Stop Prawer-Begin plan for Bedouin resettlement, by Devorah Brous, Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles

Women stand near a washing line in the Bedouin town of Rahat
in southern Israel on Dec. 10.
Photo by Amir Cohen/Reuters

By Devorah Brous, Founder and former Executive Director Bustan, former co-director of the Campaign for Bedouin-Jewish Justice

 

The Negev Bedouin village of Umm el-Hiran is where I first learned about what it means to be rooted, to be devoted to something with steadfastness. It is here that I learned the true impact of Jewish National Fund (JNF) afforestation on the Bedouin, which is far from JNF’s whitewashed and spit-shined-glossy version. Rayid Abu Alkeean, an Israeli Bedouin, partnered with Bustan, an environmental justice organization that I founded, to host delegations on dozens of our Negev Unplugged Tours in his village, where we learned about Bedouin traditional life unplugged from the nation’s electricity grid, and from Israel’s democracy.

Imagine serving in the Israel Defense Forces and having your home demolished by the government in front of your children. Next, imagine being billed for the demolition. Imagine watching religious Jews building a barbed wire fence to stake a claim to the hilltop just above your home. Hiran and Kasif, two Jewish-only religious towns slated to be built on the lands of Rayid’s village, were just approved.

Fortunately, the Knesset vote on the controversial Prawer-Begin Plan to resettle the Negev Bedouin has been postponed for the next one to two months. We must urge Israeli officials to take this discriminatory plan off the table and encourage them to adopt the Alternative Master Plan (AMP) developed by Bedouin leadership and Jewish planners of the human rights non-governmental organization Bimkom. The AMP will delimit territorial boundaries on historical village lands. It will enable formal village planning and access to the full basket of rights and services afforded Jewish villages and towns — housing, clinics, roads, waste removal and schools. We must make every effort to advance this alternative plan and promote sustainable economic development for all residents of the Negev.

Here’s why it is in the best interest of every Jew in the Negev and the Diaspora to stop the Prawer Plan.

• Because it is morally unconscionable to uproot this Negev Arab minority from their homes and against their will.

• Because token symbolic gestures aimed at recognition, such as granting formal ownership over less than 2 percent of historic Bedouin lands to some while denying the rest to the vast majority of others, simply won’t work. The Prawer Plan will dispossess some 40,000 Bedouin, requiring entire villages to be demolished wholesale.

• Because squeezing the remaining lands that have not yet been confiscated from the Bedouin population and urging them to live as neighbors with Jewish homesteaders and families that replace them will deepen already existing social cleavages.

• Because it will lead to violence. Today the youth in Bedouin villages act on behalf of a civilian population of 200,000 Negev Arabs that has been marginalized, criminalized and pauperized for decades. “Days of Rage” protests and vigils are surging to increasingly high levels of tension in what is now front and center stage of Israel’s ongoing land conflict. By declaring a civilian population a national security threat, the government further alienates and even catalyzes an already enraged and disenfranchised minority into the streets. Many believe that despite the intentions of community elders to organize nonviolently, there is no further incentive to do so.

• Because living off the grid is hard, but the unrecognized Bedouin prefer that to losing their lands. Most “unrecognized villagers” have consistently resisted running water and electricity to power their computers and washing machines, preferring to stay on their lands rather than be holed up in cities with different and sometimes clashing familial clans, and pushed into wage labor —– when it is even available — at the expense of their traditional cultural pursuits. Unrecognized Bedouin have organized however haphazardly and have used nonviolent but futile tactics to have their land rights recognized by the Israeli courts. More than 100,000 Bedouin continue to resist being transferred into impoverished townships that are drug-riddled pits of crime. They fight to keep their lands because even in recognized towns, Bedouin are denied building permits, basic infrastructure and services.

• Because we’ve learned from villages like Al-Arakib and Umm el-Hiran, among others, that coercion is not sustainable. To try to rip Negev Arabs from their lands will only make them, and more of us, more resolute.

• Because the northern Negev is already a toxic tinderbox. Most Negev Arabs and Bedouin have been relocated into a triangle of territory in the northern Negev between Beer-Sheva, Arad and Dimona that has been zoned to encircle them  to prevent further construction.

The conflict between Bedouin and the State of Israel is about land, resources and control. Investment in developing Jewish towns and demolishing Arab villages happens most aggressively in Arab areas of the Negev and the Galilee, battlefields of Israel’s demographic war to create a Jewish majority in every region of Israel.  One tactic is to break apart contiguous Bedouin villages and to concentrate the maximum number of Bedouin onto the minimum amount of territory.

