After the CP China announced its vision Made in China 2025, China 2035, China 2049, the EU the vision of a climate-neutral EU 2050, Muhammed Bin Salman his vision Saudia Arabia 2030 and General Al Sissi his vision 2035, the prozionist and Israeli sides do not want to be inferior and present a vision Israel 2040. The goal is a green, digital, fertile, sustainable, safer and stronger Israel. This is intended to serve as a model both nationally in Israel and internationally in the fight against desertification, against migration, against rampant urbanization and the rural-urban divide – as an ecological-digital-sustainable blueprint for the world as well. The organizer is the Jewish National Fund in connection with the Israeli government and army IDF. On his website you can read:

 „Jewish National Fund e.V Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael

Together we build the Israel of tomorrow! Israel 2040 means … Jobs and green sustainable communities for 1.5 million people in Israel. a quantum leap for the development of Galilee and the Negev through the settlement of high-tech industry, research and educational institutions. a globally valid blueprint for solving global problems in non-industrialized regions. Israel 2040, the KKL’s flagship project, promotes the vision of a stronger and more sustainable Israel – also in the periphery. It is designed to provide far-reaching solutions to Israel’s extraordinary social and economic challenges.

The Israel 2040 project is based on three pillars Living Creation of an attractive and contemporary living environment employment Progress and innovation through industrial and scientific centers Community Investing in future generations through excellent education and support Israel 2040 in numbers 2040 target date 750 new start-ups 500,000 new residents in Galilee 1,000,000 new residents in the Negev 30 innovation centers for business & research 400,000 new residential units 100,000 modernly equipped rental apartments 20 competence centers for young people 150,000 new immigrants

Israel 2040 was created to develop Israeli society as a whole. The spirit of the start-up nation cannot stop at Tel Aviv’s borders. Our project accelerates the demographic and economic upswing in the periphery. Israel will have an estimated 13 million inhabitants in 2040, we are creating the best possible conditions for a happy, progressive and fulfilling life for this rapidly growing population. For many young, well-trained Israelis in particular, Tel Aviv is not only the country’s cultural center, but also the only way to find a suitable job. For future generations in particular, our infrastructure project creates opportunities across the country to find adequate work and affordable housing in sustainable and progressive communities „

https://www.jnf-kkl.de/israel2040/

Chaim Noll on the right-leaning Achse des Guten( Axis of the Good )also gives more detailed explanations of the project. Noll was born in 1954 under the name Hans Noll in East Berlin. His father was the writer Dieter Noll. He studied art and art history in East Berlin before he refused military service in the GDR in the early 1980s and left for West Berlin in 1983, where he mainly worked as a journalist. In 1991 he left Germany with his family and lived in Rome. Since 1995 he lives in Israel, in the Negev desert. In 1998 he received Israeli citizenship. In addition to his literary work, Chaim Noll teaches at the University of Be’er Sheva and regularly travels to Germany for readings and lectures. He sees man-made devastation and desertification by overpopulation as the main cause of climate change and migration, denies the effects on C= 2 emissions, and claims that by means of Israel 2040 the panacea for combating the causes was found. Especially since he also advises the EU to reorient its development aid policy in this regard and also to condition EU funds to Hamas and the PLO in this progressive and sustainable direction:

Migration: Israel’s Blueprint for Combating Causes

Many of the Muslim refugees who haunt Europe today come from desert areas. Which apparently do not offer their residents a future. And these refugees are increasing, if only for the simple reason that deserts, arid regions and steppes are spreading worldwide – every year by an area roughly the size of Germany. Around a third of the global cultivation area – according to statistical data from the UN – had to be abandoned during the last few decades due to soil erosion. Half of the earth’s land area is now threatened. This process, called desertification, causes large parts of the surface of planet earth to become stepped. It has little to do with „global warming“ due to excessively high CO2 emissions, and if it does, then in the opposite sense: a high CO2 content in the air accelerates plant growth and thus counteracts desertification. Desertification comes less from the air than from the ground. The rapid increase in desert areas is primarily a result of overpopulation and the associated degradation of land areas through ruinous grazing of nomadic tribes (overgrazing), destructive monoculture or overexploitation, for which – as much as one blames the CO2-emitting, the all-crushing Moloch „West“  – largely the residents of these countries are responsible.

