Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Bedouin Land and Culture Threatened by Israel's Plans for Resettlement, by Phoebe Greenwood, in The Guardian

A stench of rubbish wafts over the Palestinian town of As Sawahira from the al-Abdali dump. The vast tip sprawls over an excavated hillside on the outskirts of the town and receives a constant stream of trucks carrying waste from nearby Jerusalem.

Israeli authorities are proposing to relocate 2,300 Bedouins from the surrounding hills to this site as part of their push to resolve "the Bedouin problem". Simultaneously, plans are proceeding through the Israeli parliament this month to move a further 90,000 Bedouin from their ancestral land in the Negev desert in Israel's south to government-planned townships.

The Israeli administration argues that a move to purpose-built communities will lift the indigenous population from unacceptable depths of poverty. Across Israeli-controlled territory, Bedouin communities argue that their culture, along with centuries-old ties to land, is being swept aside to make way for Jewish expansion.
Around 250 Bedouins from the Jahalin group already live on the fringes of the As Sawahira dump, moved here by the Israeli authorities 15 years ago from land now occupied by the Ma'ale Adumim settlement. Their modest homes and huts are overlooked by piles of rubbish on one side and the Kfar Adumim settlement on the other.

"I'm sure the dump is very damaging for our health, but the Israelis moved us here – we had no choice," says Abu Jahalin, 70. He has heard of the plans to move thousands more Bedouins to the dump. He points to the proposed site with his walking stick, explaining that it will run all the way from the top of the hill, where his sheep graze, to the piles of rubbish.

Abu Jahalin says there is not enough land to feed the animals already here: "They [the Israelis] will wall off the whole area so there will be nowhere for us to graze our animals. I'll probably end up feeding them at home. I've had to sell off most of my flock [of sheep] already to pay for animal feed." From a flock of more than 200, he has only 40 sheep left.

Khan al-Ahmar is one of 20 Bedouin communities in the E1 area outside Jerusalem that are scheduled to be evacuated. Bedouin families have lived in this village since 1951, after they fled as refugees from the Negev during the Israeli war of independence.

They live in the West Bank, but their land is controlled by the Israelis as it falls within Area C. The EU is funding Oxfam to run development programmes here. The Palestinian Authority is drafting a strategy to address their needs – but, ultimately, their fate is in Israeli hands.

In 1975, Israel declared the area a closed military zone. Today, almost every structure has been issued with a demolition order. A spokesman for the Israeli civil administration confirmed it is negotiating with the E1 Bedouins to move them and is investigating the dump as a possible relocation point.

"We are waiting for the results of an investigation into the health impacts of living on that site," Major Guy Inbar says. "I know they don't want [to move] but because they are living illegally, we have to find a better option within the law. Why now? Because now we want to enforce the law."

Unlike the Jahalin, Bedouin groups in the Negev have cultivated their land since the 16th century. They are also Israeli citizens, and yet 35 of their 46 villages are not recognised by the state. As a result, the 90,000 residents live without basic services such as water, electricity, healthcare, education or paved roads. And they are not allowed to build permanent structures.

Thabet Abu Rass, the Negev director for Adalah, an organisation that offers legal advice to the Arab minority in Israel, describes a painstaking fight for the rights of unrecognised villagers. "We have to petition the high court for each basic service, like water. Most of the time we win the cases – but the problem is implementation. Sometimes it takes 10 years. Or they grant us 'minimal access' to water, which means one tap three miles from the village."

According to a pending law for the regulation of Bedouin settlement in the Negev, due to be presented to the parliament this month, these villages will be evacuated in the next five years and ecah of their inhabitants compensated to move to one of seven government-planned townships – the poorest towns in Israel, with some of the highest crime rates.

Abu Rass argues that while the Bedouin are ill-equipped to survive in a town, they are excellent farmers who would thrive with state support to cultivate their land: "The Israelis say they want to modernise them. But modernisation doesn't necessarily mean urbanisation."

Information gathered by Oxfam from Bedouin families in the West Bank last year suggested that selling animals, mostly sheep, can earn a herder as much as £21,000 in a year. The problem is that as their grazing land has diminished, about half of this income is now spent on animal feed. Add to that the costs of trucking in water and paying for fuel for electricity generators, or investing in solar panels, and there is very little cash left over.

Mark Regev, a spokesman for the Israeli prime minister, says there is understanding between the government and the Bedouins that the situation is untenable. He insists, contrary to what is laid out in the proposed legislation, the Negev herders will be offered a choice to move to a town or rural village.
"The pockets of poverty and neglect in Bedouin communities must end. One [Negev] village is right next to a terrible, polluted dump. No one should be living next to a toxic dump," Regev says. "The solution is that all Bedouin[s] live in recognised communities where they receive the services they deserve."

Read More - http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/2012/may/09/bedouin-land-culture-israel-resettlement

Wednesday, May 9, 2012

Rabbis for Human Rights: JNF Breaking Promise to Not Plant on Disputed Bedouin Land, in JewSchool

Rabbis for Human Rights continues their efforts to persuade Efi Stenzler, JNF’s World Chairman, and Russell Robinson, CEO of JNF-USA, to stop planting on legally disputed land in Al-Arakib. Click here to send these two officials an email.