Like Rayid, head of the village council of al-Sira, Khalil el Amor resists the Prawer Plan. His entire village is slated for demolition. I spoke with Khalil yesterday. He said, “I am a teacher, and finishing school to become a lawyer. As a child, I would return home from school to tend our flock and help my mother milk the animals until dark. I would light a lantern and start my homework. I want my granddaughter Siraj (meaning “lantern”) to have the choice to tend a flock. If I stay on my village lands, I dream of inviting tourists to learn about our traditions and our changing Bedouin culture.” Rather than give up the land, and give up the lantern, Khalil holds steadfast.

The AMP is a viable way for Negev Arabs like Khalil and Rayid to showcase their village culture to tourists and to earn livable incomes rather than masquerading as traditional Bedouin for Jewish-owned tourist companies that romanticize their culture if they’ll pretend to be shepherds for a photo-op on a camel. If Prawer passes, that is all our children will know about Bedouin culture.

Published in the Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles, December 14, 2013

Israel’s Other Land Grab, by Letty Cottin Pogrebin, Moment, Sept-Oct, 2013

Opinion

In August, despite the fragility of the newly resurrected peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, the Israeli government announced plans to build 1,187 new housing units for Jews in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. This came hard on the heels of the 1,096 new units promoted by the Israel Defense Forces [IDF] Civil Administration and the 91 settlements the government recently added to the “national priority list,” presumably rendering them non-negotiable.

With the eyes of the world focused on this defiant expansion of Israeli “facts on the ground,” few were paying attention to a simultaneous land grab taking place in the Negev: Israel’s systematic expropriation of areas that for generations have been inhabited by Bedouins.

On my first trip to Israel 37 years ago, I was hosted for dinner in a Bedouin tent in the desert. Our delegation of eight or ten American media types sat on beautiful hand-loomed rugs. We ate with our hands.  We heard about Bedouin culture and traditions.  The men who sat with us in that tent (the women were behind a curtain, though we saw one peeking out) were warm, welcoming and responsive to our questions. Only later did it occur to me that our travel agent or the Israel tourism authority was paying the Bedouins to exhibit their “native” ways to visiting foreigners. And while other stops on our itinerary—Masada, Mea Shearim, Rachel’s Tomb—were introduced with extensive background information, the Bedouins were presented as ethnic exotica, a people without a history. Only later did I wonder how they really felt about these encounters.

Since then, the Jewish state seems to have become markedly less appreciative of Bedouin culture and traditions. Hundreds of times over the last few years, Bedouin homes and villages have been summarily demolished by IDF and Jewish National Fund (JNF) bulldozers.

Media sources and advocacy groups such as the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, the Campaign for Bedouin-Jewish Justice in Israel and the New Israel Fund report that Bedouins have been beaten, shot and forcibly evacuated from their ancestral lands so that this fertile area can be developed for Jewish agricultural development, JNF forests and Jewish habitation.

In 2007, the government appointed the Goldberg Commission to address the Bedouin “problem.” (Needless to say, there were no Bedouins on the commission.) Their findings led to the Prawer Plan, a proposed law that would relocate up to 40,000 semi-nomadic Bedouins, concentrating them in seven “officially recognized” urban townships that rank at the bottom of every Israeli socioeconomic measure, with an infant mortality rate four times worse than that of any Jewish Israeli community. Last June, the Prawer Plan passed its first Knesset reading by a slim majority. The final two readings needed in order for the Knesset bill to pass are expected in October.

Somehow, it’s unthinkable to evacuate thousands of Jews from their West Bank settlements in the interests of Israeli-Palestinian peace. But expelling 40,000 Arab Israeli citizens from their homes for the sake of Jewish development is considered a great idea. Moreover, Israel presents its transfer policy in a benevolent light, as if by trashing Bedouin dwellings, the IDF is expelling these noble savages from their “primitive” habitats for their own good.

Mind you, I’m not romanticizing the Bedouins. They don’t just keep their women behind a curtain, they keep them uneducated, isolated and cut off from modern health care. And though they are not responsible for their extreme impoverishment and rampant unemployment, these conditions have spawned alarming rates of criminal behavior and drug use.  Altogether, it’s not a pretty picture.

