tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17275174100832018872024-03-13T22:24:39.873-07:00Bedouin-Jewish Justice in IsraelCampaign to end the destruction of Bedouin villages in Israel and promote a just negotiated solution to the plight of Israel's Negev Bedouin citizens: A Project the Jewish Alliance for Change.Jewish Alliance for Changehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06010677880950984668noreply@blogger.comBlogger128125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1727517410083201887.post-42759421303750566702015-12-12T23:38:00.000-08:002015-12-12T23:49:23.281-08:00New Jewish settlements planned 'on top of' Bedouin villages, by Natasha Roth, +972<i><b>The Israeli government approves a plan for five new settlements in the Negev/Naqab. Rights group says the plan, like Israel’s overall policy regarding its Bedouin citizens, is discriminatory.</b></i><br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipvgntUlTqncGxHieXqhkymwhSN01lacseOdWC-YAULjB7q-I9BVeP1L-t4QJBAW7Wzehlbm-NmKrw0gD-muySQ7bIQFExPJ1KXhIlReYoc-jTRNfH8xzCbMaIPCzuABogUR2Eou1vM2s/s1600/negev.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipvgntUlTqncGxHieXqhkymwhSN01lacseOdWC-YAULjB7q-I9BVeP1L-t4QJBAW7Wzehlbm-NmKrw0gD-muySQ7bIQFExPJ1KXhIlReYoc-jTRNfH8xzCbMaIPCzuABogUR2Eou1vM2s/s1600/negev.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A man from the Zanoun family sits on the ruins of his house in the
unrecognized Bedouin village of Wadi Al Na’am a few hours after it was
demolished by Israeli authorities, Negev, May 18, 2014. Wadi Al-Na’am is
the largest unrecognized village in Israel, with about 13,000
inhabitants, most of whom are internally displaced from elsewhere in
Israel. The village is not connected to electricity. (Keren
Manor/Activestills)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
The Israeli government on Sunday [Nov. 22, 2015] approved a plan for five new Jewish settlements to be built in the Negev (Naqab) in the south of Israel. The plan, which was submitted by Housing Minister Yoav Galant of Kulanu, threatens to displace thousands of Bedouin from their homes.<br />
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Two of the settlements are due to be built where Bedouin villages already exist, according to the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI). The new town of Daya is to be established on top of the unrecognized village of Katamat, which would displace its 1,500 Bedouin residents. Neve Gurion, meanwhile, is meant to be built on part of the land of the recognized village of Be’er Hadaj, home to 6,000 Bedouin citizens of Israel.<br />
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“This decision is a mere continuation of the government’s unequal planning policy, which attempts to move the inhabitants of Bedouin villages to urban or semi-urban settlements or existing townships, which are ranked at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder and are already under significant stress,” ACRI wrote in a statement on Sunday.<br />
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The government’s announcement comes just weeks after the unrecognized Bedouin village of Al-Araqib in the Negev was demolished for the 90th time. Israel’s continual razing of Al Araqib began in 2010, and the village has become a symbol of the ethnic discrimination that characterizes the state’s policies in the Negev.<br />
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Since the founding of the State of Israel, Jewish settlement in the Negev has been considered Zionism’s final frontier — an impression largely instilled by the vision of David Ben-Gurion, the country’s first prime minister. “It is in the Negev that the people of Israel will be tested,” Ben-Gurion said in the 1950s.<br />
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“Only with a united effort … will we accomplish the great mission of populating the wilderness and bringing it to flourish. This effort will determine the fate of the State of Israel and the standing of our people in the history of mankind.” Several years later, he reiterated: “The Negev is a great Zionist asset, with no substitute anywhere in the country.”<br />
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Sixty years later, the wheels of Ben-Gurion’s dream have been firmly set in motion. The Prawer Plan, a government framework for forcibly moving thousands of Bedouin living in unrecognized villages in the Negev into impoverished townships, seemed dead in the water until the last elections. During coalition negotiations, the plan was resuscitated as a bargaining chip between the Likud and Jewish Home, with Naftali Bennett leveraging its revival as a condition for joining the government.<br />
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Israeli is also expropriating large tracts of Bedouin land – either for “greening” (i.e. planting forests on top of the ruins of demolished villages) under the auspices of the JNF, or for building new Jewish settlements on top of Bedouin towns, as is the state’s wont.<br />
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Israel has systematically refused to recognize many of the Negev villages and towns in which Bedouin citizens live, meaning that they have no connections to electricity, water or sewage infrastructure, and are in constant danger of demolition. The new suburban settlements the state builds in the Negev are generally designated for Jews, whereas Bedouin are encouraged to move to Bedouin-only townships that lack economic opportunities and are not designed with Bedouin social structures in mind.<br />
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The Negev village of Umm el-Hiran is perhaps the most blatant example of how the state hopes to displace Bedouin citizens for the benefit of Jewish citizens. The Israeli Supreme Court recently upheld plans to demolish Umm el-Hiran and build a Jewish town, named Hiran, in its place. Umm el-Hiran’s Bedouin residents would be forcibly relocated to the nearby township of Hura, according to the state’s plans.<br />
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Adjacent to Umm el-Hiran is the village of Atir, which also faces destruction — so that the JNF can expand a manmade forest, named Yatir, over its ruins. (Notice the pattern of only slightly altering names to Hebraize them?)<br />
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Housing Minister Galant on Sunday evoked Ben-Gurion when praising the government’s passing of his plan [Heb]: “It is our responsibility to settle the Negev … to turn it into a desirable and thriving area, in keeping with the Zionist vision,” he said.<br />
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Originally published at <a href="http://972mag.com/new-jewish-settlements-planned-on-top-of-bedouin-villages/114104/" target="_blank">+972</a> on Nov. 23, 2015 Jewish Alliance for Changehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06010677880950984668noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1727517410083201887.post-55887371849249647262015-10-30T13:31:00.002-07:002015-10-30T13:36:55.185-07:00JAFC is Proud to Sponsor The Other Israel Film Festival 2015 in NYC - Nov. 5 - 12<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/niHNZya86Jo/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/niHNZya86Jo?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe></div>
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<h3 style="text-align: center;">
<b>To learn more, visit <a href="http://otherisrael.org/">otherisrael.org/</a></b></h3>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEip4RPnukJH25lPEGHFDG-6h_eD4Ar5Q6qTkDHjUjsINLMjmSK1qCgkIsHxkaNh5XRjghCTqrL7uLL2NoHSlFXw6ZxqsOaxnoHChGJuipyLKreVwtLHI15AoymTxjUVXXJKas5aWqkurUM/s1600/OTI+Festival2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="140" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEip4RPnukJH25lPEGHFDG-6h_eD4Ar5Q6qTkDHjUjsINLMjmSK1qCgkIsHxkaNh5XRjghCTqrL7uLL2NoHSlFXw6ZxqsOaxnoHChGJuipyLKreVwtLHI15AoymTxjUVXXJKas5aWqkurUM/s400/OTI+Festival2.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<b> </b></h2>
Jewish Alliance for Changehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06010677880950984668noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1727517410083201887.post-67335727647850984562015-10-30T13:21:00.003-07:002015-10-30T13:21:42.581-07:00Bedouin Facing Eviction Submit New Appeal to Israel's Supreme Court <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj79JmrRdPOr4lA6ZyNy9m4CMGIx4Qc3f0YdQhj6RZiA1aJphqs9-ArB88rYXsytnhjwmpnjIsZRpHNDDgLQXPgjAPvrWc8xIC0dLeVh_cpNJcKN1sBisYxeVBSMKM21i-s3SEe5ST5uGw/s1600/Bedouin+children+sit+outside+their+home+in+village+of+Um+Al-Hiran+-+May+12+2015+AP+-+Ha%2527aretz.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj79JmrRdPOr4lA6ZyNy9m4CMGIx4Qc3f0YdQhj6RZiA1aJphqs9-ArB88rYXsytnhjwmpnjIsZRpHNDDgLQXPgjAPvrWc8xIC0dLeVh_cpNJcKN1sBisYxeVBSMKM21i-s3SEe5ST5uGw/s400/Bedouin+children+sit+outside+their+home+in+village+of+Um+Al-Hiran+-+May+12+2015+AP+-+Ha%2527aretz.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<b>Acknowledging that the chances of obtaining legal redress are slim, opponents of the eviction are planning for a public struggle.</b><br />
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By Jack Khoury and Shirly Seidler, Ha'aretz Jun 09, 2015<br />
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The residents of the unrecognized Bedouin village Umm al-Hiran on Monday petitioned the Supreme Court for another hearing, following its previous ruling that they could be evacuated and the village demolished to make way for the construction of a Jewish community, named Hiran.<br /><br />The residents, who are represented by the legal aid NGO Adalah, argued in their petition that last month’s ruling constituted a “new and historic law,” requiring another hearing before an expanded Supreme Court bench.<br /><br />In terms of the “new and historic law,” according to the petition states, “the state may, as owner of the land, instruct that the residents be evacuated at any time it wants, even if the state itself gave them permission to use the land and live there, as it gave the residents of Umm al-Hiran.”<br /><br />In so doing, according to the petition, the state “utterly ignored the lengthy period of time the citizens lived on the land,” and made it impossible for them to protect themselves constitutionally.<br /><br />“The state is the owner of the disputed land, which was registered to it in the framework of an arrangement process,” Supreme Court Justice Elyakim Rubinstein wrote in the verdict that has been challenged by Umm al-Hiram residents. “The residents did not buy the right to the land but rather lived on it for free with permission, which has been legally abrogated by the state. Under such circumstances there is no justification for the intervention of the courts in previous verdicts.”<br /><br />Justice Daphne Barak-Erez, who did not accept Rubinstein’s decision in its entirety, was critical of the state’s actions. “The petitioners cannot receive all the redress they seek, but we cannot accept the faults in the actions of the authorities regarding the decision on evacuation and compensation,” she said.<br /><br />“It has been noted that the petitioners were authorized to live in the place for some 60 years and the fact that the state insists that the new settlement is not restricted and is open to every person, including the petitioners themselves should they want to [live there.] Thus, for example, the state can consider the possibility, besides moving them to Hura [another Negev Bedouin town], of providing them with lots in the new community of Hiran.”<br /><br />Adalah acknowledges that the chances of legal success are slim and intends focusing its main effort on a public struggle. In a petition published by the Umbrella Organization of Human Rights and Social Organizations in Israel, the evacuation was defined as an “unjust, racist and discriminatory step.”<br /><br />The steering committee of the Higher Arab Monitoring Committee announced that thousands of residents of the unrecognized villages in the Negev would come to Be’er Sheva next Thursday to protest against the house demolitions. The intention is to march from market square to the government buildings. <br /><br />Another protest against house demolitions will be held at the entrance to the Arab city of Umm al-Fahm in Wadi Ara this evening.<br />
<br />read more: http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.660267<br />
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Jewish Alliance for Changehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06010677880950984668noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1727517410083201887.post-63937340625530923182014-11-09T03:11:00.000-08:002014-11-09T03:17:16.454-08:00Why Have Jewish-Arab Relations Deteriorated in Israel? The View of Sikkuy's Ron Gerlitz, by Phyllis Bernstein<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<style>
/* Style Definitions */
table.MsoNormalTable
{mso-style-name:"Table Normal";
mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;
mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;
mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-style-priority:99;
mso-style-parent:"";
mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt;
mso-para-margin-top:0in;
mso-para-margin-right:0in;
mso-para-margin-bottom:8.0pt;
mso-para-margin-left:0in;
line-height:107%;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:11.0pt;
font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;
mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri;
mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri;
mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;
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<![endif]--><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">What follows is a summary of remarks
delivered by Ron Gerlitz, co-executive director of Sikkuy: The Association for
the Advancement of Civic Equality, at an Inter-Agency Task Force for Israeli
Arab Issues meeting on November 6, 2014 in New York.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span></span></span></i><br />
<br />
<i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></span><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwRPVEOWkBBsiyFDoMII_OmOfQUd_uPhTo4PcBsjwsWzmhWvyGK1GawTHnlFZ5SJJ5qoI58NqmHspdgPuvcEsHOtsdL75n_9MF9VtcWOAB400VxQ_5XuDvm6EM3L9fU5GJ2dF_st9Gs2E/s1600/photo(18).JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwRPVEOWkBBsiyFDoMII_OmOfQUd_uPhTo4PcBsjwsWzmhWvyGK1GawTHnlFZ5SJJ5qoI58NqmHspdgPuvcEsHOtsdL75n_9MF9VtcWOAB400VxQ_5XuDvm6EM3L9fU5GJ2dF_st9Gs2E/s1600/photo(18).JPG" height="222" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>"To hate Arabs isn't racism, it's having moral values! #Israeldemandsrevenge</i></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</span></span></i><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi;">By Phyllis Bernstein</span></span>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi;">This summer, and since the war in
Gaza, we have witnessed a serious deterioration in relations between Jewish and
Arab citizens in Israel.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Unlike the
events which took place in 2000 between the police and Arab citizens, since the
summer of 2014 we’ve seen civil clashes between Jewish and Arab citizens. </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi;">In most cases, Jews have attacked
Arabs verbally or physically.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What’s new
is the frequency and intensity of these incidents. This is something we’ve
never seen before in Jewish-Arab relations in Israel.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A few examples:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>shouting “death to Arabs” on the street,
demonstrations demanding the firing of all Arab employees in some shopping
malls, organized pressure on employers to fire Arab employees, death threats
against people who expressed sympathy for Arabs, including former Defense
Minister Amir Peretz, physical and verbal attacks against Arab citizens, racist
incitement in social media, dismissal of Arab employees by mainstream Jewish
employers, and incitement by politicians such as Foreign Minister Avigdor
Lieberman who called on Jews to boycott Arab businesses.</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi;">The results:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Arabs have simply become afraid to go out in
the street, speak Arabic in public, and go to work. The level of hate has
increased significantly on both sides.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Extreme right-wing organizations have also incited hatred against
Israeli Arabs through well-organized demonstrations and marches.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi;">Some believe this has happened
because of the war in Gaza.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But there
have been three other wars in Gaza in recent years and these things did not
happen before.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If we simply see these
developments as an “unexplained outburst of racism" in Jewish society, we
will be unable to find solutions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What
we are seeing is a backlash by the very extreme right to the strengthening of
Arab society and its ever-increasing integration in the economy and society in
Israel. </span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi;">Arab society in Israel has gotten
stronger – economically, socially and also in terms of political
representation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Many factors have driven
this process, some due to Arab society itself, some to government efforts, and
some to NGO’s working for equality.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi;">While growing up near Tira in the
seventies, Ron saw Arabs working only as school janitors or as farmers. Today
you can see Arabs working in pharmacies and in hospitals as doctors and
nurses.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The symbol of success is the
Arab Supreme Court judge who sent former President Katzav to jail.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Arab citizens of Israel have not only become
better off, but they are also more visible and this has changed how the extreme
Jewish right sees them. </span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi;">The backlash began in the Knesset
with a wave of legislation against Arab citizens.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the politicians failed, and Arab society
has continued to flourish.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This summer,
people took to the streets to try to do what the politicians couldn’t do.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi;">The extreme right wing wanted to
stop integration in employment, and the “Chuligans” in the street (similar to
