Israel's Plan To Move Bedouins from Villages Sparks Large Protests, Forward/Reuters, Nov. 30, 2013

Published Saturday, November 30, 2013, The Forward

Israel's Plan To Move Bedouins from Villages Sparks Large Protests

Arabs Tie Bedouin Plight To Fight for Palestine

By Reuters

Protest Scenes: Bedouins flee from a protest after Israelis fire tear gas into the crowd.

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.

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.

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.

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!”

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.

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.

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.

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.

“WE WILL RESIST”

“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.

“It may pass a vote, but the youth here and in the Negev will resist democratically in any way possible, and stop them.”

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.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned the protests.

“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.

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.

The majority of Israel’s 1.6 million Arab citizens dwell in cities and small towns in the north and centre.

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.

The government agency in charge of the Prawer Plan, based in the prime minister’s office, condemned the protests.

“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.

“The Bedouin of the Negev, being equal citizens, deserve adequate housing, public services and a better future for their children.”

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.

“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.”

http://m.forward.com/articles/188571/           

Bill Will Turn Bedouin Dispossession into Israeli Law, by Dr. Yeela Raanan, in the Alternative Information Center

A new bill seeks to turn the controversial Prawer Plan into Israeli law. If the Knesset passes the legislation, it will pave the way for Israel to step up its efforts to disposess the Negev's Bedouin and relocate them to impoverished townships. This bill has gone totally ignored by both local and international media.

On January 3^rd the Government of Israel published the memorandum of a bill named "Regulation of the Bedouin settlement in the Negev", which states the steps to be implemented in order to relocate the overwhelming majority of the residents of the Negev's unrecognized villages and to confiscate about two-thirds of the land remaining in their possession.

As can be expected, the Government of Israel is anticipating resistance to this new bill, so within the bill are violent measures to ensure its implementation. This bill is currently going through the legislative process in the Knesset, and will likely become law soon.

We call all our friends to help us prevent the Knesset and government from passing this disastrous bill.

Following is a short history bringing us up to this legislature, then a short description of the bill, with a highlight on its most dangerous aspects.

(The memorandum can be found at this address (Hebrew only): http://www.tazkirim.gov.il/Tazkirim_Attachments/41151_x_AttachFile.doc)

Brief overview of current situation

Coerced urbanization: Israel has had destructive policies towards its Bedouin minority for decades. The results of these policies are seven Bedouin towns, which are always rated as the poorest municipalities in Israel, with severe social breakdown, harsh unemployment, and the absence of any traditional or modern positive roles for the women in the communities. Israel created these towns with willful disregard for the traditions and the needs of the community, rather with the lone aim of minimizing the land available for the use of the community. Over the last half century Israel has managed to "settle" half the Bedouin community in these failed towns.

Policies of non-recognition: The other half of the Bedouin community has been adamant in holding on to its traditional lands and culture and the government has made them pay a steep price by withholding basic services and infrastructure through the policies of non-recognition. Forty-five villages, of 1,000 -10,000 residents each, are not recognized, making the people live without roads, no connection to the electric grid, no running water or sewer system, very minimal health and education systems, and worst of all – no administrative system by which to request building permits, rendering all the homes "illegal" and therefore slotted for demolition.

Land use: Before 1948 the 90,000 Bedouin were virtually the only residents of the Negev. By 1952 there are only 12,000 Bedouin, the rest had been persuaded one way or another to leave the country. Today there are about 200,000 Arab-Bedouin, comprising 1/3 of the Negev population, and who are using only 320,000 dunams of the 13,000,000 of the Negev. The new bill will reduce this even further – to less than 150,000 dunams.

For comparison sake: the Jewish farmers in the Negev are using 1,000,000 dunams of land for agriculture, the Bedouin are currently using about 195,000 dunams, and this will be reduced by the new bill to close to zero. On the other hand – there are more people that make a living as farmers in the Bedouin community than among the Jews of the Negev. Needless to say the new bill will bring the Bedouin community to be even poorer and more dependent on governmental handouts than it is already; accordingly this will further decimate the community.

The bill:

The policy starts with a call to all Bedouins to ratify their land claims, if their father or grandfather filed a land claim in the procedure the Government of Israel initiated in the 1970's. Then the conditions of the land holdings are examined by the government: Did the ancestor utilize the land during the 70's?/ Is the land utilized by the descendent today?/ Have all siblings and cousins ratified their land claim?/ And some more conditions. If all conditions are met – then the person will receive a promise from the government to receive a land parcel up to half the size of the land claim he/ she is giving up. However the government will keep its promise only if the Bedouin person will clean off the land they are using now of all buildings, people, animals and trees at the demand of the government, and the land parcel will be allocated only at a location the government will decide on in the future.

The threats the bill poses for the Bedouin community:

Its aim is land confiscation: As stated earlier, this bill further reduces the availability of the land, an important resource for the residents of the Bedouin villages, who still mainly live by farming. This is further disturbing as the Bedouin are recognized by the U.N. as an indigenous people, and thus deserving of land (and other) compensation – not land confiscation.