Likewise, I’m mindful of the legal complexities of the land use issue. The Bedouins don’t hold title; their system of land acquisition and ownership recognition is based on oral agreements that date back to the Ottoman Empire. Expecting them to produce airtight proof of ownership of territory they’ve inhabited for centuries would be like asking American Indians, who believe the earth cannot be owned, to produce a deed from Christopher Columbus, or asking the Australian Aborigines, who mark territorial borders by transmitting “songlines” known only to the indigenous tribes, to produce transmittal documents signed by the British.

The bottom line is that Bedouin Arabs are citizens of the state of Israel. Some of their elders fought with the Palmach. Many Bedouin men have volunteered for the IDF, serving as trackers and defending the country’s borders. Yet these peaceful, loyal citizens are being targeted for internal dislocation on the basis of their ethnicity, race, religion and normative social arrangements.  And Israel shows little respect for their historic ties to the land.

Rather than herd them into the seven ghetto-like “recognized” villages with inadequate services, pathetic infrastructure and few jobs, Israel should improve the conditions of everyday life for Bedouins in the 35 “unrecognized” villages. The government should invest in Bedouin roads, schools, job creation and health care and connect these villages to the Israeli water, sewage and electricity systems.

Likewise, rather than turn a blind eye to the ongoing injustice of forcible Bedouin dislocation, American Jews should think twice before buying a tree from the JNF in a forest that may have been created on the ruins of Bedouin homes.

And we should insist that our communal organizations address both the moral and political dimensions of this issue. Israel cannot claim to be “the only democracy in the Middle East” if it continues uprooting thousands of its citizens against their will.

Letty Cottin Pogrebin’s latest book is How to Be a Friend to a Friend Who’s Sick. She is currently working on a novel.

Published here in Moment magazine, Sept-Oct 2013

Every Jew should see the Bedouin issue as test of Israel's moral values, by Rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg, Ha’aretz

Why have the relocations and demolitions of Negev Bedouin homes, an issue not related to Israel’s security or vexed questions such as "Who is a Jew?", aroused such strong feelings amongst Diaspora Jews actively engaged with Israel?

Should the Begin-Prawer plan become law, it will have an enormous effect on Israel’s Bedouin, with tens of villages destroyed and tens of thousands of people removed from their homes into poverty-stricken townships. This will be extremely painful for Israel's supporters in the Diaspora to observe.

That is why the progress of the bill through the Knesset is making such an impact well beyond the Negev, in Israel and abroad. In Britain, sixty-five rabbis from across the denominations, supporting the courageous lead of Israel’s Rabbis for Human Rights, signed a letter to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other senior ministers, asking them to re-consider their proposals. In the U.S., the Religious Action Centre of the Reform Movement, the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association, T’ruah, the Rabbinic Call for Human Rights, and thousands of individual rabbis and Jews have written in a similar vein.

Why should this issue, which does not threaten Israel’s immediate security and has no influence over the vexed questions of ‘Who is a Jew?’ with its obvious Diaspora dimensions, have aroused such strong feelings amongst Jews actively engaged with Israel?

The matter goes to the heart of how we identify with Israel, and of the nature of Israel as a society. Living abroad, rightly or wrongly, we don’t experience Israel through the everyday realities of its traffic jams, cafes, and hamsins. We identify with Israel because we are family. We identify via those hyper-sensitive antennae which quadruple our anxiety the moment we hear Israel mentioned on the news. Primarily, we identify with Israel as Jews.

To some the slogan is ‘Israel, right or wrong’. To a few it is, sadly and unjustly, ‘Israel, usually wrong’. But for most of us, in spite of all the fears and frustrations, Israel remains the country where our Jewish values are, should and shall be realized. We still hope for and believe in the Israel whose founders, less than three years after the Holocaust, presented to the world the remarkable vision of a country which "will uphold the full social and political equality of all its citizens, without distinction of religion, race, or gender; will guarantee full freedom of worship, conscience, culture and education" and live and legislate according to "the precepts of liberty, justice and peace taught by the Prophets of Israel."

We know that, for all the daily difficulties the country encounters, this Israel is not just the stuff of dreams. Countless Israelis put into practice in their daily lives the values of justice and compassion. ‘That’s only a bubble’, someone recently told me. If so, it’s a big bubble or many bubbles. One has only to think of Israel’s extraordinary number of chesed organisations. To the outsider it can be hard to credit how many groups work across the painful divisions between Arab and Jew, Israeli and Palestinian and continue to affirm in spite of all the conflicts the core Jewish value of universal human dignity in the image of God.