Added to this is the tendency of poor rural populations in Asia and Africa to congregate in metropolitan areas, so-called mega-metropolises. There are now more than one hundred cities in China, of which at least five are in the double-digit range (led by Shanghai with over 20 million), which, due to their excessive consumption and absorption by the surrounding rural population, are becoming üples of desertification. By degrading the abandoned agricultural land around them through soil erosion to steppe and desert. By which the megacities themselves, literally, ditch the water and all other resources for their supply.

In Africa, too, urban sub-proletariat is concentrated in mega-metropolises such as the 17 million conglomerate of Cairo, while the vast, largely uncultivated desert land is still fallow and is only wandered through by scattered – and often beyond state control – Bedouin tribes. Surrounded by empty desert areas, millions of people in Cairo and the surrounding area are vegetating on rubbish dumps or in the famous „City of the Dead“, the old Fatimid cemetery, where half a million people are said to live between the graves. Or in Lagos, with more than 16 million inhabitants, in the otherwise undeveloped Nigeria, which is located in the Sahel zone and is badly affected by desertification. Such megacities, the number of which is growing rapidly, are already home to the larger and fastest growing part of the world population. The problems and environmental damage they cause have global implications. The megacity, “ready to devour us”, as James Baldwin once described it in his story Return from the Desert, is in turn threatened by the collapse of overload, by a complexity that is no longer controllable, by the overturning of the urban “labyrinth” into its original state

Desert. Expanding basic structure for future immigration

Otherwise, internal structural undesirable developments in the affected countries and their inhabitants are largely responsible for the global misery. Rapidly growing populations are ruining the scarce resources of the steppe and semi-desert in Africa. Overpopulation leads to overexploitation of the steppe areas, which leads to the destruction of sensitive ecosystems and catastrophic famines such as in Niger, in the Sahel zone on the southern edge of the Sahara. The indigenous peoples of the steppes and semi-deserts are mostly cattle breeders who let their herds migrate without worrying about the regeneration of the grazed areas. The rapid increase in people and herds leads to rapid, ruthless grazing of the land without ensuring the convalescence of the soil and vegetation.

In addition, there is the excessive consumption of steppe plants as fuel in the cold, stormy winters. This is usually followed by sanding and dewing of previously vital steppe areas. There is hardly any turning back from there, at least not without massive human effort. The flora and fauna of the dry land are fragile species, able to survive under extreme conditions, but, once destroyed, are not so easy to regenerate. If soil organisms, vegetation and fauna of the steppe are ruined, the landscape is no longer habitable for humans either. Sandy desert spreads, the legendary world of total lack, the distance from people and closeness to God, which literature has been talking about since the earliest days. A landscape of misery and civil wars that are driving millions of residents northwards, towards Europe.

Europe reacts to this onslaught in a completely defensive manner. In public discourse, the problems caused by the refugees are lamented or denied – the debate rages between these two attitudes, but both hardly contribute to solving the problem. In many cases, the required “integration” of immigrants is only apparent – it is also not a behavioral pattern of nomadic tribes. On the contrary: their “pride” has for centuries been based on the freedom of movement of the tribe, the autonomy within a state that is only perceived as a backdrop. In truth, the old clan structures are being implanted in major European cities, creating “parallel societies”, often unlawful areas. Increasingly with violent clashes between the „criminal“, in their self-perception traditionally „honorable“ tribes and large families – as has always been the case in the desert. More streets and more quarters are conquered and form the expanding basic structure for future immigration.

Civilized, viable milieus provided with modern infrastructure Measures to counter them by individual countries – mostly undecided and ineffective anyway – come too late once the former desert inhabitants have set out and, taking advantage of the open borders, penetrate deeper and deeper into the largely defenseless states of Northern Europe. Where they question the cultures and ways of life there, not in a creative, constructive way, as the apologists claim, but largely in a destructive way. By triggering social shifts, tensions and divisions, undermining the social consensus and overtaxing and overloading the democratic structures of these countries. In Europe hardly anyone seems to think about how to tackle the problem at the root. That would mean: how to act against the causes of flight and prevent further mass migration. Since the spread of the deserts is one of the main causes, we have to deal with this landscape.

