Bedouin-Jewish Justice in Israel

Neglect at Schools Spurs Strike by Parents in Bedouin communities, by Yanir Yagna, in Haaretz

2012-02-20T17:04:00.007-08:00

Parent-initiated strikes are paralyzing schools and kindergartens in two different Bedouin communities in the Negev. The strikes are in protest of long-standing neglect of equipment and poor sanitation and safety conditions.

The parents’ committee of theBedouin area of El Azazme has shuttered 12 kindergartens for the last 12 days, while at Lakiya, the parents’ committee has closed both schools and kindergartens serving some 5,000 pupils.

Photograph from Step Forward, an NGO with the objective of promoting
educational opportunities and economic advancement programs for
the Bedouin community of Southern Israel.

“The games are old and dirty and the chairs are broken,” says Mussa Abu Bina of the El Azazme committee. “The kids can’t be in the kindergarten because of the noise of the generator. The sand boxes are filthy, some of the playground facilities are unsafe, the toilets are broken, and we lack basic equipment such as drawing paper and markers.”

Some parents told Haaretz: “The Education Ministry claims it doesn’t have money to help the communities, and refer us to the Abu Basma regional council. They, in turn, refer us back to the ministry.”

The regional council’s acting chairman, Rahamim Yona, replies that, “We’re doing our best to solve the problem but we lack budgets. We reported the problem to the Education Ministry a year ago.”

The situation in Lakiya is similar, claims Mer’i al-Sana, of the parents’ committee there: “All the schools are in the same dire conditions because we never received the basic financial support given to other educational institutions. It’s inconceivable that kindergarten teachers pay for cleaning materials from their meager salaries, because there are no funds. Last week the school children didn’t receive their report cards because the school hasn’t had a budget for paper. There are 18 air-conditioners in the junior high school but none of them work. There even isn’t enough money to fix broken windows.”

Nir Shmueli, deputy director of the Education Ministry in the south, counters that the ministry ordered the Abu Basma regional council to buy equipment for the kindergartens, and that the problem in Azazme would be solved “within a week.” As for the situation in Lakiya, the ministry did not comment by press time.

Read More - http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/neglect-at-schools-spurs-strike-by-parents-in-bedouin-communities-1.413671

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

2012-02-05T14:16:00.000-08:00

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

Jerusalem Protest at JNF Calls to Halt Bedouin Displacement, by Max Schindler, +972

2012-01-30T16:11:00.000-08:00

Some 100 demonstrators gathered at the Jewish National Fund headquarters in Jerusalem on Sunday to protest afforestation plans in the Negev region of Southern Israel, which could result in the displacement of Bedouin families residing there.

Rallying in front of the JNF’s sprawling offices in downtown Jerusalem, the crowd included activists from Rabbis for Human Rights and regional Bedouin leaders. Holding posters declaring their opposition to the forcible transfer of the Bedouin population, the protesters received thumbs-up from passersby and honks from speeding drivers.

One demonstrator, a resident of the al-Araqib village—located seven kilometers north of Beersheba (see here for a detailed map)—described how the Israeli authorities confiscated his cropland:

“The JNF took my land,” said a man who introduced himself as Hussein and who was born in al-Araqib. “They’ve taken everything, all types of crops—watermelon, wheat—and they planted trees all over it… Now we’re all living in the al-Araqib cemetery, all 25 of us [extended family members].”

The Israeli authorities have been trying to evict the residents of al-Araqib since 1999, who were then estimated to number some 500. In July 2010, the Israel Land Administration razed the al-Araqib village in order to plant a forest there. Most of village’s structures were subsequently rebuilt.

Since then, the authorities have demolished the village at least 32 times, according to Haia Noach, executive director of the Negev Coexistence Forum for Civil Equality.

Every few months, the cat-and-mouse game resumes, with the Israeli authorities demolishing and the villagers rebuilding.

Virtually none of the structures have proper building permits, according to village residents. The Israel Land Administration—the authority carrying out the demolitions— argues that the area was pronounced state property for “security purposes” in 1954.

Al-Araqib is by no means the only unrecognized village affected by JNF development.

According to a 2011 report by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, approximately half the Bedouin population in the Negev—or 90,000 people—live in quasi-recognized or unrecognized villages similar to al-Araqib.

Many of their villages, all lacking basic infrastructure, face the same predicament as al-Araqib. In 2007, in order to supposedly find a solution to the unrecognized villages, Israel established the Goldberg Commission, which concluded that the Bedouin villages should be recognized and their buildings rights retroactively legalized.

However, the Prawer Commission, established to implement Goldberg’s recommendations, calls to transfer some 30,000 Bedouin from their Negev villages to existing Bedouin townships. Its conclusions were approved by the government last September.

As Noam Sheizaf of +972 reported in November of last year, the JNF now controls 13 percent of the land in Israel. As a policy, the fund – a non-profit which is run by the Israeli government – markets its land only to Jews.

Regarding the JNF’s plans for the Negev, Gadi Elgazi of Tarabut-Hithabrut, an Arab-Jewish movement for social and political change, said, “It’s the largest campaign of dispossession in Israel, against the weakest and poorest population in Israel by any socio-economic standard.”

It doesn’t help that among Jewish communities abroad, the JNF conjures images of blue donation boxes and a pioneering ethos. “From the [United States], many people contribute to the JNF believing that it does nice things for everyone. They don’t know what’s going on in the Negev, the daily demolitions,” Elgazi continued.

The al-Araqib village has scrambled to organize against the eviction efforts, creating a local committee. But the head of these efforts, Awad Abu Freih, a professor of chemistry and resident of al-Araqib, said the prospect of forestalling the JNF’s plans was weak.

“In the end, they will take our land,” Abu Freih said. “We haven’t had any successes but there have been some delays.”

In response to the protests, the Israeli government has offered compensation for the al-Araqib village. “The government wants us to move and they’re offering 1,000-2,000 shekels for one dunam,” or about $270-530 for a quarter of an acre, Abu Freih said.

A number of Israelis and international organizations have responded to the eviction efforts by petitioning and pressuring the JNF.

Rabbi Arik Ascherman, executive director of Rabbis for Human Rights, has lobbied the JNF on the behalf of al-Arakib and says that the organization is feeling the heat.

“There are people on the directorate both here and in the States that who would like to see this changed,” Ascherman said, without divulging individual board members’ names.

In December, JNF board member Seth Morrison resigned from the organization in response to news of similar evictions and demolitions in East Jerusalem.

“I think it reflects that many people who believe in the JNF and support and love many of things they do, as I do, and put their coins in those little boxes over the year or sent more significant checks; they expect something different of the JNF,” Ascherman said.

The JNF was not available for comment at time of publication. Stay tuned for updates.

Trees n' Settlements: First the JNF, Now the Israel Nature and Parks Authority -- What's Next?, by Moriel Rothman, in Huffington Post

2012-01-27T03:22:00.000-08:00

The new trend: seemingly innocuous, nature-oriented bodies in Jerusalem shedding their bark, so to speak, and revealing their true identities as expert-action-arms for the agenda of the settler movement.

First, we have the JNF-KKL, which, apart from its leadership in the campaign to demolish Bedouin villages in the Negev, has recently been exposed as seeking to evict Palestinian families from their homes in East Jerusalem.

Following an international outcry, including the resignation of one of the JNF's Board members in the U.S. in protest of his former organization's actions the JNF's actions in East Jerusalem are frozen, for now. There is little doubt that they'll be back in action soon, though, dear justice-oriented reader, so keep your eyes peeled around Tu B'shvat, a festival of trees (which I really like, when its not being used to perpetrate political injustices) that falls in early February this year, wherein the JNF will certainly seek out some Bedouin village on which to plant more trees. In fact, just yesterday the JNF-KKL reestablished up a "work station" brimming with bulldozers next to Al-Arakib, a Bedouin village in the Negev that has been demolished 30-some times already.

Meanwhile, I am displeased to introduce the latest Trees n' Settlements organization -- the Israel Nature and Parks Authority. The Israel Nature and Parks Authority, as in "the governmental body charged with the protection of nature, landscape and heritage in Israel?"

Unfortunately, yes.

The Israel Nature and Parks Authority has a new plan, called the "Slopes of Mount Scopus National Park," which, if carried out, will result in the confiscation of private Palestinian land and a territorial connection formed between the Old City of Jerusalem and the West Bank settlement area of E1, near Ma'ale Adumim.

For more background on this case, see this blog post on +972 magazine by Solidarity's Zvi Beninga, and this more detailed background prepared by Bimkom, an Israeli planning rights organization, and the following letter prepared by the Solidarity Movement. For a report on how this process of political manipulation of archaeology is not a unique to this case but rather is quite systematic in Jerusalem, see Emek Shaveh's report, "Where Are the Antiquities?"

This park is not only unfair to the residents of A-Tur and Issawiya whose only wrongdoing was being born Palestinian in Jerusalem, but it also has potentially dramatic political ramifications:

The "Slopes of Mount Scopus" park is strategically located such that it will create Israeli territorial continuity between the Old City and the area known as E1, around the settlement of Ma'ale Adumim.

Construction in E1 has been opposed by the U.S. government -- both under Obama and Bush: In October 2005, then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice stated: "We have told the Israelis in no uncertain terms that [settlement in the E1 area] would contravene American policy." Building a "national park" that connects to E1 is the Israeli government's ill-disguised attempt to circumvent clear-cut American opposition to settlement in E1. It is apparent, however, that the goals of this park are political and not ecological.

