Bedouins Facing Expulsion From Villages, by Nathan Jeffay, in The Forward

Beersheba, Israel — To the Bedouins, the plan for a mass demolition of their villages is a cruel move that would expel them from land they say belongs to them; to the Israeli government it is a bold attempt to remedy this minority’s own complaints about its low living standard and bring it into the 21st century.

Israel’s government is poised to propose legislation to solve a dispute as old as the country itself. It will compensate 80,000 Bedouin Arabs for land in the Negev that they say they own. Israel considers them squatters, and will demand that they leave.

As the villages slated for evacuation are considered illegal by Israel, inhabitants do not receive services like sewage and connection to the country’s electricity grid —services they are to receive in the government’s mass resettlement plan. “You cannot say they don’t have the standard of living of other Israelis and criticize when we give that,” said Ofir Gendelman, a spokesman in the Prime Minister’s Office.

In response, Bedouin activists and their supporters have turned to Washington. In late October, three Bedouin activists and one Jewish advocate for their cause flew to America from Israel to seek the administration’s intervention in an effort to avert the plan. They held meetings at the White House and lobbied Congress members. They tried to raise objections from civil society, briefing think tanks, meeting with faith groups and speaking at universities.

“This kind of action against the most disadvantaged community in Israel should be taken seriously by the American state and by Americans,” said delegation member Rawia Aburabia, a Bedouin attorney who deals with Bedouin-related cases at the Association for Civil Rights in Israel. “America considers itself a friend of Israel, and we’re saying that to be a friend of Israel it needs to be a friend of Israel’s citizens, including the Bedouins.”

Doni Remba, co-director of the American-based Campaign for Bedouin-Jewish Justice in Israel, who participated in the Washington visit, said delegation members were told that the American ambassador to Israel, Dan Shapiro, would soon travel to some of the Bedouin sites slated for demolition. Remba stressed that the trip would not be a solidarity visit but part of the effort of the United States to “learn about the situation.”

But if Washington is acting, it’s not in public. Asked if Shapiro had, in fact, since the Washington mission, visited any of the sites due to be demolished, embassy press attaché Kurt Hoyer replied, “The ambassador, as his predecessors did, visits communities all around Israel as a normal part of his portfolio, not in response to any particular event or actions of others.”

Israel’s plans for its Bedouin citizens, who live in Israel, parallel those it implemented in Israeli-occupied Gaza when troops evacuated Israeli Jews living in settlements there. “If the government evacuated 8,000 citizens living in legally authorized buildings, it can also evacuate those living in illegal buildings,” wrote Ehud Praver, head of the department for policy planning in the Prime Minister’s Office, shortly after the Gaza disengagement of 2005.

Praver went on to head the committee providing policy for the forthcoming legislation. Its report, released last May, does not specify the number of Bedouins that will be relocated, but Gendelman, the prime minister’s spokesman, revealed to the Forward that the legislation will propose evacuation of all 80,000 who live on disputed land — double the number estimated by critics of the new policy.

Gendelman said that the legislation will offer generous compensation to evacuees for land that they inhabit as well as for land over which they claim ownership. But while the Praver report says that compensation may be as high as 50% of the value of the land claimed, Bedouin activists say that the complicated structure for calculating compensation means that in the final reckoning it will be much lower.

The Regional Council for the Unrecognized Villages and the advocacy organization Bimkom — Planners for Planning Rights have released a rival master plan in which they argue that the state could legalize the unrecognized villages without violating any of its planning principles. They put forward “a diverse and agreed planning solution based on the existing Bedouin settlements, which would be integrated in the overall planning of the Beersheba metropolitan area.”

Many critics of the government’s plan think that planning rules and Bedouin community development are not the government’s real priorities. Aburabia considers the plan to be intentional “ethnic displacement.” She told the Forward: “If there were a plan that said we should concentrate 100 rural Jewish communities into 30 towns, nobody would think it reasonable. But the objective with Bedouins is to have the maximum number of Bedouins on the minimum amount of land possible, concentrated [just] in the northern Negev.”

Aburabia believes that the new legislation constitutes a push to reduce the footprint of the Bedouins while increasing the Jewish footprint in the Negev. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is open about the fact that he is deeply concerned about the demographics of the desert, keen to boost the Jewish population there to ensure a Jewish majority. On October 30, his Cabinet advanced plans for 10 new Jewish communities in the Negev. But his office insists that the two policy areas are unrelated. “The Bedouin issue is completely disconnected,” Gendelman said. “The plan is for the benefit of the Bedouins, period.”

As the villages slated for evacuation are considered illegal by Israel, inhabitants do not receive services like sewage and country’s electricity grid. “You cannot say they don’t have the standard of living of other Israelis and criticize when we give that,” Gendelman argued.