Extra Power to Governing Bodies: Articles #71-#73 permit the Authority for the Settlement of the Bedouin (after a formal claim by the Prime Minister), to render a certain area to be cleared out immediately, and demolish all buildings and evacuate all people, without the necessity for a court injunction, as is the law today. Further the bill states that the courts have very limited possibility in preventing this process from being carried out. All the Bedouin villages are to go through this process.

Unwarranted Creation of Family Strife: Articles #42-#43 state that the percentage of the land that a person will receive as compensation depends on the percentage of the original land claim that has been ratified. In plain language what this means is – if all cousins (the grandfather being the original land claimer) enter the process this bill suggests, then (if all other criteria are met) all can receive compensation in land (which is strongly preferred to monetary compensation) of up to 50% of the size of their personal land claim. However if some choose not to enter the process, then the other cousins will receive less land as compensation. This is set by the bill to create family pressure on the descendants of the original land claimer to enter the process and officially forgo their land claims. The end result will be the creation of family strife among most Bedouin families in the Negev, strife that will probably continue on for generations, destroying even further the strained social fabric already decimated by forced urbanization and dislocation. It is unimaginable that a government will pass a bill that is so destructive to family life, all for the purpose of forcing people to forgo some more of their historical claims to land.

Diminished protection by the courts: The bill also prescribes that in cases of conflict with other laws, it is above other existing laws in Israel, reducing further the possibility for members of the Bedouin community to turn to the courts for protection.

Another blatant racist ruling in this bill is that Bedouin may not receive land compensation and may not settle west of route #40, but rather within a clearly delineated area, mapped in the bill, which is clearly reminiscent of a reservation or a "Bantustan".

No allowance for settlement planning: Furthermore, the bill does not include any discussion or procedures for recognition of villages, processes for planning the villages, or possibilities for people of the community to make choices as to where they may live, and the character of their communities. So when the clearing process described in articles 71-73 comes into effect, the government will be the sole decider of the new locations for tens of thousands of people.

Impeded process of consideration: The government has nominated Minister Beni Begin to listen to the grievances of the Bedouin men, and to implement change in the bill according to the needs and wishes of the Bedouin community. However, we have heard Minister Begin's talks, and unfortunately we find that he has no real ability or wish to listen to members of the Bedouin community. Rather, we find him frustratingly eloquent and an emissary of the government in convincing members of our community to enter this destructive bill.

Implementation of this bill will create severe suffering: We do not believe this bill can be implemented, as its aim – further reducing the ability to hold on to what is left of the Bedouin ancestral lands – is an abomination for members of the Bedouin community. However, if this bill passes, and if there is an attempt to implement this bill, the Bedouin community will suffer greatly: with bulldozers razing villages to the ground, land confiscated by force, many incarcerated because of their refusal to give up their lands, and possibly the eventual success of the bill – total urbanization and loss of land as a source of income to the Bedouin people, and the destruction of their culture.

Thousands of Bedouin have demonstrated in Beer Sheva and in Jerusalem, showing their abhorrence to this bill. The Israeli media, cooperating with the government, completely ignored these demonstrations.

Read More - http://www.alternativenews.org/english/index.php/component/content/article/28-news/4109-bill-will-turn-bedouin-dispossession-into-israeli-law

A brief update on the JNF campaign to evict a Palestinian family from Silwan in East Jerusalem

Thanks to our efforts and those of our partners at Rabbis for Human Rights in North America and in Israel, JNF-KKL and its Himnuta subsidiary have decided to freeze the eviction of the Sumarin family from their home of over 40 years in Silwan, East Jerusalem. We believe that JNF and Himnuta are now looking to sell the Sumarin family home.

In the past, when JNF has sold such homes in East Jerusalem to the Israeli government, the government has finished the job of evicting Palestinian families. This happened, for example, in the case of the Ghozlan family.

We’re watching closely, and holding JNF’s feet to the fire: we've told JNF that we will hold it accountable if it knowingly sells the Sumarin home to a party that is likely to continue efforts to evict the family.

And we’re ready to focus our and the American Jewish community's protests on the Netanyahu government if it tries to push more Palestinians out and bring more Jewish settlers in as part of a campaign to help the Elad settler organization "Judaize East Jerusalem."

Through a combination of external pressure and internal persuasion, we convinced JNF to stop the eviction of the Sumarin family.

Help us insure that whoever JNF sells the home to faces staunch opposition from American Jews if the new owner tries to renew the eviction process against this or other Palestinian families in East Jerusalem, inflaming Jewish-Arab tensions and undermining the prospects for peace.

Support the Campaign for Bedouin-Jewish Justice in Israel with a tax-deductible gift to Rabbis for Human Rights-North America earmarked for our Campaign.

In Legal Precedent, Israel Court Stops Demolition of Unrecognized Bedouin Village, by Jack Khoury, in Haaretz

In an unusual and precedent-setting ruling, the Kirayt Gat magistrate's court cancelled a demolition order for an unrecognized Bedouin settlement in Israel's south on Tuesday.