The residents of Issawiya and A-Tur are not sitting by idly, though. Last Friday, almost 100 residents of Isswayia and Israeli activists organized by the Solidarity Movement took matters into their own hands, literally, and began to break down, with shovels and open palms, the mound of dirt and rubble that the INPA created last week, after it destroyed a road in Issawiya, to block residents from driving where the road once was (video of this nonviolent act of civil disobedience here).

Meanwhile, a broad coalition of Israeli organizations, including the Solidarity Movement, Bimkom, Emek Shaveh, Ir Amim, Rabbis for Human Rights, Combatants for Peace and more have been working with Palestinian partners and activists in Issawiya and A-Tur in order to seek to prevent this "national park."

The campaigns to stop the JNF from evicting families and destroying villages, and to cancel the INPA's planned park in the middle of East Jerusalem are ongoing, and the more international attention they get, the better the chances for success. E1 still remains largely empty because of American governmental pressure, and the Sumarin family in Silwan still remains in their home largely because of grassroots efforts.

Next time on Trees n' Settlements: the Israel Center for Watching Extremely Rare Birds lays out its plans a new bird sanctuary in the Palestinian neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah.

(Kidding, kidding. Hopefully.)

Read More: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/moriel-rothman/post_2843_b_1207309.html

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

2012-01-09T03:04:00.000-08:00

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/

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

2011-12-29T00:23:00.000-08:00

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.

JNF Board Member Quits Over Evictions, by Seth Morrison, in The Forward

2011-12-13T18:13:00.000-08:00

Some of my earliest Jewish memories involve dropping spare change in the Jewish National Fund’s iconic little blue boxes. I was proud that my money would help plant trees in Israel. The JNF, I knew, was making the desert bloom.

As an adult, I became a member of the organization’s Washington, D.C., board and moved from donating extra nickels to raising thousands of dollars for JNF.

Now, I regret to announce that this week I have resigned my board position and am severing all ties with the organization.

My commitment to building a safe and secure Israel has not changed. My admiration for much of JNF’s environmental work has not changed. What has changed is a sense of betrayal I have at learning that JNF is a force in preventing long-term peace.

This fall, a subsidiary of the Israeli branch of JNF launched eviction proceedings against the Sumarin family, who live in the Silwan neighborhood of East Jerusalem. Under Israel’s controversial “Absentee Property Law,” the state may reclaim homes whose owners were not present in 1967, when Israel took control of East Jerusalem. In the case of the Sumarin family, the children of the original owner, Musa Sumarin, were declared absentees after his death even though there were other family members living in the home at the time. In 1991, the Israeli government took the step of transferring the property to the JNF subsidiary.

I have learned that the action on the Sumarin home is not an isolated case. JNF has gained ownership of other Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem and, in many instances, then transferred these properties through its subsidiaries to Elad, a settler organization whose purpose is to “Judaize” East Jerusalem.

In my eyes, the expulsion of the Sumarin family is a violation of human rights. But it is also part of the systematic transfer of Palestinian property to ideological settlers who wish to put facts on the ground that hinder a lasting peace agreement.

A few days before the proposed eviction, Rabbis for Human Rights - North America, in partnership with its counterpart in Israel, asked American Jews to write to the CEO of JNF requesting that he stop the eviction. More than 1,300 people responded. I believe that, like me, these writers felt deeply betrayed that the organization many of us have supported since our childhood would act in such unjust ways.

JNF’s initial response was to deny any involvement in the eviction. When legal papers that name a subsidiary of JNF as the initiator of the proceedings became public, the organization decided to postpone the eviction.

I hope that JNF will decide to cancel this eviction for good, and to refrain from pursuing additional such evictions. But I felt I had to resign now because senior people at JNF made clear to me that they still plan to get the Sumarin family out and transfer the property to Elad.

I have always supported Israel through organizations like JNF because I believe that the Jewish people have the right to a secure, democratic and peaceful homeland in Israel. And I strongly believe that the Palestinian people have the right to a secure, democratic and peaceful homeland in a neighboring Palestinian state. By supporting right-wing settlers in “Judaizing” Palestinian neighborhoods, JNF makes this vision harder to achieve. I fear that such actions endanger Israel’s future as a secure and democratic state.

My commitment to Israel remains strong. But I will invest my time and financial resources in organizations committed to peace, democracy and coexistence between peoples.

Seth Morrison is Immediate Past Chair of the Friends of the Arava Institute and a member of the Washington D.C. Local Steering Committee for J Street.

Our Campaign in the News

2011-12-10T18:15:00.000-08:00

Bedouins Facing Expulsion From Villages, by Nathan Jeffay, in The Forward, Dec. 2, 2011

JNF delays eviction of Palestinian family from East Jerusalem home, by Nir Hasson, Ha'aretz, Nov. 27, 2011

From Israel to Essex: Travelers Not Welcome, by James Brownsell, in Al Jazeera English, Nov. 14, 2011

Pro-Bedouin activists meet with White House officials, in JTA, Oct. 27, 2011

3 Israeli Palestinian, Bedouin & Jewish human rights activists on WBEZ Worldview/Chicago's NPR station: Israel plans to displace 30,000 Bedouin Israeli citizens, Oct. 26, 2011

Israel and the Polarization of American Jews, by Gidon D. Remba, in the Jerusalem Report, June 20, 2011

JNF Challenged on Discrimination, by Josh Nathan-Kazis, in The Forward, Apr. 29, 2011

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, Mar. 7, 2011

In Israel, the revolution has already begun, by Bradley Burston, in Ha'aretz, Feb. 23, 2011

A JNF Drive to Make the Desert Bloom Means Destruction for a Bedouin Village, by Nathan Jeffay, in The Forward, Feb. 9, 2011

Open Letter to the Jewish National Fund - Just say no! by Rabbi Arik Ascherman (Jerusalem Post, Feb. 1, 2011)

Where are the Jewish Greens?, by Devorah Brous, Tikkun, Jan. 20, 2011

Seeing the Unseen: The Forgotten Palestinian-Israeli Problem, by Devorah Brous - Jerusalem Report, Jan. 3, 2011

Israeli and American Jewish Groups Condemn Israeli Government and JNF for 7th Demolition of Negev Bedouin Village of Al-Arakib, Nov. 23, 2010

Seeing the Forest and the Trees: The Untold Story of the Jewish National Fund, by Uri Blau, in Haaretz

2011-12-09T17:33:00.000-08:00

"A Jew purchased an apartment in Carmiel, on Jewish National Fund ‏(JNF‏) land. No problem. Twenty years go by and Mohammed who lives in Dir al-Assad ... comes to buy an apartment.”

This may sound like the some sort of ethnic joke, but that’s how JNF world chairman, Effie Stenzler, a member of the Labor Party, chose to speak recently before the members of his board.

"The Jew sells him the apartment for a tidy sum,” Stenzler continues. “He goes to the Israel Lands Administration ‏(ILA‏) and says, ‘I’m Mohammed. I want you to register this apartment in the Tabu [Government Lands Registry Office] in my name.’ They say to him, ‘Wait a minute − you’re an Arab, we can’t do that because it’s written that JNF doesn’t sell to Arabs, doesn’t lease to Arabs.’ And then there was the trick that worked until 2004, and according to this trick the ILA, without telling anyone ... took land registered in the name of JNF, transferred it to another building and then registered that building in JNF’s name ... But then an Arab came to that building and then they had to do it again ...”

The tale of “Mohammed and the Apartment” is quoted from the minutes of the JNF board meeting in July. The organization claims that the quote “is part of a description of a very complicated bureaucratic problem created by the ILA in regard to the registration of apartments. After discussions with the attorney general and the court, the solution to the problem was found and JNF has been acting accordingly.”

Thus, JNF transfers to the ILA property on which there are buildings where Arabs have purchased apartments, and receive other land in return. Specifically, the records of that July meeting show that each year, three or four such property exchanges are carried out, and that some 25 have been made since the arrangement was formulated in 2008.
Lately, JNF has been busy dealing with numerous legal and personal disputes.

Founded 110 years ago following a decision by the fifth Zionist Congress, with the aim of acquiring lands for Jews in Palestine, the organization has in recent times been identified more with forests and forestation − to the point where many see it as a “green” organization.

Hundreds of pages of court records, a flood of correspondence between lawyers and arguments involving JNF board members have been devoted in the last two years to deciding who will control this body, which oversees 13 percent of state lands ‏(2.5 million dunams, or 625,000 acres‏) and is not subject to oversight by the state comptroller or the treasury.

Battling over ‘treasure’

Following a delay that was agreed upon last Thursday among all parties involved, the JNF General Assembly ‏(whose composition is identical to that of the Zionist General Council, with 192 members‏) will on January 4, 2012 elect 37 members of the organization’s board, from which the chairman will be selected. After that, perhaps, the legal sagas that have overshadowed JNF’s operations for the past year and a half will come to an end, and it will become clear whether chairman Stenzler ‏(who has served for the past five and a half years‏) will be reelected or if he will be replaced by former Laborite Prof. Shimon Sheetrit, now affiliated with Ehud Barak’s Atzmaut faction.

In an earlier legal round between the two in October, Stenzler earned a victory − on points, at least − when Judge Avraham Yaakov of the Petah Tikva District Court ruled that Sheetrit and other Atzmaut representatives, including Industry, Trade and Labor Minister Shalom Simhon, had to resign from their faction-related positions in the World Zionist Congress ‏(the body above JNF‏) because they had originally been appointed to these positions as representatives of Labor.

For his part, Sheetrit has been concerned that Stenzler’s reelection as JNF chair is assured, and that he, Sheetrit, will not be eligible to run at all.