That is why so many of us care when Israel threatens to pass a law so deeply at odds with its own principles. "So long as Israel claims to be a Jewish state, it must act according to Jewish moral values," commented Gidon Remba, Director of the U.S.-based Campaign for Bedouin-Jewish Justice. "The way a country treats its most disadvantaged citizens defines its moral character, and so too its Jewish character as a bearer of the Jewish moral tradition."

It’s not just that Diaspora Jews are pained by the prospect of watching on their national television Israeli bulldozers flattening villages and forcing thousands of men, women and children from their homes, actions which the Begin-Prawer plan could indeed entail. The matter goes deeper than the damage that would be done to Israel’s international reputation.

It relates to a profound moral instinct that Israel’s safety depends not only on military superiority and the skill and courage of its armed forces, but is connected in some unquantifiable way to its faithfulness to the age-old Jewish values of justice and human dignity.

It connects to those historical experiences of exile and persecution which Jews carry subliminally in their souls. As Theodore Bikel, who played Tevye in countless productions of Fiddler on the Roof, said, "What hurts is the fact that the very people who are telling them [the Bedouin] to “Get out” are the descendents of the people of Anatevka. My people."

I’ve been to El Arakib, demolished fifty times, spoken with its leaders and seen footage of its destruction. It was a shocking experience. "You mustn’t believe everything the Bedouin claim", I was told. Yet Bedouin land ownership was honoured by the Ottomans and the British, and pre-State aerial photographs document extensive Bedouin agriculture. There is much misinformation. A recent poll conducted by Panelresearch showed that 70% of Israelis thought on average that the Bedouin wanted forty per cent of the Negev. In fact, they are asking for just 5.4% of the area. When told this fact most Israelis felt the Bedouin claims were reasonable.

It’s beyond dispute that the situation of Israel’s Bedouin requires legislation. Their villages can’t remain unrecognised, without the provision of electricity and hygiene services other Israelis take for granted. After all, the Bedouin are full citizens and many have traditionally served in the IDF. What the thousands of voices from abroad and within Israel are asking for is a proper partnership between Israel and the Bedouin leadership in agreeing a solution. As Rabbi Jill Jacobs of T’ruah writes, "Demolishing homes, forcing people off their land, and denying basic government services contradict the moral values…on which the State of Israel was founded."

Surely the Knesset, and the Jewish community around the world, will not allow that to happen.

Jonathan Wittenberg is a rabbi of the New North London Synagogue and has strong family, communal and charitable connections with Israel.

Published in Ha'aretz on July 15, 2013

UN Panel Urges Israel to Shelve 'Racist' Bedouin Relocation Plan, by Dana Weiler-Polak, in Haaretz

A United Nations committee has called on for the withdrawal of an Israeli draft law that would move 30,000 Bedouin living in the Negev to permanent, existing Bedouin communities. According to the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, the Law for the Regulation of the Bedouin Settlement in the Negev is discriminatory and would legalize racist practices.

The bill is based on the Prawer Report, which was approved by the cabinet in September. It calls for moving 30,000 Negev Bedouin to communities such as Rahat, Kseifa and Hura. The plan - drafted in response to recommendations made by the Goldberg committee - envisions land exchanges and compensation payments, and comes with an estimated price tag of NIS 6.8 billion.

The UN committee said the law "would legalize the ongoing policy of demolitions and forced displacement of the indigenous Bedouin communities."

It expressed concern "about the current situation of Bedouin communities, particularly with regard to the policy of demolitions, notably of homes and other structures, and the increasing difficulties faced by members of these communities in gaining access on a basis of equality with Jewish inhabitants to land, housing, education, employment and public health."

The UN body reviews official reports from member states as well as counter-reports filed by nongovernment organizations in these countries pertaining to issues of discrimination. Its recommendations are binding.

Dr. Thabet Abu Rass, director of the Adalah Legal Center for Arab Minority Right's office in Naqab, accused the government of "declaring war against" the Bedouin in the town.

"The government has declared war against the Bedouin in the Naqab. The Prawer Plan was written without consultation with the Bedouin community, whose lives are going to be ruined by this plan," he said.

In January the committee received a report from the Negev Coexistence Forum For Civil Equality that presumably influenced its position.

A representative of the forum said the bill would be deleterious to the Negev Bedouin and called on the government to withdraw the draft law.

Read More - http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/un-panel-urges-israel-to-shelve-racist-bedouin-relocation-plan-1.420692

Twitter reveals JNF’s approach toward Palestinian Bedouin, by Noam Sheizaf in +972

In a tweet that was later deleted, the Jewish National Fund says Bedouins in unrecognized villages are “living on someone’s land illegally.” The JNF has been taking part in evacuations of Palestinians in East Jerusalem and in foresting actions aimed at preventing the Bedouin from accessing their lands; last month, a JNF board member resigned, citing “violation of human rights” by the organization.