The ruling effectively calls off the demolition of 51 structures in the unrecognized settlement of Al-Sura, which would have left its 400 residents homeless. The ruling was reached following a petition by Adala - the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel.

Al-Sura's 70 families have been residing in the village southeast of Be'er Sheva for the last seven decades, and were recognized by the British Mandate as legal owners of their land. Already in the 1970s, the families have petitioned Israeli authorities to be recognized as official owners, but their request has yet to receive a response.

Throughout the years they have been deemed squatters on government land, but claimed the state has yet to offer then an alternative, rejecting their offers at a solution.

In 2006, al-Sura residents began receiving orders to demolish their homes, at which time they appealed the relevant judicial authorities, with the court freezing those orders in 2007. A final ruling, however, was not given until Tuesday.

In his ruling, judge Israel Axelrod said that it was clear that the petitioners had been in breach of the law and that the state could act against the illegal structures.

However, Axelrod added that the houses have existed at their current location for dozens of years, saying that the state presented no evidence that the evacuation was meant to promote any public cause, and adding that enforcement would leave the families homeless.

"And as is custom in the Supreme Court, when the court is asked to rule in petitions such as these, it must balance, as it sees fit, between general and specific public interests that have to do with the case and the personal interest of those whose houses the state wishes to demolish," Axelrod wrote.

Adala legal representative Suhad Bishara called the ruling a precedent for the many unrecognized Bedouin settlements in the Negev.

The ruling's significance is that the state cannot continue a unilateral policy toward the unrecognized villages, while disregarding the basic legal rights of their residents.

In his closing notes, Axelrod quoted Supreme Court Justice Edna Arbel, who wrote that "the difficult reality with which Israel's Bedouin population faces necessitates – and better sooner than later – a general systematic solution."

"That is the essential message which the ruling in this case sends," Axelrod continued, saying that it "should be taken into account in any future attempt to deal with the issue."

Axelrod urged the Israeli government to "open an honest dialogue with the residents of the unrecognized settlements and recognize their legal rights to their lands and to the use of those lands."

It should be noted that the decision was made during a public campaign against a plan to regulate Bedouin settlement in the Negev, known as the Prawer Plan.

Several protests and rallies have taken place in recent weeks to protest the plan, backed by High Follow-Up Committee for Arab Citizens of Israel. Human rights groups have also joined the struggle, with lawyers declaring their willingness to represent the Bedouin residents in their fight against the plan and the legislation that will follow it.

Read More: http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/in-legal-precedent-israel-court-stops-demolition-of-unrecognized-bedouin-village-1.399989

From Israel to Essex: Travellers Not Welcome, by James Brownsell and Pennie Quinton, in Al Jazeera English (Excerpt)

Though this article is good in that it provides international context, it also misleads in describing the Negev Bedouin as nomadic, as they have lived in Negev villages for generations since before Israel's founding.


Travel anywhere in the Middle East, and you are likely to be greeted with the words: Ahlan wa sahlan wa marhaban. Literally translated, the phrase means "Welcome to this flat piece of ground", a throwback to a time when Arab culture was traditionally more nomadic in nature, and visitors may have had a long, perilous journey before reaching friends on the plain.

But the romantic image of the wandering traveller is a far cry from the daily reality experienced by travelling communities. From east to west, theirs is a life more often filled with discrimination, violence and oppression carried out by state authorities attempting to force them to conform with the urban lifestyle.

"It was an experience I'll never forget; police attacking people, beating people, Tasering people," said Pearl, a member of the Dale Farm community.

She is one of a group of more than 200 Irish Travellers who were forced from their own land near Basildon in Essex, south east England, in a series of violent evictions reported to have cost up to £18m ($29m).

The isolation of their community, established in the 1970s, has eerie parallels with the experiences of the Bedouin residents of the Negev, who have faced frequent threats from Israeli state officials since that country's founding - with "unrecognised" villages denied infrastructure services and occasionally simply bulldozed...

Yet it is in Israel where the nomadic way of life has been most greatly criminalised under the pretence of "helping" travelling communities become more "civilised".

Khalil al-Amour is a 46-year-old maths teacher from al-Sira, one of the 45 "unrecognised" Bedouin villages in the Negev desert, southern Israel.

"They [Israeli officials] placed demolition orders on all the homes in my village in 2006," he told Al Jazeera. "There are about 70 families and there about 500 people in al-Sira."

Their homes have not yet been demolished (unlike other Bedouin villages), and are fighting their case through the court system. But their community remains without any of the state services that connect nearby villages, such as being connected to the electricity grid or having paved roads.

"People have been using generators for many years," he said. "Now I am trying to encourage more and more families to use solar systems and solar panels - which [are] very expensive. On the other hand, the fuel used for these generators is very expensive too."

There are some 80,000 Bedouin living in the "unrecognised" villages.

Their community has always been semi-nomadic; seasonally roaming with their herds in search of grazing pastures and returning to their home villages each year.