the KKK, but with different hats) descended on pharmacies to demand the
dismissal of Arab employees. They cannot tolerate the strength and visibility
of Arabs in public in Israel. They want to put them in the only place they’re
willing to see them – back down at the bottom.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi;">During the summer, the assault
against Arab citizens took place in the Knesset, within the government, on
social networks, in the media and, of course, on the street.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This makes the situation much worse because
it is harder to control.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And we have
come very close to the point where things could spin out of control.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi;">What does all this mean for Israeli
society?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In a word, it’s
dangerous.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There is a real possibility
that the largely non-violent relations between Arabs and Jews in Israel will
deteriorate into serious violence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi;">We must develop solutions for this
new situation, because things have changed dramatically.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A few important lessons emerge.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>First, we didn't expect the backlash from
the right wing to the success of efforts to strengthen Arab society and
especially to the strides made in integrating Arabs into the Israeli work
place.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The process of economic development,
integration and narrowing of gaps between Arabs and Jews is not linear.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There are people on the other side who want
to stop it and we need to take this into account.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>An example:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>While Israeli and American Jewish philanthropists are giving microfinance
to small Arab businesses, the foreign minister called on Jews not to buy from
those very same businesses!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Philanthropic efforts must take this into account.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Otherwise, their efforts are at risk of
failing.</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi;">There are more and more shared spaces
in which Jews and Arabs mix on an equal basis, especially in work places and in
the new mixed cities like Nazareth Illit.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And it is exactly in those places that we saw clashes between Jewish and
Arab citizens.</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi;">If the Arab woman from Sakhnin
hadn’t graduated university and worked as a pharmacist in Haifa, no one would
have cared what she thought about the IDF during the Gaza war.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But she is a graduate of an Israeli college
and she works in a pharmacy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So
right-wing hooligans demanded her dismissal because of what she wrote on
Facebook during the war.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>"Death to
the Arabs" marches were not held in Baqa al-Gharbiya but in Nazareth Illit
and Haifa.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Arab doctor was fired and
not the Arab hospital cleaner.</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi;">While we have worked hard and had
success in narrowing gaps, for example through increased economic development
in the Arab sector and creating more shared places, no one considered that
those places could become focal points for tension between Jews and Arabs in
times of war.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is exactly in those
places where the right wing will react.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi;">Perhaps the most important lesson is
that economic development by itself simply isn’t enough.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The difference in narratives between Jews and
Arabs dramatically affects the ability of these societies to live together.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>NGOs and philanthropists cannot create a
common narrative for both sides.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
Zionist and Palestinian narratives are very far apart.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That chasm will not be bridged in the next
two generations.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But we must find ways
to live together despite these different narratives.</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi;">We must be ready for the next
escalation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Every newly shared space
could become the arena for the next escalation between Jews and Arabs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is important to develop and promote ideas
that will enable those shared places:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>for example, the workplace must become tolerant of the different
narratives.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As an example, an Arab
doctor should not be fired for Facebook posts in sympathy with the Palestinian
children killed in Gaza.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi;">We should <i>not</i> stop pushing
economic development forward, and we should continue to build a shared
society.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But now we must also prepare
for the reactions of those who find these unwelcome.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In addition to our investment in economic
progress, we will also have to invest in preparing our response to the likely
counterattack.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We will have to find
ways that those shared spaces, especially places of employment, can accommodate
the two differing and sometimes conflicting narratives of Jews and Arabs in
Israel. </span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi;">Phyllis Bernstein adds:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Israeli Arabs, and the Palestinians in the
West Bank and in Gaza, all view themselves as part of the same “Palestinian
people.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Arab citizens want to remain
in Israel as citizens, but in times of war they are unable to express dissenting
views against the government’s policies or the IDF’s actions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Israeli civil society really needs to start
addressing the question of how to deal with the “Palestinian peoplehood
narrative” of Israel’s Arab citizens.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>In short, Israel needs to work much more on its democracy issues. </span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi;">Phyllis Bernstein is co-chair of the
Israeli Arab Committee of the Jewish Federation of Greater Metrowest New Jersey
and serves on the executive board of Partners for Progressive Israel.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Her views are her own and not those of any
organization with which she is affiliated.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></span></i></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi;">Here are links to three Op-eds by
Ron Gerlitz with further analysis of the deterioration in Arab-Jewish relations
in Israel this summer:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi;">1. <a href="http://bit.ly/ReasonsForEscalation">Why Palestinian citizens of Israel
are no longer safe</a>, Ron Gerlitz | +972 Magazine<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi;">2.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>A short version of that op-ed appeared in Ha’aretz:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><a href="http://bit.ly/BacklashHaaretzRonGerlitzAug14">The backlash against Arab
integration</a></span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi;"> </span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi;">3.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And a new op-ed about the firing of Arab employees during the war:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><a href="http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/dismissal-for-narrative-reasons/">Dismissal
for Narrative Reasons</a> | Ron Gerlitz | The Times of Israel</span></span></span></div>
Jewish Alliance for Changehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06010677880950984668noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1727517410083201887.post-41363113541662910842013-12-17T04:46:00.000-08:002013-12-17T04:46:42.498-08:00Stop Prawer-Begin plan for Bedouin resettlement, by Devorah Brous, Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles <!--[if !mso]>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="Women stand near a washing line in the Bedouin town of Rahat in southern Israel on Dec. 10. Photo by Amir Cohen/Reuters" height="245" src="http://www.jewishjournal.com/images/featured/opi_bedouin-settlmentplan_121613.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="400" /></td></tr>
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Women stand near a washing line in the Bedouin town of Rahat<br />
in southern Israel
on Dec. 10.<br />
Photo by Amir Cohen/Reuters<br />
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<![endif]--><b style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"> </b><b>By Devorah Brous, Founder and former Executive Director Bustan, former co-director of the Campaign for Bedouin-Jewish Justice </b><br />
<article> </article>The Negev Bedouin village
of Umm el-Hiran is where
I first learned about what it means to be rooted, to be devoted to something
with steadfastness. It is here that I learned the true impact of Jewish
National Fund (JNF) afforestation on the Bedouin, which is far from JNF’s
whitewashed and spit-shined-glossy version. Rayid Abu Alkeean, an Israeli
Bedouin, partnered with Bustan, an environmental justice organization that I
founded, to host delegations on dozens of our Negev Unplugged Tours in his
village, where we learned about Bedouin traditional life unplugged from the
nation’s electricity grid, and from Israel’s democracy.<br />
<br />
Imagine serving in the Israel Defense Forces and having your home demolished
by the government in front of your children. Next, imagine being billed for the
demolition. Imagine watching religious Jews building a barbed wire fence to
stake a claim to the hilltop just above your home. Hiran and Kasif, two
Jewish-only religious towns slated to be built on the lands of Rayid’s village,
were just approved.<br />
<br />
Fortunately, the Knesset vote on the controversial Prawer-Begin Plan to
resettle the Negev Bedouin has been postponed for the next one to two months.
We must urge Israeli officials to take this discriminatory plan off the table
and encourage them to adopt the Alternative Master Plan (AMP) developed by
Bedouin leadership and Jewish planners of the human rights non-governmental
organization Bimkom. The AMP will delimit territorial boundaries on historical
village lands. It will enable formal village planning and access to the full
basket of rights and services afforded Jewish villages and towns — housing,
clinics, roads, waste removal and schools. We must make every effort to advance
this alternative plan and promote sustainable economic development for all
residents of the Negev. <br />
<br />
Here’s why it is in the best interest of every Jew in the Negev
and the Diaspora to stop the Prawer Plan.<br />
<br />
• Because it is morally unconscionable to uproot this Negev Arab minority
from their homes and against their will.<br />
<br />
• Because token symbolic gestures aimed at recognition, such as granting
formal ownership over less than 2 percent of historic Bedouin lands to some
while denying the rest to the vast majority of others, simply won’t work. The
Prawer Plan will dispossess some 40,000 Bedouin, requiring entire villages to
be demolished wholesale.<br />
<div class="adtoggle">
</div>
• Because squeezing the remaining lands that have not yet been confiscated from
the Bedouin population and urging them to live as neighbors with Jewish
homesteaders and families that replace them will deepen already existing social
cleavages.<br />
<br />
• Because it will lead to violence. Today the youth in Bedouin villages act
on behalf of a civilian population of 200,000 Negev Arabs that has been
marginalized, criminalized and pauperized for decades. “Days of Rage” protests
and vigils are surging to increasingly high levels of tension in what is now
front and center stage of Israel’s
ongoing land conflict. By declaring a civilian population a national security
threat, the government further alienates and even catalyzes an already enraged
and disenfranchised minority into the streets. Many believe that despite the
intentions of community elders to organize nonviolently, there is no further
incentive to do so.<br />
<br />
• Because living off the grid is hard, but the unrecognized Bedouin prefer
that to losing their lands. Most “unrecognized villagers” have consistently
resisted running water and electricity to power their computers and washing
machines, preferring to stay on their lands rather than be holed up in cities
with different and sometimes clashing familial clans, and pushed into wage
labor —– when it is even available — at the expense of their traditional
cultural pursuits. Unrecognized Bedouin have organized however haphazardly and have
used nonviolent but futile tactics to have their land rights recognized by the
Israeli courts. More than 100,000 Bedouin continue to resist being transferred
into impoverished townships that are drug-riddled pits of crime. They fight to
keep their lands because even in recognized towns, Bedouin are denied building
permits, basic infrastructure and services.<br />
<br />
• Because we’ve learned from villages like Al-Arakib and Umm el-Hiran, among
others, that coercion is not sustainable. To try to rip Negev Arabs from their
lands will only make them, and more of us, more resolute.<br />
<br />
• Because the northern Negev is already a
toxic tinderbox. Most Negev Arabs and Bedouin have been relocated into a
triangle of territory in the northern Negev between Beer-Sheva, Arad and Dimona that has
been zoned to encircle them to prevent further construction.<br />
<br />
The conflict between Bedouin and the State of Israel is about land,
resources and control. Investment in developing Jewish towns and demolishing
Arab villages happens most aggressively in Arab areas of the Negev and the
Galilee, battlefields of Israel’s
demographic war to create a Jewish majority in every region of Israel.
One tactic is to break apart contiguous Bedouin villages and to concentrate the
maximum number of Bedouin onto the minimum amount of territory.<br />
<br />
Like Rayid, head of the village council of al-Sira, Khalil el Amor resists
the Prawer Plan. His entire village is slated for demolition. I spoke with
Khalil yesterday. He said, “I am a teacher, and finishing school to become a
lawyer. As a child, I would return home from school to tend our flock and help
my mother milk the animals until dark. I would light a lantern and start my
homework. I want my granddaughter Siraj (meaning “lantern”) to have the choice
to tend a flock. If I stay on my village lands, I dream of inviting tourists to
learn about our traditions and our changing Bedouin culture.” Rather than give
up the land, and give up the lantern, Khalil holds steadfast.<br />
<br />
The AMP is a viable way for Negev Arabs like Khalil and Rayid to showcase
their village culture to tourists and to earn livable incomes rather than
masquerading as traditional Bedouin for Jewish-owned tourist companies that
romanticize their culture if they’ll pretend to be shepherds for a photo-op on
a camel. If Prawer passes, that is all our children will know about
Bedouin culture.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.jewishjournal.com/opinion/article/stop_prawer_begin_plan_for_bedouin_resettlement" target="_blank"><b>Published in the <i>Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles</i>, December 14, 2013</b></a><br />
<br />
Jewish Alliance for Changehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06010677880950984668noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1727517410083201887.post-26823590262781185392013-11-30T07:49:00.000-08:002013-12-17T07:51:38.661-08:00Israel's Plan To Move Bedouins from Villages Sparks Large Protests, Forward/Reuters, Nov. 30, 2013<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZt3xTzQu3kvREynEGu3RieffjzN5pAbyhgmE39S3mkSVekN8DWvKAtwwWELp-Akee-a5HcwmjF2pGduXO7KMOgKpXfw_pACBwUv8ALPpWrKfTSSMWj949YB8K927x7xwYfXqlRTcfA-4/s1600/week1128-1204_004.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="425" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZt3xTzQu3kvREynEGu3RieffjzN5pAbyhgmE39S3mkSVekN8DWvKAtwwWELp-Akee-a5HcwmjF2pGduXO7KMOgKpXfw_pACBwUv8ALPpWrKfTSSMWj949YB8K927x7xwYfXqlRTcfA-4/s640/week1128-1204_004.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<![endif]-->Published Saturday, November 30, 2013, The Forward
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Israel's
Plan To Move Bedouins from Villages Sparks Large Protests</b></div>
<b>
</b><div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Arabs Tie Bedouin Plight To Fight for Palestine</b></div>
<b>
</b><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
By Reuters</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Protest Scenes: Bedouins flee from a protest after Israelis
fire tear gas into the crowd.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Hundreds of Bedouin Arabs and their supporters clashed with
Israeli forces on Saturday in protests against a government plan to force
40,000 Bedouins living in the southern Negev
region to leave their villages.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The plan has not only angered the Bedouins but also spurred
many other young Arab citizens of Israel
to associate it with Israel’s
occupation of Arab East Jerusalem and the West Bank,
and so identify themselves more closely with demands for a Palestinian state.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The historic heart of Haifa, Israel’s northern port city on the Mediterranean, was brought to a standstill as hundreds of
Israeli Arabs scuffled with scores of security forces.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Police fired stun grenades and water cannon at the youths,
who blocked a main thoroughfare and chanted: “With our souls and blood we will
defend you, Palestine!”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Over 1,000 demonstrated in the largest gathering, in Hura,
in Israel’s Negev Desert.