In any event, to understand what sort of “treasure” this battle has revolved around, it is instructive to return to the July 2010 and February 2011 JNF board meetings, at which David Lazarus, director of the organization’s financial division, spoke of JNF’s general financial situation. In recent years, JNF has had an annual budget of NIS 650 million; half of that is designated to pay salaries, administrative expenses and so on, and the rest is for other activities. The data indicate that even though in 2009 there was a decrease in donations to JNF ‏(NIS 96 million, compared to NIS 112 million the previous year‏), its financial situation was excellent, since its income far exceeds its expenditures.

Thus, for instance, in 2009, JNF had income totaling NIS 1.133 billion, the vast majority from land holdings, compared to NIS 972 million in 2008 − meaning a surplus in the organization’s coffers of hundreds of millions of shekels per year. The total value of JNF lands is estimated at NIS 6.2 billion; the ILA administers more than half of these properties; its subsidiary, Himanuta, administers the rest.

“The income and moderate expenses have created what JNF calls a ‘budget reserve.’ The reserve should amount to something like NIS 2 billion,” said Avraham Duvdevani, then co-chairman and currently chairman of the WZO, said in September 2010. “This is a well-kept secret,” he told the members of the JNF board, “and it must be preserved with maximum secrecy, otherwise the government will covet this money and we have experience with this already from the past.” ‏(The secret leaked out shortly afterward nonetheless, and was reported upon by Shuki Sadeh in a January 2011 report in TheMarker‏).

Board member Moshe Yogev proposed at that meeting that JNF “take [the reserve], before it’s taken from us, to build the fence with Egypt.”

Among the organization’s fears were the ability to fulfill future financial commitments: In 2008, these commitments totaled NIS 1.971 billion, and a year later they had crossed the NIS 2-billion mark. Stenzler sought to reassure the board and promised to guard the coffers.

“The subject of the reserve is something that needs to be closely watched, that’s true,” he said, “but we also must remember that we promised employees their pension rights with what we called a ‘floating charge’ ‏(shi’abud tzaf‏). This ensures both the JNF’s future and the future of the workers’ pensions, because this is insured and secure money.”

Indeed, it appears that JNF has trouble parting with funds that have accumulated in its coffers, even if these are assets that belong to Holocaust victims and their descendants.

‘JNF foot-dragging’

“I am writing to request that you personally intervene immediately and put an end to JNF’s foot-dragging in regard to complying with the directives of the Law on Holocaust Victims’ Assets.”

These words were written by Yaron Jacobs, head of the Company for the Location and Restitution of Holocaust Victims’ Assets ‏(known by the Hebrew name Hashava‏), in January to Stenzler, whose organization holds tens of millions of shekels worth of such assets. Later in the letter, Jacobs’ language was more pointed: Since 2006, he wrote, “Hashava has systematically maintained contact with JNF on various matters with the aim of upholding the law and obtaining the Holocaust victims’ assets currently held by JNF ... Unfortunately, despite the pleasant atmosphere at most of the meetings ... satisfactory progress was not made in solving these problems and in returning all of the assets to the company.”

Jacobs stressed also that “JNF is holding a lot of funds that belong to victims, in a manner that runs counter to the law’s instructions. This situation is intolerable and requires an immediate solution.”

Unfortunately, he added, “JNF is not in any hurry. The restoration of the assets is occurring very slowly, with various obstacles being placed in the company’s way, in an appropriate manner.”

By contrast, he explained, for the victims’ descendants, time is racing by, as many of them are elderly themselves. Jacobs also explained that assets for which descendants are not found are supposed to be used to help Holocaust survivors, and “if we are unable to obtain the assets in the near future, there will no longer be anyone to help.”
Jacobs was complaining about the failure to transfer NIS 67 million, equivalent to the value of 57 plots of land belonging to victims, which JNF transferred to the ILA in the past. He noted that some in the JNF wanted to transfer the value of the lands according to their worth at the time of purchase − i.e., before the founding of the state − and not according to their present value, which is 10 times higher. He said the company finds itself receiving from the JNF “offers that are low and inexplicable.”

Jacobs also wrote that the JNF had a debt of NIS 12 million to the company, and that “on this subject too all kinds of unworthy ‘compromise’ or bargaining proposals have been made.”

His letter said that JNF had been seeking to charge handling fees for the transferred funds, and to receive from the company and victims’ descendants a commitment not to sue JNF for assets that it would be transferring.

Stenzler reported on the letter at the JNF board meeting in February, according to the minutes. “So far, JNF has transferred NIS 99 million to Hashava,” he said. “In addition, JNF has transferred another 141 plots of land to the company.”

Stenzler noted that Hashava had a new director general at that time, and that the latter had sent a letter “in which he says that JNF still has to transfer funds and so on, in a tone that I didn’t like very much, to put it mildly, because JNF, the members of the board − we were the first ones to say that the funds should be transferred. Moreover, all of the directors general who dealt with him always noted the fact that JNF was ready to go above and beyond the letter of the law with them ... Therefore I did not like the style of this letter.”

The fact that only about half of JNF’s annual budget is designated for its activities did not deter board member Nissan Chilik from cynically remarking, “We have to understand [Hashava]: They need the money because they waste four times as much in administration than they actually return.”

However, not everyone present liked this attitude. Board member Reuven Shalom proposed “making a distinction between what we need to give, and their [Hashava’s conduct. We need to give what the Holocaust survivors deserve, and they need to behave properly.”

Chilik: “But they should have used more delicate language.”

Shalom: “We are not a commercial body or something like that. We are a body of the Jewish people ... the approach has to be a ‘public’ one.”

Avraham Roth, a founder of Hashava and its chairman until 2008, says JNF was among the first to cooperate with the company, and he describes the transfer of funds and assets on its part since then as “reasonable.” When asked if its conduct went beyond the letter of the law, as Stenzler said, he says: “No, in accordance with it.”

Still, Roth adds, “The fact that things still aren’t settled with the JNF six years after the law was passed is quite unbelievable. It’s inconceivable that the JNF is still holding property of Jews who were killed in the Holocaust. The survivors are dying, the heirs are getting to the end of their lives, and they have all the time in the world.”

A source that is knowledgeable about the issue says Jacobs’ letter in January appears to have “done the job,” because in recent months the parties have returned to negotiations and “significant progress toward a solution” has begun.

JNF says in response that, “As soon as the matter [concerning Hashava] reached the desk of the JNF chairman, Effie Stenzler personally got involved in handling it, in full cooperation with the company and with the company director general, Yaron Jacobs. JNF was a leader in this realm, and deserves a medal for the way it acted with the company ... when, for example, it transferred close to NIS 100 million in funds and property for survivors and over 100 assets worth a lot of money. This massive process is now nearing its end.”

On transparency

Stenzler declared firmly at the September 2010 meeting: “It is incumbent upon us for the organization to be completely transparent,”

However, it seems that when it comes to internal organizational affairs as well, this transparency is not always total. For example, at the February meeting, board member Yigal Yasinov, who is considered Stenzler’s rival, said: “I do not regularly receive emails ... [or regular] mail. I didn’t even receive an invitation to the last board meeting, I didn’t get the agenda for today’s meeting and I know there are other letters that didn’t go out ... I want to get all the material from the past four months, because I did not receive it. I did not receive protocols, or any other mail at all. Invitations to ceremonies I do receive ... I get only mail which is unimportant, all the junk mail.”

It seems that Stenzler himself is not always keen on media transparency − as regards, for example, one of the more sensitive JNF activities: planting trees on lands in the south, whose ownership is a matter of dispute with the Bedouin population. This mostly concerns land in the area of Al-Arakib, a village north of Be’er Sheva that has been destroyed numerous times in clashes with police and property inspectors, because its inhabitants refuse to be evicted and claim ownership of the land.

In May, after telling the board about the extensive media coverage of the affair abroad and the number of emails he receives as a result, Stenzler added: “I must thank the spokespeople, our media people, our public relations people, who are doing everything to see that this matter doesn’t develop in the local media ... In the media in Israel it hasn’t [yet] made any waves, thank goodness.”

About the matter itself, he said: “This is an area that we are taking so that others, neither Jews nor non-Jews, will take it − not Bedouin or anyone else.”

In August last year, according to minutes of a meeting, he explained: “We have learned from our experience in recent years that wherever there is a tree planted it is almost impossible to seize control of the land ... Not for nothing did the ILA agree to increase the budget, because it understands that JNF helps to keep property.”

At the same meeting, board member Yitzhak Krichevsky offered another idea for how to deal with the problem: “Go to Sinai and see how Egypt took over the Bedouin,” he suggested. “There is no democracy there. We’re playing in the courts, with democracy. Go to Sinai. You won’t see a single Bedouin around there.”

But there are other voices making themselves heard in JNF as well. At the meeting in May, board member Alon Tal said that the affair is “a very serious public relations failure by the JNF ... The pictures of JNF foresters and other pictures that were publicized of tractors demolishing buildings are what stick with people, and the JNF appears to be a partner to a crime. Our representatives abroad didn’t know how to answer these charges and lost the battle over our reputation in Australia, the United States and other places.”

Another member, Or Karsin, spoke in even stronger terms: “I will say what I think, even if it might sound like Don Quixote,” she said, explaining that she didn’t feel right that “people are being put up against trees ... Placing trees in a position of war versus an Israeli population, citizens of the State of Israel, is a very serious thing, and it is very difficult to see these pictures and hear these voices.”

JNF said in response that this article has been based on “a collection of partial documents and partial truths that present a distorted and false picture. In regard to Al-Arakib, JNF is acting solely in accordance with the court decisions, and what the chairman meant by his remarks is that it is good that the media in Israel is not influenced by the world campaign that is fed by lies against Israel and against JNF, and that the media in Israel is behaving responsibly, and sees and knows that not a single tree was planted in the area in question.”