But when Israel passed its planning and development laws in 1965, it excluded the Bedouin villages of the Negev, "even though the Bedouin were an indigenous population and had been living there for centuries", said Doni Remba, co-director of the Campaign for Bedouin-Jewish Justice in Israel.

His campaign, a project of Rabbis for Human Rights-North America and the Jewish Alliance for Change, points out that, in addition to not having any infrastructure services, the Bedouin live under constant threat of enforced expulsion, as Israeli officials "rely on a basically discriminatory law".

"The most recent instance of this has been the series of demolitions which has occurred in the Negev Bedouin village of al-Arakib," Remba told Al Jazeera.

"In that case, the Israeli government sent in as many as 1,300 paramilitary police to violently expel more than 300 men, women and children. The village has been rebuilt and demolished nearly 30 times over the past year and a half alone."

What's more, plans are afoot which Israeli officials claim will be a comprehensive resolution on the status of the Bedouin across the entire Negev.

"The Praver Plan [named after former Netanyahu aide Ehud Praver] involves demolishing 20 unrecognised villages and expelling as many as 20-40,000 of the residents if they do not accept a rather meagre and inadequate offer of compensation," said Remba.

The plan's goal, he said, was to concentrate the entire Bedouin community into the seven government-recognised Bedouin "townships" in the region, which are currently home to around 100,000 people - who had also been forced from their land, he added.

"Because the government has discriminated against them and neglected them so egregiously, the Bedouin are Israel's single most economically disadvantaged population on every socio-economic parameter.

"Even the government-approved towns, though they are 'legal' and not subject to demolition... rank as the seven most socio-economically disadvantaged communities in all of Israel, and that's on unemployment, on poverty, crime, education, even on infant mortality rates.

"The infant mortality rate [in Bedouin villages] is four times that of neighbouring Jewish communities, just a mile or two away - and it's all because of the extreme discrimination in living conditions." - Doni Remba of Bedouin-Jewish Justice

"The infant mortality rate is four times that of neighbouring Jewish communities, just a mile or two away - and it's all because of the extreme discrimination in living conditions."

The Israeli government intends to "erase" the Bedouin villages and replace them with Jewish communities, "to control the land... tied to the goal of what Prime Minister Netanyahu has called 'maintaining the Jewish majority in the Negev'," Remba told Al Jazeera.

As in the case of the Dale Farm residents, officials say that the relocation will "help" residents comply with planning laws. But, while praising his new plan, even Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu noted the Bedouin had been neglected in the land on which they had lived for generations.

"After years in which needs were insufficiently met, this government decided to take matters in hand and bring about a long-term solution of the issue," he said.

"Our state is leaping towards the future, and you need to be part of this future... This is an historic opportunity that must not be missed." - Benjamin Netanyahu, prime minister of Israel

"The plan will 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.

"Our state is leaping towards the future and you need to be part of this future. We want to help you reach economic independence. This plan is designed to bring about development and prosperity. This is an historic opportunity that must not be missed."

This sort of rhetoric does not please many Bedouin, however.

"The problem with the plan is that it is going to uproot all of us from our ancestral land and relocate us into the poorest towns and cities," said al-Amour.

"We are going to be uprooted; we are going to lose our traditions, our life, our culture our values." - Khalil al-Amour, resident of al-Sira

"We are going to be uprooted; we are going to lose our traditions, our life, our culture, our values - and going to these cities - this is the antithesis of our being, as Bedouin. That is why we oppose the plan. The Jewish people here have the right to choose where they want to live. They can live in a city, they can live in a village, they can live in a moshav, in a kibbutz. The Bedouin people have to be only in cities now. It is ridiculous, it is unbelievable."

Ridiculous, perhaps, but not unbelievable. In fact, many Bedouin and their supporters say the Praver Plan is merely a continuation of state policy that has been ongoing for decades.

In 1963, then-minister of agriculture Moshe Dayan showed his contempt for the Bedouin and their way of life, telling Haaretz:

"We must turn the Bedouin into urban labourers ... It means that the Bedouin will no longer live on his land with his flocks but will become an urbanite who comes home in the afternoon and puts his slippers on. His children will get used to a father who wears pants, without a dagger, and who does not pick out their nits in public. They will go to school, their hair combed and parted. This will be a revolution, but it can be achieved in two generations. Not by coercion, but with direction from the state. This reality that is known as the Bedouin will disappear."

Ongoing campaign

Al-Amour, the Bedouin leader in al-Sira, has been a teacher for 28 years, and is also a lecturer in computer network systems, holds a masters degree in education administration and has just finished his second year of studying law.

He told Al Jazeera that he would keep fighting for his community, and would never leave his nomadic lifestyle behind.

"I will be always moving, to represent my community and my people." - Khalil al-Amour, resident of al-Sira

"I will be travelling to Geneva and I will attend the meeting of the UN's Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and then after that will be going to Berne and meet supporters in Lausanne. I will be always moving, to represent my community and my people."

