of institutions and projects such as a clinical genetics laboratory that serves cancer and other patients. They founded&nbsp; and run (as full time volunteers) <a href="http://palestinenature.org/" target="_blank"><u>the Palestine Institute for Biodiversity and Sus