Bilha Givon, executive director of the Sustainable Development for the Negev, a not-for-profit organization that works with Jewish and Bedouin residents of that area, shares Gendelman’s frustration about Bedouin resistance to the plan. “Israel is not an apartheid country. [Bedouins] have the rights, but every time you offer something, [community] groups won’t accept it, so you can’t achieve anything,” said Givon, a member of the Goldberg Commission, the 2008 panel that came up with the original principles that Praver’s committee was asked to implement.

But another member of the Goldberg Commission, Faisal el-Huzayel, former deputy mayor of the Bedouin city of Rahat, told the Forward that his community is right to reject the plan. In his view, the final Goldberg report was too harsh on Bedouins, and the Praver report even more so. He believes that the new policy will accentuate tensions between Israel and Bedouins, a traditionally loyal minority, some of whom serve in the army. “Not giving land rights can cause conflict, can lead to violence,” he said. “The Bedouins will not agree to leave, and will say, ‘Why should I give up my home?’”

This theme was common during the Bedouins’ visit to the United States. “Ultimately it will accentuate the Jewish-Arab conflict in Israel,” said Remba, the Jewish Bedouin advocate. The plan creates a “security risk,” he said, because in the long run, the evacuees “will fight back.”

Read more: http://www.forward.com/articles/146678

Bedouin Battle to Stay in Their Villages Ends in Rubble, by Ruth Pollard, in The Sydney Morning Herald

Al-Sira, Israel: The Israeli authorities came without warning last week, and despite her pleas for time to pack, the house Rifa al-Oqbi shared with her two young sons was demolished, and with it, some of their most valued possessions.

Smashed pale blue and white floor tiles lay among the debris of broken brick blocks and wooden framing, as her sons Ali, 5, and Omar, 4, played in the rubble of what once was their home in their village in the Negev Desert.

Photo: Ruth Pollard

The village was under a demolition order, but experts say there is rarely any warning before the bulldozers arrive.

''They asked me to immediately leave my house, and I asked them for 24 hours so I could remove the furniture and my other belongings … and they said no,'' the 31-year-old explained. ''They closed this entire area, and when I tried to grab one more thing, they beat me and threw me to the ground … and beat up a relative who came to help.''

Israel's long-term goal of evicting between 30,000 and 40,000 indigenous Bedouin from their lands in the Negev Desert in order to create new Jewish settlements was cemented on September 11 with the adoption of the Prawer Plan.

Due before parliament in the coming days, opponents of the plan say it will result in the seizure of two-thirds of the Bedouin's land, destroy all but 10 of the 45 ''unrecognised'' Bedouin villages in the Negev and extinguish the Bedouin's land claims without proper compensation.

Thabet Abu Ras, the director of the Negev Project at Adalah, the Legal Centre for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, said that although they make up about 30 per cent of the region's population, the Bedouin occupy only 2.5 per cent of the Negev.

They have already been ''corralled onto the smallest amount of land possible,'' he said.

''If you take the land from the Bedouin … you are denying their right to exist.''

Professor Abu Ras, who is also a professor of political geography at Ben Gurion University, has just returned from a lobbying trip to the US to try to raise the plight of the Bedouin.

The Israeli cabinet this week gave the green light for work to begin on 10 Jewish settlements in the area ''to attract a new population to the Negev''.

On Thursday, the Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, met the mayors from some Bedouin villages before the implementation of the plan, in which the 10 villages that are allowed to remain will become eligible for government services.

All others will be razed and their residents forced to move to towns such as the government-created Hura, which has schools, a medical clinic, paved roads, water and electricity. To many Bedouin, Hura is overdeveloped and has no agricultural land for grazing. It ''feels like a prison'', one community leader said.

Mr Netanyahu said the plan would ''allow the Bedouin, for the first time, to realise their assets and turn them from dead capital into living capital to receive ownership of the land, which will allow for home construction, according to law, and for the development of enterprises and employment. This will jump the population forward and provide it with economic independence.''

In a report before the development of the Prawer Plan, retired judge Eliezer Goldberg recommended that many Bedouin villages be recognised, acknowledging their ''general historic ties'' to the land.

Then the government asked the former deputy head of the National Security Council Ehud Prawer to implement Justice Goldberg's recommendations.

He instead proposed the immediate transfer to the state of half the land claimed by the Bedouin, with minimal compensation for the remaining land. Not a single Bedouin was consulted by the committee.

One village, , al-Araqib, which is home to about 300 Bedouin, has been demolished and rebuilt 29 times in the past 18 months.

The battle between Israeli forces and Bedouin in al-Araqib is played out with monotonous regularity. It is a process repeated throughout the region.

Khalil al-Amour, school teacher, law student, father of seven and the leader of the village of al-Sira, knows this battle. His house, along with the rest of the village of 47 homes and 500 people, is the subject of a demolition order. ''It is about cramming the maximum Bedouin onto the minimum amount of land,'' he said.

And because his village is one of the many ''unrecognised villages'', there is no running water, electricity, social services or schools. They are cut off from the rest of Israeli society, despite the fact they serve in the army, vote, pay taxes and speak Hebrew, and some work in nearby Beersheba and other major centres.

Many are now fighting through the courts for ownership of what land they have left .