Stone-throwers clashed with police, who used tear gas, stun grenades and water
cannon.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Eyewitnesses said several demonstrators had been injured. An
Israeli police spokesman said at least 28 people had been arrested in Haifa and Hura and some
15 officers treated for injuries.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A bill set for a final vote in parliament before the end of
the year provides for 40,000 Arab Bedouins from many villages that are
“unrecognised” by the Israeli state to be forced to move into seven townships.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Bedouins, other Arab citizens of Israel
and Palestinians in the occupied West Bank all say the plan is a land grab
meant to benefit Jews at their expense, and point to the lack of progress in
the latest, U.S.-backed peace talks between Israel and Palestinians.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“WE WILL RESIST”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“We were here before Israel. What they’re doing in the
Negev is what they’ve done to us all along,” Haneen Zoabi, an Arab member of
parliament, told Reuters at the Haifa
protest.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“It may pass a vote, but the youth here and in the Negev will resist democratically in any way possible, and
stop them.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Other demonstrations took place near the old city of Arab East Jerusalem, another Arab town in central Israel and an area adjoining a Jewish settlement
in the West Bank, where tear gas was used to
scatter protesters.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned the protests.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“The attempts of a boisterous and violent minority to deny a
better future for a large population are grave. We will continue to promote
this law for the better future that it will provide for all the Negev’s citizens,” Netanyahu said.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Israel
says it will compensate many of the Bedouins with a combination of land and
cash, and “bring them into the 21st century” by significantly improving their
standard of living, according to a government-sponsored report on the draft.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The majority of Israel’s 1.6 million Arab citizens
dwell in cities and small towns in the north and centre.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But 200,000 Bedouin live in the southern desert, half in
government-built townships and half in 42 ramshackle “unrecognised” villages
without running water, electricity or sanitation. Civil rights groups say it is
these the government should be developing, rather than the soulless dormitory
towns where the Bedouins are being forced to move.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The government agency in charge of the Prawer Plan, based in
the prime minister’s office, condemned the protests.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Extremists, many of whom are not Bedouin, chose to divert
the open debate about a purely social and humanitarian cause into a
confrontation, falsely linked to the Palestinian issue,” it said in a
statement.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“The Bedouin of the Negev,
being equal citizens, deserve adequate housing, public services and a better
future for their children.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But Medhat Diab, a young Arab activist from a town outside Haifa wearing the
trademark Palestinian chequered scarf, said the Bedouin and Palestinian causes
were linked.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Our ID says we’re Israeli but our identity is Palestinian,”
he said. “My generation sees that there’s no justice or equality for Arabs,
just taking more and more of our land.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="http://m.forward.com/articles/188571/">http://m.forward.com/articles/188571/</a>
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Jewish Alliance for Changehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06010677880950984668noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1727517410083201887.post-78364172895033795442013-09-30T06:27:00.000-07:002013-12-17T06:45:07.413-08:00Israel’s Other Land Grab, by Letty Cottin Pogrebin, Moment, Sept-Oct, 2013 <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIklovX4FZ5mO_Rk2Ka5_01htfpur_ixGFvN5_vTGNupIO1yGQMPKsjfIANWLBWLEg-Qic9SGPGdKxHR8_YaHuVxai6GEVE9bh5xPUDQzBxQ6tpTGiLwK0wbtx7lugQPlNllaZj7X3oDg/s1600/bedouin-90.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="311" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIklovX4FZ5mO_Rk2Ka5_01htfpur_ixGFvN5_vTGNupIO1yGQMPKsjfIANWLBWLEg-Qic9SGPGdKxHR8_YaHuVxai6GEVE9bh5xPUDQzBxQ6tpTGiLwK0wbtx7lugQPlNllaZj7X3oDg/s400/bedouin-90.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Opinion </div>
<br /><div class="MsoNormal">
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.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We heard about Bedouin culture
and traditions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>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.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Altogether, it’s not a pretty picture.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And Israel shows
little respect for their historic ties to the land.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Published <a href="http://www.momentmag.com/opinion-letty-cottin-pogrebin-3/" target="_blank">here</a> in Moment magazine, Sept-Oct 2013 </div>
Jewish Alliance for Changehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06010677880950984668noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1727517410083201887.post-1785971737946374722013-09-01T07:01:00.000-07:002013-12-17T07:11:49.687-08:00Every Jew should see the Bedouin issue as test of Israel's moral values, by Rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg, Ha’aretz<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZ8Lhyphenhyphenvv_ZuvanVNtCFoIlxiPj8qwIbzUKTIzToGMAWMqIzrsRN5uhan2LthvuC6hdATThq4xgzsTRF4o2Wq4y93n3Gr3uOTJ44jRCel-lQ66mopeEvqwyiUAb6S4la3ql6LTkffj2aFk/s1600/Bedouin+-+Photo+by+Eliyahu+Hershowitz+-+Ha%2527aretz.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="231" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZ8Lhyphenhyphenvv_ZuvanVNtCFoIlxiPj8qwIbzUKTIzToGMAWMqIzrsRN5uhan2LthvuC6hdATThq4xgzsTRF4o2Wq4y93n3Gr3uOTJ44jRCel-lQ66mopeEvqwyiUAb6S4la3ql6LTkffj2aFk/s400/Bedouin+-+Photo+by+Eliyahu+Hershowitz+-+Ha%2527aretz.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>Why have the relocations and demolitions of Negev Bedouin
homes, an issue not related to Israel’s
security or vexed questions such as "Who is a Jew?", aroused such
strong feelings amongst Diaspora Jews actively engaged with Israel?</i> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Should the Begin-Prawer plan become law, it will have an
enormous effect on Israel’s
Bedouin, with tens of villages destroyed and tens of thousands of people
removed from their homes into poverty-stricken townships. This will be
extremely painful for Israel's
supporters in the Diaspora to observe.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
That is why the progress of the bill through the Knesset is
making such an impact well beyond the Negev, in Israel and abroad. In Britain,
sixty-five rabbis from across the denominations, supporting the courageous lead
of Israel’s Rabbis for Human Rights, signed a letter to Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu and other senior ministers, asking them to re-consider their
proposals. In the U.S.,
the Religious Action Centre of the Reform Movement, the Reconstructionist
Rabbinical Association, T’ruah, the Rabbinic Call for Human Rights, and
thousands of individual rabbis and Jews have written in a similar vein.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Why should this issue, which does not threaten Israel’s immediate security and has no influence
over the vexed questions of ‘Who is a Jew?’ with its obvious Diaspora
dimensions, have aroused such strong feelings amongst Jews actively engaged
with Israel?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The matter goes to the heart of how we identify with Israel, and of the nature of Israel as a
society. Living abroad, rightly or wrongly, we don’t experience Israel through
the everyday realities of its traffic jams, cafes, and hamsins. We identify
with Israel
because we are family. We identify via those hyper-sensitive antennae which
quadruple our anxiety the moment we hear Israel mentioned on the news.
Primarily, we identify with Israel
as Jews.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
To some the slogan is ‘Israel, right or wrong’. To a few
it is, sadly and unjustly, ‘Israel,
usually wrong’. But for most of us, in spite of all the fears and frustrations,
Israel
remains the country where our Jewish values are, should and shall be realized.
We still hope for and believe in the Israel whose founders, less than three
years after the Holocaust, presented to the world the remarkable vision of a
country which "will uphold the full social and political equality of all
its citizens, without distinction of religion, race, or gender; will guarantee
full freedom of worship, conscience, culture and education" and live and
legislate according to "the precepts of liberty, justice and peace taught
by the Prophets of Israel."</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We know that, for all the daily difficulties the country
encounters, this Israel
is not just the stuff of dreams. Countless Israelis put into practice in their
daily lives the values of justice and compassion. ‘That’s only a bubble’,
someone recently told me. If so, it’s a big bubble or many bubbles. One has
only to think of Israel’s
extraordinary number of chesed organisations. To the outsider it can be hard to
credit how many groups work across the painful divisions between Arab and Jew,
Israeli and Palestinian and continue to affirm in spite of all the conflicts
the core Jewish value of universal human dignity in the image of God.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>That is why so many of us care when Israel
threatens to pass a law so deeply at odds with its own principles. "So
long as Israel
claims to be a Jewish state, it must act according to Jewish moral
values," commented Gidon Remba, Director of the U.S.-based Campaign for
Bedouin-Jewish Justice. "The way a country treats its most disadvantaged
citizens defines its moral character, and so too its Jewish character as a
bearer of the Jewish moral tradition."</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It’s not just that Diaspora Jews are pained by the prospect
of watching on their national television Israeli bulldozers flattening villages
and forcing thousands of men, women and children from their homes, actions
which the Begin-Prawer plan could indeed entail. The matter goes deeper than
the damage that would be done to Israel’s international reputation.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It relates to a profound moral instinct that Israel’s safety
depends not only on military superiority and the skill and courage of its armed
forces, but is connected in some unquantifiable way to its faithfulness to the
age-old Jewish values of justice and human dignity.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It connects to those historical experiences of exile and persecution
which Jews carry subliminally in their souls. As Theodore Bikel, who played
Tevye in countless productions of Fiddler on the Roof, said, "What hurts
is the fact that the very people who are telling them [the Bedouin] to “Get
out” are the descendents of the people of Anatevka. My people."</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I’ve been to El Arakib, demolished fifty times, spoken with
its leaders and seen footage of its destruction. It was a shocking experience.
"You mustn’t believe everything the Bedouin claim", I was told. Yet
Bedouin land ownership was honoured by the Ottomans and the British, and
pre-State aerial photographs document extensive Bedouin agriculture. There is
much misinformation. A recent poll conducted by Panelresearch showed that 70%
of Israelis thought on average that the Bedouin wanted forty per cent of the Negev. In fact, they are asking for just 5.4% of the
area. When told this fact most Israelis felt the Bedouin claims were
reasonable.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It’s beyond dispute that the situation of Israel’s
Bedouin requires legislation. Their villages can’t remain unrecognised, without
the provision of electricity and hygiene services other Israelis take for
granted. After all, the Bedouin are full citizens and many have traditionally
served in the IDF. What the thousands of voices from abroad and within Israel are asking for is a proper partnership
between Israel
and the Bedouin leadership in agreeing a solution. As Rabbi Jill Jacobs of
T’ruah writes, "Demolishing homes, forcing people off their land, and
denying basic government services contradict the moral values…on which the
State of Israel was founded."</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Surely the Knesset, and the Jewish community around the
world, will not allow that to happen.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>Jonathan Wittenberg is a rabbi of the New North London
Synagogue and has strong family, communal and charitable connections with Israel.</i></div>
<i>
</i><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><a href="http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/1.535827" target="_blank">Published in Ha'aretz on July 15, 2013</a> </i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Jewish Alliance for Changehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06010677880950984668noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1727517410083201887.post-9558488111918614812013-08-23T12:57:00.002-07:002013-08-26T01:57:18.917-07:00Press Release: Jewish Organizations Meet with White House National Security Council and State Department Officials on Israeli Government Plan to Displace 30-40,000 Bedouin<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<![endif]--><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE</b><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhG_Iz14A9AlsKSvrbhZN2lsG4iQ6nZp7mo9q9OqjtJdGX3x6iltbHidKeeVz_Bk85PEMewQ0ZaHGmaEQepQDqt5tgBpDgQNLLUbZjzrt2CI73qWuaSTEF-9oBVaQ9VQjhevCowH67nDlc/s1600/WhiteHouseSouthFacade.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="236" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhG_Iz14A9AlsKSvrbhZN2lsG4iQ6nZp7mo9q9OqjtJdGX3x6iltbHidKeeVz_Bk85PEMewQ0ZaHGmaEQepQDqt5tgBpDgQNLLUbZjzrt2CI73qWuaSTEF-9oBVaQ9VQjhevCowH67nDlc/s320/WhiteHouseSouthFacade.JPG" width="320" /></a></b></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
August 23, 2013</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: black;">Contact:</span></b><span style="color: black;"> Doni Remba, Jewish Alliance for Change, <a href="mailto:dremba@comcast.net">dremba@comcast.net</a> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Jewish Organizations
Meet with White House National Security Council and State Department Officials
on Israeli Government Plan to Displace 30-40,000 Bedouin</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black;">Mass Protests Against the Plan by Bedouin and Palestinians
in Israel, the West Bank and
Gaza as U.S.-Sponsored
Israeli-Palestinian Peace Talks Resume Heighten American Jewish Concerns</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: red;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
New York, NY,
August 23, 2013 – A delegation of rabbis and leaders from American Jewish and
Israeli organizations met on Tuesday at the White House with National Security
Council and State Department officials regarding the Israeli-government
sponsored “Bill on the Arrangement of Bedouin Settlement in the Negev.” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This
legislation, which seeks to resolve longstanding land disputes between Bedouin
Israelis and the state, will likely lead to the expulsion of 30,000 to 40,000
Bedouin Israelis from their homes, the demolition of as many as 25 villages and
the loss of most Bedouin land.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The groups at the White House meeting have all urged the Government
of Israel
to suspend the plan currently under discussion and allow for greater
exploration of its implications and impact.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It is their view that any plan to resettle members of the Bedouin
community must be developed with leaders of that community rather than be
forced upon them. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The groups have
expressed concerns that the resulting sense of displacement raises the potential
for increased poverty and unrest that is not only harmful to those communities
but endangers Israel’s
security and American strategic interests at a time of great instability and
violence in the region. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The White House meeting took place against the backdrop of
several major developments since the controversial bill was narrowly approved
on June 24 by a vote of 43-40 on its first reading in the Knesset.</div>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: Wingdings; mso-bidi-font-family: Wingdings; mso-fareast-font-family: Wingdings;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;"><span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"></span></span></span>Mass protests against the bill have erupted
during June, July and August with the participation of thousands of Bedouin,
Palestinian, and Jewish Israelis in several cities in northern and southern Israel, and Palestinians in Ramallah, East
Jerusalem and Gaza.
