How Solar Brought Muslims and Jews Together in One West Bank Village

http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/318-66/36905-how-solar-brought-muslims-and-jews-together-in-one-west-bank-village

A solar project funded and operated by both Jews and Muslims is shining some light on Auja, a small Palestinian town located in one of the most controversial territories on Earth.

The $100,000 project is harnessing solar energy to power the drawing of water from deep underground to irrigate a grove of palms growing the prized Medjool dates. It is the first large project to be funded by both Jews and Muslims in the United States – including former New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg – and to be operated by Israeli Jews and Palestinian Muslims on the ground.

The solar array is providing an economic boost to 45 farming families in this town of 5,000 Palestinians on the eastern flank of the West Bank who struggle with scarce water and unreliable and expensive electricity. Although claimed by the State of Palestine, along with the Gaza Strip and a portion of eastern Jerusalem, the West Bank has been contentiously occupied by Israel, which continues to build settlements across the region in defiance of international law, as The Christian Science Monitor has reported.

“It’s either you’re all in or you’re not in,” said 33-year-old Ben Jablonski, a former Manhattan investment banker who is leading the project through a nonprofit he founded called Build Israel Palestine. Mr. Jablonski, who is Jewish, started the organization in 2014 with Tarek Elgawhary, an Egyptian Muslim religious scholar in Washington, D.C. who also runs Coexist, an educational nonprofit