Mr Amour has a document he says proves his family's ownership of the land, dated November 23, 1921, notarised by Britain. It is not recognised by Israel.

There is often a deep misunderstanding of what it means to be a Bedouin, fuelled partly by a romantic image as the original nomads of the desert, resistant to the ways of the modern world.

''Bedouin are not against development and advancement and improvements to our lives,'' Mr Amour said. ''We just reject the way the government imposes this on us. They are asking us to move to cities and towns that are the antithesis of Bedouin being. Israel uses a demolition order to 'encourage' us to move''.

Forced to live under the constant threat of demolition the people of al-Sira are deeply frustrated and depressed.

''Even though they are determined to stay and fight, everything we build in this environment may not be here for the long term, so we build very rough just to survive,'' Mr Amour said.

Professor Abu Ras estimates that in 1948 there were 100,000 Bedouin in the Negev. By 1954, there were 10,000 remaining, the rest had been forcibly moved to Jordan and the Sinai in Egypt.

Professor Abu Ras said the plan to push the Bedouin from their land had been under development since the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, when they were first moved into what is known as the ''siyag triangle'' in the Western Negev, with the promise that they could soon return to their ancestral lands. ''They are still waiting.''

He estimates that under the Prawer Plan the Bedouin would receive just 100,000 dunams (10,000 hectares) of their outstanding claim of 600,000 dunams and monetary compensation will be far less than half the land value.

For many Bedouin, some of whom have already been forcibly relocated at least once by the government, that compensation is just not enough.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/bedouin-battle-to-stay-in-their-villages-ends-in-rubble-20111104-1mzzf.html#ixzz1dcengyzn

How Not to Solve the Bedouin Problem, by Don Futterman, in Haaretz

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's recent order to Justice Minister Yaakov Neeman to find ways to retroactively legalize illegal outposts on privately held Palestinian land should surprise no one familiar with the coalition's contempt for Palestinians and our legal system: If we can't have Greater Israel, at least we can have Lesser Palestine. But the government's legal arsenal is also being deployed against another target - Israel's Bedouin citizens in the Negev.

Every few years, Israeli leaders decide to solve the Bedouin problem once and for all. There are no shortage of challenges in Bedouin society that could benefit from government intervention: poverty; lack of government services; grossly inadequate education; a sky-high birthrate; polygamy; involvement in smuggling, trafficking and car theft; and officially unrecognized shantytowns that keep spreading as Bedouin continue to be refused legal building permits.

But the problem that bothers our government is Bedouin land claims.

The Bedouin claim they own a portion of the Negev - about 640,000 dunams (160,000 acres ), or 4.9 percent of the Negev's total area - because these are their traditional tribal lands. The government argues that this figure is misleading, because the Bedouin want a much higher percentage of the choice areas centered around Metropolitan Be'er Sheva, conveniently forgetting that many Bedouin were forcibly relocated to this area by previous Israeli governments. The government believes this land must be kept in trust for Jewish settlement, based in part on trumped-up security fears, to prevent a band of Arab settlement connecting Gaza and the West Bank.

The recently formed Bedouin Settlement Authority is yet another attempt to control the Bedouin, rather than help them. It has invested in a huge staff of lawyers and inspectors to find ways to neutralize Bedouin land claims and to expedite the removal of Bedouin from their villages. As in the West Bank, the government's legal firepower has been tasked not with helping citizens or getting at the truth, but with keeping land out of Arab hands by any means possible.

Three years ago, the government commissioned retired Justice Eliezer Goldberg to recommend how to address the Bedouin situation. Goldberg talked to members of the Bedouin community and discovered that instead of impoverished towns with no economic base, they wanted rural settlements where they could practice their way of life. Goldberg advised that as many as possible of the Bedouin villages be left in place and recognized, presumably under a leasing arrangement like that enjoyed by kibbutzim and moshavim, and that as citizens, the Bedouin should be involved in determining their own future.

Although Goldberg did not endorse Bedouin claims of land ownership, he acknowledged that the Bedouin have a tenable, historic connection to the land they live on, and are neither squatters nor trespassers - a radical admission for a government-sponsored entity. While not satisfying Bedouin leaders, Goldberg's recommendations were a thoughtful leap past the sloganeering demonization that usually passes for government policy in the Negev.

But Yisrael Beiteinu and other right-wing parties objected, basing themselves on an interpretation of the Zionist mission that can only be considered anachronistic. Sixty-three years since we became the lords of the land, right-wing ideologues insist we are still fighting to redeem the Land of Israel. Every dunam given the Bedouin is considered a loss for the Jewish people, rather than a gain for Israeli society. Under political pressure, many of Goldberg's recommendations were dumped by Netanyahu's point person, Udi Prawer, who agreed to recognize Bedouin ownership for half of the lands currently occupied - about 200,000 dunams - but dismissed the recognition of additional villages. Prawer dredged up the old program of concentrating the Bedouin around their failed townships, with the addition of the 11 villages recognized as part of the Abu Basma Regional Council.