Indeed, he - and the thousands like him - have supporters across the globe.

New York-based Doni Remba said that discrimination against Bedouin must end.

"If we believe that Israel is a democracy, as it is claiming to be, that is the minimum that it owes its Bedouin citizens - to give them the same rights and opportunities that it gives to its Jewish citizens.

"[The Praver plan] is a violation of Israel's basic democratic values, and its commitment to equality - and I see it as a violation of basic Jewish moral values." - Doni Remba, of Bedouin-Jewish Justice

"That was what Israel promised in its declaration of independence - to develop the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants... [the Praver Plan] is a violation of Israel's basic democratic values, and its commitment to equality - and I see it as a violation of basic Jewish moral values.

"I also think it's extremely bad and inflames relations between Jews and Arabs in Israel - and that can't lead to a good end."

Back in Essex, outside Dale Farm, former residents paid tribute to their supporters and called for continued solidarity with travelling communities, as the bailiff company continued to destroy their homes:

"They’re doing things they are not supposed to do," said one resident named Clem. "They are smashing everything up, the bailiffs are making a big mess in the middle of the site. The residents are crying. But when you came to Dale Farm you came to support a cause, because you knew what was happening was wrong. I love you with all my heart. No-one ever stood up for Travellers before, you made history."

Pearl concluded: "I love every activist in the world, without them the world would be a hard, wicked place."

The full text of this article is available at: http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2011/11/201111111621240788.html

Arab-Israeli towns go on strike over plans to confiscate their land, The Guardian

If Israel's parliament approves the proposal, 30,000 Bedouins could be removed from their homes in Negev within 60 days

Bedouins living in Israel's southern Negev region protest against government plans to confiscate their land. Photograph: Amir Cohen/Reuters

"Mark Regev, spokesman for Israel's prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, said the aim of the government was to assist the Bedouin minority by assimilating them into wider Israeli society. "The Bedouin community has a lower standard of health care and education than the rest of Israel, they live in substandard conditions. We are investing 1.2bn shekels [£210m] to move them into the mainstream, to reduce that gap."

Comment from the Campaign for Bedouin-Jewish Justice:

This is Orwellian double-speak: if the Israeli govt wants to improve the living conditions of the Negev Bedouin, let them honor their wishes and develop and modernize the villages in which they live, without forcing tens of thousands of them off their land with brutal violence as they have at Al-Arakib and other villages, and concentrating them in urban townships in which they do not want to live. The bottom line: the Netanyahu govt covets Negev Bedouin land for developing new Jewish settlements and JNF forests.

The govt's plan is designed to confine the Bedouin into reservations to free up their land for "Jewish development." This is an immoral policy that discriminates against non-Jewish Israelis in favor of Jewish Israelis and sabotages democracy and equal citizenship in Israel. It empties of meaning the "democratic" in Netanyahu's and Lieberman's demands that Israel be recognized by the Palestinians as a "democratic Jewish state," and insures that it will be seen as an undemocratic Jewish state which oppresses its minority non-Jewish Arab and Palestinian citizens. Why would the Palestinians recognize a Jewish state that mistreats and discriminates against its Palestinian and Arab citizens?

The article follows:

Six Arab-Israeli towns in Israel's southern Negev region have ground to a halt in protest at government plans to confiscate swathes of land from the Bedouin community. If the proposal passes through the Knesset, Israel's parliament, unopposed, 30,000 people could be forced from their homes within 60 days.

Schools, shops and municipal offices across the region closed for the day allowing more than 8,000 people to stage a demonstration in Beersheba rejecting the plan – the largest civil protest in the city's history. Arab-Israeli MP Jamal Zahalka said they were united against the proposal.

"We want to send a very clear message to the Israeli government – we are saying no. This demonstration proves that Israel's plans will be thwarted. Nobody here today will co-operate with them."

He added that the protesters would not allow another Nakba, the Palestinian term for the events of 1948, in which hundreds of thousands became refugees.

The Israeli ministerial committee approved a plan to settle the long-standing land dispute between the Bedouin communities in the Negev and Israel on 11 September. Based on a report produced for the prime minister's office, it suggests that more than 30,000 Bedouin living on land claimed by Israel should be resettled in six towns created and recognised by the state in 1973.

Of the 12,000 sq km (2,965,000 acres) of Negev land, the government plan apportions 200 to the Bedouin, with compensation offered to anyone forced from land they can prove ownership of.

Around half of the Negev's 180,00 Bedouin live in unrecognised villages, without running water, electricity or public services of any kind. They are the poorest minority group in Israel.

Mark Regev, spokesman for Israel's prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, said the aim of the government was to assist the Bedouin minority by assimilating them into wider Israeli society.

"The Bedouin community has a lower standard of health care and education than the rest of Israel, they live in substandard conditions. We are investing 1.2bn shekels [£210m] to move them into the mainstream, to reduce that gap.

"The idea that the Bedouin do not want to make this move is simply not true."