 The public discussion in Western countries should not stop at the phenomenon of mass exodus and its effects, but rather move on to the crucial question of how one can revitalize the growing desert regions of the world and induce the peoples living there to stay. The tragic irony lies in the fact that, after decades of intensive desert research, the western states now have the technical and scientific possibilities to transform the desert regions of the world into civilized, viable milieus with modern infrastructure and to provide tolerable living conditions for millions of people living in misery to accomplish. But apparently they do not have the strength or the political skills to implement such concepts. Billions are flowing into the Middle East or North Africa, and reasonable conditions could be attached to the granting of economic aid and loans.

For example, one could ask the Hamas leadership in Gaza to revitalize their area, which has been ruined by war and mismanagement, instead of constantly passing it through poorly covert UN channels, most of which end up in terrorist weapons. European politicians will soon begin to help Syria with loans and aid from the crisis of the last decade, the benefits will go to the dubious regime as everywhere – but the demand will also be made to use the predominantly sterile areas of the country and with them future-oriented infrastructure? Or allow this despot to spend the money on armament and new weapon systems in order to be able to show off in the Islamic power struggles of the Middle East and to leave their own people in misery? Is the European Community already too weak, still technologically highly developed, but politically so weakened that it can no longer assert its own interests? To this day, most desert states, supported by the West with a lot of money, remain in rigid structures that are hostile to innovation or fall back into civil wars and other patterns of self-destruction.

Incredible revitalization of once deserted areas

Israel is one of the most successful states in reclaiming desert. The small country consists mostly of desert, so you had to come to terms with this type of landscape in order to survive. The economic boom in Israel, its astonishing demographics and its high, still growing standard of living prove that desert areas can become comfortable places to live in a relatively short time. I have lived in the Negev desert in Southern Israel for 23 years and have witnessed an almost unbelievable revival of once deserted areas. David Ben-Gurion saw the settlement of the Negev desert, Israel’s only major land reserve, as the touchstone for Israel’s future. He himself relocated from comfortable Tel Aviv to the desert Kibuz Sde Boqer, where he initiated the establishment of a campus of the University of Beer Sheva, which was dedicated to desert research.

Beer Sheva, an ancient biblical place, under Ottoman-Muslim rule for centuries a sleepy caravanserai, transformed within a few decades into a modern city and an internationally known high-tech center. In the time since I’ve lived here, the city’s population has tripled. Since the population of Israel is growing rapidly – in the 25 years I’ve been here from 5 to over 9 million – the government and the Jewish National Fund Keren Kayemet are planning to settle another million people in the Negev desert by 2040, including jobs and, as it says in the project description Israel 2040, “green-sustainable communities” for living. It reads like a fairy tale, but I can assure you that here, in the middle of the wasteland described by Mark Twain (in his travel book The Innocents Abroad) as „hopeless“, I really live in the countryside and these days I am harvesting baskets of lemons in my garden . That my children have found well-paid jobs here, in universities and high-tech companies, and that my grandchildren enjoy the best possible education.

Our quality of life is high, even by Western standards. In order to avoid monster cities, uncontrollable proliferation of concrete and slum structures, they rely on autonomous small towns with their own homes. Already now, tens of thousands of families from the relocated center of the country are building new houses in the countryside here, tempted by the construction of a railway and a new motorway. There are two answers to the threat posed by the desert: escape or resist. The blessings of the desert – vast spaces, solar energy, fertile, mineral-rich soils, subterranean waters – have long been used to transform apparently lifeless arid areas, elsewhere the scene of famine and civil war, into places of high culture. The recent rapprochement between Arab and North African states and Israel, which was previously declared a mortal enemy, will result in close cooperation in desert technologies – for the creation of infrastructure and irrigation systems, plant cultivation, urban planning, and the use of underground aquifers – and the countries cooperating with Israel change noticeably. They provide enough space for growing populations, who then no longer have to emigrate north. The promise made by the Jewish National Fund Keren Kayemet does not seem exaggerated when it promises to create “a globally valid blueprint for solving global problems” with the Israel 2040 project.”

https://www.achgut.com/artikel/migration_israels_blaupause_fuer_die_ursachenbekaempfung

In Jüdische Allgemeine, on the other hand, Prof. Michael Wolfsohn focuses more on the tradition of Zionism and security issues, especially since Israel 2040 was developed in cooperation with the Israeli Defense Forces, which consider a certain decentralization of the population and critical infrastructures and economic centers from the greater area Tel Aviv necessary for security policy.