When that didn't satisfy his coalition partners, Netanyahu brought in his national security advisor, Maj. Gen. (res. ) Yaakov Amidror, to be his hatchet man. Choosing Amidror meant Netanyahu had decided to reject Goldberg outright, and to regard the Bedouin as security problems rather than as citizens.

In Amidror's plan, apparently none of the other 35 villages will be recognized, and far less land will be registered under Bedouin ownership. An estimated 30,000 Bedouin will be forced to leave their homes, this time with the imprimatur of the Israeli justice system. Furthermore, Bedouin citizens are to be excluded from the decision-making process. It's a pity, not only because this course will lead to unnecessary conflict and damage the credibility of our legal system, but also because there are other choices. The Regional Council of Unrecognized Villages (RCUV ) and the NGO Bimkom: Planners for Planning Rights, drafted an alternative plan for developing the Negev that includes giving unrecognized villages legal status and providing proper planning for their development. There are about 100 days to change course before Amidror's plan takes effect. The government should emulate Bimkom, soliciting input from Bedouin leaders and villagers, including, outreach to Bedouin women. The real Zionist challenge for 2011 is not to guard land from Bedouin for the sake of the Jewish people, nor to deploy the courts against our own citizens, but to figure out how Jews and Arabs can participate as equals in the democratic life of this country.

Don Futterman is the program director for Israel of the Moriah Fund, and one third of the podcast team of The Promised Podcast, a weekly discussion of Israeli politics from a progressive perspective.

Read More: http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/how-not-to-solve-the-bedouin-problem-1.392403

Discrimination against Bedouin in Israel reaches unprecedented scale in the Netanyahu govt's new plan - Policy Brief offers an alternative solution

The Campaign for Bedouin-Jewish Justice joins with the Association for Civil Rights (ACRI) and the many in Israel who were appalled to learn that the Netanyahu government voted on Sept. 11, 2011 to approve the Praver Plan to address the problem of unrecognized Bedouin villages in the Negev.

Rather than recognizing the systemic violations of the rights of the Bedouin, the Praver Plan continues the discrimination of one of the most disadvantaged communities in Israel, at the very time when a mass Israeli protest movement has been calling for social justice for all citizens.

The Praver Plan, which was prepared without any consultation whatsoever with the Bedouin community in the unrecognized villages, will lead to the needless uprooting of tens of thousands of Bedouin from their homes, in flagrant violation of their human and civil rights.

An Alternative Master Plan, submitted by the Regional Council of Unrecognized Bedouin Villages and Bimkom - Planners for Planning Rights, proposes to keep all 35 unrecognized villages intact and to connect them to infrastructure and services, while saving Israel massive amounts of resources necessary for uprooting villages that have existed since before the State was established.

Only an approach based on respect for the human rights of the Bedouin population, that includes them in the process, will bring about a lasting solution for all residents of the Negev, both Arabs and Jews.

The Campaign for Bedouin-Jewish Justice is working with our allies in Israel - including the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), Rabbis for Human Rights, Bimkom, and the Negev Coexistence Forum for Civil Equality - to build support in Israel and the U.S., both with the public and with NGO and government officials, for the Alternate Master Plan and to stop the Praver Plan.

To Read the 4-page summary Policy Brief on this issue, click here.

The Policy Brief, titled “Principles for Arranging Recognition of the Bedouin Villages in the Negev,” provides an overview of the Negev Bedouin, the Goldberg and Praver Plans, and guiding principles for the proposed alternative solution.

Help support our efforts to stop the expulsion of tens of thousands of Bedouin in Israel, gain recognition for the Negev Bedouin villages, and ensure respect for the human rights of the Bedouin citizens of Israel.

Jerusalem Post editorial criticizes Netanyahu govt's new plan for the Negev Bedouin

The new plan approved this week by the Netanyahu government on the Negev Bedouin “contains a number of critical faults that, if not addressed swiftly, could lead to a further deterioration of relations with an increasingly alienated Beduin community.

"Beduin have already vowed to call a general strike in protest against the plan, and other Arab Israelis might join in. At a time when Israel is facing numerous challenges abroad, from Turkey and Egypt to the Palestinian bid for statehood in the UN, it would be highly advisable to avoid a clash with the Beduin, a population that is rapidly growing (the average Beduin woman has between five and six children) and is relatively loyal (many Beduin men serve in the IDF)."

The Negev Beduin

Jerusalem Post - EDITORIAL

09/12/2011

While it might not be realistic to meet all demands, a more serious effort needs to be made on the part of the gov't to open up channels of communication with the Beduin community in the Negev.

The Beduin population of the Negev has a list of genuine gripes against a cabinet decision Sunday to evacuate tens of thousands of Beduin from “unrecognized” villages such as al-Arakib and Tavil Abu Jarwal and resettle them in “recognized” and relatively urbanized locations such as Rahat, Hura, Tel Sheva and Kuseife.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was right when he stated that “given the situation in the Negev, the time has come to act.”