Bedouin leader Amal Elsana-Alh'jooj said the report failed to recognise Bedouin claims to the land prior to the creation of Israel, as recommended by the government-commissioned Goldberg committee in 2008. An estimated 90,000 Bedouin lived in the Negev before 1948.

"If we accept what they are offering, we will see a violent, over-crowded poverty-ridden area," she said. "We want to restart the negotiating process so we the Bedouin can start to contribute to the area and not just be people living in poverty."

Phoebe Greenwood inJerusalem, guardian.co.uk, Thursday 6 October 2011 13.09 EDT

How does the Israeli government use the law to confiscate land from Bedouin in Israel and Palestinians in the West Bank?

An Ottoman law dating from 1858 allows uncultivated land to be declared by the Israeli government as state land. Israeli Supreme Court rulings in 1961 (Badaran) and 1984 (Al-Hawashli) defined "uncultivated land" so narrowly that areas not within 1.5 miles of an inhabited settlement that existed before 1858 can be declared by the Israeli government as state land.

These rulings, together with other discriminatory laws passed by the Knesset, enabled the Israeli government to render all Negev Bedouin villages "illegal" and turned the Bedouin into "trespassers on state land," subject to forcible expulsion and their homes and villages to demolition.

The rulings have also enabled the Israeli government to "legally" confiscate land from Palestinian villages in the West Bank, making it available for "lawful" development (under Israeli law) for Jewish settlements - despite the fact that such settlements are universally regarded as violating international law.

“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

Israel and the Polarization of American Jews, by Gidon D. Remba, Jerusalem Report

In “Israel and the Polarization of American Jews,” (The Jerusalem Report, June 20, 2011), I suggest that the controversy over Tony Kushner’s views on Israel highlight the ways in which the gap between liberal and conservative Jews regarding Israel is becoming an unbridgeable chasm. At the same time, I question the value of defining who is “inside the Jewish communal tent” and who is “outside,” as leaders in the organized Jewish community have suggested, on the basis of whether a person or organization “recognizes Israel as a democratic Jewish state.”

Today, many human rights activists and groups which are not avowedly Zionist work closely with pro-Israel groups like ours that are fighting for justice and equality in Israel. Our Campaign for Bedouin-Jewish Justice (a project of Rabbis for Human Rights-North America and the Jewish Alliance for Change), for example, has brought together American Jewish and Israeli Arab groups across the ideological spectrum, including some in Israel and the U.S. who would be defined as “outside the tent” by the conventional definition. Acting in concert has enabled us all to be more effective in our efforts to stop the demolition of homes in unrecognized Negev Bedouin villages and the violent expulsion of Bedouin Israeli men, women and children by the Israeli government.

By working together to advance equal citizenship for both Arab and Jewish Israelis, aren’t non-Zionist human rights activists doing more to secure Israel’s future as a democratic Jewish state than some Zionists who pass the conventional test of “kashrut” for membership in the “communal tent”? The misbegotten controversy in Israel’s Knesset and at the Boston Jewish Community Relations Council over whether J Street is “pro-Israel” enough to be included in Jewish communal institutions is another case in point.

Perhaps the time has come to do away with the impulse to excommunicate Jewish groups engaged in activism for peace, human rights and justice in Israel if they take unorthodox political stands or do not speak in ways that representatives of the mainstream community deem politically correct.

Click here to read “Israel and the Polarization of American Jews.”

Los Angeles Event: Civil Rights and Wrongs in the Negev, with Devorah Brous, April 23, 2011 12 noon

When: Saturday, April 23, 12:00pm - 1:30pm

Where: IKAR, 5870 West Olympic Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90036 (map)

Description: Join us after Shabbat lunch for a special discussion. For some Jews, Israel's Negev Desert is the "last Zionist frontier," a "barren wasteland" in need of development. For Israel's Bedouin citizens, it is an ancestral homeland, rich with tradition and sustenance. Arabs and Jews live side by side in the Negev, but their access to basic necessities such as water, energy, and medicine varies widely. With a rapidly expanding population on a small land mass with dwindling resources, the age-old Zionist question to develop or to preserve continues to arise. The development of the Negev for a new wave of Jewish settlements is increasingly undermining Israel's commitment to democracy and civil rights. Must we support development at the expense of democracy in the Negev?

About the Speaker: Devorah Brous lived in Israel and worked with Bedouin for 15 years. She is the founder of BUSTAN, a Jewish/Bedouin civil rights and environmental justice NGO in the Negev, where she served as Executive Director for 9 years. She currently serves as co-director of the Campaign for Bedouin-Jewish Justice in Israel, a Project of Rabbis for Human Rights-North America and the Jewish Alliance for Change. She holds two Masters degrees in Israel Studies and Development Studies.

Listed on the IKAR website events calendar

A Day of Catastrophe in Israel, by Rachel Metz - Special to the Campaign for Bedouin-Jewish Justice

March 23rd was one hell of a day in Israel. Anyone following the news there probably saw the major stories, but experience in the Negev lends some insight into their implications for Bedouin–Jewish justice.