In recent months, we have reported here on the Jewish National Fund’s role in attempts to take over Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem and in the evacuations of Palestinian Bedouins from their homes in the Negev desert.

The Fund – originally established to buy lands in the early days of Zionism – is today a quasi-government agency that controls 13 percent of the land in Israel. Since the fund only sells lands to Jews, the government occasionally transfers real estate in disputed areas to the fund, so it can carry out discriminatory policies that the government is forbidden from exercising directly. Such are the cases in East Jerusalem.

In the south, the fund does foresting work on the lands of unrecognized Palestinian villages, aimed at preventing Bedouins from rebuilding their homes. Last week, the Abu al-Qian Bedouin clan protested plans to evacute them from their homes in the Yatir area in order to make room for another JNF forest.

Last Thursday, there was an interesting tweet from the JNF USA office, essentially admitting that the Fund sees the Bedouin citizens of Israel as illegal invaders in their own land:

After several followers re-tweeted this message, the tweet was deleted. A new tweet directed readers to a public statement by the fund, claiming that the Bedouin issue “is too complicated to debate in 140 [characters].”

“The issue” is in fact not that complicated. When Israel was established, it chose not to recognize Bedouin ownership of lands that they cultivated or lived on, making them illegal residents in their own home – even in cases where those settlements predated the state itself. More than 60 years after, the state still tries to evacuate the Bedouin, while refusing to connect them to infrastructure such as electricity and water. Yet in the world of the Jewish National Fund, its not even a disputed territory: All lands belongs to Jews by default, and people – Israeli citizens! – living there are doing so “illegally.”

The Jewish National Fund is knowingly and willingly taking an active role in taking over the lands of indigenous population in different parts of Israel and the occupied territories. Lately, JNF board member Seth Morrison resigned from the organization, calling its evacuations of Palestinians in East Jerusalem a “violation of human rights.”

Rabbis for Human Rights have launched a campaign against the Jewish National Fund’s attempts to take over Palestinian homes and evacuate Bedouins from their lands. You can read more about it here.

Read more - http://972mag.com/twitter-reveals-jnfs-approach-toward-palestinian-bedouin/32360/

Right to Life, by Esther Zandberg, in Haaretz

The final thesis submitted last year by Noa Tal as part of her major in landscape architecture at the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology was supposed to be about landscape planning in the Yatir Forest, in the southern Hebron hills. When she first paid a visit to the area, however, she saw a multitude of Bedouin settlements scattered about there and decided to switch thesis subjects. The paper she eventually submitted dealt with the settlements of the so-called Bedouin diaspora, and included a proposal for what she called "definition and reorganization of the Yatir region, and the creation of a settlement alternative for the Bedouin living there."

Tal is a former Jewish Agency emissary in Capetown, South Africa, who worked as a volunteer in a black township. In the course of her visits to the unrecognized Bedouin settlements in the Yatir area, she says she was astounded to see "that the same situation exists here, as well."

Tal arrived in the Bedouin community without any prior knowledge or conceptions. In a preliminary study, she was astonished to learn that the unrecognized settlements do not appear anywhere in official plans, and on regional maps are defined as empty territory - whereas "In fact, it is full of life," she asserts. Scattered throughout the area are homemade road signs resembling those posted by the Jewish Agency, Tal says, adding that they are also graced with a logo of a bulldozer demolishing buildings, a hint of black humor.

Tal's thesis puts the unrecognized Bedouin settlements on the map, not as the target for demolition and uprooting, but as communities indeed deserving of "a full life." The thrust of her thesis is that a "softer" approach to the region must be taken: namely, one of "defining and reorganizing," not of "planning."

While it is true that Tal's final project does not offer a miraculous solution to generations of discriminatory planning policies, it seems to be saying that things could move in a different direction.

Tal's project was recently presented at the ninth annual conference of the Association of Landscape Architects in Israel, which took place in Herzliya. Evidently, it is the first project presented before this distinguished professional forum to touch on social and political issues. Conferences of the association, like its members, usually suffer from a lack of awareness of the greater contexts of its work, even while dealing directly with the manner in which land resources are distributed and created. Tal's thesis refutes with data and photographs the national phobia whereby Bedouin settlement in the Negev is seen as an existential, environmental and aesthetic threat. The ecological footprint of Bedouin settlement is a mere fraction of that of Jewish settlement, no matter what form or variety the latter takes. The area in which the Bedouin reside is only 3 percent of the Negev, whereas they constitute about one-third of its population. As for aesthetics, ugliness is in the eye of the beholder.