Unfortunately, the NIS 6 billion, five-year plan approved this week contains a number of critical faults that, if not addressed swiftly, could lead to a further deterioration of relations with an increasingly alienated Beduin community. Beduin have already vowed to call a general strike in protest against the plan, and other Arab Israelis might join in.

At a time when Israel is facing numerous challenges abroad, from Turkey and Egypt to the Palestinian bid for statehood in the UN, it would be highly advisable to avoid a clash with the Beduin, a population that is rapidly growing (the average Beduin woman has between five and six children) and is relatively loyal (many Beduin men serve in the IDF).

Conflict with the Beduin might also have international ramifications. Prof. James Anaya, the UN’s special rapporteur on the situation of human rights and fundamental freedoms of indigenous peoples, recently issued a report criticizing the Israeli refusal to recognize the rights of Beduin to land in the Negev.

The State of Israel has a moral obligation to provide the 200,000-strong Beduin population of the Negev with basic services such as roads, water, electricity and garbage collection. Besides, their demands are not outrageous.

They make up about 30 percent of the population of the Negev and if all their land demands of about 600,000 dunams (60,000 hectares) – in addition to about 200,000 dunams already recognized by the state back in 2003 – are met they would receive a total of 5% of the land in the Negev.

In October 2007, former Supreme Court justice Eliezer Goldberg was chosen to head an eight-man committee that included two Beduin representatives living in “recognized” villages in the Negev.

In December 2008, the Goldberg Committee presented a list of recommendations worded in conciliatory language. Statements such as “there is no justification for the state to treat the Beduin residents in these communities differently from the way it treats the rest of the citizens of the state,” and that Beduin have a “historic connection” to the Negev were received positively by the Beduin community as a basis for dialogue, though certain aspects of the report were criticized.

Where possible, wrote the Goldberg Committee members, an effort should be made to recognize the dozens of “unrecognized” villages throughout the southeastern Negev in the triangle created by Beersheba, Dimona and Arad, where the vast majority of Beduin now live, after being expelled from the western Negev in the years following the establishment of the state. The committee also recommended a generous compensation program in cases where recognition was unfeasible.

But for two years none of the Goldberg Committee recommendations were implemented. Eventually, a new body, the Prawer Committee, was formed. Devoid of Beduin representation, the Prawer Committee issued recommendations that were eventually adopted by the cabinet and have turned out to be bad for the Beduin.

As pointed out by Dr. Suleiman Abu Bader, director of the Robert Arnow Center For Bedouin Studies and Development at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, perhaps the biggest flaw in the Prawer Committee was its “top down approach” that made absolutely no attempt to incorporate the Beduin community in the decision-making process.

While it might not be realistic to meet all demands, a more serious effort needs to be made on the part of the government to open up channels of communication with the Beduin community in the Negev. Perhaps it is not too late to return to the positive atmosphere created by the Goldberg Committee’s approach that came close to striking a balance between recognition of Beduin historic rights to land in the Negev with the Zionist ideal of settling the area with Jews and “making the desert bloom” with the fruits of Jewish labor.

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Editorials/Article.aspx?id=237708

Israel approves plan to uproot 30,000 Bedouin, by Joseph Dana, +972 Magazine

The approval of the ‘Prawer Plan’ concerning Bedouins in the Negev desert demonstrates that Israel’s principle of divide and rule, which has been perfected in the West Bank and Gaza, also applies to citizens of Israel living inside 1948 boundaries.

Perhaps the most violent component of Israel’s control over non-Jewish inhabitants since the founding of the state has been the (unequal) distribution and allocation of resources. In Area C of the West Bank, the area designated for full Israeli military and civilian control by the Oslo accords which makes up the majority of land in the occupied territories, Israel has demonstrated its ability to control the Palestinians of the West Bank through the allocation of resources such as water, electricity and building permits. In the West Bank village of Susya, for example, Palestinians are forced to purchase water at rates close to 10 times higher than an Israeli living in Tel Aviv. Their wells are destroyed by Israel’s civilian administration due to lack of permits which are almost impossible to obtain and many living structures are deemed illegally built and subject to demolition.

The deprivation of resources leaves Palestinians helpless in the face of bureaucratic measures which even Kafka could not have imagined. The point of this system is clear, make Palestinian life in area C villages so unbearable that they their only option is to move into cities in Area A, under Palestinian Authority control. The unclaimed land is then expropriated by Israel using out of date Ottoman laws. This amounts to an effective use of the classic colonial practice of divide and rule given the fragmented nature of Area A cities in the West Bank and the settlements which form almost natural barrier between them.

Interestingly, this is not just happening to West Bank Palestinians. Something similar is taking place to non-Jewish citizens inside Israeli territory. This morning, Israel authorized the controversial “Prawer Plan” concerning the resettlement of Bedouins in the Negev Desert.