For residents of Beer Sheva and neighboring areas, Wednesday started bright and early with a siren and rocket at 5:30 a.m. Even living seven time zones away, when I read about the rocket, I felt like I was straight back during the 2008-2009 war. I can only imagine how palpably people still in the area experienced that as they felt the rush of adrenaline that comes with the siren and hurried to seek shelter. My heart goes out to the residents of Beer Sheva and the rest of the Negev as they're assaulted by rocket fire. Both during Cast Lead and today, though, when the Israeli news media report that a rocket hit an "open area" in the Negev, I can't help but wonder if that "open area" was an unrecognized Bedouin village. Is damage there excluded from the official news the way the villages are from the official map? As people in Beer Sheva justifiably complain about locked shelters, where are the complaints on behalf of their neighbors for whom the threat of home demolition precludes not just having shelters but even living in houses big enough to provide the relative protection of stairwells?

Elected in the wake of Cast Lead as people’s defensiveness manifested in a political shift to the right, the Knesset continued to add to the bad news on Wednesday for those Jews who support change towards improved human rights. It passed two highly problematic laws proposed by Avigdor Lieberman's Yisrael Beiteinu party. The first law bars public funding for groups that "undermine the foundations of the state and contradict its values." The potential for this bill to be used in a McCarthy-esque way is troubling, especially when coupled with Wednesday’s Knesset hearing that questioned whether J Street has the right to criticize Israeli policy while supporting Israel.

More immediately troubling for Bedouin-Jewish Justice is the second racist bill passed that same day, which allows Negev and Galilee communities with up to 400 families to screen potential applicants based on cultural characteristics.* Bedouin in Israel are stuck between a rock and a hard place. Those who have tried to move into predominately Jewish areas (including Beer Sheva) have long contended with de facto discrimination, and now in many places it will be de jure discrimination as well. They can move to one of the government-created Bedouin towns, where the legacy of decades of underfunding means they will face rundown roads and schools, minimal-at-best government services such as libraries, and, unsurprisingly given these other issues, the highest unemployment and poverty rates of all Israeli towns. Alternatively, they can remain on their land in unrecognized villages without water, electricity, roads, medical clinics, etc. and hope their homes aren’t destroyed nor their crops defoliated.

The biggest news story on Wednesday, however, was of course the bus stop bombing in Jerusalem. Violence against innocent people is never acceptable. But anyone concerned with that type of explosive physical violence should also be concerned with the disenfranchisement of Israel’s Bedouin citizens. It, too, leads to the loss of innocent lives.

*Israeli civil rights groups are also concerned about the potential of this being used to discriminate against Ethiopian-Israelis, foreign workers, same-sex couples, single-parent families, and other stigmatized groups.

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Rachel Metz lived in Beer Sheva, Israel from 2007 through 2009 while earning her master's degree in Middle East Studies from Ben Gurion University. Her experiences in the Negev included interning for BUSTAN, a Jewish/Bedouin environmental justice NGO. That same passion for social justice motivated her to combat U.S. poverty through AVODAH, the Jewish Service Corps, work on the largest reservation in the U.S., and write articles, opinion pieces and letters to the editor for publications including In These Times, The Jerusalem Post, and The Washington Post. She currently lives in the Washington, DC area where she works in environmental protection.

Peter Beinart at J Street: Our task in solidarity with Israelis and Palestinians at Sheikh Jarrah, Al-Arakib, Bil'in is to resanctify the land

Prepared Remarks, Opening Session, J Street 2nd National Conference, by Peter Beinart

The Talmud says that what cannot be accomplished by reason is often accomplished by time. For us, sadly, the opposite is true. What reason cannot preserve, time will destroy. I’m talking about the democratic state of Israel.

We are not the first group of American Jews to warn that a nation whose declaration of independence pledges that it will pursue “freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the Hebrew Prophets” cannot forever hold another people in subjugation without losing its soul.

In 1974, a group of young American Jews, mostly rabbis, created Breira, the first American Jewish group to advocate a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. They were vilified by the American Jewish establishment; their inaugural conference was physically attacked by the Jewish Defense League, and three years later they gave up.

On the day they folded, there were roughly 1,000 Jews living in the West Bank, in non-democratic Israel. In 1979, American Jews created the New Israel Fund, which supports inspiring Israeli human rights groups like B’tselem and the Association for Civil Rights in Israel. By then, there were 10,000 Jews living in non-democratic Israel. In 1981, after a group of Israeli army officers created Shalom Akshav, American Jews, in solidarity, created Americans for Peace Now. In 1981, there were 16,000 Jews living in non-democratic Israel. In 1993, at the urging of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, American Jews created Israel Policy Forum to support the Oslo Accords. In 1993, there were 110,000 Jews living in non-democratic Israel. In 2002, a civil and women’s rights activist named Marcia Freedman created Brit Zedek v’Shalom, which urged an end to Palestinian terrorism and the creation of a Palestinian state. In 2002, there were 210,000 Jews in non-democratic Israel.