</li>
<li><span style="font-family: Wingdings; mso-bidi-font-family: Wingdings; mso-fareast-font-family: Wingdings;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;"><span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"></span></span></span>Substantive Israeli-Palestinian peace talks have
resumed for the first time in five years, under the <span style="color: black;">sponsorship
o</span>f the United States
and Secretary of State John Kerry.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>With
trust between Israelis and Palestinians at an all-time low, all parties are
being urged to avoid provocative actions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></li>
<li>Once the Knesset returns in October from recess
after the Jewish Holidays, the bill will be taken up by the Committee for
Interior Affairs and Environment and prepared for the second and final readings
which could occur during the upcoming Knesset session – unless the Israeli
government places a hold on it to allow for deeper consideration and more
meaningful consultation with Israeli Bedouin communities.</li>
</ul>
<div class="MsoNormal">
American Jewish and Israeli participants in the meeting
included:</div>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: Wingdings; mso-bidi-font-family: Wingdings; mso-fareast-font-family: Wingdings;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;"><span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"></span></span></span>Rabbi David Saperstein, Director and Counsel,
The Religious Action Center
for Reform Judaism</li>
<li><span style="font-family: Wingdings; mso-bidi-font-family: Wingdings; mso-fareast-font-family: Wingdings;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;"><span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"></span></span></span>Rabbi Arik Ascherman, President and Senior
Rabbi, Rabbis for Human Rights (Israel)</li>
<li>
<span style="font-family: Wingdings; mso-bidi-font-family: Wingdings; mso-fareast-font-family: Wingdings;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;"><span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"></span></span></span>Rabbi David Shneyer, OHALAH: The Association of
Rabbis for Jewish Renewal </li>
<li>
<span style="font-family: Wingdings; mso-bidi-font-family: Wingdings; mso-fareast-font-family: Wingdings;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;"><span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"></span></span></span>Joshua Bloom, Director of Israel Programs, T'ruah: The
Rabbinic Call for Human Rights</li>
<li>
<span style="font-family: Wingdings; mso-bidi-font-family: Wingdings; mso-fareast-font-family: Wingdings;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;"><span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"></span></span></span>Dina B. Charnin, Vice President, Partners for
Progressive Israel
</li>
<li>
<span style="font-family: Wingdings; mso-bidi-font-family: Wingdings; mso-fareast-font-family: Wingdings;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;"><span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"></span></span></span>Dr. Morad El Sana, an Israeli Bedouin
attorney and former New Israel Fund Civil Rights Leadership Fellow who just
completed a doctorate in law at the American University Washington College of
Law specializing in Bedouin land rights.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></li>
<li>
Gidon D. Remba, Executive Director, Jewish
Alliance for Change, and Director, Campaign for Bedouin-Jewish Justice, who
organized the meeting.</li>
</ul>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "ヒラギノ角ゴ Pro W3";">“Bedouin
community leaders have been outspoken in rejecting the Israeli government’s plan
as discriminatory, failing to recognize our historical land rights, and
threatening the Bedouin way of life,” said Dr. Morad El Sana, an expert on
Bedouin land rights in Israel who participated in the meeting. </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="http://org2.salsalabs.com/o/5149/p/dia/action3/common/public/?action_KEY=14782">A
petition to Prime Minister Netanyahu</a> against the bill organized by T’ruah:
The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights, and Rabbis for Human Rights, has already
garnered the signatures of over 400 rabbis and cantors, as well as rabbinical
and cantorial students.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Read more about Bedouin human rights here:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo3; tab-stops: list .5in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: Wingdings; mso-bidi-font-family: Wingdings; mso-fareast-font-family: Wingdings;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;"><span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><a href="http://www.truah.org/issuescampaigns/bedouin.html">http://www.truah.org/issuescampaigns/bedouin.html</a></li>
<li>Background Paper from the Recognition
Forum:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Coalition of Organizations for
Recognition of the Unrecognized Negev Bedouin Villages—The time has come to
truly and fairly resolve the Negev Bedouin’s rights <a href="http://rhr.org.il/eng/2013/05/position-paper-the-time-has-come-to-truly-and-fairly-resolve-the-negev-bedouins-rights/">http://rhr.org.il/eng/2013/05/position-paper-the-time-has-come-to-truly-and-fairly-resolve-the-negev-bedouins-rights/</a></li>
</ul>
</div>
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Jewish Alliance for Changehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06010677880950984668noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1727517410083201887.post-25093732744970903522013-05-31T06:17:00.002-07:002013-05-31T06:39:58.714-07:005 Bedouins injured as Israeli police demolish houses in Negev<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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5/31/2013 10:20 - BEERSHEBA, Israel (Ma’an) – Five Palestinians sustained
injuries Thursday in clashes with Israeli police officers in the Bedouin village of Beer
al-Mashash in the Negev.</div>
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A Ma’an reporter said the clashes erupted as Israeli forces
demolished three houses in the village which is “unrecognized” by the Israeli
authorities. The houses belong to the Abu Skeik family.</div>
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As the owners tried to prevent the demolitions, Israeli
officers fired stun grenades, tear-gas canisters and plastic-coated bullets. As
a result, five were injured including children and a pregnant woman.</div>
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“Israeli police officers behave like scoundrels rather than
law enforcers,” said Arab member of the Knesset Talab Abu Arar.</div>
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Israeli police patrols escorted bulldozers affiliated with the
so-called land department [the Israel Land Administration] which arrived at the village to finish demolishing
three structures. A day earlier the owners had started demolishing the homes
after receiving orders from Israeli authorities.</div>
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<a href="http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=600678">http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=600678</a></div>
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<![endif]--><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Israeli forces
demolish Bedouin homes for 2nd time in fortnight</b></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">(updated) 5/30/2013 20:04 </span></div>
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BEERSHEBA (Ma'an) -- Israeli
forces on Thursday demolished 11 structures and tents belonging to Palestinian
Bedouins in a Negev village for the second
time in two weeks.</div>
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A heavily armed police force sealed Attir village near
al-Hura to allow bulldozers of the Jewish National Fund and Park Authorities to
level homes belonging to the Abu al-Qiean family, a Ma'an reporter said.</div>
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The structures had been rebuilt after Israeli forces
demolished them on May 16.</div>
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One of the residents whose home was demolished, Shihdeh Abu
al-Qiean, said an Israeli officer told him: "Beware there are no media
outlets here."</div>
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Another resident, Ratib al-Qiean, told Ma'an: "We will
never leave this land even if they demolish our houses 100 times. We will live
in tents until God says the final word."</div>
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He said Israel
demolished 11 tents and steel homes, uprooted several trees and confiscated a
power generator and agricultural equipment. "All the wreckage was loaded
in lorries in order to hide all evidence of the crime," he added.</div>
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Talal Abu Ara, a Palestinian member of Israel's
Knesset, visited the village and said the demolition was a "crime against
humanity."</div>
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Abu Arar and fellow Palestinian MKs Ibrahim Sarsour, Ahmad
Tibi and Masood Ghanayim joined dozens of Negev Bedouins in a demonstration in
front of Israel's
Knesset on Monday to protest the forced displacement of nearly 40,000 Bedouins.</div>
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Abu Arar, who is leading a campaign to protect Negev
Bedouins, appealed to "rational Israeli officials" to halt
implementation of the Prawer-Begin plan, which he called a "racist,
apartheid law."</div>
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Bedouins "are not immigrants from a foreign country,
but indigenous owners of the land," he added.</div>
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Ramiz Jaraisy, the mayor of Nazareth,
and MKs Hana Sweid and Afou Ighbariyya also attended the Jerusalem protest.</div>
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In early May, Israel's Ministerial Committee on
Legislation approved a bill which outlines a framework for implementing the
Prawer-Begin plan.</div>
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The plan will forcibly evict nearly 40,000 Bedouins and
destroy their communal and social fabric, condemning them to a future of
poverty and unemployment, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel says.</div>
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Israel
refuses to recognize 35 Bedouin villages in the Negev,
which collectively house nearly 90,000 people.</div>
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The Israeli state denies them access to basic services and
infrastructure, such as electricity and running water, and refuses to place
them under municipal jurisdiction.</div>
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Jewish Alliance for Changehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06010677880950984668noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1727517410083201887.post-12067673753409871762013-05-03T08:21:00.000-07:002013-05-03T08:36:18.612-07:00Background on Israeli government's plan to expel 40,000 Negev Bedouin<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<![endif]--><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
Ministerial Committee on Legislative Affairs is set to discuss the Bill on the
Arrangement of Bedouin Settlement in the Negev
on Monday 6 May. The Bedouin community and human rights organisations strongly
object to the bill and want it removed from the Knesset’s and government’s
agenda. The bill is based on the <a href="http://www.acri.org.il/en/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Begin-Report-English-January-2013.pdf">Begin
Plan</a>, approved by the government on January 27, 2013, which effectively
constitutes a modified version of the Prawer Plan for Bedouin
settlement in the Negev, approved by the
government on September 11, 2011.</span></i>
<br />
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<u><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Background</span></b></u></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Today
the Bedouin number 210,000. About 120,000 live in seven Bedouin towns
established by the State. Most of the towns suffer heavily from poverty and
unemployment resulting from discrimination and their residents’ severance from
traditional livelihood and sources of income. The rest of the community<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>- around 90,000, live in 11 villages currently
undergoing recognition, plus 35 more villages with more than 500 inhabitants
each. The State of Israel does not recognise these 35 villages. These 46
villages together constitute around 5% of the entire land of the Negev. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">These
Israeli citizens in unrecognised villages are denied their most basic
rights: their villages are not connected to the state’s water and sewer systems
nor to its electrical grid; education and health services are only partially
provided to them, and are inadequate; and the state refuses to recognise villagers’
historical claims of ancestral ownership of the land. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Until
1948 the Negev served as home to
65,000-100,000 Bedouin who inhabited and worked somewhere between 2 and 3
million dunams of land. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After the war
only about 10% of the population remained, under a military regime. In the
1970’s the State of Israel allowed the Bedouin to submit claims of land
ownership. The Bedouin asserted they owned about 1.5 million dunams of land. Of
those, about 500,000 dunams of pastureland were not granted recognition;
different sources disagree over the exact total and the number of dunams
formalized through court rulings. The estimates range from 200,000 to 350,000
dunam. In some cases they received compensation, but in the vast majority of
cases they were not given the right to remain on the lands they had claimed to
own, and many of the resolutions were forced on the Bedouin. About 650,000
dunams of land remain unresolved.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
desire to develop the Northern Negev prompted the government of Israel to
recognize the need to resolve the ownership of the lands.</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">In
2008 a committee under a retired judge, Eliezer Goldberg, determined that
historical Bedouin rights to the land must be recognised. A series of
recommendations were made but the government did not ratify these and instead
established the Praver Committee in 2009, which was to oversee implementation of
the Goldberg Committee report. The Praver committee altered both its approach
to the issue and its recommendations. According to the Praver proposal the
Bedouin would only receive 180,000-200,000 dunams, whereas their claims cover
approximately 600,000. About 40,000 Bedouin will be removed from their villages
if the proposal is adopted. </span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">A
reading of the Praver Committee report indicates that the committee did not
involve the Bedouin community in determining its fate; it did not even hear its
claims.</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">As
a result of vehement public criticism of the Praver report, former Minister
Benny Begin embarked on a “listening mission” aimed at fixing the Praver
report. The Begin Outline was approved by the government on 27 January 2013,
but despite its softer rhetoric, the latest report does not contain any redress
for the government’s unwillingness to recognize the 36 unrecognized Bedouin
villages and to fairly resolve the land ownership claims of Bedouin citizens
whose property was appropriated by the State.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
bill outlines a framework for the implementation of government policies toward
the Bedouin population on two separate issues: (1) the evacuation of
unrecognized villages in the Negev, and (2) the settlement of ownership of
lands in the Negev. The bill is
based on the absolute negation of the Bedouin population’s rights to property
and historical ties to the land, in violation of the residents of the
unrecognized villages’ basic rights.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Like
Prawer, the Begin Plan is also based on the notion that Bedouin are “squatters,”
ignoring the fact that most of the villages have been in existence in their
current location since before the establishment of the State of Israel. Other
villages were established by government transfer during the period of
martial law. </span></div>
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<u><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">What
will happen if the plan is implemented? </span></b></u></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
plan will lead to the uprooting and forcible eviction of dozens of
villages and 30-40,000 Bedouin residents, who will be stripped of their
property and their historical land rights. Thousands of families will be
condemned to poverty and unemployment. The communal life and social fabric
of these villages will be destroyed. Like its precursor, the current plan also
seeks to restrict the Bedouin to a specific area and to forcibly
apply this policy.</span></div>
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<u><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">A
fair arrangement is needed to benefit all the Negev
residents</span></b></u></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">A
significant choice now confronts the State of Israel. At stake is not only the
fate of about 40,000 Bedouin threatened with expulsion from their homes, but
the future of all the Negev inhabitants. The
decision before us is whether to perpetuate and exacerbate the tension and
sense of deprivation already worsening the situation in the Negev,
or to arrive at a just resolution that will allow closer relations and promote
growth and development of the area.</span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">A
just and feasible solution means, first and foremost, recognizing the fact
that the Bedouin in the unrecognized villages are citizens with equal rights.</span></b></div>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">It
will be arrived at only with real involvement from the Bedouin community
institutions.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Ownership
claims to land made in the 1970's must be considered fully with recognition for
all existing villages. </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Unique
agricultural nature of the villages must be taken into account, along with the
Bedouin’s patterns for settlement, land ownership and family and social
customs.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
Negev must be developed equally for all its
citizens. </span></li>
</ul>
<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><a href="https://www.change.org/petitions/ministers-lapid-and-livni-stop-the-begin-proposal-regarding-the-bedouins-in-israel" target="_blank">Click here</a> to send a letter to Israel's Justice Minister Tzipi Livni and Finance Minister Yair Lapid urging them not to send the Praver/Begin plan to the Knesset for enactment into law. </span></b></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span><ul>
</ul>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">This is an abridged version of a document provided by our friends at ACRI - The Association for Civil Rights in Israel. </span>Jewish Alliance for Changehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06010677880950984668noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1727517410083201887.post-25923719936864669682013-04-22T15:49:00.004-07:002013-04-22T19:15:01.594-07:00Israeli govt to decide on plan to evict up to 40,000 Negev Bedouin from their homes<div style="text-align: center;">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAUpa-qjzTuUhipQQKKHBftK0y8Ywau1zgJfdt8q0z0eGMiz3C4BUyfdrhic_xq8QRYTKeLMfqTi4aj0ewKrzdV5yjNJKMS299-13FgrXtLWrwO3hybMW7pjB2i92YBjJgArrD4ITCNr4/s1600/Demolition+of+Al-Arakib-10-13-10.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="261" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAUpa-qjzTuUhipQQKKHBftK0y8Ywau1zgJfdt8q0z0eGMiz3C4BUyfdrhic_xq8QRYTKeLMfqTi4aj0ewKrzdV5yjNJKMS299-13FgrXtLWrwO3hybMW7pjB2i92YBjJgArrD4ITCNr4/s400/Demolition+of+Al-Arakib-10-13-10.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
The Israel Government will soon vote on whether to proceed with a plan (the Prawer Plan) that could result in the forcible eviction of 30,000 - 40,000 Negev Bedouin from their homes and the demolition of their villages, a gross violation of the civil and human rights of Israel's Bedouin citizens. If the Netanyahu government decides to move forward with this plan, they will submit a bill to the Knesset to enact it into law. Our friends at ACRI (the Association for Civil Rights in Israel) provided this update. </div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><u>Negev Bedouin Land
Ownership</u></b><br />
<br />
<b>Ministerial Committee on Legislative
Affairs </b>|<br />
Sunday, 21.04.2013 | Deciding the government’s
position.</div>
<br />
<b>ACRI’s position</b>: ACRI, together with Bimkom
– Planners for Planning Rights, have been dealing for many years with the issue
of Bedouin rights in the Negev in all fields of life. The proposed bill below
primarily deals with the issue of Bedouin land ownership in the
Negev.<br />
<br />
The bill suggests an arrangement whereby the registration of land
claims takes place within a specified time; recognition will be given for only a
percentage of the claims and financial compensation will be provided for land
recognized by the arrangement.<br />
<br />
Our main reservations regarding this
proposed law are:<br />
<ul>
<li>The one sided nature of this arrangement is unacceptable to the Bedouin
population who wish to participate in the planning process. <b>This
arrangement entails the dispossession of 90% of the Bedouin’s lands.</b></li>
<li>The law does not recognize the historical rights of the Bedouin over their
land in the Negev, and completely ignores the fact that the Bedouins from have
continuously settled most of the Bedouin villages since before 1948.
</li>
<li>The law provides a mechanism for implementing the law in a manner leading to
the destruction of entire villages and the <b>eviction of between 30,000
and 40,000 people from their homes.</b></li>
<li>The proposed arrangement is unequal and discriminatory since it deals with
arrangement of Bedouin property rights only. It replaces arbitration and
negotiation with a legal settlement that will apply to an entire population.
</li>
<li>The proposed arrangement is filled with harmful and problematic sanctions
which may harm the fundamental individual rights of those subject to the law.
Among other things, the arrangements states that those who do not subscribe to
the agreement within a limited timeframe prescribed by the law will see their
claims and compensation gradually diminish until they have completely lost all
of their proprietary rights. The law prescribes a period of five years, after
which the land will be registered in the name of the state. </li>
</ul>
According
to our position, an equitable and just solution requires firstly recognizing
that the residents of the unrecognized villages are citizens with equal rights.
The government must recognize the 35 currently unrecognized villages, and
institute a fair mechanism for investigating and determining land ownership
claims, in which the historical affiliations of the Bedouin citizens to their
land are considered.<br />
<br />
<u>Related Material</u>
<br />
<ul>
<li><a href="http://acri.us1.list-manage2.com/track/click?u=1b09f55e95d9f2091a6bf4daf&id=2599801248&e=53ad83adcc" style="color: #eb4102; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; word-wrap: break-word !important;" target="_self">Press Release</a>: NGOs warn - Government plan will displace
thousands of Bedouin
</li>
<li>ACRI’s <a href="http://acri.us1.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=1b09f55e95d9f2091a6bf4daf&id=5929683b1a&e=53ad83adcc" style="color: #eb4102; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; word-wrap: break-word !important;" target="_self">position paper</a> on the principles for arranging recognition of
Bedouin villages in the Negev.