Authored by Ehud Prawer, head of the Policy Planning Department at the Prime Minister’s Office, the report contradicts an earlier report on how to resolve settlement issues in the Negev desert. The first report, penned by former Justice Eliezer Goldberg, demanded that Israel make every attempt to respect Bedouins living in the Negev, noting in particular the need to allow them to remain in their villages and homes.

The Prawer report, which has been criticized by the Israeli civil liberties outfit, the Association of Civil Rights in Israel, has proposed that as many as 30,000 Bedouins be removed from their homes and villages, against their will and for little reason. Removal has been approved by the government according to a report in today’s edition of Haaretz (Hebrew).

The decision to evacuate as many as 30,000 Bedouins and relocate them to large Bedouin towns such as Rahat, Khura and Ksayfe with some financial compensation has been called by some a “declaration of war on the Bedouin.” It is actually a long time coming if the experience of the Bedouin village of al Arakib is any indication. The village has been destroyed almost 30 times by Israel in an effort to make way for a new Jewish National Fund forest in its place.

During the height of the hopeful J14 tent protests this summer, demands for better Bedouin rights could be heard filling conversations even in the heart of Tel Aviv’s Rothschild boulevard tent encampment. However, hope has taken a backseat in recent days as many of the tent protesters’ demands for Bedouin rights have been dropped, ignored or simply disappeared.

Israel policies of divide and rule, based on classical colonial principles, are not limited to its occupied populations. The adoption of the Prawer plan by the Israeli government has shown that Israel uses this mechanism of control to subjugate all non-Jewish inhabitants under its control from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea regardless of the status of their citizenship.

Reprinted from +972 Magazine

Netanyahu gov't to approve plan to contain Negev Bedouin, forcibly relocating 30,000 people, reducing Bedouin land by two-thirds

"The plan is to concentrate them in certain areas, where they will receive land and till it…"

No, these are not the words of a Czar regarding the future of the Jews in the land. These are the words of David Rotem, an Israeli Member of Knesset from the Yisrael Beitenu party, deciding the future of the Bedouin, citizens of Israel, and the indigenous people of the Negev. His version of the Praver plan will be voted on by the Israeli government on Sunday, September 4th. (Link to Hebrew, "On the way to approval: large cut in lands for Bedouin, YNET, 9/1/11).

[Editor's note: The first report in Ha'aretz's English edition online whitewashed the story, omitting key passages from the Hebrew version, as we show here. About forty-eight hours later Ha'aretz English edition published an updated story under the headline: "Negev Bedouin to ask UN for help to quash Israeli transfer plan; Cabinet delays vote on plan to move thousands to recognized Negev towns," 9/5/11, which rectified some of the omission, but still left out some of the most provocative portions of the original Hebrew edition report.]

I don't know where to begin…

That the Bedouin have owned and used the Negev land for centuries before the establishment of the state of Israel?

That since the establishment of the state of Israel, their wish has been to become a legitimate part of their state?

That the policies of the state of Israel over the last 60 years have brought them to penury, living in tin shacks, at the threat of even these being demolished at the whim of a bureaucrat?

That the land they are holding on to now is no more than 3% of the Negev lands – and that the policies of oppression and destruction are in order to further reduce these lands to only 1.5% of the Negev land.

That on average a Bedouin farmer can use no more than 3 dunams (1 dunam = 1/4 of an acre) to support his family of 10, while a Jewish farmer in the Negev has no less than 30 dunams, and at times even 1,000?

So let’s remember how we got to where we are now:

• Retired Supreme Court judge Eliezer Goldberg listened to many voices, and together with a small committee put together "the Goldberg Report" in 2008 under the auspices of the Olmert Government. This report, while using positive rhetoric, such as "the villages must be recognized, as much as possible," also recommended that Bedouins should not receive land beyond Route 40, re-establishing the norm that Bedouins, while being citizens, are not really a fully legitimate part of our country. The Bedouin community, which had fully cooperated with the Goldberg committee, was disappointed.

• Prime Minister Ehud Olmert assigned Ehud (Udi) Praver to create a plan implementing the Goldberg Report recommendations. Praver's plan was released a couple of months ago. This plan did not implement the Goldberg Report recommendations, but rather created a completely new plan.

• In developing this new plan, NO BEDOUIN were consulted. NONE. Creating a plan for a community, without even thinking of considering their voice, is a strong statement – indicating that Israel still perceives the Bedouin as less than citizens. It also means that the chance of implementing the plan is really low.

• The Praver plan includes massive violent enforcement, concentration, no clear statement as to the recognition of villages, use of "divide and rule" tactics intended to split the community, and no option for the community for negotiations. The end result was to be – reduction of actual use of land by the Bedouin community from 300,000 dunams to no more than 200,000.

• Naturally, the leadership in the Bedouin community felt betrayed yet again, and together with organizations such as ACRI (the Association for Civil Rights in Israel) and Bimkom: Planners for Planning Rights, expressed their disapproval of this plan. But, evidently, that was not important to Prime Minister Binyamin (Bibi) Netanyahu: his concern was the criticism from the Right.