Despite hearing from hundreds of people, KKL-JNF resumed plowing disputed land in Al-Arakib on Monday.

We need to keep the pressure up! Join us in writing to Jewish National Fund in Israel and the United States. Tell them to stop planting on legally disputed land in Al-Arakib and to end their involvement in forestation on the remains of demolished Bedouin villages and disputed Bedouin land.

Residents of Al-Arakib have documents and other evidence of their traditional rights to their land dating to the times of the Ottoman Empire and the British Mandate, prior to the establishment of the state of Israel.  Yet the Israeli government refuses to recognize their land claims. The State has demolished the village dozens of times in the last year and a half, leveling homes, livestock pens, and hundreds of fruit and olive trees, all to make way for Jewish National Fund forests. The government remains embroiled in protracted legal disputes with the residents about their ownership of the land.

Earlier this year, the leadership of KKL-JNF promised our colleagues at Rabbis for Human Rights in Israel that they would not plant on four plots of land in Al-Arakib that are involved in ongoing legal disputes. KKL-JNF also issued a public statement saying that it “does not plant even a single tree on land that is in legal dispute in court.” Russell Robinson, CEO of JNF-USA reiterated this position to Rabbi Jill Jacobs, Executive Director of Rabbis for Human Rights-North America, in a conversation they had just last week. But now it seems as though the Jewish National Fund is changing its tune.

Just over a week ago, KKL-JNF equipment arrived in Al-Arakib and began preparing one of the disputed plots of land for planting. Yesterday, KKL-JNF returned again and plowed more land for planting in this disputed plot. KKL-JNF has spent the last month working on other plots of land in Al-Arakib that are due to be adjudicated in Israel’s High Court in December 2012.

Read More - http://jewschool.com/2012/05/09/28605/rabbis-for-human-rights-jnf-breaking-promise-to-not-plant-on-disputed-bedouin-land

Monday, May 7, 2012

Jewish National Fund Resumes Forestation Project in al-Arakib, by Mairav Zonszein, in +972

After having their homes destroyed by the State over 30 times in the last two years, the residents of al-Arakib can do little else but watch as a forest is built on the ruins of their homes. 

The Jewish National Fund resumed cultivating land Monday morning in al-Arakib, an unrecognized Bedouin village in southern Israel which the quasi-governmental agency has earmarked for a large forestation project. A week ago, the families in the village got word that the JNF would return and asked for activists to come and support them.

JNF equipment, escorted by heavy police presence, showed up Monday morning and sealed off the entrance to the village.  Families and activists watched from the village cemetery, the only spot that has been deemed untouchable due to its historic and emotional significance. Residents told +972 that JNF representatives gave their word in private conversations a couple of months ago that they would not plant on a specific plot of land - known as plot 24 – since it is the subject of an ongoing court case. However this morning they prepared this precise piece of land for cultivation.

Since July 17, 2010, the village has been demolished by the Israel Lands Administration (ILA) more times than anyone can count, and each time the families have returned and built it up again to confirm their claim on the land. Despite remaining steadfast in their claims to the land, most families have relocated to neighboring towns like Rahat to avoid the anguish of constant destruction, such that only a handful of residents still live inside al-Arakib.

Here is footage of the 25th demolition of the village:




The ILA claims the Bedouin are trespassing on state land, but the issue is still being fought in court proceedings over land ownership. While the residents do not have official land deeds, they do have documents from the Ottoman era showing their ancestors purchased the land in 1906. The state insists the land was appropriated in 1954 such that court findings regarding ownership before then are irrelevant anyway.

The issue of Al-Arakib is part of a larger story concerning 35 unrecognized villages inside Israel. According to a 2011 report by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, approximately half the Bedouin population in the Negev, about 90,000 people—live in quasi-recognized or unrecognized villages similar to al-Arakib. The government adoption of the Prawer Plan last September calls for the uprooting of 30,000 Bedouin citizens of Israel and their relocation to established Bedouin towns (with financial compensation), thereby denying the community’s connection to the land and way of life. Critics of the plan have called it a “declaration of war” on the Bedouin community, since they are being treated like a security threat, and not as citizens with equal rights.

Rabbis for Human Rights activist Moriel Rothman contributed to this report.


Read More - http://972mag.com/jewish-national-fund-resumes-forestation-project-in-al-arakib/44850

Tuesday, May 1, 2012

BREAKING UPDATE ON THE GROUND: The police have notified Sheikh Sayakh of El-Arakib that from tomorrow early in the morning, by request of the Israel Lands Authority, JNF people can starting planting trees on the lands of El -Arakib. The KKL/JNF maintains that it will not work on the lands that they committed not to working on, but can/will not indicate what those lands are.

Read More - http://itnewsletter.itnewsletter.co.il/sending/webpage.aspx?d=4206091879526734987648065739279647566&w=1&ar=0&isDe=True&rfl=False&pl=0&l=1309914&sll=0&mlt=True