„Zionism The desert is blooming

 With the “Israel 2040” project, the Jewish state is continuing the ideas of its founding fathers by Michael Wolffsohn 09/26/2020

New in old new land. Biblical and visionary. Tradition and innovation, past and future. This is what Israel offers – even if, especially in Germany, it is bad manners to lament and complain about the country and the people in the Jewish state. The new in old-new land is emerging in the Negev and Galilee. Various virtues are made out of various needs under the direction of the KKL (Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael – Jewish National Fund). You can find them in the project »Israel 2040«. That is the basic idea of  Israel 2040«: The Tel Aviv metropolitan area is bursting at the seams. Because of the overload. It affects individuals as well as the country’s infrastructure. It is also a huge security risk. A direct hit by Iranian, Hezbollah, Hamas or jihad missiles is enough to kill numerous Israelis and at least temporarily paralyze the metropolitan area. That is also why equalization is necessary; geographically, demographically, economically and strategically in every respect. In short, it is not »just« about sensible economic planning, but about survival.

PAST The planned future for Galilee and the Negev draws a bow to the Tenach, especially the Torah, as well as to general, ancient Jewish history in the Holy Land. In contrast, the coastal plain, i.e. Israel’s core region after the state was founded in 1948, was once, in Tenach and historical times, Philistine land. Zionism is the Israeli present and future, derived from the Jewish past in Eretz Israel. The now planned intensive development of the Negev and Galilee is therefore a Zionist future, legitimized by the past. As is well known, this Jewish legitimacy is repeatedly denied by Israel-haters, ignoramuses and UNESCO majorities. Even about Jerusalem. „Israel 2040“ counters this fake story with new facts relating to Galilee and Negev. From this point of view, the planned development focuses on the Negev and Galilee represent a return to the biblical roots of the Jewish state. The book of Genesis reports that the ancestors Abraham, Isaac and Jacob lived with their families at times in the Negev, in and around Beer Sheva. In the other books of Tenach, the Hebrew Bible, and even more so in ancient Jewish history, there are countless references to the city and the Beer Sheva area.

Ben Gurion Israel’s founding father, Ben Gurion, campaigned for the development of the Negev. Because of the historical continuity as well as because of the strategic rationality. his actions followed his words. Too few of his successors and compatriots followed his good example. The same is true of Galilee. For many, including Jews, Galilee is „Jesusland“: Nazareth, Cana, Capernaum, Sea of Galilee, Sermon on the Mount. But Galilee was also of great importance to Jewish history. This is where the strongest resistance to the Roman occupation was stirring at the turn of the times. After the Bar Kochba uprising (132–135), the Talmudic sages moved from Yawneh to Galil: to Usha and Zippori. In the mid-8th to mid-9th centuries, Tiberias was the center of the Palestinian Geonim. Here, according to his will, the immortal Maimonides was buried.

Beyond the past, „Israel 2040“ could become a model project nationally and globally, because overpopulation, overpricing and congestion in a metropolitan area are not just an Israeli problem.

PRESENT The project aims to resettle up to 1.5 million people in the Negev and Galilee over the next two decades. Green settlements with a high quality of life, the settlement of high-tech companies that offer hundreds of thousands of well-paid jobs, high-class research and educational institutions and modern infrastructure are planned. This spatial planning structural policy is at the same time internal Jewish and Jewish-Arab integration and social policy. Many „oriental“ Jews live in the south of the country, and most of the Arabs of Israel in Galilee. Compared to the Ashkenazi Israelis, there are considerable deficits in terms of the quality of life for these two population groups.

The project will certainly reduce them. On the one hand, the overpopulated and overpriced metropolitan area of ​​Tel Aviv will be relieved and equalized, on the other hand two little or hardly developed regions with low industrialization and relative poverty will be upgraded. The bone of contention about Jewish settlements in the West Bank is also likely to be less controversial, because the Negev and Galilee are part of the Israeli heartland. One and a half million people are to be settled in the Negev and Galilee. Already in the past few decades, Israel, which is actually arid and therefore achieves top achievements in water science and management, has set global standards. It reclaimed large parts of the desert and built one of the strongest high-tech industries in the world. „Israel 2040“ is now developing this concept, which was successful in the 20th century, into a vision for the 21st century.Israel’s reputation as a “start-up nation” has so far been shaped primarily by the economic “powerhouse” Tel Aviv. Most of the country’s high-tech companies and the majority of the highly qualified workforce are based in this metropolitan region. Almost all investments in business and research flow into this part of the country. The ambitious project aims to bring comparable economic prosperity and quality of life to the south (Negev desert) and north of the country (Galilee).