It is with sadness, disappointment and a feeling of intense distaste that I write of the next steps decided upon by Netanyahu:

• Netanyahu gave Yaakov Amidror, the director of the National Security Council (NSC), the mission to "correct" Praver's plan. Yet again, the Bedouin are treated not as citizens, but as a security issue. In addition, Foreign Minister Liberman assigned MK David Rotem, Chairman of the Constitution, Law and Justice Committee in the Knesset, to study the plan, and insure it is in accordance with his party’s (Yisrael Beitenu’s) line.

• MK Rotem is demanding that the maximum amount of land allowed to remain in the hands of the Bedouin be no more than 100,000 dunams, and that another 300 paramilitary police be assigned to enforce the relocation and containment of the Bedouin.

• There are 100,000 Bedouin living today in the villages, an agricultural people and young population with an annual growth of about 5%. The entire land they utilize is 300,000 dunams – used for their homes, their livestock, and their agriculture. Rotem is demanding that it be reduced to 100,000 dunams. By contrast 50 newly established Jewish single family ranches in the Negev have received about 1,000 dunams each from the State. The words of MK Rotem "...concentrate them, there they will till their land", are extremely ironic pending this planned process of dispossession.

MK David Rotem's opinions on Arabs are well known. For example, he presented a law conditioning Israeli citizenship on service in the Israeli army. Now the Bedouin – who have no say in the plans for their future within their own country – have to accept the plans created for them by a person of MK Rotem's views.

I don't believe it is possible, even with the use of massive force: police brutality, bulldozers, arrests, fines, demolitions, and village erasures – to evict the Bedouin from their lands and contain them.

We are about to step into a very dark era in Israeli history, making the Bedouin community suffer tremendously before the government will change its ways.

Eventually, at some time in history, Israel will realize that its treatment of its Bedouin population must be one of inclusion and dignity. But I am fearful of what will happen until then.

For more updates see the website of Dukium, the Negev Coexistence Forum for Civil Equality, a group of concerned Arab and Jewish residents of the Negev engaged in collaborative Jewish-Arab efforts in the struggle for civil equality and the advancement of mutual tolerance and coexistence.

Please take initiative and do what you can to help change Israel's treatment of its Bedouin population.

Recognition Now calls on the Government of Israel to integrate the Arab-Bedouin community of the Negev into the region based on the principles of partnership, equality, human rights, and a future of prosperity for all the Negev residents.

For more information: Dr. Awad Abu-Frieh, deeretna@gmail.com,

Halil El-Amour, ycantmeetu@hotmail.com

الاعتراف الان
Recognition Now
הכרה עכשיו
اللجنة الشعبية لحقوق العرب في النقب הוועד הציבורי למען זכויות הערבים בנגב
ص. ب 5730 بئر السبع ת"ד 5730 באר שבע

“Cabinet ministers will vote on the evacuation of 30,000 Bedouin from their homes" - translation from the Hebrew, with commentary

“Cabinet ministers will vote on the evacuation of 30,000 Bedouin from their homes,” Ha’aretz, June 2, 2011, Hebrew edition

“The Prime Minister’s Office has prepared a new report for resolution of Bedouin settlement in the Negev. 40% of the 71,000 residents of the “unrecognized” Bedouin villages will be relocated from their homes, at a cost of 6 – 8 billion shekels.” http://www.haaretz.co.il/hasite/spages/1230017.html

“The new plan is the Praver Report for Implementing the Goldberg Commission Recommendations for Resolution of Bedouin Settlement in the Negev, and will be presented for approval by the government in the coming weeks. The cost will come to 6 – 8 billion shekels, of which 1.2 billion will be allocated for economic development plans for the recognized Bedouin villages.

"Under the plan, residents who live or work land on which they claim ownership will receive replacement land equal to half the area they claim; residents who claim land of which they are not in actual possession will receive monetary compensation at double its value.” [However, Clinton Bailey, one of the leading experts on the Negev Bedouin, has pointed out in a Ha’aretz op-ed that the net value of the monetary compensation amounts to one-sixth to one-eighth of the market value per dunam of land in this area of the Negev.[1]]

“The report attributes great importance to law enforcement mechanisms, both in terms of significant augmentation of the police force and the legal system,” possibly including new courts. Many Bedouin leaders and heads of the Jewish municipalities in the area are unhappy with the plan and are planning to take legal action against it once it is approved.

“Dr. Awad Abu Freich, one of the most prominent Bedouin activists in the Negev, described the plan as a disaster that would lead to harsh conflict with the Bedouin residents of the Negev.”

The Netanyahu government’s new plan contradicts the findings of the Goldberg Commission: “The Regional Council of Unrecognized Villages, together with Israeli human rights organizations, have stressed in an Open Letter to Prime Minister Netanyahu and his Cabinet ministers, that the new plan stands in complete contradiction to the Goldberg Commission’s recommendations, thwarting entirely the Praver Committee’s purpose, which was to develop a plan to implement Goldberg’s recommendations.”

