Opinion
In August, despite the fragility of the newly resurrected
peace talks between Israel
and the Palestinian Authority, the Israeli government announced plans to build
1,187 new housing units for Jews in East Jerusalem and the West
Bank. This came hard on the heels of the 1,096 new units promoted
by the Israel Defense Forces [IDF] Civil Administration and the 91 settlements
the government recently added to the “national priority list,” presumably
rendering them non-negotiable.
With the eyes of the world focused on this defiant expansion
of Israeli “facts on the ground,” few were paying attention to a simultaneous
land grab taking place in the Negev: Israel’s systematic expropriation
of areas that for generations have been inhabited by Bedouins.
On my first trip to Israel 37 years ago, I was hosted
for dinner in a Bedouin tent in the desert. Our delegation of eight or ten
American media types sat on beautiful hand-loomed rugs. We ate with our
hands. We heard about Bedouin culture
and traditions. The men who sat with us
in that tent (the women were behind a curtain, though we saw one peeking out)
were warm, welcoming and responsive to our questions. Only later did it occur
to me that our travel agent or the Israel tourism authority was paying
the Bedouins to exhibit their “native” ways to visiting foreigners. And while
other stops on our itinerary—Masada, Mea
Shearim, Rachel’s Tomb—were introduced with extensive background information,
the Bedouins were presented as ethnic exotica, a people without a history. Only
later did I wonder how they really felt about these encounters.
Since then, the Jewish state seems to have become markedly less
appreciative of Bedouin culture and traditions. Hundreds of times over the last
few years, Bedouin homes and villages have been summarily demolished by IDF and
Jewish National Fund (JNF) bulldozers.
Media sources and advocacy groups such as the Association
for Civil Rights in Israel, the Campaign for Bedouin-Jewish Justice in Israel
and the New Israel Fund report that Bedouins have been beaten, shot and
forcibly evacuated from their ancestral lands so that this fertile area can be
developed for Jewish agricultural development, JNF forests and Jewish
habitation.
In 2007, the government appointed the Goldberg Commission to
address the Bedouin “problem.” (Needless to say, there were no Bedouins on the
commission.) Their findings led to the Prawer Plan, a proposed law that would
relocate up to 40,000 semi-nomadic Bedouins, concentrating them in seven
“officially recognized” urban townships that rank at the bottom of every
Israeli socioeconomic measure, with an infant mortality rate four times worse
than that of any Jewish Israeli community. Last June, the Prawer Plan passed
its first Knesset reading by a slim majority. The final two readings needed in
order for the Knesset bill to pass are expected in October.
Somehow, it’s unthinkable to evacuate thousands of Jews from
their West Bank settlements in the interests
of Israeli-Palestinian peace. But expelling 40,000 Arab Israeli citizens from
their homes for the sake of Jewish development is considered a great idea.
Moreover, Israel
presents its transfer policy in a benevolent light, as if by trashing Bedouin
dwellings, the IDF is expelling these noble savages from their “primitive”
habitats for their own good.
Mind you, I’m not romanticizing the Bedouins. They don’t
just keep their women behind a curtain, they keep them uneducated, isolated and
cut off from modern health care. And though they are not responsible for their
extreme impoverishment and rampant unemployment, these conditions have spawned
alarming rates of criminal behavior and drug use. Altogether, it’s not a pretty picture.
Likewise, I’m mindful of the legal complexities of the land
use issue. The Bedouins don’t hold title; their system of land acquisition and
ownership recognition is based on oral agreements that date back to the Ottoman Empire. Expecting them to produce airtight proof
of ownership of territory they’ve inhabited for centuries would be like asking
American Indians, who believe the earth cannot be owned, to produce a deed from
Christopher Columbus, or asking the Australian Aborigines, who mark territorial
borders by transmitting “songlines” known only to the indigenous tribes, to
produce transmittal documents signed by the British.
The bottom line is that Bedouin Arabs are citizens of the
state of Israel.
Some of their elders fought with the Palmach. Many Bedouin men have volunteered
for the IDF, serving as trackers and defending the country’s borders. Yet these
peaceful, loyal citizens are being targeted for internal dislocation on the
basis of their ethnicity, race, religion and normative social
arrangements. And Israel shows
little respect for their historic ties to the land.
Rather than herd them into the seven ghetto-like “recognized”
villages with inadequate services, pathetic infrastructure and few jobs, Israel should
improve the conditions of everyday life for Bedouins in the 35 “unrecognized”
villages. The government should invest in Bedouin roads, schools, job creation
and health care and connect these villages to the Israeli water, sewage and
electricity systems.
Likewise, rather than turn a blind eye to the ongoing
injustice of forcible Bedouin dislocation, American Jews should think twice
before buying a tree from the JNF in a forest that may have been created on the
ruins of Bedouin homes.
And we should insist that our communal organizations address
both the moral and political dimensions of this issue. Israel cannot claim to be “the only democracy in
the Middle East” if it continues uprooting
thousands of its citizens against their will.
Letty Cottin Pogrebin’s latest book is How to Be a Friend to
a Friend Who’s Sick. She is currently working on a novel.
Published here in Moment magazine, Sept-Oct 2013