Right to Life, by Esther Zandberg, in Haaretz

2011-12-09T17:30:00.000-08:00

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.

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

2011-12-06T17:25:00.000-08:00

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.

'JNF Judaizing Negev at Beduin Expense,' by Sharon Udasin, in Jerusalem Post

2011-12-05T17:10:00.000-08:00

Following the Jewish National Fund’s announcement at last week’s Sderot Conference that it would be investing NIS 1 billion toward further Negev development, Beduin rights advocates have expressed concern that the investment will deepen already profound rifts between the Jewish and Beduin Negev residents.

JNF chairman Efi Stenzler unveiled plans to invest NIS 1b. in the next few years toward the construction of thousands of new housing units and related infrastructural development, in the hope of strengthening the Negev region and fulfilling a “Zionist vision” by attracting young people to move there. While the Negev has an area of 1.2 million hectares, or 60 percent, of Israel’s territory, it is home to only 600,000 people, or 8% of the country’s population, according to the JNF.

Although the difference in average real estate in the Center and the Negev was only about 10% in the 1970s, in now stands at 400%.

The organization will be working to develop the region in conjunction with architect Shamai Assif, various government ministries, the Israel Lands Authority, mayors and heads of local councils, regional councils and settlement movements, the JNF reported.

“The JNF will continue to help reinforce communities in the Negev,” the statement said, noting that the group intends to employ the already vibrant Negev population centers as “anchors” for future development.

Some of the specific plans for the area include upgrading the number of plots in Karmit from 250 to 700, creating 120 land plots in both Neveh Netzarim and Bnei Netzarim, expanding the Shlomit temporary camp from about 30 families to 500, and preparing another 32 lots in Kadesh Barnea – a community established by the JNF. In addition, on Amatzya, a moshav near Lachish, the JNF is preparing to create 200 housing units for people evacuated from Gush Katif in 2005, and the organization will be erecting a new community for about 100 evacuee families near Nir Akiva, according to the organization. The JNF and its partners will also help develop tourist facilities in Tzukim, and will prepare the communities of Idan, Paran and Ein Yahav for further agricultural development.

“This is a plan that is expected to help change the face of the Negev, encouraging families to move from the center to the Negev, together with shaping the existing communities, which will lead to a transformation in the residential experience,” Stenzler said. “All this in cooperation with heads of councils who are doing a great job and who together are transforming the region into a center of attraction, and there is hope in [first prime minister David] Ben-Gurion’s vision of making the desert bloom.”

The organization stressed that it is continuing to advance agricultural infrastructure in the Central Arava region, and said it will be preparing 5,000 hectares of land for citrus cultivation, in addition to the 1,500 already prepared for that purpose.

As far as the Beduin portions of the Negev Desert go, the JNF emphasized that it is currently working on many projects involving this sector, such as the recently completed first stage of Nahal Gerar Park in Rahat, which amounted to a NIS 1 million investment.

Meanwhile, the organization is also in the process of establishing recreational infrastructure for Beduin communities, such as the Lahav Forest for residents of Beersheba, Lehavim, Lakiya and Rahat, as well as the Yatir Forest for residents of the southern Hebron hills, Hura and Kuseifa, according to the statement.

But advocates for the Beduin community fear that the JNF’s development efforts will only further destroy “entire villages,” as occurred with al- Arakib village in 2010, during a JNF forestation project.

“There is minimal investment in Beduin communities relative to the size of the population,” said Haia Noach, executive director of the Negev Coexistence Forum for Civil Equality.

“The JNF’s plan reveals that it is continuing to not only ignore the reality of the Negev’s diverse population but inflame the relationship between the Jewish and Beduin communities,” Noach said. “It is clear that the mission of the JNF is to Judaize the Negev at the expense of Israel’s Beduin citizens.”

Read More: http://www.jpost.com/Sci-Tech/Article.aspx?id=248124

The Myth of United Jerusalem, by Daniel Seidemann, in The Atlantic

2011-12-03T05:55:00.000-08:00

The Jewish attachment to Jerusalem is incontestable. For millennia, Jerusalem has been central to Jewish identity in the Diaspora; since the birth of the state of Israel, the importance of contemporary Jerusalem as Israel's capital has become part of the ethos shared by Israelis and Jews around the world. Jewish attachments to Jerusalem are embodied both in the religious and historic sites in and around the Old City and in the modern Israeli city that has been built beyond its ramparts in the past century.

But this genuine attachment to Jerusalem has given rise to policies that are increasingly unsustainable: settlement policies that aspire to place Jerusalem beyond the realm of political compromise and which embody an exclusionary vision of Jewish Jerusalem, ignoring the complexity of the city and its universal importance. Forty-four years after Israel took control over the entirety of Jerusalem, these policies are both a failure and at odds with Israel's own interests.

Since 1967, when Israel gained control of East Jerusalem and "united" it with West Jerusalem to create its self-proclaimed capital, Israel has tried to control the city's demography. It has accelerated Israeli development while implementing a planning and zoning regime that limits Palestinian construction to a bare minimum. It has also enacted policies that effectively bar Palestinian "immigration" into East Jerusalem while reducing the number of Palestinians counted as residents in the city. But these efforts to cap the Palestinian population in Jerusalem have failed. In 1967, Palestinians represented 25.5 percent of the city's population. Today they are 38 percent, and within decades they will be the majority.

Neither the Palestinians of East Jerusalem nor Israel have ever viewed Palestinian residents of the city as Israeli. Despite the attempts of problematic polls that purport to prove otherwise, Israelis and Palestinians have demonstrated by their actions over the past 43 years that neither endeavors nor aspires to share a political community. While Palestinians living in East Jerusalem have been formally given the right to seek Israeli citizenship (in contrast to the Palestinians that found themselves living inside Israel following Israel's 1948 War of Independence, who automatically became citizens of Israel), less than 5 percent of the population of close to 300,000 have availed themselves of this right. Thus, today almost 40 percent of the population of "united" Jerusalem does not vote in national or municipal elections. In truth, "united" Jerusalem remains a bi-national city.

Today, 44 years after Jerusalem's "unification," Israel still does not provide most normal services or even build sufficient classrooms in much of East Jerusalem. Legal proceedings are currently pending before the Israeli Supreme Court to compel Israel's Postal Authorities to deliver mail in East Jerusalem. This dysfunctional reality is not typically rooted in malice, but rather in the political cultures of Israelis and Palestinians: Israel displays little, if any, interest in genuinely incorporating the Palestinians into Israeli Jerusalem, while the Palestinians determinedly reject the legitimacy of Israeli governance over their lives. In short, Israeli rule in East Jerusalem is a fiction.

Israel's efforts to physically unify the city, mainly through building large Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem, have likewise failed. (These neighborhoods, by virtue of being located east of the 1967 lines, are viewed by the international community as settlements whose construction should cease and whose future will have to be determined by Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.) In Jerusalem, a border based on demography already largely exists today. The municipal boundary of Jerusalem, expanded by Israel in 1967 to extend far beyond those areas in which there are Jewish historical and religious attachments, include tens of Palestinian neighborhoods that most Israelis have never heard of. Few Israelis ever venture into areas in East Jerusalem beyond its Old City and Palestinians rarely visit the West. The two peoples lead separate lives, working and shopping in different areas and going to separate schools in which different curricula are taught.

This anomalous situation comes at a price - evident throughout East Jerusalem and increasingly in West Jerusalem, where fictitious rule and real-life neglect have created an impoverished, disgruntled, crime- and strife-ridden city. That cost is also evident in the fact that 44 years after Jerusalem's "unification," not a single country recognizes Jerusalem as Israel's capital or has its embassy there. No country, not even among Israel's staunchest allies, recognizes the legitimacy of Israel's annexation of East Jerusalem. Doggedly clinging to the mantra of "undivided Jerusalem" has not altered this reality; if anything, it has driven Israel into ever-increasing isolation.

Alongside these troubling realities is something even more worrisome: Israeli policies in Jerusalem are threatening the possibility of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israeli settlement activities in East Jerusalem will soon render the geography and demography of the city so balkanized that it will no longer be possible to create a viable Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem. This means the end of the two-state solution, since Palestinians will never agree to a solution that does not include a capital in East Jerusalem.

In addition, Israel is today permitting extremist settlers to seize properties in the heart of East Jerusalem based on the argument that these properties belonged to Jews before 1948. In effect, Israel is supporting a Jewish "right of return" to East Jerusalem. In doing so, Israel is not only laying the seeds for permanent and escalating conflict in these areas; it is also re-opening 1948-era grievances, fanning the flames of Palestinian demands for their own right of return to properties inside Israel, thereby further undermining the two-state solution.

Cumulatively, Israeli policies in East Jerusalem today threaten to transform the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from a bitter national conflict that can be resolved by means of territorial compromise, into the potential for a bloody, unsolvable religious war. This threat derives from Israel's dogged pursuit of the settlers' vision of an exclusionary Jewish Jerusalem -- displacing Palestinians in targeted areas, politicizing archeology, handing over of the most sensitive cultural, historical, and religious sites to extreme settler organizations, and promoting a narrative that East Jerusalem is exclusively or predominantly Jewish, while marginalizing the other national and religious equities in the city. In the process, Israel is alienating even its staunchest allies and thus undermining its own claims in the city. It is also putting itself on a collision course with the forces of moderation in the Muslim and Christian worlds, who sense, with reason, that their equities are being marginalized in Jerusalem. Jerusalem is fast becoming the arena where religious fundamentalists -- Jewish, Christian, and Muslim; domestic and international -- play out their apocalyptic fantasies.