FUTURE The plan is also a response to the expected significant population growth. Experts predict that Israel’s population will grow from nine million today to 13 million in 2040. This assumption is realistic for two reasons. First, the Jewish population of Israel has the highest increase in birth rates in the First World, and second, increasing immigration of Jews into the Jewish state is to be expected. Why? Experts predict that Israel’s population will grow from nine million today to 13 million in 2040. Already today it is not only Germany’s Jews who are suffering from increasing right-wing, left-wing and Muslim anti-Semitism in word and violence. From France alone, around 100,000 of the 500,000 Jews at the time emigrated to Israel between 2000 and 2020. Whether anti-Semitism à la ex-Labor leader Corbyn remains just a brief episode in British history remains to be seen.

 To be feared are sequels. The anti-Zionism of left-wing US Democrats causes anti-Semitic spill-over effects left and right, also in word and deed. A partly strong increase in the emigration of Diaspora Jews to Israel is therefore realistic. emigration Perhaps in the future Jews from Germany will emigrate to Israel more than before, if Jewish schoolchildren are bullied further and more often than Jews, if there is more than just an attack like in Halle 2019 and if those wearing a kippah or a Star of David are assaulted more often . No matter whether from right or left extremists or misguided Muslims. Hundreds of thousands of apartments and jobs will be created in the “Land of Tomorrow” for the old and young in Israel, as well as educational and study opportunities, attractive open spaces and recreational opportunities as well as the necessary infrastructure for energy, water, transport and communication.

In detail, the plan is to make around 500,000 Israelis in Galilee and one million Israelis in the Negev at home. 750 start-up companies, 25 locations for research and development and 150 growth companies from Germany and abroad are to be established in the newly emerging industrial centers of these two regions. These should employ a total of 180,000 highly qualified people. These are also realistic assumptions, because large and small companies from all over the world (including Germany) have been pouring into the country for years. You want to benefit from Israel’s knowledge and work in the cyber and IT world. If you are there today, you will accelerate your future profit prospects. Donate 300,000 more jobs are to be created around the new industrial and scientific centers, for example in schools, hospitals, service companies, in retail outlets and so on and so on. A total of around half a million new jobs are targeted. The project is to be financed through donations, government grants and private investments. JNF-KKL wants to raise the donations in a worldwide fundraising campaign. In every respect, „Israel 2040“ is not just about Israel and the Jews. Innovative, people-friendly IT, spatial planning with culture – this is where the event is.

 The author is historian, journalist and university professor of the year 2017. His most recent publication was: »Tacheles: In the struggle for the facts in politics and history«.

https://www.juedische-allgemeine.de/kultur/die-wueste-blueht/

A few concerns remain: to what extent is this serving the further illegal occupation of Palestinian territories when Galilea is mentioned next to the Negev desert, will the Westbank be excluded- to what extent is it not simply an underwater robbery for new Israeli settlements at the expense of the Palestinians? ` The aim is to found livable, digital, green high-tech communities and modern cities with first-class education and a pioneering start-up scene for 1.5 million inhabitants beyond the previous metropolitan areas like Tel Aviv. It is supposed to be a green-ecological, perhaps religious, new kind of kibbutz movement, which is supposed to create a Garden of Eden and a high-tech oasis out of the desert. Quite a few people might feel addressed, keeping in mind the exploding rents and housing prices in Tel Aviv and the existing big cities. especially since another 1.5 million new Jewish immigrants are expected. But is it that sustainable? Saudi Arabia also had such a greening program and made the desert fertile and arable for a time until the underground water supplies were exhausted and the desert returned and the whole project collapsed due to lack of water. The question is whether such a project with an underground water recycling system including trickling technology in agriculture can be sustainable or can only be secured in the long term with expensive and energy-intensive water desalination systems? Or at the expense of the Palestinians and other Arabs?