I recently attended “The Climate Restorers — Part 1” at The Commons in Fort Worden. (Thank you, Skeeter a.k.a. Michael Pilarski, and Rick and Jan!)   

The film pointed out that we need to feed the soil to heal the Earth and plant trees to recreate the hydrological cycle to replace the dryness of the desert with waters. This rings true to me for the crisis in the Middle East, too.

My solution is to offer all the civilians in Gaza, the West Bank, and even the Arabs in Israel a way out of being human shields for Hamas. We offer the choice — with the help of the multitudes of funds from the United Nations and its agency, the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, known as UNRWA — to relocate, subsidizing them with durable lovely housing, food, water, clothing, and education for their children, to Jordan, a fellow Palestinian country.

The vast majority of Jordanian land is uninhabited because no one, until recently, has created a viable solution to either of those gargantuan situations.

Israel and Jordan were carved out of the same territory in 1947-1948. Jordanians live on 7% of the land mass because it is essentially desert, as Israel was.

There is, in my mind, a Savior of the Soil and his name is Geoff Lawton a protégé of the father of Permaculture, Bill Mollison. Lawton and his Jordanian wife, Nadia, have taken the worst-ever soil next to salt-full Dead Sea, and using Permaculture design principles, turned acres and acres of this so-called incorrigible land mass into Arable Land for the Arabs! 

In the words of the brilliant Lawton, “All of the world’s problems can be solved in the garden.” Bob Marley said: “A hungry man is an angry man.”

I contend that there is plenty of funds funneling into UNWRA to subsidize all the Arab civilians who are holed up in Gaza, the West Bank and even in Israel who want to live in Peace to be resettled comfortably and willing to work ,the operative words are willing to work, and subsidized comfortably, to create all of Jordan into a world class gorgeous prosperous country.

We are all facing annihilation from the climate crisis floods and unbridled raging fires and gangs of the hungry and unloved.   Where there is political will, there is a way to heal Planet Earth, one nation at a time. Let us stop the primitive brain’s knee jerk reactionary divisive hatred of the other and do things differently.

Someone asked my guru, Baba Hari Das, how do you love everybody? He simply replied, “Stop Hating.” Let’s think outside the box and use the UNWRA funds for creatively constructive ends instead of devastating destruction. Shift the paradigm into a win/win/win and then hate will stop in its tracks and sanity will prevail.

If you have a constructive, better idea for all the crises that are now in our collective face, let me know. You can send me anything neutral to positive to annapurna.wellness@gmail.com.    

Until then, I’m spreading mulch, planting trees, and praying for sanity, peace and creativity to reign down upon all of us to dissolve the hatred and make love not war as the solution to all our existential problems on our Sweet Planet Earth today. Our quality of life depends on our positive open minds.

Robin Sharan

Port Townsend