The genuine Israeli and Jewish interests reside not in an exclusive Israeli hegemony over the city, but in universal recognition of Israeli Jerusalem as Israel's capital and of the deep Jewish attachments to the city. Likewise, arriving at an end-of-claims agreement with the Palestinians, something that cannot be done without a compromise on Jerusalem, is an existential Israeli imperative. And all of these can only be achieved by means of a political division of the city, a position that has been embraced by all those who have engaged seriously in permanent status negotiations, including two Israeli prime ministers.

The contours of such an agreement are clear: Jewish Jerusalem becomes the capital of Israel, Palestinian Jerusalem becomes the capital of Palestine, virtually all the Israeli settlement neighborhoods in East Jerusalem are incorporated into Israel as part of a land swap, and special arrangements are put in place in and around the Old City, guaranteeing access to and protection of its religious and holy sites. (For more on the possible contours of Jerusalem in a final-status agreement, see the Jerusalem chapter of "Is Peace Possible?" on The Atlantic.) Israel would gain far more than it would stand to lose in such an agreement.

Today, Israel must choose between two visions of Jerusalem. On the one hand, it can continue pursuing an exclusive, largely fictitious rule over an already divided, bi-national city -- exposing Israel to virtually universal censure and imperiling the two-state solution. On the other hand, it can pursue policies that can make Israeli Jerusalem, Yerushalayim, a thriving national capital, recognized by all, existing side-by-side with but politically divided from the Palestinian capital in Jerusalem, al Quds. To those who cherish Israel and understand what is truly at stake, the choice is clear.

Read More: http://m.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/11/the-myth-of-united-jerusalem/249239

This article is part of "Is Peace Possible?", a special report on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by The Atlantic and The S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace.

JNF delays eviction of Palestinian family from East Jerusalem home (Ha'aretz)

2011-11-26T22:30:00.000-08:00

Together, we stopped JNF from evicting a Palestinian family of 12 in East Jerusalem! Congrats to everyone who answered our call and sent the message to JNF leaders that American Jews and all who care about Israel won't sit idly by while JNF pushes Palestinians out so that Jewish settlers can take over their land and homes.

JNF had the chutzpah to deny their involvement after we launched this action together with Rabbis for Human Rights-North America and RHR in Israel, with Sheikh Jarrah Solidarity Movement bringing activists to the house. We showed JNF was behind this - thanks to the intrepid work of Hagit Ofran of Peace Now's Settlement Watch - and JNF stepped back from causing what would have become a major international incident. You made a difference!

By Nir Hasson, Ha'aretz

Eviction order initially issued requiring the 12 members of the Sumarin family to be out of the property by Sunday; Jewish National Fund has been trying to evict them since 1991.

At the last minute on Thursday night, the Jewish National Fund announced a delay in the eviction of 12 members of a Palestinian family from the house where they've been living in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan. An eviction order had initially been issued requiring the Sumarin family to be out of the property by Sunday.

Police and bailiff's office officials had already toured the house, preparing for the possibility that the family would have to be physically removed from the premises. A Jewish National Fund subsidiary, Himnuta, has been trying to get the family out of the house since 1991, saying it owns the premises having acquired it that same year. The house had previously been acquired by the Custodian of Absentee Properties, after original owner Musa Sumarin passed away in 1983 and his three heirs were all living abroad.

	The Sumarin family in their contested Silwan home earlier this month.
	Photo by: Michal Fattal

The JNF attempted to downplay its connection to the site, referring inquiries to Elad, a group that has been bringing Jews to live in East Jerusalem and obtaining leases for much of the property Himnuta acquired in Silwan.

Following an initial report on the matter ten days ago by Haaretz, the left-wing groups Rabbis for Human Rights and the Sheikh Jarrah Solidarity Movement launched a campaign against the JNF, including its American affiliate.

Following the campaign, the JNF announced that it was not a party to the eviction case, claiming that Elad had pursued the action without any connection to the Jewish National Fund.

Their announcement also took Rabbis for Human Rights to task for not checking the facts. The statement said the JNF had leased the property where the Sumarin family is living to Elad in the early 1990s, as a result of Elad's archaeological activities in the area. The JNF said it has no control or responsibility for what was done at the property and any issue is between the Sumarin family and Elad.

The legal documents in the eviction action, however, show that Himnuta, a wholly-owned JNF subsidiary, was the party that brought the current legal action.

The eviction action has been going on for 20 years, before four different courts, and in each case Himnuta was the plaintiff in the matter; Elad was never a legal party to the action. Himnuta is also pursuing two other eviction cases in the neighborhood. It should be noted, however, that the lawyers representing Himnuta represented Elad in other eviction actions in Silwan.

For its part, the JNF said the court ordered the Sumarin family to leave the premises in 2006 and family members have rebuffed efforts to seriously discuss a resolution of the case. Nonetheless, the JNF said, additional time would be granted to resolve the issue. Elad did not comment.

Facts show JNF behind eviction of Palestinian family in Silwan, East Jerusalem, despite denial, by Hagit Ofran

2011-11-24T23:18:00.000-08:00

Following the Rabbis for Human Rights’ action alert, calling on JNF not to evict the Sumarin Palestinian family in Silwan, JNF published a response basically claiming: “It’s Not Us! It’s the Settlers!” Meanwhile, the Jewish group Yachad in the UK published a similar call.

According to JNF’s response, “KKL-JNF leased the land to Elad in the early ‘90’s … KKL-JNF has no rights, control, or responsibility in this issue at all.” In fact, as the Eviction Order proves, all legal action against the Sumarin family has been taken by Himnuta (which is wholly owned by JNF). The Elad settlers were never mentioned in any of the lengthy legal proceedings against the Sumarin family. So even if Himnuta did lease the property to Elad in the 90′s, the eviction process is being done in Himnuta’s name.

The Announcement of Eviction that the family received from October 2, 2011, ordering the eviction of the Sumarin family, explicitly states that the eviction is "for the benefit of Himnuta, located in the KKL-JNF building in Jerusalem:"

For the full document click here

Worse still, if JNF honestly believes that nothing has been done in their name, they have in effect decided to let the settlers use their name and given up all responsibility for the public they represent. What would JNF say about all the other properties they gave to the settlers in Silwan: that they didn’t know?

There are other families in Silwan that are still under threat of eviction by Himnuta, fighting in courts against the well-funded lawyers working in JNF’s name. JNF can no longer say “we didn’t know.” JNF must take action and withdraw any legal action to evict Palestinians from their homes. I call on the JNF: Don’t let the settlers use your name against families to create facts on the ground that are morally wrong and could be politically disastrous for Israel.

Tell JNF not to evict Palestinians from East Jerusalem

Hagit Ofran, Peace Now, Settlement Watch: Eyes on the Ground in East Jerusalem

Israeli desert plan would uproot 30,000 Bedouin, by Allyn Fisher-Ilan, in Reuters

2011-11-24T16:04:00.000-08:00

(Reuters) - Bulldozed by Israel more than two dozen times, a village known by Bedouin Arabs as Al-Arakib is one of many ramshackle desert communities whose names have never appeared on any official map.

If Israel's parliament adopts proposed new legislation, it never will.

The plan to demolish more Bedouin homes in the southern Negev region and move 30,000 people to government-authorized villages connected to power and water lines has been hailed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a "historic opportunity" to improve Bedouin lives.

But Israeli Arab leaders, who have long complained about discrimination against their community in the Jewish state, call it "ethnic cleansing," and aim to thwart the project with protests, a general strike and appeals to the United Nations to intervene.

"I will never leave here, I intend to stay until I die," said Abu-Madyam, 46, a farmer from al-Arakib.

He and his family of nine live in a makeshift plastic-sided shack in a cemetery near the ruins of their wooden home, razed by Israeli authorities last year.

The project is the most ambitious attempt in decades by the government to resettle Negev Bedouin and free up land in the largely open spaces of southern Israel for development and construction of military bases to replace facilities in the crowded center of the country.

Some Israelis argue the Bedouin have grown too dominant in the Negev, a geographic area wedged between Hamas Islamist-ruled Gaza and the occupied West Bank where Palestinians want a state, and that they pose a possible security risk.

The area being restructured also abuts Israel's largest Negev city of Beersheba and is near several military bases.

For decades, Israeli governments have tried to attract Jewish Israelis to move to the Negev, offering mortgage and tax breaks, but the region has fewer opportunities for employment than in the heavily populated center of the country.

Only 20 percent of Israel's Jewish population lives in the Negev, which covers more than 60 percent of the nation's land area. Bedouin villages take up two percent of Negev land.

This month, Netanyahu sat down with Bedouin mayors at his office to urge them to accept the plan, which could take at least five years to implement at a cost of more than 1 billion shekels ($300 million) once legislation due to be introduced shortly becomes law.

"Our state is leaping toward 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," Netanyahu told the Bedouin officials.

Arabs make up about 20 percent of Israel's population of seven million, 200,000 of them Bedouin citizens.

Most of Israel's Bedouin, who predominate in the desert area that accounts for two-thirds of its territory, are descendants of nomadic tribes that had wandered across the Middle East from Biblical times.

Half of the Bedouin live in towns and villages recognized as formal communities by the government. Others live rough, in tents and shacks on patches of desert.

"If everyone sat exactly where they felt their place was, then it wouldn't be possible to develop anything," said Yisrael Scop, a senior official at the Israel Lands Authority, which would bear responsibility for carrying out the Negev plan.