Coerced urbanism

The site Tal selected for her project is an area along Route 316 that leads to Hebron, which includes four unrecognized settlements. A pressing reason for choosing this site was the recent approval of a government plan to establish the Jewish communal settlements of Yatir and Hiran there, in total disregard for the existing Bedouin settlements. The unrecognized settlements are adjacent to the recognized town of Hura, one of the seven towns in the Negev established by the state for Bedouin. They are, in large part, evidence of a tremendous planning failure and the total incompatibility of these communities to the population for which they were meant. In comparison to the plethora of residential options available to the general (Jewish) population in Israel - city, village, suburb, one-family dwellings - urbanization is the sole form of settlement available to Bedouin citizens of Israel, the majority of whom earn their living from agriculture. In the face of this coerced urbanization, the product of a government policy to restrict the subsistence zones of the Bedouin population and force it to relinquish its traditional lifestyle, culture and economy; in the face of the intention to uproot tens of thousands of residents of this diaspora (according to the Goldberg Committee report ); in the face of the bulldozers that sow destruction and have become part of the landscape - Noa Tal's theoretical project takes a strong stand. It relates seriously to social structure, construction in existing settlements and the need to strengthen their rural character through the allocation of land for agriculture. Among the settlements in the region, Tal selected Abu al-Qian , where her dialogue with residents was most productive, as a test case. While this and other unrecognized Bedouin settlements seem to be a haphazard collection of structures thrown into the desert, in actuality, they precisely reflect the population's social structure and its conditions of subsistence. The road system may be "informal," but it outlines boundaries between family, clan and tribe, and underscores inter-tribal relations. The location of the settlements within this expanse is consistent with the geographical lay of the land and its network of streambeds.

It is thus not coincidental that Tal suggests that the main public structure of her project - the local educational center - should be located at a point that connects the roads and belongs to all of the clans in the tribe. The basic assumption is that investment in education in this sector would be a decisive factor in determining the future of the society, and that the location of the center would be a significant element in its functionality.

Female space

A key focus of the project involves "creation of a physical place for the woman in a society that is undergoing processes of modernization." Paradoxically, those processes have, in fact, stymied woman's advancement in Bedouin society, notes Tal. In the era of nomadic life, women herded the sheep and could freely move about in the space outside the tent. With the transition to permanent settlements, the area in which they are allowed to move about without an escort was reduced to their immediate home environment. The project proposes to redefine the so-called female space to include vegetable and other gardens, and playgrounds. The public buildings of the settlement, Tal suggests, could offer a partition between this realm and the male realm.

"My personal hope," concludes Tal, "is that one day there will not be a need for partition, and the [women's] territories will be the open territories of the settlement at large." If this hope is realized, and given the rapid departure of Jewish women from the public expanse in Israel, the day might come when the Bedouin settlement will be the only place in Israel in which a woman will be able to appear in public undisturbed .

In the meantime, at the conference at which Tal's thesis was presented, where "the changing functions of landscape architecture" were discussed - not a single woman or man from the Bedouin sector, to which the project relates, was present. Similarly, there weren't any professionals from the Arab sector present, even though the injustices related to landscape planning and the division of land resources are more relevant to them than to their Jewish counterparts. On second thought, perhaps members of these sectors were in fact invited to the conference and meant to attend, but were not allowed to come because they did not properly meet the loyalty tests, or they were confused by the words of the national anthem, or they answered incorrectly the questions about the Zionist heritage and its division of land and other resources.

Read More - http://www.haaretz.com/weekend/magazine/right-to-life-1.400531

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

Listen to 3 Israeli Palestinian, Bedouin & Jewish human rights activists on WBEZ Worldview: Israel plans to displace 30,000 Bedouin Israeli citizens

Listen to the interview broadcast on NPR-affiliate WBEZ here.

Last month, the Israeli government approved a plan to relocate 30,000 Bedouin Arabs living in unrecognized villages and tent encampments in southern Israel to settlements recognized by the state. Critics say the plan forcibly removes people from their ancestral lands and sends them to some of the most destitute parts of the country.

We hear from a wide range of Israeli citizens, both Arab and Jewish, who are concerned about the relocation. The activists are on a tour of the U.S sponsored by the Telos Group and the Campaign for Bedouin-Jewish Justice in Israel and Rabbis for Human Rights-North America.