Tonight, as we gather here, almost 300,000 Jews live in lands in which their non-Jewish neighbors lack citizenship and the right to vote, must travel on separate roads and live under a different law. And so we come together knowing that we are not the first group of American Jews to gather in defense of the principles in Israel’s declaration of independence. But make no mistake: we are the last. There will be no next J Street. If we fail, our children will meet, in halls like these, not to defend democracy in the Jewish state, but to mourn democracy in the Jewish state.

Our parents and grandparents struggled to ensure that the Jewish people would survive, to ensure that we would not be forever at the mercy of the gentile world. And in that awesome struggle, to their everlasting credit, despite the millions of dead, they triumphed. Today, because of them, we not only have a Jewish state, we have power, both in Israel and the United States, that they could only have dreamed of. But with that power comes another struggle, every bit as momentous: not a struggle for Jewish survival, but a struggle for Jewish honor. A struggle to show that we can wield power and still keep faith with the teachings of the Prophets, a struggle to show that, despite everything, the Jewish people still has an ethical message for the world.

We have won the land, but we have forgotten what Rabbi Heschel taught, that “The holiness of the land of Israel is derived from the holiness of the people of Israel. The land was not holy at the time of Terah, or even at the time of the Patriarchs. It was sanctified by the people when they entered the land.” And so now, our task, in solidarity with the Israelis and Palestinians risking their lives in places like Sheikh Jarrah and Al-Arakib and Bil’in is to resanctify the land. Because if the land was not holy in the time of Terah, the idol-maker, neither can it be holy in the time of Lieberman and Netanyahu and Ovadiah Yosef.

When we ensure that no more Palestinians are evicted from their homes, and no more Bedouin villages are bulldozed and no more elderly Palestinians die waiting at checkpoints and no more Palestinian children wade in sewage on the beaches of Gaza, and when we ensure that a Jewish woman can safely carry a Sefer Torah to the Kotel, knowing that it is as much her birthright as it is the birthright of the chief rabbi of Israel, then we will have resanctified the land.

When the great progressive Zionist rabbi Stephen Wise, in the final months of his life, was told of the creation of the state of Israel, he said, “I have lived to see the Jewish state. I am too small for the greatness of the mercy which God has shown us.”

I look forward to the day when I can take my five year old son and my three year old daughter--and we can all take our children and grandchildren--to a vibrant, liberal democratic Israel—an Israel that extends the right of citizenship to everyone under its domain, an Israel that not only safeguards the Jewish people, but inspires the world. And on that day, we too will be able to say, with wonder and joy, “I have lived to see the Jewish state. I am too small for the greatness of the mercy which God has shown us.” Thank you.

Help our us and our allies in Israel re-sanctify the land by making a

tax-deductible gift to Rabbis for Human Rights Campaign for Bedouin-Jewish Justice in Israel.

Go here to make your contribution to justice and equality for Jews and Arabs in Israel's Negev.

Meretz to JNF: Stop the racist policy at Al-Arakib!

The Meretz party this week condemned the actions of the Jewish National Fund (Keren Kayemet l'Yisrael) at the unrecognized Bedouin village of al-Arakib, north of Beersheva, branding them a "racist policy, arising from a viewpoint that regards the Bedouin in the Negev as a nuisance, rather than as citizens with equal rights."

Meretz called for the recognition of al-Arakib and for the provision of basic infrastructure there, and demanded that the JNF immediately suspend its plans to plant a forest at al-Arakib that would deny the villagers any chance of return.

Since last July, the Meretz Executive noted, the homes in al-Arakib have been demolished more than ten times by the Israel Land Administration and the Israel Police - first the permanent houses, and since then the tents and temporary structures that the residents have continually rebuilt.

Over the last few weeks, the situation has deteriorated further: The police had begun to use clubs, rubber bullets and teargas during the demolitions, while making arrests of villagers and other activists. In addition, the JNF had begun to prepare the ground for the planting of a forest atop al-Arakib's ruins so that the village could not be rebuilt.

The District Court in Beerhseva issued a temporary injunction against the JNF's actions, and although the injunction was not extended, the judge recommended that the JNF not continue its work so as not to create irreversible facts on the ground. The JNF rejected the judge's recommendation, however.

In light of these developments, the Meretz Executive resolved as follows:

1. The Meretz Executive regards the demolition of the al-Arakib village as a racist policy, arising from a viewpoint that regards the Bedouin in the Negev as a nuisance, rather than as citizens with equal rights.
2. Both law and justice require that al-Arakib be recognized, and that infrastructure be provided there for the welfare of its residents.
3. The Meretz Executive condemns the conduct of the JNF, which insists on entering village land and planting trees where the houses of the residents once stood. It calls on the JNF to cease all its activities in the al-Arakib area.

Meretz representatives on the JNF directorate, Micha Drori and Radi Sfuri, have approached JNF officials, demanding that its operations at al-Arakib cease.

For the report in Hebrew, click here.

Reprinted from the Meretz USA website.