“They point out that the Praver Report runs contrary to the main principle of the Goldberg Commission’s recommendations, which was to ‘recognize [and develop] the unrecognized villages wherever possible.’ The Praver Plan also goes entirely against the norms of modern planning policy, by requiring the forced relocation of 20,000 – 30,000 citizens from their homes without valid reason and completely against their wishes.”

All of the following material is also omitted from the English version of the Ha’aretz article:

2. The government’s plan suffers from a democratic deficit: Razi Abu-Kaf, director-general of the Council of Unrecognized Bedouin Villages in the Negev, stated that “during the entire period during which the ‘Praver Implementation Committee’ in the Prime Minister’s Office worked on its plan, we asked them to enable us, along with other representatives from the Negev Bedouin community, to participate in the plan’s development. To our regret, we were ignored. The plan perpetuates the government’s unilateral, force-based approach of steam-rolling over the Bedouin, which has caused great suffering and failed to bring about a real solution.”

Bedouin Israeli Attorney Rauya Abu Ravia added that “the Goldberg Commission found that the government has committed an ongoing injustice to the Bedouin that must be remedied….The Praver Plan cannot be implemented; it is cruel and perpetuates discrimination against the Bedouin” as a non-Jewish minority in Israel.

She continued: “There are today 112 Jewish communities in the Negev, with an average population of 350 per community. By contrast, the average population in 35 of the Bedouin unrecognized villages is 1,700. I ask the government to apply the same standards to the Bedouin that it uses for the Jewish population in the Negev.”

“This means recognizing and developing the unrecognized villages [as the government did with many originally unauthorized Jewish settlements and single-family farms in the Negev,] providing them with basic infrastructure and public buildings as the government does for Jewish communities in the Negev. The government’s failure to do so has caused environmental neglect and great harm to open areas in the Negev, polluting both water and land. The government’s proposed 1.2 billion shekel 5-year development plan, expected to be approved along with the Praver Plan, deals only with the recognized Bedouin villages.”

[Comment: No one objects to the government’s interest in providing economic development for the Bedouin. But the government can develop the unrecognized Bedouin villages, as the Goldberg Commission recommended, rather than uprooting tens of thousands of citizens against their will and attempting to concentrate them in urban townships in a limited space.

By contrast with Bedouin Israelis, Israeli Jews who live in the Negev can choose the type of community they wish to live in, including single-family farms, moshavim or towns; they can choose between agricultural, urban or village communities. The state established the seven Bedouin urban towns without consulting the Bedouin, without asking them how they wished to live, or how they perceive their needs. The government then pressured some 60% of the Negev Bedouin to relocate to these townships and to surrender their agricultural land, by denying recognition and essential services to their existing settlements, demolishing homes and consistently rejecting their claims to land ownership.]

“Dr. Sandy Kedar, a professor of law at the University of Haifa who specializes in land administration in Israel, said that it’s clear that the Praver Committee has committed a serious error by failing to include the Bedouin in the planning process. ‘I believe that the fact that Bedouin are being treated by the government as if they are not a party to the discussion, and that the entire process is being [imposed] on them without their participation, greatly harms its chances for success.’

“Kedar’s proposal for resolving the conflict between the Bedouin and the state is, among other things, to provide the Bedouin with fair compensation comparable to the market value compensation that the [Jewish settler] evacuees from Gush Katif [in Gaza] received. They should also be provided with agricultural land on which to live, like all other Israelis who wish to live in the Negev. It’s unreasonable that every Tel Avivi who decides that his great life’s wish is to raise goats in the Negev, receives land for this purpose without any problem, whereas the government ‘proposes’ to the Bedouin, whose connection to the land is part of their identity, to move to urban townships.”

A substantially abridged and re-written version of this article also appeared in the English online edition of Ha’aretz under the headline “Netanyahu's office promoting plan to relocate 30,000 Bedouin,” http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/netanyahu-s-office-promoting-plan-to-relocate-30-000-bedouin-1.365409), which attempts to present the plan so as to make it appear justified, inserting a pro-government slant into its reportage. The more complete Hebrew article, which is twice as long as the English version, is considerably more critical of the plan. We have provided an English translation of key passages from the Hebrew article.

Ha’aretz English edition rectified the omission of the many criticisms of the plan in the original Hebrew article by publishing a separate piece in a different section of the paper (The Marker): Bottom shekel / Civil rights groups: Prawer plan for Bedouin won't work; The Association for Civil Rights in Israel argues that the conditions the Prawer Report sets for recognizing Bedouin villages are prejudicial, June 2, 2011, English.

Text is above is a translation by the Campaign for Bedouin-Jewish Justice of the Hebrew article: “Cabinet ministers will vote on the evacuation of 30,000 Bedouin from their homes,” Ha’aretz, June 2, 2011, Hebrew edition

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[1]Clinton Bailey, “Time to Settle Bedouin Claims,” Ha’aretz, April 8, 2011, English. http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/time-to-settle-bedouin-claims-1.354755