NEW VILLAGES

Some new villages will be built for displaced Bedouin, Scop told Reuters in an interview. He said about 60,000 acres would be affected, with 30,000 Bedouin called upon to abandon their homes in return for monetary compensation.

Another 2,000 Bedouin who have claims against Israel for past relocation would have their cases settled under the new project.

"We cannot have such a large population living in unorganized settlement," Scop said.

Bedouin leaders in the Negev say Israel has long discriminated against their communities, denying them public funds and services, in a bid to make their inhabitants leave.

Many of them were built, the officials said, because Israel had failed in the past to offer other housing options.

In a 2008 report on Israel's policy toward Bedouin in the Negev, Human Rights Watch said the government "appears intent on maximizing its control over Negev land and increasing the Jewish population in the area for strategic, economic and demographic reasons."

"The state implements forced evictions, home demolitions and other punitive measures disproportionately against Bedouin as compared with actions taken regarding structures owned by Jewish Israelis that do not conform to planning law," the New York-based group said.

Khalil Alamour, a 42-year-old schoolteacher, plans to head to Geneva this month to a meeting of a U.N. Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights as part of a delegation to protest against the resettlement project.

His village of Al-Sira, home to 500 Bedouin, has long been tagged by Israel for demolition. It is located near an airbase.

"I always thought we could be a bridge to peace but this has not happened because we don't feel involved," Alamour said about the Bedouin, some of whom serve as volunteers in Israel's military. Unlike Jewish men and women in Israel, members of its Arab minority are exempt from conscription at the age of 18.

Alamour called the Negev plan "a second Nakba," the Arabic word for "catastrophe" that Palestinians use to describe the displacement of hundreds of thousands of them in fighting over Israel's establishment in 1948.

"We've been around for so many years, yet they treat us as little more than numbers on a map. It's shameful," he said.

Like most unauthorized Bedouin villages, Al-Sira is not hooked up to Israel's electricity grid. Alamour and his neighbors have installed their own solar panels to generate electricity, supplementing the supply with power generators.

They have run their own pipes to hook up with a regional grid to provide running water for their homes.

In the ruins of al-Arakib, Abu-Madyam vowed to hang on to land which he said was once covered by lush grapevines and bought by his grandparents more than a century ago.

"I will seek justice until my last day. I don't have any objections to Jews living here, too, but why must I give up my own rights?" he said.

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

2011-11-23T02:54:00.000-08:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How has Israeli law been used to unfairly expropriate homes and land from Palestinians in East Jerusalem?

2011-11-22T07:33:00.000-08:00

Tell JNF CEO Russell Robinson: End JNF’s role in expulsions or demolitions of Palestinian and Bedouin homes, whether in the Negev or East Jerusalem.

Twenty years ago, an ultra-nationalist Israeli government bent on expanding Jewish control in East Jerusalem took legal possession of the Sumarin home under what is known as the Absentee Property Law. The owner of the house, Musa Sumarin, passed away in 1983. At the time of his death, all three of his sons, declared by the government to be his heirs to the property, were out of the country. Even though other members of the Sumarin family continued to live there, the State declared that the home should be considered Absentee Property, and turned it over to the Custodian for Absentee Properties.

The government then transferred the Sumarin home to JNF subsidiary Himnuta, along with seven other properties in Silwan, in exchange for other lands located in Wadi Ara. Himnuta, in turn, transferred many of the other properties to ELAD, which has been criticized as an extremist settler organization because of its aggressive role in expropriating Palestinian homes and land in Silwan and transferring them to the control of Jewish settlers. Himnuta then entered into a legal struggle to force the Sumarin family from their home in Silwan.

The Absentee Property Law had not been applied to houses that were inhabited by Palestinians in East Jerusalem until the 1980s, when settler groups, in cooperation with Israel’s Housing Ministry, then under Ariel Sharon, started to use the law to take control of Palestinian homes and lands in Silwan.

An investigative committee convened by the government of Yitzhak Rabin in 1992 (the Klugman Committee) found that the takeover of Arab property in East Jerusalem was conducted through the use of false affidavits, misapplication of the Absentee Property Law, and the transfer of public property and millions of shekels in public funds to private settler organizations.

In 2005, Himnuta filed suit to evict the Sumarin family. The court ordered the family to evacuate their home and to pay Himnuta damages of NIS 2 million. About two months ago Himnuta obtained an eviction order for November 28, 2011.

Attorney and expert on Jerusalem Danny Seidemann has written us privately as follows:

“Virtually all of the JNF/Himnuta lands in the Wadi Hilweh section of Silwan – almost 1/3 of the total area - have been handed over covertly to the settler organization ELAD. On May 5, 1998, senior JNF/Himnuta official Avraham Halleli testified before the Jerusalem District Court:

'To the best of my knowledge, all of the JNF areas [in Silwan] were leased by the ILA to the ELAD Association…it is the lands policy of JNF… that [its lands] be leased to Jews for the purposes of Jewish settlement in the Land of Israel.'”

What is Himnuta?

JNF established Himnuta in the 1930s, mainly to circumvent legal restrictions on its own land dealings. Under Israeli law, Israel’s Development Authority and the Israel Land Administration are required to administer their assets without discrimination based on nationality. Himnuta was registered under Jordanian law in Ramallah in 1971 so that it could lawfully operate and buy land in the occupied territories, which JNF says it does not do.

“JNF and Himnuta operate according to a JNF memo that provides that its assets be leased or transferred to the possession of Jews only.” (Hagit Ofran, “The Eviction of One Palestinian Family Might Cause the Next Political Crisis Over East Jerusalem,” HuffPost World, Nov. 17, 2011.) “In order to bypass the requirement of equality, the authorities in the early 1990’s used the JNF and Himnuta to transfer property in Silwan [in East Jerusalem] to Jewish settlers.

Himnuta’s offices are located in the JNF’s Jerusalem headquarters. JNF owns 100% of Himnuta’s 30,000,000 company shares. The head of Himnuta, David Lazarus, also serves as KKL-JNF’s CFO.

What is the Absentee Property Law?

The Absentee Property Law is used by Israel to take over land belonging to Israeli Arabs or Palestinians. If an owner is not physically present, the land can be given to the Custodian. The Custodian almost always either transfers the property to Jewish ownership or allows the State to use it for Jewish needs. In violation of the Jewish principle prohibiting acting "eifah v'eifah (acting according to double standards), this law is not used to take over Jewish owned property, and the Custodian would never allow the land to be used by non-Jews.

The use of the Absentee Property Law in East Jerusalem, while technically within the government’s “legal” purview, is highly controversial. Following Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem in 1967, according to Ir Amim, “then-Attorney General Meir Shamgar issued an opinion that there was no justification to apply the Absentee Property Law to East Jerusalem.”

Go here to see how the Israeli government has used the law to confiscate land from Bedouin in the Negev and Palestinians in the West Bank.

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

2011-11-16T03:10:00.000-08:00

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

West Bank Settlement Is Outdoing Its Neighboring Bedouin Village, by Ilana Hammerman, in Haaretz

2011-11-15T03:05:00.000-08:00

Dozens of people in Umm al-Khayr live in grinding poverty, next to a few hundred people to whom Israel has generously supplied, in the heart of the desert, the amenities for leading a comfortable modern life.

"And there was a man in Maon, whose possessions were in Carmel; and the man was very great, and he had three thousand sheep, and a thousand goats; and he was shearing his sheep in Carmel. Now the name of the man was Nabal; and the name of his wife Abigail; and the woman was of good understanding, and of a beautiful form; but the man was churlish and evil in his doings ... " - 1 Samuel 25:2-3

A tall girl emerged from the doorway of the large one-story house and stood on the tiled space in front. Though palm trees and verdant bushes were all around, there was no shade and the girl stood under the broiling sun. Her clothes divided her lean figure into two: a dark blue blouse with a closed collar and long sleeves; this contrasted with the flaring white skirt that reached halfway down her shins. On her feet were rubber flip-flops. Apart from the skirt, everything about her was dark, including her long brown hair loosely gathered at the back, olive skin and large eyes. She reminded me of one of the girls I had seen in the morning in the village on the other side of the fence. We stared at each other.

"How old are you?" I asked her. "I will be 7 on the 23rd of Tamuz," she replied, lifting one shoulder and tilting her pretty oval head toward it, while charmingly arching her back. "You're cute," I told her. She was silent.

I knew I should explain to her my sudden appearance next to her house - a strange woman in this small settlement where everyone surely knows everyone else. "I'm just on an outing here," I said embarrassedly. "I wanted to see your place. I'm from Jerusalem."

She said nothing. "Do you live here?" I asked. "Yes," she replied. "And what's it like, do you feel good here?" Another stupid question. She gave me a quizzical look and said nothing. "Where do you go to school?" I asked her, trying to find a thread that would connect us across the garden and yard between us. "In Susya," she said - the neighboring settlement. Her reply reminded me where I was and snapped me out of the vacant state of mind I had fallen into after the electric gate of the settlement of Carmel, the little girl's home, let me in a little while before. "Shalom," I said, then went back to the car and hightailed it out of there, first along the access road leading from the house, then onto the street and out of the settlement.

I didn't know anyone yet in Carmel, a gated community south of Hebron in the West Bank. I had entered alone, and after driving once and then twice through its three streets, or maybe four or five, I lapsed into a kind of reverie brought on by my increasingly surrealistic surroundings. No living creature - neither man, woman, nor child, neither dog nor even a stray cat - could be seen on the clean, tidy streets and tiled sidewalks that curve into convenient parking bays. The garbage bins, too, stand implacably in their appointed places, and on both sides are handsome homes with red-tile roofs, most of them nestling amid lush green lawns, trees and bushes.