</li>
<li><a href="http://acri.us1.list-manage2.com/track/click?u=1b09f55e95d9f2091a6bf4daf&id=0380eab651&e=53ad83adcc" style="color: #eb4102; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; word-wrap: break-word !important;" target="_self">Interactive page</a> on the difference between illegal outposts,
Area C villages and unrecognized Bedouin villages. </li>
</ul>
Jewish Alliance for Changehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06010677880950984668noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1727517410083201887.post-3470369066146280722012-11-14T11:14:00.000-08:002012-11-14T11:14:25.488-08:00Extreme Israeli violence in recognized Bedouin village of Bir Hadaj - Report from Negev Coexistence ForumIn the early morning hours of November 12, hundreds of Israeli police stormed the recognized Bedouin village of Bir Hadaj. The police officers were accompanied by representatives of the Israeli Ministry of Interior, who attempted to distribute home demolition orders to village residents.<br /><br /><img align="none" height="191" src="http://gallery.mailchimp.com/e8e84502ef33a494e8d51c62e/images/423034_378495542230388_529266186_n.jpg" style="border-bottom: 0px; border-left: 0px; border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px; display: inline; height: auto; line-height: 100%; outline-color: invert; outline-style: none; outline-width: medium; text-decoration: none;" width="400" /><br /> Israeli police in Bir Hadaj (Photo: Adalah)<br /><br />In Bir Hadaj, the Israeli police used tactics usually saved for the occupied Palestinian territories, including the use of undercover forces disguised as Arabs, known as <em>Mistaravim</em> in Hebrew, whose goal it is to create provocations and incur a violent response from the Israeli security forces.<br /><br />Indeed, soon after their arrival in Bir Hadaj, the Israeli police fired tear gas, and rubber and sponge bullets at residents, injuring many people, including women, children and the elderly. 19 residents --including 7 minors-- were arrested in the clashes that ensued, and 29 children were subsequently taken to Soroka Medical Center in Be’er Sheva to be treated for tear gas inhalation.<br /><br /><img align="none" height="300" src="http://gallery.mailchimp.com/e8e84502ef33a494e8d51c62e/images/542969_10151094728646502_1205943809_n.jpg" style="border-bottom: 0px; border-left: 0px; border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px; display: inline; height: 300px; line-height: 100%; outline-color: invert; outline-style: none; outline-width: medium; text-decoration: none; width: 400px;" width="400" /><br /> Israeli police weapons in the schoolyard, Bir Hadaj<br /><br />This wasn’t the first time that the Israeli authorities have used extreme violence in Bir Hadaj. Similar, though less severe, instances of violence also occurred on October 11 and September 27, when Israeli police officers fired tear gas and sponge bullets and injured numerous residents.<br /><br />NCF would like to draw these destructive events to your attention, as it seems clear that Israel is moving forward rapidly with its plan to forcibly evict 30,000 Bedouin citizens from their homes and villages in the Negev.<br /><br /><img align="none" height="300" src="http://gallery.mailchimp.com/e8e84502ef33a494e8d51c62e/images/552407_405050889564840_2115075022_n.jpg" style="border-bottom: 0px; border-left: 0px; border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px; display: inline; height: 300px; line-height: 100%; outline-color: invert; outline-style: none; outline-width: medium; text-decoration: none; width: 400px;" width="400" /><br /> Israeli medical staff treat children for their injuries, Bir Hadaj<br /><br />It is also apparent that the Israeli authorities are prepared to use egregious levels of force to carry out these demolitions and evictions. In September and October, we witnessed dozens of home demolitions in Bedouin communities in the Negev, and an increase in police violence during this destruction.<br /><br />Tactics used regularly by the Israeli army in the occupied West Bank and in East Jerusalem are now being used inside the Green Line against citizens of the state. This reality demonstrates the fact that the Israeli government doesn’t view the Bedouin as full citizens.<br /><br />NCF has written letters to the Israeli Ministry of Education - condemning the attacks on the school in Bir Hadaj and injuries of village children - and to the Israeli Ministry of Internal Security, questioning the use of undercover Israeli police officers whose sole job it was to create a provocation in the village.<br /><br /><img align="none" height="298" src="http://gallery.mailchimp.com/e8e84502ef33a494e8d51c62e/images/373973_405087449561184_989155364_n.jpg" style="border-bottom: 0px; border-left: 0px; border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px; display: inline; height: 298px; line-height: 100%; outline-color: invert; outline-style: none; outline-width: medium; text-decoration: none; width: 400px;" width="400" /><br /> Dozens of weapons used in Bir Hadaj<br /><br />One of the most important ways to prevent further escalations in violence is to apply strong pressure on Israel to abandon its destructive policies towards Bedouin citizens of the state and respect the rights of Bedouin communities in the Negev. NCF urges you to publicly condemn the Israeli authorities’ actions, urge the government to investigate the recent string of violence, and clearly tell the Israeli authorities that violence like that witnessed in Bir Hadaj will not be tolerated.<br /><br />In appreciation,<br /><br />Haia Noach<br />Executive Director, Negev Coexistence Forum for Civil EqualityJewish Alliance for Changehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06010677880950984668noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1727517410083201887.post-30972734172451841272012-09-07T03:30:00.002-07:002012-09-07T03:47:18.656-07:00One rightist group's creeping state influence, on both sides of Green Line, +972 <h1 class="post_title_h1 bluetext">
</h1>
<div class="post_content dyn_cont">
<i><b>Whether in Area C of the West Bank, in the Negev, the
Galilee or the ‘mixed cities,’ Regavim has one clear goal: the selective
implementation of planning and construction laws, encouraging the state
to demolish Palestinian homes or public buildings.</b></i><br />
<br />
By Rona Moran and Miryam Wijler<br />
<br />
<div class="wp-caption aligncenter" id="attachment_53959" style="width: 620px;">
<a href="http://972mag.com/rightist-groups-creeping-state-influence-on-both-sides-of-green-line/55149/attachment/118/" rel="attachment wp-att-53959"><img alt="" class="size-full wp-image-53959" src="http://972mag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/118.jpeg" title="Jerusalem Day (Activestills)" /></a><br />
<div class="wp-caption-text">
Israelis celebrate Jerusalem Day (Activestills)</div>
</div>
<br />
It all began one bright morning in April, after reading <a href="http://www.haaretz.co.il/opinions/1.1640126">an outrageous op-ed by the right-wing journalist Karni Eldad</a> [Hebrew] about
Dahamash – an “unrecognized” village in the Ramle-Lod area that we hold
quite dear. Karni Eldad’s text can be summed up as a pathetic attempt
at comparing the status of Jewish settlements and outposts in the
Occupied Palestinian Territories with the state of unrecognized villages
within the 1948 borders. The date of publication was no coincidence,
coming just a few days before a meeting of the Ministry of Interior’s
Borders Committee regarding the future of the village. After the initial
rage abated somewhat, we sat down to write a response and turned to
Arafat Ismail, chairman of the village committee, to help us confirm all
of the legal details.<br />
<br />
Arafat told us that Eldad’s article is actually a one-to-one
reproduction of arguments that an association named Regavim had
presented to various planning committees against recognizing the
village. Though this was our first encounter with the association, it
has been almost ubiquitous ever since – from the halls of the High Court
of Justice down to the village of Al Zarnoug (where Regavim conducted a
tour that was <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3SpZyzN7Go&feature=youtu.be">interrupted by Knesset Member Talab Al-Sana</a>),
from the Knesset committees to the planning commission meetings. They
seem to be gaining power and racking up achievements, so we thought we
should get to know them a bit more in depth.<br />
<br />
<b>Regavim’s goals and strategy</b><br />
<br />
The association’s <a href="http://www.regavim.org.il/en/">website</a> is
a good starting point. The site’s home page presents the association’s
main goal – promoting a Jewish and Zionist agenda for the State of
Israel on issues of land and environment, or as they put it:
“safeguarding the lands of the Nation.”<br />
<br />
Such statements are familiar from the agenda of Gush Emunim (a Jewish
organization dedicated to settling in the West Bank and Gaza Strip
since 1967), not to mention the fundamental tenets of the Zionist
movement since its inception. However, we see Regavim as part of a new
phase in the evolution of the national-religious right in Israel, which
has traditionally sought to expand Jewish control and ownership of lands
in historic Palestine by settling Jewish Israelis on lands in the
Occupied Palestinian Territories. This movement enjoys the full support
of the state and all its institutions in the pursuit of its mission.
Regavim employs a complementary strategy that focuses on “enforcement.”
Instead of encouraging Jewish settlement supported by the state, the
association exerts pressure on the authorities to escalate processes of
dispossession by blocking any horizons for development of the country’s
Palestinian inhabitants. The association <a href="http://www.regavim.org.il/en/">rejects</a> the
strategy of land redemption through the donations of private persons
overseas, and wishes to “influence all governing systems of the State,
make them act in light of Zionism’s ground principles and fulfill them
in actual fact, to preserve the lands of the Jewish People…preventing
their takeover by foreign elements.”<br />
<div>
<br />
Betzal’el Smotrich, activities director of the association, presents
Regavim as a mirror image of human rights organizations in Israel. The
guiding rationale of those organizations is action towards policy-change
and the righting of specific “wrongs” through a combination of legal
resources, research, lobbying and campaigning. Regavim has adopted these
practices, and at times even some of their rhetoric, in order to
promote a lands policy that is based on absolute preference in allotting
lands to Jews.<br />
<br />
<b>Regavim’s activities</b><br />
<br /></div>
Regavim does not deal with settling the land with Jewish Israelis,
but rather with the expulsion of the Palestinian population on both
sides of the Green Line. The association is <a href="http://www.regavim.org.il/en/index.php/achievements-so-far">active</a> in
Area C of the West Bank, in the Negev, the Galilee and the “mixed
cities.” In all of these arenas, Regavim has one clear goal: the brutal
and selective implementation of planning and construction laws,
encouraging the state to demolish Palestinian homes or public buildings.
The demolition orders issued lately for the entire Palestinian village
of Susya in the South Hebron Hills are the fruit of its labors.<br />
<br />
In recent years, since the Israeli disengagement in the Gaza Strip
and the dismantling of the settlements there, the extreme right in
Israel has embarked on a campaign of settling the “mixed cities” of
Israel (cities with sizable Arab and Jewish populations) by forming
“Torah clusters” (<i>Garinim Toraniim)</i> – in <a href="http://www.tarabut.info/en/articles/article/After-Acca/">Jaffa</a>, <a href="http://www.tarabut.info/en/articles/article/Colonizing-Acre/">Acco</a> as well as <a href="http://www.tarabut.info/en/articles/article/dahmash-from-demonstration-to-court/">Lod</a>.
At the same time, Jewish nationalist shows of force have escalated
within Arab localities.<br />
<br />
<b>Regavim is a characteristic expression of this
wider campaign. It takes a considerable amount of cruelty to encourage
the state to tighten even <i>further</i> the <a href="http://eng.bimkom.org/Index.asp?CategoryID=107&ArticleID=115">veritable noose</a> of
planning restrictions around the neck of Palestinian communities within
the Green Line. Palestinian citizens of Israel own a very small
percentage of the lands they had owned before 1948, most of their
localities do not have master zoning plans, and the local and regional
planning committees are <a href="http://www.adalah.org/newsletter/eng/mar07/hana.pdf">staffed exclusively by Jewish Israelis</a>.</b><br />
<br />
<div class="wp-caption aligncenter" id="attachment_38524" style="width: 620px;">
<a href="http://972mag.com/photo-essay-3-years-of-settlement-struggle-in-sheikh-jarrah/38493/5395594303_a08d67d63a_b/" rel="attachment wp-att-38524"><img alt="" class="size-full wp-image-38524" src="http://972mag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/5395594303_a08d67d63a_b.jpg" title="Palestinian children from Lod singing at the weekly protest in Sheikh Jarrah, January 28 2011 (photo: Anne Paq/Activestills)" /></a><br />
<div class="wp-caption-text">
Palestinian children from Lod at the weekly protest in Sheikh Jarrah, January 28, 2011 (photo: Anne Paq/Activestills)</div>
</div>
<div>
<br />
<b>The situation in the Negev is even worse: there the state doesn’t
even recognize the Bedouins’ claim to any land while promoting a plan
that is expected to result in <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/nat-l-security-adviser-to-rethink-plan-for-negev-bedouin-1.369148">the uprooting of 30,000 people and the erasure of their villages</a>.
The State of Israel has left this population in a legal limbo that
makes it impossible to live: people cannot build on their land, cannot
purchase land belonging to the Jewish National Fund, will not be
accepted as members of Jewish communities due to screening committees,
and most Jewish Israeli towns’ residents will not rent or sell them
apartments. All that is left, for people who will not choose to
emigrate, would be illegal construction. The state prefers that its
Palestinians subjects be “criminals.”</b><i></i><br />
<br />
Regavim’s activity is based first and foremost on the work of
coordinators on the ground, who systematically document construction in
Palestinian communities. This documentation serves the association in
lobbying planning committees, local authorities, the Civil
Administration in the occupied territories, and others. They have a
single demand: to force these institutions to place sanctions on
Palestinians. In some cases, the association appeals to court in order
to force the implementation of standing demolition orders, or to <a href="http://www.regavim.org.il/en/index.php/activity">produce a planning policy</a> that
is as Zionist as possible. <b>Regavim promotes existing transfer plans
such as its efforts to influence the Prawer Committee recommendations to
take a harder line against the Bedouin community.</b><br />
<br />
<b>In April 2009, Regavim sued the Abu Basma Regional Council in the
Negev, where the number of inhabitants in all known localities in the
council’s area is about 45,000, but in fact the council provides
services to another 35,000 citizens who live in unrecognized villages.