Rawia Abu-Rabia is a civil rights attorney, a Palestinian Bedouin citizen of Israel who heads the Bedouin project of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel. Michal Rotem is a Jewish Israeli with the Negev Coexistence Forum for Civil Equality in Israel. And Dr. Thabet Abu Ras is an academic who works for minority rights with Adalah: the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel.

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

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

NYC Lunch and Learn - 9/23: The New Netanyahu Gov't Plan for the Negev Bedouin: A Harsh Blow to Human Rights in Israel

A discussion with

Dr. Yeela Livnat Raanan

Former Director of Bedouin Rights Advocacy, Shatil: Leading Social Change, An Initiative of the New Israel Fund, Beersheva, Israel

Date: Friday, September 23, 2011

Time: 12:30-1:30 pm

Location: Offices of Rabbis for Human Rights-North America / Human Rights First, 333 Seventh Avenue, 13th Floor, New York, NY

Bring your lunch; desert will be provided. RSVP to: office@rhr-na.org

Dr. Livnat Raanan will explain the new plan for the Negev Bedouin community just approved by the Netanyahu government, and now being debated by the Knesset. If enacted by the Knesset, the plan will involve expelling 30,000 Bedouin from their homes, demolishing 20 “unrecognized” villages. It will deprive the 200,000-strong Bedouin population of much of their land and livelihoods, containing the entire Bedouin community in a small part of the Negev. Dr. Livnat Raanan will report on the great challenges facing Israel’s most disadvantaged community, discuss possible scenarios and lay out a different approach that human rights groups in Israel and the US are urging the Israeli government to adopt.

Sponsored by the Campaign for Bedouin-Jewish Justice: A Project of Rabbis for Human Rights-North America and the Jewish Alliance for Change, and Jewish Voice for Peace

http://www.rhr-na.org/get-involved/attend-an-event/view/32.html?Itemid=28

Netanyahu gov't plans to build new Jewish settlement on the land of two Negev Bedouin villages, after forcibly expelling 1,000 Bedouin residents

Click here to view the map of the Negev showing the location of the two Bedouin villages the Netanyahu government plans to demolish for a new Jewish settlement, and to view their proximity to JNF's Wadi Attir Project.

Excerpts translated from Ha'aretz, June 3, 2011:

"The government is expected to approve in the coming weeks the [Praver] ‘Implementation Plan for the Goldberg Report’ and the evacuation of 30,000 Negev Bedouin to new neighborhoods in recognized settlements. From documents uncovered by the Adallah Legal Center which have reached Ha’aretz it is clear that in one of the areas of the Bedouin villages slated for evacuation, the government is planning a new Jewish settlement. This is despite the fact that the Prime Minister’s Office has claimed that the Bedouin who will be evacuated are living in settlements that are not appropriate for infrastructure and public buildings, or that this land is not included in the Development Plan for Metropolitan Beer Sheva.

“The Bedouin villages of Atir and Um Al-Hiran, on whose land the government plans to establish a Jewish settlement, are located in the area of Wadi Atir, near Road 316, east of Hura. The 1,000 residents of the village…are from the Bedouin tribe that has lived in a nearby agricultural area northwest of Beer Sheva since before 1948…In 1956, they were evacuated by the Israel Defense Forces so that the area could be used for military training, and were moved to the area in which they live now in Wadi Atir.

“In recent years, the government began planning the new Jewish settlement, to be called Hiran, which will have 2,400 residential units by 2030, and a population of 10,000. Based on these development plans, the government initiated demolition orders for the Bedouin homes in the two villages and the eviction of the Bedouin residents.

“Despite the fact that a professional Construction and Planning Committee of the local municipal authority in the area recommended that the two Bedouin villages be recognized, Ha’aretz reported in November 2010 that the Prime Minister’s Office intervened to prevent recognition for Atir and Um Al-Hiran.

“The Bedouin residents are currently engaged in a legal struggle against the evacuation and demolition orders…in the Beer Sheva District Court, the Kiryat Gat District Court and the Supreme Court…According to the new development plan for Hiran, the new Jewish residential units will be built in the area where Bedouin homes are currently situated in Um Al-Hiran…”

The article goes on to say that unlike many other Bedouin homes in unrecognized villages, the homes in Um Al-Hiran and Atir are built from stone (suggesting that the residents expected the village would be recognized and that their homes would be permanent and not subject to demolition; hence the use of more costly building material.)