The streets end at a no-man's-land that circles the settlement, demarcated by a barbed-wire fence. On the other, eastern side of one section of the fence, and almost abutting it, are large tents, tin shacks, lean-tos and makeshift goat pens. Between them, walking or running, were boys, girls, women and teenagers. They are from the Hadaleen Bedouin tribe, next to whose meager dwellings Carmel was established some 30 years ago.

Since then the settlement has taken root and grown. It is now expanding again and continuing to usurp the land of its neighbors, who lived at the site decades before the settlers arrived. Amid the desert vastness, the settlers craved precisely this piece of land. The charming little girl I encountered that day was born and raised there, and my faltering conversation with her next to her house - from which neither tin shacks nor tents are visible - hurtled me back to reality.

Right next to the stately country homes - complete with air-conditioning, drip-irrigation gardens and goldfish ponds - a few extended families including old men, old women and infants live in dwellings made of tin, cloth and plastic siding, though there are a few cinder-block structures, too. They tread on broken, barren ground. They have no running water. They are not connected to the power grid that lights up every settlement and outpost in this remote region. They have no access road.

To get to them, take the asphalt road leading to Carmel's large chicken coops that abut the Bedouin site on the north, and turn off amid the rocks and potholes. Then drive until you see them, "the two clusters of Bedouin," as they are described in an official Defense Ministry document (see box ). Dozens of people live here in grinding poverty, next to a few hundred people to whom Israel has generously supplied, in the heart of the desert, the amenities for leading a comfortable modern life.

Why were they connected in this way - that is, the settlers to the Bedouin? Are there no other places in these expanses for settlement? There is only one reason: They want the Bedouin to leave. They, the settlers. They, the State of Israel. They, us, the people of the State of Israel, all of us. Because the settlers are not alone: Behind them are the powerful, sophisticated forces of a whole country, our country, propelled by its army, laws and all the mechanisms of government that make the Bedouin's lives so unbearable that they will finally get out.

Demolition order for a stove

The families in the Bedouin hamlet of Umm al-Khayr came here more than 60 years ago after Israel expelled them from the Arad Rift to Jordan. After wandering about, they settled in this arid desert region known as the South Hebron Hills. They acquired the land from residents of the nearby town of Yata in return for camels or money - each family and its story, each family and the legal papers it has or doesn't have.

People have lived here like this for generations, and no government authority was ever strict with them about ownership. In any case, no one disputes the fact that they were here, in their desert home, when Israel reached them for the second time, after the war in 1967. Still, the state and its citizens didn't crave their land immediately.

The Bedouin went on living as before for 14 more years until in 1981, when, after decisions by officials, committees and ministers, Carmel arose next to them. As the settlement developed and expanded, so too did its hold on land where the Bedouin lived or grazed their sheep and goats. With the settlers came the infrastructure for electricity, water and sewage, reaching the fence. A few years later, military orders began to rain down on the other side of the fence.

Almost every structure here, even the small lavatories built recently, has a stop-work or demolition order hanging over it. All the orders are based on Article 38 of the Towns, Villages and Buildings Planning Law, which states: "If the local committee or the district planning committee discovers that the construction of any land [sic] or the construction of a building is being executed without a permit or contrary to what a permit stipulates or contrary to valid regulations, orders and directives, or contrary to any approved planning and/or construction project, the relevant committee or its chairman, or any official authorized to act in its name, shall issue an operative warning against the owner, the contractor, the possessor and the foreman .... In particular, the warning shall contain a demand to remove, demolish or change the building or work or to desist from using the said land and to desist from further construction activity."

In short, all the violations that the law - promulgated by a state that considers itself law-abiding, a properly administered state in a region of backward countries and despotic regimes - sought to terminate via demolitions, changes and stop-work orders were apparently perpetrated by the Bedouin. From tent to urinal, from lean-to to wood-burning outdoor stove, everything here was built illegally, without planning and contrary to regulations, orders and directives. Accordingly, the owners and/or holders of these "assets" received detailed orders citing section and plot numbers - even in this forlorn area there are lawfully measured parcels of land - along with type and size of structure.

One such order, for example, refers to "a tent made of iron poles with a cloth roof and a tent made of iron poles with a total area of 70 square meters." Another order challenges the legality of a lavatory - "a tin structure of two square meters" - and of two small tents "with an area of 12 square meters and six square meters." A third, incredibly, takes issue with "a structure made of stone that serves as a tabun," a wood-burning outdoor stove.

That last injunction, issued a year ago, was a stop-work order. But the tabun had been built many years earlier and had been in constant use by a family living nearby. So what did the order mean? According to the stove's owner, it was the family's bad luck that the baking aroma, which is sometimes carried by the wind, irritated the noses of the residents of the new neighborhood in Carmel.

So the settlers took a series of measures. First they threatened their neighbors and made demands, then they broke the structure's clay vessels, then they turned to the state. The state acceded and issued an order from "the Civil Administration for the Judea and Samaria region, Supreme Planning Council, subcommittee for supervision." In other words, a standard order representing a whole hierarchy of authorities that the state has ostensibly made responsible for maintaining law and order in the occupied territories. But these authorities, like the laws themselves, are designed to serve the material and ideological interests of a certain segment of the population who are the authorities' agents and who, for more than four decades, have been implementing every government's annexationist policies in the West Bank. In Umm al-Khayr the tabun and most structures are still standing because they are the subjects of legal proceedings - lengthy, expensive and absurd - that have been going on for years. But every so often the orders are carried out. The last time was two months ago, on the morning of September 8. People from the Civil Administration arrived at Umm al-Khayr with a bulldozer, and soldiers demolished three of the structures previously mentioned: the lavatory, a tent and a tin shack that was home to a family of 10. The wreckers told the villagers they would be back soon for another round of destruction.

Some structures have been demolished once, twice or three times and then rebuilt. The inhabitants refuse to leave. The settlers, acting as if the Bedouin aren't there, continue to create facts on the ground. And it's all sanctioned by law - the state has allotted the settlers large tracts, marked by blue lines on the maps as the regulations require, and the state and its army help the settlers entrench their grip on the land.

So the Bedouin are brutally victimized. Their homes are demolished, the concrete sides of their water cistern are cracked, their fence around a meager plot they are working despite the drought is ripped out, and their shepherds are driven off. Some of these acts are perpetrated by the authorities and the army, some by the settlers. Everything is done openly and is documented on film, though few eyes seek to view the results.

Closed military area

At the settlement of Carmel, why is it that on one side of the fence, roads, homes and public institutions have been built and gardens planted, while on the other side even a stone stove and tin-hut lavatory are fated to be destroyed? Is everything built on one side legal and everything built on the other side illegal? In a word, yes. Precisely for this reason, during Israel's rule in the West Bank, an array of judicial, legislative and planning tools have been perfected: to legalize - in advance or retroactively - Israel's civilian takeover of 43 percent of the West Bank. No less, maybe more.

Carmel is just one example, a good one. First the land was grabbed in a "military seizure" order; then, in January 1981, a Nahal paramilitary outpost was set up there. Then the outpost was "civilianized." The land itself had already been "civilianized" earlier. At the end of 1979, assessors and surveyors assigned the area a new status - "state land" - which, in total contradiction to the international law that applies to occupied territories, koshered Israeli civilian settlement in an area in which the army is sovereign. Most settlements in the West Bank then received the same validation.

The areas designated as state land are made available only to Jews, and they are distributed generously. The land controlled by the settlements extends far beyond their built-up areas and is many times the size of the settlement itself. In Carmel, for example, the built-up area constitutes only one-eighth of the land allotted to the settlement. This "jurisdiction area" has long, grasping tentacles - as can be seen in Civil Administration data - all of it classified in a special order as a "closed military zone."

Closed to civilians? No. Like all Israeli settlements in the West Bank, it's open to every Israeli, civilian or soldier, and to whoever "is eligible to immigrate to Israel under the provisions of the Law of Return or possesses a valid entry visa to Israel." It's closed to all other human beings. Above all, it's closed to the Bedouin of Umm al-Khayr, who are not Israelis and are not eligible to immigrate under the Law of Return and don't have an entry visa to the Jewish state. So these people, who have lived here all their lives, are having more and more problems residing in their dwellings - which are designated for demolition. And they're also having problems grazing their sheep, their main source of livelihood. The last time I visited the village I saw a herd of goats returning in the heat of day from pasture. I watched them from afar as they took a very long, twisting path. The shorter route passed the spot where I was standing, but here, in the middle of nowhere, there is a standard, albeit tilting, road sign that states: "No entry." To whom is the sign conveying this information in this wasteland? Someone who must have wondered the same thing pasted the picture of a goat on the sign. In other words, from this point on there is no passage for herders and their animals.

Yes, this empty zone, a long way from Carmel's latest new homes, is in the settlement's area of jurisdiction. This year, on Tu Bishvat (Jewish Arbor Day ), the settlers planted a few trees and set out wooden tables and benches for anyone who wished to relax here, precisely here. The result is that the shepherds and goatherds must take another wider bypass in addition to the bypasses the built-up area and fence already impose on them.

It's here that the main violent confrontations have been taking place. Because there is no fence in this zone, the settlers and army show the Bedouin their limits by shouting, pushing and kicking. These actions can be seen in visits to the area or in photos and videos on the Internet.