The council ranks dead last in the socio-economic scale of the Israeli
Central Bureau of Statistics and where the council is not providing
inhabitants within its jurisdiction area with the most basic services:
connection to the water supply grid, regular garbage collection,
sanitation infrastructure, and where access roads are not paved and the
council’s welfare services are collapsing.</b></div>
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<b>Here, of all places, is where the Regavim association
suddenly discovered an urgent need to intervene “for the sake of the council’s
inhabitants.” In its petition, the association demands the demolition of eight
structures, which describes as “villas” and whose owners it describes as “real
estate barons.” For Regavim, then, they have no qualms about using whatever
means necessary to “protect the nation’s lands.” To that end, they encourage
the state to beat to a pulp its most oppressed population.</b></div>
<div>
<br />
<b>The diplomatic face of the ideological-messianic right</b><br />
<br /></div>
Regavim presents a “nicer” or at least more diplomatic face of a
trend that began within the settler community following the
disengagement from Gaza. The failure of the resistance to the
disengagement brought about the creation of another movement – “<a href="http://www.komemiut.org/default.asp">Komemiyut</a>”
(independence), whose goal is “enhancing Jewish uprightness as a
central national idea in the State of Israel, reinforcing Jewish
settlement and thwarting intentions to expel Jews.”<br />
<div>
<br />
Among the rabbis of this movement is Dov Lior, rabbi of Kiryat Arba
(the largest Jewish settlement in Hebron) and one of the leaders who
expressed <a href="http://972mag.com/tag/torat-hamelech/">public support for the book </a><i><a href="http://972mag.com/tag/torat-hamelech/"> Torat Hamelech</a> </i>(“The
King’s Torah”). Another is Rabbi Haim Yerucham Smotrich, of Beit Yatir
(Jewish settlement in the South Hebron Hills), father of Betzal’el
Smotrich, one of Regavim’s leaders, operations director of the
association and an active member of Komemiyut.</div>
<br />
Though Regavim did adopt the channels of legal action used by human
rights organizations, it did not adopt the liberal ideology upon which
legal activism is based. A closer look at the ideology of the
association’s leaders and of their ties with other right-wing
organizations reveals that their choice of the legal path is
instrumental and tactical only. In an article published by Smotrich in <i>Gilui Da’at</i>, the most popular weekend supplement in the national-religious public, following the <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/state-to-high-court-migron-must-be-evacuated-in-next-few-days.premium-1.461213">High Court of Justice’s ruling on Migron</a>,
Smotrich objects to what he defines as “High Court rule,” contests the
court’s authority to rule on issues regarding the future of the
settlement project, and marks the Knesset as the sole legitimate arena
for discussion of such issues.<br />
<div>
<br />
In an article published by Rabbi Yehuda Eliyahu, the association’s
director, in Komemiyut’s publication, he outlines an ideal Jewish state,
one that lacks any liberal values whatsoever. In his writing, Eliyahu
presents the Jewish National Fund as a body that undermined the very
purpose for which it was founded – redeeming the land for the Jewish
people. He accuses the Fund of corruption, which he blames on the
“post-Zionist spirit” of the High Court of Justice and resents the
court’s ruling demanding that the Israel Land Administration administer
JNF lands according to the principle of equality, allotting some of them
to Arabs as well.<br />
<br />
In an interview, Smotrich explains: “I see the State of Israel as the
beginning of our redemption, and as an important phase on the way to
complete salvation. But unlike many who adhere to state norms, I do not
consider myself a slave of the system nor a fifth wheel on the regime’s
wagon. I believe we are perfectly entitled to quarrel with the present
coachman and take the reins into our own hands by means available to
us.” He spoke of the warm welcome which Regavim feels from the state
apparatus – “on the ground and in many departments of the Ministry of
Interior, the Israel Land Administration, the Ministry of Justice etc.,
Regavim is regarded as a positive element whose aim is to help them meet
the pressure exerted by the left.”<br />
<br />
Compared to other new, ideologically related right-wing movements
such as Im Tirtzu, Regavim has so far remained relatively anonymous
among leftist activists, except for the lawyers who run into its
representatives in the courtroom. Both Regavim and Im Tirtzu represent
the values of the ideological right with an easy-to-digest package for
the Israeli mainstream. But while Im Tirtzu is basically an advocacy
organization, Regavim urges the state rather than the public to manifest
its neo-Zionist vision in practice. An adequate response to this
campaign will not come from small, focused victories in court, important
though they may be, but rather in the public arena and through
political struggle.<br />
<br />
<i>Rona Moran and Miryam Wijler are a</i><i>ctivists in the Hithabrut-Tarabut Movement, an Arab-Jewish movement for social and political change. This post was t</i><i>ranslated by Tal Haran.</i><br />
<br />
<a href="http://972mag.com/rightist-groups-creeping-state-influence-on-both-sides-of-green-line/55149/" target="_blank"><b>Originally published in +972</b></a><i> </i>Sept. 4, 2012<i><br /></i></div>
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Jewish Alliance for Changehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06010677880950984668noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1727517410083201887.post-60842689824027034472012-07-08T14:43:00.003-07:002012-07-08T14:43:57.244-07:00European Parliament Condemns Israel's Policy Toward Bedouin Population, by Jack Khoury, in Haaretz<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOE1ItYgcpdUBy0KvNzYf3Sf96nMoZgENvU2292fa6fAJ4K8J1MOTinwKsecghQ7DCt1KQ-Zo-yyuGAmyp_XKYzv-OLlUXq76H2KUtzdQRP3PBDCN0R_PEPJb4YcXXJ3G_eQJBVrRElVQ/s1600/europe.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="185" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOE1ItYgcpdUBy0KvNzYf3Sf96nMoZgENvU2292fa6fAJ4K8J1MOTinwKsecghQ7DCt1KQ-Zo-yyuGAmyp_XKYzv-OLlUXq76H2KUtzdQRP3PBDCN0R_PEPJb4YcXXJ3G_eQJBVrRElVQ/s320/europe.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div dir="ltr">
The European Parliament passed a resolution on Thursday
condemning Israel's policy toward the Bedouin communities living in
unrecognized settlements in the Negev Desert. Human rights groups have
called the resolution, which passed 291 to 274 with 39 abstaining,
unprecedented. </div>
<div dir="ltr">
<br /></div>
<div dir="ltr">
The European Parliament called on Israel to withdraw its
government-approved Prawer plan to regulate the Bedouin communities in
the Negev. The resolution was brought to a vote by the Group of the
Progressive Alliance of Socialists & Democrats in the European
Parliament and was based on work done by the European Parliament's
Working Group on the Middle East, which held consultations with
representatives of human rights groups including Attorney Suhad Bishara
of Adalah - The Legal Center for the Arab Minority Rights in Israel, who
briefed working group on the legal ramifications of the plan, and its
relations to Israeli and international law. </div>
<div dir="ltr">
<br /></div>
<div dir="ltr">
The situation of the Bedouin citizens of Israel has never before been
addressed by the European Parliament. The Director of Adalah’s Negev
bureau, the geographer Dr. Thabet Abu Rass commented on the decision
saying that “achieving recognition by the European Parliament that the
Israeli government practices the same policies of displacement and
dispossession against Palestinian citizens of Israel as it does against
Palestinians living under occupation is a tremendous step forward.” </div>
<div dir="ltr">
<br /></div>
<div dir="ltr">
Last march, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination called on Israel not to implement the Prawer program. </div>
<div dir="ltr">
<br /></div>
<div dir="ltr">
"Whereas Arab Bedouins are indigenous people leading a sedentary and
traditionally agricultural life on their ancestral lands and are seeking
formal and permanent recognition of their unique situation and status,"
The resolution stated. "whereas Arab Bedouin communities, threatened by
Israeli policies undermining their livelihoods and including forced
transfer, are a particularly vulnerable population both in the occupied
Palestinian Territory and in the Negev." </div>
<div dir="ltr">
<br /></div>
<div dir="ltr">
In another relevant clause the resolution said: "The European
Parliament Calls for the protection of the Bedouin communities of the
West Bank and in the Negev, and for their rights to be fully respected
by the Israeli authorities, and condemns any violations (e.g. house
demolitions, forced displacements, public service limitations); calls
also, in this context, for the withdrawal of the Prawer Plan by the
Israeli Government."
</div>
<br />
Read More - http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/european-parliament-condemns-israel-s-policy-toward-bedouin-population-1.449687Rachelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05281589586630326322noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1727517410083201887.post-40808031771406447962012-06-09T13:58:00.004-07:002012-06-09T13:58:52.026-07:00Get Ready for a Bedouin Uprising, by Clinton Bailey, in HaaretzThe "Law for Bedouin Settlement in the Negev," which the Knesset is
expected to pass soon, has angered the entire Bedouin population in the
south - one-fourth of all the Negev's residents - and threatens to drive
them to violence. Although the state dealt harshly with Bedouin in the
past by moving them from place to place, confiscating their flocks,
destroying their homes and even spraying their crops with poison, its
actions never resulted in an uprising, perhaps because these violations
were small-scale: a family here, a clan there.<br />
<br />
The proposed law, on the other hand, will adversely affect almost all
the 200,000 Bedouin in the Negev. It will do so in two ways: by
rejecting their claims to ownership of most of their property, and by
destroying the homes of some 20,000 families, who will be transferred to
undeveloped plots in "authorized" locations. All of this is part of the
government's so-called Prawer Plan, upon which the law for settling the
Bedouin is based.<br />
<br />
Israel has always denied Bedouin their rights to the land they owned
before 1948, because they had no official documents from the Ottoman and
British periods to prove their ownership. In those periods, however,
Bedouin acquired lands under their own tribal law, the law then valid in
the desert, which accepted such transactions based on oral guaranty and
dispensed with written proof.<br />
<br />
In the 1970s, the state seemingly modified its stance, inviting Bedouin
to register their ownership claims, which amounted to 240,000 acres in
private claims. This procedure was not intended to make their claims
legal, but rather to enable the state to acquire their lands through
purchase, and that, moreover, at minimal prices, which the Bedouin
largely rejected. Over a 40-year period, the Bedouin sold the state only
16 percent of the land they claimed. Their characteristic patience
allowed them to sustain the hope that it would ultimately offer them a
just compromise that would not deprive them of land they once acquired
by law, albeit their own.<br />
<br />
To their great dismay, however, the new law enables confiscation of 80
percent of this land, to be used for governmental projects, making it a
matter no longer affecting a family here or there, but rather the entire
Bedouin community. In addition, the compensation that the state is
offering for the remaining 20 percent of the land that the new law
acknowledges as Bedouin is again paltry and unlikely to be accepted,
leaving the state no choice but to use force to acquire these lands -
even if it is for the purpose of settling the Bedouin. Force, however,
will not benefit the state, as no Bedouin will agree to build his house
on land that another Bedouin still claims.
<br />
<br />
The destruction of the "illegal" homes of 20,000 Bedouin families will
also not help facilitate their resettlement in new places. Nor will it
transpire quietly. These homes were erected as an alternative to the
tents of the Bedouin after the state forbade them to continue their
migratory way of life and told them where to live until a permanent
solution was found for them. In the prolonged absence of a solution,
each house deemed to be located on "government land" was declared
illegal and subject to demolition. However, as no alternative housing
was prepared for those living in the illegal homes, not a single
developed plot exists today for a Bedouin who wishes to build a
permanent home in government-designated locations. Furthermore, it takes
five years to plan and establish a town or neighborhood with the
infrastructure needed for residential housing.
<br />
<br />
Despite this standing injustice, the new law threatens, in the first
phase, to destroy the homes of 30,000 Bedouin, who are to be transferred
to places that the government chooses - about one-third of those
ultimately destined to be moved. This means moving them out of homes to
which they have become accustomed over the course of a generation and
putting them in the desert without a house. These people, moreover, are
an educated generation of professionals, teachers and university
students.<br />
<br />
If someone imagines that such an operation will go down easily, he is
mistaken. Indeed, the Israel Police has begun enlisting hundreds of
officers to keep the peace while these houses are being demolished, an
action scheduled to get under way as early as August. The pictures from
these demolition and relocation operations, seen around the world, will
make the recent assault by Lt. Col. Shalom Eisner on a Danish peace
activist seem like a marginal event.<br />
<br />
A proper settlement of the Bedouin is crucial to them and the state
alike, but the new law is not the instrument for achieving it. The
Netanyahu government would do well to postpone its ratification by the
Knesset and devote more serious thought to the problem. Otherwise,
conflict with the Negev Bedouin will be our unhappy lot for ages to
come.<br />
<br />
<em>Dr. Clinton Bailey has studied Bedouin history and culture in the Negev for many years.</em><br />
<br />
<br />
Read More - <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/get-ready-for-a-bedouin-uprising-1.433806">http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/get-ready-for-a-bedouin-uprising-1.433806</a><em></em>Rachelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05281589586630326322noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1727517410083201887.post-85205150636720802002012-05-16T13:43:00.000-07:002012-06-09T13:44:19.311-07:00Bedouin Land and Culture Threatened by Israel's Plans for Resettlement, by Phoebe Greenwood, in The Guardian<div id="article-body-blocks">
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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.<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
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.<br />
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.<br />
<br />
"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.<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
They live in the West Bank, but their land is controlled by the Israelis as it falls within Area C. The EU is funding <a href="http://www.oxfam.org.uk/what-we-do/countries-we-work-in/occupied-palestinian-territories-and-israel" title="">Oxfam to run development programmes here</a>. The Palestinian Authority is drafting a strategy to address their needs – but, ultimately, their fate is in Israeli hands.<br />
<br />
In 1975, Israel declared the area<i> </i>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.<br />
<br />
"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."<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
Thabet Abu Rass, the Negev director for <a href="http://www.adalah.org/eng/" title="">Adalah</a>,
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."<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
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."<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
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.<br />
"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."<br />
<br />
Read More - <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/2012/may/09/bedouin-land-culture-israel-resettlement">http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/2012/may/09/bedouin-land-culture-israel-resettlement </a></div>Rachelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05281589586630326322noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1727517410083201887.post-58952717522721168182012-05-09T13:22:00.000-07:002012-06-09T13:56:09.544-07:00Rabbis for Human Rights: JNF Breaking Promise to Not Plant on Disputed Bedouin Land, in JewSchool<h1>
</h1>
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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. <a href="http://org2.democracyinaction.org/o/5149/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=10528" target="_blank">Click here</a> to send these two officials an email. <span id="more-28605"></span><br />
<br />
Despite hearing from hundreds of people, KKL-JNF resumed plowing disputed land in Al-Arakib on Monday.<br />
<br />
We need to keep the pressure up! <a href="http://org2.democracyinaction.org/o/5149/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=10528" target="_blank">Join us in writing to Jewish National Fund in Israel and the United States</a>.
