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Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/10/opinion/israel-uae-peace-dates-technology.html
The New Alliance Shaping the Middle East Is Against a Tiny Bug
(New York Times) Matti Friedman - Dates in the Middle East are like corn for the Maya - the "bread of the desert," a symbol of life itself. With their long shelf life, dates were beloved by Arabian nomads and caravan traders, and are still eaten to break the Ramadan fast. The United Arab Emirates has an estimated 40 million date trees. Red palm weevils are burrowing holes in the date palms. At a date farm in Dubai, a sensor made by the Israeli company Agrint is used to detect red palm weevils. The Agrint sensors are the first practical early-warning system for the weevil to go on the market anywhere. At Agrint's offices near Tel Aviv, the chief executive opened the sensor app on his cellphone and showed me an orchard in a Gulf country that doesn't have open ties with Israel. A farmer there has a weevil infestation in four trees in a corner of his orchard. In a nearby Arab power that also has no official relations with Israel, 100 sensors show a nine-tree infestation just a few miles from one of Islam's holiest sites. Thousands more sensors are going into trees in Morocco. Jews have always been around this region, farming and trading like everyone else, and it's not the past few months of renewed contact that are the anomaly, but the past seven decades of isolation.