It quotes Salim Abu Al-Kayan, a Bedouin resident of Um Al-Hiran, who describes the strong opposition of the residents to being forced out of their homes and lands again after having been compelled to move there by the IDF in 1956: “They are planning to build a Jewish settlement called Hiran here. There is no reason why we [the village of Um Al-Hiran] shouldn’t be annexed to the new Jewish settlement and allowed to remain on our land.” Salim’s brother, Najah, agreed: “We’re happy to become a neighborhood in the new Jewish settlement, or to be considered a neighborhood of Hura.”

Said Salim, “I have children serving in the IDF. What am I supposed to tell them when their country destroys the home in which they live?”

Translation of excerpts from an article which appeared only in the Hebrew edition of Ha’aretz, June 3, 2011, titled “Netanyahu government plans to build a Jewish settlement on the land of a Bedouin village that will be ‘evacuated.’” English translation by Gidon D. Remba, Co-Director, Campaign for Bedouin-Jewish Justice in Israel.

Call JNF: Tell the Israeli gov't to cancel plans to expel 1,000 Bedouin and demolish 2 villages near JNF's Wadi Attir Project for a Jewish settlement

Click here for sample call script and JNF phone numbers

See also Umm al-Hieran: Objection to Planned Jewish Town that would Entail Demolishing Bedouin Village: Press Release, Bimkom: Planners for Planning Rights, Jan. 16, 2011, English, below.

Adalah, Bimkom and Residents of the Unrecognized Village of Umm al-Hieran in the Negev/Naqab Submit Objection to Plan to Build Jewish Town of “Hiran” after Demolishing Arab Bedouin Residents’ Homes and Evacuating them from their Village:

The plan is another component of the discrimination against the Bedouin in the Negev/Naqab

On 12 January 2011, Arab Bedouin citizens of Israel who are residents of Umm al-Hieran, the southern area of the unrecognized village of Atir-Umm al-Hieran, in cooperation with Bimkom – Planners for Planning Rights and Adalah submitted an objection to the National Council for Planning and Building (NCPB) against the building of a new exclusively Jewish town to be called “Hiran” on the land on which Atir-Umm al-Hieran is located (the Nahal Yatir area).

The master plan (Plan 15/02/107) aims to build the Jewish town of ‘Hiran’ after demolishing the homes of the 500 Arab residents of Umm al-Hieran and evacuating them from the area that falls within the plan's boundaries. According to the Hiran master plan, most of the Arab Bedouin residents’ homes are located in the zone designated for residential buildings, while others are situated on land designated for public use, including a proposed forest.

The objection argues that the plan would entail the demolition of Arab Bedouin homes and the forced eviction of the residents who have lived in the area for more than 55 years, resulting in gross violations of the constitutional rights of the residents to property, dignity and equality. In addition, the planners and planning authorities did not examine alternatives that would have avoided the violation of these rights, such as recognizing Umm al-Hieran and providing a planning solution that would regularize its status.

Cesar Yeudkin, an urban planner with BIMKOM, stated that: “The plan completely ignores the situation on the ground and the rights of the Bedouin residents. It is evidence of the government’s policy to concentrate the Bedouin into a few recognized towns. Furthermore, this plan represents another instance of discrimination against the Bedouin community in the Naqab in the division of land and resources .”

The objection recalls that after a seven year-long planning process, the NCPB decided, on 20 July 2010, to recognize the northern area of the village of Atir-Umm al-Hieran, where the residents of Atir live; and accepted the proposal that the residents of Umm al-Hieran would move to Atir, according to a specific time-line and process. Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu's office intervened in the decision and requested that the NCPB reconsider its decision. The NCPB committee members complied with the request and withdrew the recognition. It did so without hearing the position of the residents and in contravention of the rules of good governance.

Adalah Attorney Suhad Bishara argued: “All the facts included in the objection lead us clearly to conclude that the plan was designed to give preference to the interests of the Jewish residents over and above the interests of the Arab Bedouin who have lived in this village for more than 55 years. This is a blatant violation of the people’s right to equality. The practical consequences of evacuating a certain group of residents in favor of another, based on nationality and/or religion, are very harsh. This constitutes a policy of segregation which is reminiscent of dark regimes from the past.”

For further details: Shani Sokol, Spokesperson for Bimkom, 052-429334
Attorney Suhad Bishara, Adalah, 052-2490669

Call JNF: Tell the Israeli gov't to cancel plans to expel 1,000 Bedouin and demolish 2 villages near JNF's Wadi Attir Project for a Jewish settlement

Click here for sample call script and JNF phone numbers