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.<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
Read More - <a href="http://jewschool.com/2012/05/09/28605/rabbis-for-human-rights-jnf-breaking-promise-to-not-plant-on-disputed-bedouin-land/">http://jewschool.com/2012/05/09/28605/rabbis-for-human-rights-jnf-breaking-promise-to-not-plant-on-disputed-bedouin-land </a>Rachelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05281589586630326322noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1727517410083201887.post-3913386698549160252012-05-07T13:37:00.000-07:002012-06-09T13:52:24.949-07:00Jewish National Fund Resumes Forestation Project in al-Arakib, by Mairav Zonszein, in +972<i><b>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. </b></i><br />
<div class="wp-caption alignnone" id="attachment_44961" style="width: 434px;">
<div class="wp-caption-text">
<br /></div>
</div>
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.<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
Since July 17, 2010, <a href="http://972mag.com/bedouin-village-al-arakib-destroyed-again-police-to-sue-cost-of-evacuation-from-residents/">the village has been demolished </a>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.<br />
<br />
Here is footage of the 25th demolition of the village:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='560' height='315' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/UNCWDKKcqbo?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
<br />
<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
The issue of Al-Arakib is part of a larger story concerning 35 unrecognized villages inside Israel. According to a <a class="external" href="http://www.acri.org.il/en/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Prawer-Policy-Brief-FINAL-ENG.pdf?utm_source=ACRI+-+Contacts&utm_campaign=3076c19ee6-Prawer+Plan+Approval&utm_medium=email" target="_blank">2011 report</a>
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 <a href="http://972mag.com/israel-approves-plan-to-uproot-30000-bedouins/22814/">Prawer Plan</a> 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.<br />
<br />
<i>Rabbis for Human Rights activist Moriel Rothman contributed to this report. </i><br />
<br />
<br />
Read More - <a href="http://972mag.com/jewish-national-fund-resumes-forestation-project-in-al-arakib/44850/">http://972mag.com/jewish-national-fund-resumes-forestation-project-in-al-arakib/44850 </a>Rachelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05281589586630326322noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1727517410083201887.post-25996114253097396772012-05-01T13:15:00.000-07:002012-06-09T13:22:14.597-07:00BREAKING 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. <br />
<br />
Read More - <a href="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">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</a>Rachelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05281589586630326322noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1727517410083201887.post-47745298435291404852012-04-17T16:06:00.002-07:002012-04-17T16:10:54.933-07:00Israel Police Establishes Unit to Enforce Demolition of Bedouin Homes, by Yanir Yagna, in Haaretz<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkML4Q3ZYWnTXgiWewUUrc7ziT3ezbW9GqU2j6GC7EdoSTsqo0zIrWogbVIgIkfXUIAiy_yGlI7LM5tYWXYSXOSbjysh9L2eMuIm9AaZq4mOJJ3jFwgN0LBzZ_N4n1yhyphenhyphenYGn-sV4aSrTU/s1600/PoPo.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 266px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkML4Q3ZYWnTXgiWewUUrc7ziT3ezbW9GqU2j6GC7EdoSTsqo0zIrWogbVIgIkfXUIAiy_yGlI7LM5tYWXYSXOSbjysh9L2eMuIm9AaZq4mOJJ3jFwgN0LBzZ_N4n1yhyphenhyphenYGn-sV4aSrTU/s400/PoPo.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5732510347672845618" border="0" /></a>Israel Police is establishing a new unit to enforce demolition and evacuation orders served to scattered Bedouin villages in southern Israel, in order to deal with “trespassing into state lands.” <p> The unit, which will be made up of 200 police officers, will be established in cooperation with the Prime Minister’s Office to enforce Israeli land laws in the Negev. </p>The unit’s establishment follows a government decision reached last August, in which Minister of Internal Security Yitzhak Aharonovich was granted permission to begin deploying the officers beginning August 1, 2012. Israel Police’s Southern District has yet to announce an official plan of operation, which will be charged with evacuations and demolitions. <p> The unit will operate alongside the Interior Ministry, the Israel Land Administration, the Ministry of the Environment, and the Prime Minister’s Office among others. </p> <p> The plan to establish the new unit was received with harsh criticism from Negev residents, who claim that the use of force by police as a means to solve the land dispute is the “wrong move.” </p> <p> “We do not need the police in order to reach an agreement. We must sit down and solve the issue through negotiations,” said Ibrahim al-Wakili<em>, </em>who heads<em> </em>the regional council of unrecognized Bedouin communities in the Negev. “We are not interested in a confrontation with the police…the police previously used violent force against young children.” </p> <p> Israel Police’s Southern District has refused to comment on the matter. </p> <p> The announcement of the unit’s establishment comes less than a month after a five-year economic development plan for Israeli Bedouin was approved by a steering committee in the Prime Minister's Office, as part of operational plans for relocating tens of thousands of Bedouin to officially recognized communities. </p> <p> The proposal calls for the relocation of up to 30,000 Bedouin from areas not recognized by the government as residential locations. Known as the Prawer Plan, it was approved by the cabinet in September, based on a proposal developed by a team headed by the director of policy planning in the PMO, Ehud Prawer. At that time, the cabinet also approved a NIS 1.2 billion economic development program for Bedouin Negev. </p> <br />Read More - <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/israel-police-establishes-unit-to-enforce-demolition-of-bedouin-homes-1.424805">http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/israel-police-establishes-unit-to-enforce-demolition-of-bedouin-homes-1.424805</a>Rachelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05281589586630326322noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1727517410083201887.post-9289849589400410772012-04-09T14:53:00.001-07:002012-04-09T14:55:01.211-07:00‘Algorithm of expropriation’: Plan to uproot 30,000 Bedouin, by Neve Gordon, in +972<p>Beer-Sheva, Israel - “It is not every day that a government decides to relocate almost half a percent of its population in a program of forced urbanization,” <a href="http://www.acri.org.il/en/2010/06/21/rawia-aburabia/" target="_blank" class="external">Rawia Aburabia</a> asserted, adding that “this is precisely what Prawer wants to do.”</p> <p>The meeting, which was attempting to coordinate various actions against the Prawer Plan, had just ended, and Rawia, an outspoken Bedouin leader who works for the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, was clearly upset. She realised that the possibility of changing the course of events was extremely unlikely and that, at the end of the day, the government would <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/cabinet-approves-plan-to-relocate-negev-bedouin-1.383842" target="_blank" class="external">uproot 30,000 Negev Bedouin</a> and put them in townships. This would result in an end to their rural way of life and would ultimately deprive them of their livelihood and land rights.</p> <p>Rawia’s wrath was directed at Ehud Prawer, the Director of the Planning Policy Division in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office. Prawer took on this role after serving as the deputy director of Israel’s National Security Council. His mandate is to implement the decisions of the <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/news/committee-gov-t-should-formally-recognize-bedouin-villages-in-negev-1.259322" target="_blank" class="external">Goldberg Committee for the Arrangement of Arab Settlement</a> in the Negev, by offering a “concrete solution” to the problem of the 45 unrecognised Bedouin villages in the region.</p> <p>An estimated 70,000 people are currently living in these villages, which are prohibited by law from connecting any of their houses to electricity grids, running water or sewage systems. Construction regulations are also harshly enforced and in this past year alone, about 1,000 Bedouin homes and animal pens – usually referred to by the government simply as “structures” – were demolished. There are no paved roads in these villages and it is illegal to place signposts near the highways designating the village’s location. Opening a map will not help either, since none of these villages are marked. Geographically, at least, these citizens of Israel do not exist.</p> <p><strong>History</strong></p> <p>The State’s relationship with the Bedouin has been thorny from the beginning. Before the establishment of the state of Israel, about 70,000 Bedouin lived in the Negev. Following the 1948 war, however, only 12,000 or so remained, while the rest fled or were expelled to Jordan and Egypt.</p> <p>Under the directives of Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, many of the remaining Bedouin were uprooted from the lands they had inhabited for generations and were concentrated in the mostly barren area in the north-eastern part of the Negev known as the <em>Siyag</em> (enclosure) zone. This area comprises one million dunams [one dunam = 1,000m<sup>2</sup>], or slightly less than ten percent of the Negev’s territory. Through this process of forced relocation, the Negev’s most arable lands were cleared of Arab residents and were given to new <em>kibbutzim </em>and <em>moshavim</em>, Jewish agriculture communities, which took full advantage of the fertile soil.</p> <p>After their relocation and up until 1966, the Bedouin citizens of Israel were subjected to a harsh military rule; their movement was restricted and they were denied basic political, social and economic rights. But even in the post-military rule of the late 1960s, many Israeli decision-makers still considered the Bedouin living within the <em>Siyag</em> threatening and occupying too much land, so, despite the relocation that had been carried out in the 1950s, the state decided to find a better solution to the “Bedouin problem.”</p> <p>The plan was to concentrate the Bedouin population within semi-urban spaces that would ultimately comprise only a minute percentage of their original tribal lands. Over the course of several years, government officials met with Bedouin sheikhs and reached agreements with many of them. In a gradual process, spanning about 20 years, seven towns were created – Tel-Sheva, Rahat, Segev Shalom, Kusaife, Lqya, Hura and Ar’ara.</p> <p>In some cases, Bedouin were already living where the town was built, but the large majority of the Bedouin were relocated once again and moved into these Bedouin-only towns. Some did it of their own volition, while others were forced. The price that most families had to pay for their own displacement was hefty: renouncing the right to large portions of their land and giving up their rural way of life.</p> <p>For many years following the establishment of each town, the Bedouin residents were not allowed to hold democratic elections and their municipalities were run by Jewish officials from the Ministry of Interior. The towns also rapidly turned into over-crowded townships, with dilapidated infrastructure and hardly any employment opportunities. Currently, all seven townships, which are home to about 135,000 people, are ranked one on the Israeli socio-economic scale of one (lowest) to ten (highest), and are characterized by a high unemployment, high birth rates and third-rate education institutions.</p> <p>After years of indecision, the government appointed Prawer to try, yet again, to solve the “Bedouin problem” once and for all. His mandate is to relocate the Bedouin who had been unwilling to sign over their property rights and remained in unrecognized villages. The government’s justification for not recognizing these villages is that they are relatively small (ranging from a couple of hundred to several thousand people) and are scattered across a large area, all of which makes it difficult, in the government’s view, to provide them with satisfactory infrastructure. In the name of modernism, then, the government wants to concentrate the Bedouin in a small number of towns.</p> <p><strong>Wadi al Na’am</strong></p> <p>After meeting Rawia, I drove to Wadi al Na’am, an unrecognized Bedouin village located about 20 minutes south of my house in Beer-Sheva. I wanted to ask some of the people there what they think of Prawer’s plan.</p> <p>Along the highway, I passed literally hundreds of Bedouin dwellings made from tin panels, scrap wood and canvas. Chicken, sheep, goats and donkeys adorned the terraces. I was again struck by Bedouin wheat pastures because they are not irrigated, and the height of the stalk depends on the amount of rain that falls during a given year; it is easy to identify a Bedouin pasture because the stalk is miniscule when compared with “Jewish” wheat, which receives plenty of water.</p> <p>Although I had been to Wadi al Na’am a few times before, I suddenly felt unsure about where I was supposed to turn off the highway and called Ibrahim Abu Afash to ask for directions. “Don’t you remember,” he said, “at the road sign pointing towards the electricity plant take a left and I will wait for you on top of the hill.”</p> <p>I followed Ibrahim’s Subaru on dirt roads for about ten minutes until we reached his <em>shieg</em>, a large tent towering over a concrete floor covered with rugs, a row of mattresses and pillows scattered along the perimeter. In the middle of the tent, there was a hole in the concrete, with an iron pot of tea simmering over burning coals. Ibrahim sat on a mattress next to his brother Labad and right behind them were a few young men smoking Israeli cigarettes and drinking tea.</p> <p>Ibrahim is the sheikh of Wadi al Na’am. When he was young he served as a scout for the Israeli military, which may explain why his Hebrew is better than mine. After a few niceties, he cut to the point.</p> <p>“I met Prawer and he is a good man,” he said, and then added that “often good men do bad things.”</p> <p>“The fact that Wadi al Na’am, like many other unrecognized villages, is located right under electricity grids and next to central water pipes and that we were never allowed to connect our homes to these basic services is no doubt a criminal act of discrimination.”</p> <p>“You know,” he continued, “in the past two decades, several dozen single-family Jewish farms have been established throughout the Negev and more recently, ten new Jewish satellite settlements have been approved and will be constructed on Bedouin land near the Jewish town Arad. Incidentally, at least two unrecognized Bedouin villages, al-Tir and neighbouring Umm al-Hiran, are due to be emptied of their combined 1,000 residents to make way for these new Jewish communities.”</p> <p>Ibrahim did not mention that in the northern Negev there are already <a href="http://www.acri.org.il/en/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Prawer-Policy-Paper-May2011.pdf" target="_blank" class="external">100 Jewish settlements</a> scattered about, each one home to an average 300 people, but he nonetheless managed to underscore that Prawer’s scheme is biased at its very core. And even though he never came out and said that the true motivation behind the plan is the desire to Judaize the land, it is obvious that this is indeed the objective. There is no other feasible explanation for why the state does not relent and legalize the unrecognized villages.</p> <p><strong>The Bedouin as a threat</strong></p> <p>As he was formulating the plan, Ehud Prawer met many Bedouin in order to understand the complex issues involved in trying to provide a solution to the unrecognized villages. Years of service within Israel’s security establishment have led him, however, to relate to Bedouin less as individual bearers of rights and more as a national risk that needs to be contained.</p> <p>Working closely with Prawer are a few people who, like him, were for many years part of one of Israel’s security arms. His right hand man, Doron Almog, is a retired military general, while Yehuda Bachar, chairman of the Directorate for the Coordination of Government and Bedouin Activities in the Negev, was a senior officer in Israel’s police force. Not coincidentally, before submitting the plan to the government, Prawer asked Yaakov Amidror, the Director of the National Security Council, to provide his stamp of approval.</p> <p>The fact that the life experiences of almost all of the people responsible for providing a solution for the unrecognized Bedouin orbited around issues of security is not a minor matter, since for them the Bedouin are first and foremost an internal threat. The “Bedouin problem,” accordingly, has little to do with rights and much more to do with managing risks.</p> <p><strong>Algorithm of expropriation</strong></p> <p>Ironically, the plan Prawer drafted and the proposed law based on the plan do not really address the problems of these villages.</p> <p>“If the state is so adamant about not recognizing the villages in their existing locations, I would have at least expected Prawer to state clearly that the government will build a specific number of villages and towns for the Bedouin, to specify exactly where they will be located, and to promise that they will be planned so as to take into account the Bedouin’s rural form of life,” Hia Noach, the Director of the <a href="http://www.dukium.org/eng" target="_blank" class="external">Negev Co-existence</a> Forum, explained in an interview.</p> <p>“Instead, the plan, which will soon become law, focuses on creating an algorithm for dividing private property among the Bedouin, while discussing in a few ambiguous sentences the actual solution for the unrecognized villages. Isn’t it mysterious that the plan dealing with the relocation of the Bedouin does not include a map indicating where the Bedouin will be moved to?”</p> <p>Prawer’s algorithm is an extremely complex mechanism of expropriation informed by the basic assumption that the Bedouin have no land rights. He is aware that, in the 1970s, as Israel was relocating Bedouin to townships, about 3,200 Bedouin filed petitions to the Justice Ministry, claiming rights over property that had belonged to their family for generations.</p> <p>All in all, they petitioned for a million and a half dunams, of which 971,000 were claims regarding property belonging to individuals, and the remaining half a million dunams were land that had been used by communities for pasture. Over the years, the Ministry of Justice has denied claims relating to two-thirds of the land, which means that, currently, property claims amounting to about 550,000 dunams, or four percent of the Negev’s land, are still waiting to be settled.</p> <p>Prawer’s plan aims to settle all the remaining petitions in one fell swoop. Ironically, though, his underlying assumption is that all such claims are all spurious. At the very end of the government decision approving the Prawer Plan (Decision 3707, September 11, 2011), one reads:</p> <p><em>“The state’s basic assumption over the years … is that at the very least the vast majority of the claimants do not have a recognized right according to Israeli property laws to the lands for which they have sued … By way of conclusion, neither the government decision nor the proposed law that will be brought forth in its aftermath recognise the legality of the property claims, but rather the opposite – a solution that its whole essence is ex gratia and is based on the assumption of the absence of property rights.”</em></p> <p>The strategy is clear: Take everything away, forcing the Bedouin to be grateful for any morsel given back. And this, indeed, is how Prawer’s algorithm of expropriation works.</p> <p>First, only land that is disputed (meaning land that families filed suit for 35 years ago) and that a family has lived on and used consecutively (as opposed to pasture areas that have been collective) will be compensated with land, but at a ratio of 50 percent. So if a person has 100 dunams, lived on this land and planted wheat on it for the past three and a half decades, this person will be given 50 dunams of agricultural land. Most of this newly “recognized land” will not be located on the ancestral lands, but at a location wherever the state decides.</p> <p>Second, cash compensation for land that had been petitioned for, but held by the state and therefore not used by Bedouin will be uniform, regardless of the location of the land and whether or not it is fertile, remote or attractive.</p> <p>Third, the rate of compensation will be about NIS 5,000 ($1,300) per dunam, a meagre sum considering that half a dunam in a township such as Rahat costs about NIS 150,000 shekels. The cost of a plot is important, since the families will have to buy plots in the towns. If a Bedouin landowner has five or six offspring, by the time he buys plots for the family, he will be left with little, if any, land for agricultural use. Finally, Bedouin who filed land claims and do not settle with the state within five years will lose all ownership rights.</p> <p><strong>To where?</strong></p> <p>Hia Noach estimates that of the existing 550,000 dunams of unsettled land claims, about 100,000, which is less than one per cent of the Negev’s land, will stay in Bedouin hands after the Prawer Plan is implemented. But this, she emphasises, is only part of the problem. Another central issue has to do with the actual relocation. Where will the Bedouin be moved to and to what kind of settlement? These are precisely the questions Ehud Prawer is yet to answer.</p> <p>One detail that has become public knowledge is that the unrecognized Bedouin will be relocated east of route 40, which is the Negev’s more arid region situated close to the southern tip of the occupied West Bank. While this part of Prawer’s plan is reminiscent of Ben Gurion’s strategy of concentrating the Bedouin within certain parameters in order to vacate land for Jews, it may be the case that there is something more sinister at hand. If there are ever one for one land swaps with the Palestinians in the West Bank, what could be more convenient for the Jewish state than handing over some parched Negev land with a lot of Bedouin on it?</p> <p>Regardless of what the Bedouin think about this scheme, the government is going ahead with the plan and has decided to allocate about $2 billion for relocating 70,000 Bedouin. Incidentally, this is more or less the same sum that was allocated for relocating the 8,000 Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip in 2005. The government has also stated that about $300 billion will be allotted to the existing townships, indicating that at least some of the Bedouin will be moved to these dilapidated municipalities.</p> <p>It is unclear how people accustomed to living off agriculture and raising sheep will make ends meet once they are forcefully relocated. This is not merely a theoretical concern, considering that the majority of Bedouin who moved to the first seven towns never succeeded in socializing to more urban life. There are talks that three more towns will be created, but if history is any indication, it is unlikely that these will be any better suited to the Bedouin’s rural form of life.</p> <p>Before leaving Wadi al Na’am, I asked Ibrahim what he thinks will happen if they do not reach an agreement with the government. He paused for a moment and then replied that he does not want to think about such an option, adding that “they will not put us on buses and move us, they will simply shut down the schools and wait. When we see we cannot send our children to school we will ‘willingly’ move.”</p> <p>This is how forced relocation becomes voluntary and how Israel will likely represent it to the world.</p><br /><br />Read More - <a href="http://972mag.com/algorithm-of-expropriation-the-plan-to-uproot-30000-bedouin/40202/">http://972mag.com/algorithm-of-expropriation-the-plan-to-uproot-30000-bedouin/40202</a>Rachelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05281589586630326322noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1727517410083201887.post-11409352488957651992012-04-02T17:27:00.005-07:002012-04-02T18:06:30.112-07:00Is a College Really What the Bedouin Need Right Now?, by Merav Michaeli, in Haaretz<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTIO5yv9pk7xXop74LF4KkcRT4bFB20P7vzeaf01e0ylGCsQ-zxqmY0OaM3Yq7hPksb0sDgHjYX95XmCPF6TbBDF_fJuWQYKAGc3QO18kndmQnXOUbd9gSDU5OXjNYlJrDBlr7Mm0l8d8/s1600/wadi+nam.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 201px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTIO5yv9pk7xXop74LF4KkcRT4bFB20P7vzeaf01e0ylGCsQ-zxqmY0OaM3Yq7hPksb0sDgHjYX95XmCPF6TbBDF_fJuWQYKAGc3QO18kndmQnXOUbd9gSDU5OXjNYlJrDBlr7Mm0l8d8/s320/wadi+nam.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5726973046457218338" border="0" /></a>While the Age of the Negev project is an excellent initiative, it will not solve the problem of the deprivation of the Bedouin's living expanse, with the Prawer Law still threatening the relocation of most of them. <span class="writer"></span><div><div class="wrapperRight"> </div> <div class="clear"> </div> </div> <p> President Shimon Peres will tour the Bedouin city of Rahat on Monday and announce the establishment there of a university campus, according to a report Sunday in the media. The question is: Is a college really what the Bedouin urgently need right now? </p> <p> Apparently, the college has been in the pipeline for over six years already, at the initiative of local agents. The answer then, according to activists Safa Abu Rabia and Amal El-Sana, is a definite yes. Education and intellect are no less important aspects of life, they say, and it's time for the public image of the Bedouin to reflect this, and not only poverty and squabbles over land; after all, books are read and computers are used in the non-recognized villages too. </p> <p> The college is being planned as part of the Age of the Negev project: an employment park - employment, not industrial, stresses Sigal Moran, who heads the Bnei Shimon Regional Council, where the park is located. An employment park because the emphasis there is not on industry but on employment - in other words, on people, and primarily on Bedouin women from the area. The stated goal: Of the 3,200 jobs on offer, at least half of them, at all levels, will go to Bedouin women. </p> <p> This excellent initiative comes from the former head of the regional council, Moshe Paul - cooperation among the Bnei Shimon Regional Council, which has a ranking of 6 on the Central Bureau of Statistics' socioeconomic scale, Rahat, which has a ranking of 1, and Lehavim, with a ranking of 9. Moreover, although the park itself is located in the jurisdiction of Bnei Shimon, Rahat has been given a 46-percent stake in the joint company that will manage it. In other words, Rahat will get 46 percent of the municipal taxes collected - no less important a matter for the men and women of the city than the employment. </p> <p> Another important matter is the fact that one of the 21 enterprises that have already been approved for the park is the SodaStream factory, which has moved there from Ma'aleh Adumim. Apparently, it is possible: cooperation between Jews and Bedouin for the good of all within the borders of sovereign Israel, instead of participation in depriving the Palestinians of their living expanse. </p> <p> But the Age of the Negev project will not solve the problem of the deprivation of the Bedouin's living expanse, with the Prawer Law still threatening the relocation of most of them - in a manner that will allow the state to register as much land as possible in its name and concentrate the Bedouin on as little land as possible, leaving many of them without property, without rights and without a roof over the heads. </p> <p> And if the Prawer provisions go into effect, the plight of the Bedouin women will be even worse. These women are the most weakened sector in Israel. Time is too short to detail their unique statistics here, but a legal report by Itach-Maaki - Women Lawyers for Social Justice outlines how the law disregards them entirely and prevents many of them from ever achieving the right to ownership, recognition of their children's rights, and the right to shelter for those who need it. </p> <p> A college for Bedouin men and women is an excellent idea, but life itself must certainly be dealt with too. Home demolitions must cease; the Bedouin must be hooked up to decent infrastructure services; existing villages must be recognized; and kindergartens, pre-schools and schools must be set up for the girls and boys so that they will be able to study at the new college some day. The college-in-the-works must not be allowed to whitewash the continuing trampling of the Bedouin's fundamental rights. </p> <p> Under Peres' vision, Bedouin and Jewish students will study on the campus side by side. This vision ignores the fact that already today, Jews and Bedouin study side by side at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev; nevertheless, Jews going to study at a bilingual college adjacent to Rahat would be a worthy innovation. </p> <p> But the spirit of this vision should start with Jews including the Bedouin and allowing them to participate in the discussions over their own future. The Bedouin were not party to the discussions of the Goldberg Committee or on the Prawer guidelines - and certainly not Bedouin women. In fact, the Prawer guidelines were prepared at the Prime Minister's Office, under a cloak of secrecy befitting a military operation against the enemy. </p> <p> The Bedouin are not an enemy; and their neighbors in Lehavim and Bnei Shimon appear to realize this. It would be so much better for all of us if one day the government of Israel was to understand that too. </p><p><br /></p><p>Read More - <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/is-a-college-really-what-the-bedouin-need-right-now-1.422042">http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/is-a-college-really-what-the-bedouin-need-right-now-1.422042</a><br /></p>Rachelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05281589586630326322noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1727517410083201887.post-60117860062107115752012-04-01T14:50:00.000-07:002012-04-09T14:52:59.435-07:00Prawer Plan Promotes Racial Discrimination and Violates Rights of the Negev Bedouin, update from ACRI<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhu2LM9ymZwZul_LPpI2oZEbGind-i3rV0EDiG0UsQ0pJvbkpm2G12ChkX2f17KWX8xFSegygguRHWZmBFG9EwriMtzdk7Sb0DYwQ2NarjhEHOuZAmArymOR0IyG3H0vWiyBaiRZ5xyY6E/s1600/ACRI.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 319px; height: 213px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhu2LM9ymZwZul_LPpI2oZEbGind-i3rV0EDiG0UsQ0pJvbkpm2G12ChkX2f17KWX8xFSegygguRHWZmBFG9EwriMtzdk7Sb0DYwQ2NarjhEHOuZAmArymOR0IyG3H0vWiyBaiRZ5xyY6E/s320/ACRI.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5729522189767336786" border="0" /></a>Human rights organizations Adalah and Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) formally submitted their reservations to the government’s legislative proposal to implement the Prawer Plan for Bedouin in the Unrecognized Villages in the Negev (the “Memorandum of Law to Regulate the Bedouin Settlement in the Negev – 2012″).<br /><br />The government established the Prawer Committee in 2009 to formulate a detailed plan for addressing the legal and practical issues of Bedouin settlement in the Negev based on the recommendations of a commission headed by former Supreme Court Justice Eliezer Goldberg. The government approved the Prawer Plan in September 2011.<br /><br />In a 17-page letter to Minister Benny Begin (the Minister without a portfolio charged with the procedural aspects of this proposal), Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, and Justice Minister Yaakov Ne’eman, the organizations detailed their objections to the Prawer Plan, addressing two central issues: the dismantling of the unrecognized villages and forced displacement and relocation of tens of thousands of residents to recognized settlements, and the recognition of Bedouin ownership to lands.<br /><br />In respect of each of these issues, the organizations maintain, the government is ignoring the facts and reality on the ground, failing to seriously examine alternatives, and proceeding with the clear intention of ousting the residents. Such an implementation of the Prawer Plan would also constitute a gross violation of the residents’ rights under Israeli law to appeal against eviction and demolition orders as afforded to them by their constitutional rights to property, dignity and equality.<br /><br />With respect to the unrecognized villages: the organizations stress that the proposed legislation ignores the fact that most of these villages have existed on their lands since before the establishment of the State, while others were established when the Israeli military government forcibly relocated Bedouin residents from their lands in the 1950′s. Underlying the proposed law is the sweeping misconception that the 70,000 people residing in 36 unrecognized villages are squatters without rights to the land.<br /><br />With respect to the issue of land ownership in the Negev: the organizations argue that the facts, supported by ample legal precedents, formal reports and research, prove Bedouin ties and ownership to the lands in question. The government, however, ignores these facts, while purporting that the “arrangement” it intends to impose on the residents is actually for the benefit of Bedouin citizens.<br /><br />The organizations warn that the central tenant of the proposed law is the “concentration” of Bedouin in limited predefined areas which will force them to abandon their traditional agricultural livelihood, while industrial areas, a military base, and new Jewish settlements are expected to be established on the lands of the unrecognized Bedouin villages. The proposal includes the use of administrative authority, similar to the emergency powers of legislation reserved for wartime, in a manner which would grossly violate the residents’ rights to due process. Accordingly, this proposal would enshrine wholesale discrimination against the residents of unrecognized villages into law.<br /><br />According to <strong>Attorney Rawia Aburabia of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel</strong>, “the attempt to enshrine the Prawer Plan into law is a farce. A democratic state cannot pass a law of discrimination, one that violates human rights and continues to harm a minority that has suffered from neglect and discrimination dating back to the founding of the State. Demolishing an Arab Bedouin village in order to establish a Jewish settlement on its ruins is not the action of a democracy – it is a step that takes us back to the military regime.”<br /><br /><strong>Attorney Suhad Bishara of Adalah</strong> states that “the government of Israel should shelve the Prawer Plan and recognize the rights of the Arab Bedouin residents of the unrecognized villages to ownership and use of the lands on which they have resided for many decades. The government should recognize the ownership rights of the Bedouin to their lands in the Negev as a necessary step towards creating historic justice vis-à-vis this population.”<br /><br /><br />Read More - <a href="http://www.acri.org.il/en/2012/04/01/prawer-plan-reservations-submitted/">http://www.acri.org.il/en/2012/04/01/prawer-plan-reservations-submitted</a>Rachelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05281589586630326322noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1727517410083201887.post-65782576813698360032012-03-27T05:49:00.002-07:002012-03-27T05:57:54.452-07:00UN Panel Urges Israel to Shelve 'Racist' Bedouin Relocation Plan, by Dana Weiler-Polak, in Haaretz<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKaDgFpA2mN9ebsQftaUzew0NLmrlGtk1Glxggjr3pTCmWw73_HAE0iEt5ykpjNv5Hil-yd5tloaZsdjrQbp_9u-UP1XyROj4ZqvDy4mccFddLRQOiN7jIjFZoQ_mG2yLcxUJaK2F7yDA/s1600/indigenous.gif"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKaDgFpA2mN9ebsQftaUzew0NLmrlGtk1Glxggjr3pTCmWw73_HAE0iEt5ykpjNv5Hil-yd5tloaZsdjrQbp_9u-UP1XyROj4ZqvDy4mccFddLRQOiN7jIjFZoQ_mG2yLcxUJaK2F7yDA/s320/indigenous.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5724559887699426930" border="0" /></a>A United Nations committee has called on for the withdrawal of an Israeli draft law that would move 30,000 Bedouin living in the Negev to permanent, existing Bedouin communities. According to the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, the Law for the Regulation of the Bedouin Settlement in the Negev is discriminatory and would legalize racist practices. <p></p>The bill is based on the Prawer Report, which was approved by the cabinet in September. It calls for moving 30,000 Negev Bedouin to communities such as Rahat, Kseifa and Hura. The plan - drafted in response to recommendations made by the Goldberg committee - envisions land exchanges and compensation payments, and comes with an estimated price tag of NIS 6.8 billion. <p dir="ltr"> The UN committee said the law "would legalize the ongoing policy of demolitions and forced displacement of the indigenous Bedouin communities." </p> <p dir="ltr"> It expressed concern "about the current situation of Bedouin communities, particularly with regard to the policy of demolitions, notably of homes and other structures, and the increasing difficulties faced by members of these communities in gaining access on a basis of equality with Jewish inhabitants to land, housing, education, employment and public health." </p> <p dir="ltr"> The UN body reviews official reports from member states as well as counter-reports filed by nongovernment organizations in these countries pertaining to issues of discrimination. Its recommendations are binding. </p> <p> Dr. Thabet Abu Rass, director of the Adalah Legal Center for Arab Minority Right's office in Naqab, accused the government of "declaring war against" the Bedouin in the town. </p> <p> "The government has declared war against the Bedouin in the Naqab. The Prawer Plan was written without consultation with the Bedouin community, whose lives are going to be ruined by this plan," he said. </p> <p dir="ltr"> In January the committee received a report from the Negev Coexistence Forum For Civil Equality that presumably influenced its position. </p> <p dir="ltr"> A representative of the forum said the bill would be deleterious to the Negev Bedouin and called on the government to withdraw the draft law. </p> <br /><br />Read More - <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/un-panel-urges-israel-to-shelve-racist-bedouin-relocation-plan-1.420692" target="_blank">http://www.haaretz.com/news/<wbr>national/un-panel-urges-<wbr>israel-to-shelve-racist-<wbr>bedouin-relocation-plan-1.<wbr>420692</a>Rachelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05281589586630326322noreply@blogger.com0