An idyllic situation, at first

I returned to Carmel a week later - this time, at my request, as an invited guest. My host, Ron Tzurel, received me with genuine cordiality. He has lived in the settlement from its inception and in 1979 worked for a short time with the surveyors who delineated the "state land" where his home was later built. His house is one of the closest to the fence and thus to the Bedouin's tents and tin shacks. Their desolate soil abuts his garden and he is friendly with a few of them, speaks their language and helps them out occasionally. He says he is grieved by their plight and wants to see their conditions improved.

In the beginning the situation was idyllic, Tzurel told me. The Bedouin worked in the settlement and earned a decent wage; the settlers even hooked them up to their water system. But long ago something bad happened. A Bedouin man named Ibrahim was arrested on suspicion of doing something prohibited. He never returned to his family in Umm al-Khayr, and to this day Tzurel doesn't know what Ibrahim allegedly did. In any event, the water supply to the Bedouin was cut off and that was the end of the neighborly relations.

Now, years later, all we hear - and see - from the Bedouin across the fence are complaints about harassment by the army and settlers. But Tzurel is a believing Jew and the return of the Jewish people to their land is for him an auspicious development, a great and joyful event. So it's inconceivable, he says, that it should entail injustice - there is room here for both Carmel's residents and the Bedouin.

Indeed, from his big living-room door that opens onto the garden, the desert's endless vistas are visible beyond the Bedouin's nearby hovels. He didn't ask why the Bedouin don't move there and I didn't ask him why he had come to this particular place. I did ask him about the settlement's new neighborhood, which is also visible from his house and which is causing the Bedouin further problems. He replied by citing a fact about which there's no doubt: The neighborhood was built legally, within Carmel's area of jurisdiction.

Tzurel is both a law-abiding man and a visionary; the two traits sit very well together here, from his viewpoint and to his satisfaction. The state gave the settlement this land and it must be settled with as many Jews as possible. That's the great vision, the dream that is coming true. And it's coming true here on both sides of the Green Line, which is unmarked and unknown in this part of the country.

My affable host showed me this clearly when he drove me in his pickup to see the area's agricultural wonders, from the cowshed run jointly by the settlements of Carmel and Ma'on, to the crops grown jointly by the settlements of Carmel, Ma'on and Beit Yatir. The cowshed is to the north of the vanished Green Line, atop a hill between Ma'on and Carmel; the fields stretch out to the south of the line in the Arad Rift.

The settlers have developed a model farm on both sides of the irrelevant line. The cowshed - clean, spacious and state-of-the-art - produces millions of liters of milk a year. Using an innovative method that treats the cows' solid and liquid wastes, it also produces high-quality compost to be used as fertilizer. The milk is marketed by Israel's giant Tnuva cooperative. The compost is used mainly to fertilize the fields of the three settlements in the Arad Rift. The fields are worked magnificently and are saturation-irrigated with water from purified ponds, originating in the liquid sewage of the nearby city of Arad.

Tzurel showed me all this during the long tour he gave me. He was proud but not arrogant. He's a dyed-in-the-wool farmer and highly knowledgeable, and his explanations were clear and interesting. In the Arad Rift he also pointed out the Bedouin tent encampments scattered at the fields' edges. With his accustomed sincerity he told me that the fields had been given to him and his colleagues in the Nahal group back at the end of the 1970s, to place these areas in Jewish hands and prevent the Bedouin from taking them over. They were then also given the land on the other side of the Green Line, because that's where they chose to settle, where they believe to be the site of the biblical settlement of Carmel. They chose to build their homes in the conquered territories, which they believe were given to the Jewish people, together with the whole land.

The result, as I could clearly see, is that they now have a hold, to their hearts' and spirits' content, on both sides of the Green Line. As for the deceptive, abstract line, it has been erased, it no longer exists - not only in their view but in the situation on the ground.

The dairy products and the fruit of the land are marketed by Israeli companies, and no boycott can separate them from the rest of the fruit of the land, while the Bedouin are being evicted. It's all part of one policy, consistent and systematic. One state rules here in full and its ways have not changed over the years. They are constantly fine-tuned and have long since made a laughingstock of the "peace process" and its stages, from Oslo to the various road maps.

On that day, in the company of Ron Tzurel, I felt defeated, but above all, I was forced to open my eyes. What you see in the land of the settlers, you don't have to see from Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. And even if you know what's there it's easy and convenient to ignore it. That was the main lesson I learned that day.

The second lesson is much harder to articulate. It came to me gradually, without coming fully into focus, when, after the tour, we chatted in Tzurel's living room. We listened to each other politely and patiently. Ron and two of his daughters, who at some point hesitatingly joined us, tried to persuade me in pleasant tones that, contrary to my hard-and-fast opinion, no gulf separates us. They are good, decent folk and advocate the same humane values as I do.

They are not racists, they are not Arab haters, and most of all, they are not extremists or zealots. This they took pains to emphasize. It's clear that they're genuinely sorry that I and many other Israelis refuse to see this and instead denounce and shun them.

I told them about the injustice against civilians in the West Bank that I have witnessed and documented for many years. They listened. Occasionally it seemed that Tzurel even grimaced with sorrow. In any event, they didn't justify those actions and didn't dispute what I said. They said something else: They simply don't know about all that. Nor does it especially interest them, Tzurel admitted. In this they are like most Israelis, he said, echoing something I had said a moment earlier. I had said that most Israelis don't know and don't want to know about these things. Well, they too are Israelis, so why do I think that the settlers are different from most Israelis? They too don't know and don't really want to know.

And I, who all this time could see from the corner of my eye the barbed-wire fence, the tents and the tin shacks on the other side, and also did not forget the military orders, the settlers and the soldiers who kick the goats and chase away the goatherds - I did not find the words to answer him on this. Because I couldn't see evil and wickedness in him, in this polite person sitting across from me at the family dining table and looking at me with his smiling, honest eyes. Suddenly I wasn't so sure I had a moral advantage over him: From my home in West Jerusalem I can't see what's happening in Silwan, Sheikh Jarrah, Ras al-Amud and Qalandiyah - an urban version of the things happening in the South Hebron Hills.

Like him, I too am responsible for the illegal laws of the state whose legislative and executive branches were elected by a majority of the members of my nation. The fact that he supports them and benefits from them directly, whereas I benefit indirectly, is not enough to create a moral buffer between us. He is not one of the shooters, kickers and rampagers under the army's protection, and he denounces them too.

True, those people are members of his settlement, but by the same token the dispossessors and harassers in the neighborhoods annexed to Jerusalem are residents of my city. And the Jews who turned the center of Hebron into a desolate ghost town, strewn with fences and roadblocks and filled with soldiers, bases and guard positions, are members of my nation and his nation. They're citizens of my country and his country.

So are the inhabitants of the settlements of Yitzhar and Har Bracha, outside Nablus, for whom infrastructure was built and roads paved on "state land" by the decision of an elected Israeli government "to expand settlement in Judea, Samaria, the Jordan Rift Valley, the Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights by increasing the population of the existing communities and by establishing additional communities on state-owned land."

All according to the law, in a law-abiding state.

Carmel

Source of name: Biblical

Type of settlement and organizational affiliation: Cooperative moshav, Amana (the settlement arm of the Gush Emunim movement)

Population: 417

District: Hebron

Municipal affiliation: Hebron Hills

Local government decisions:
1. September 14, 1980 − approval to establish the settlement
2. July 5, 1981 − approval for a civilian settlement
Date of establishment: As a Nahal outpost, January 1981; civilian status, May 1981
Land status: State domain lands, previously under military seizure order ‏(issued jointly with the Ma’on outpost‏)

Nearby outposts: None

Execution of valid detailed plans:
Plan No. 507 allows for construction of 81 residential units. Many structures do not conform to authorized plan ‏(residential structures in a green area and trailer homes in industrial zone‏). There are also 15 lots.
Builder: Housing and Construction Ministry, Rural Construction Directorate, Amana

Note:
1. There are five chicken coops and agricultural structures northeast of the settlement. They are not classified as irregular because they are agricultural structures consistent with provisions of Mandatory plan that applies to this area.
2. There are two clusters of Bedouin east of the settlement.

Source: Database compiled by Brig. Gen. ‏(res.‏) Baruch Spiegel

Bedouin Oppose Israeli Plans to Relocate Communities, by Yolande Knell, in BBC News

2011-11-11T16:31:00.000-08:00

Bedouin in the occupied West Bank and in Israel's Negev desert say they fear for their future as new reports circulate that the Israeli authorities plan to relocate them. International aid and Bedouin groups say tens of thousands of people could ultimately be affected.

Bedouin to the east of Jerusalem expect attempts will soon be made to move them against their will. They live in an area that is controlled by Israel's Civil Administration, part of the Defence Ministry that governs the West Bank.

"Nobody can stop them. This is their project and they will implement it no matter what," says Ghadara Jahalin, who squats on a rug surrounded by her grandchildren in a camp made up of tents and metal shacks.

"They will push us to somewhere where we won't be able to survive".

The small community already endures harsh conditions in the desert. They have no running water or access to the electrical grid.

On the other side of the busy road leading to Jericho, Israel's largest settlement, Maale Adumim, fills the horizon.

The family moved here after they were forced away from Tel Arad in the northern Negev, more than 60 years ago, soon after the creation of Israel.

Now there are plans to relocate them to allow for expansion of the nearby settlement bloc. The Israeli authorities say this will also give them better access to resources and services.

Recently the Civil Administration declared its intention to move some 20 Bedouin communities, a total of about 2,300 people, most of them refugees.

Reports said the Bedouin would be taken to a new permanent location by al-Azariya, close to a rubbish dump. Dozens of members of the Jahalin tribe were relocated there in the 1990s due to early construction at Maale Adumim but complain of lack of access to grazing land and health problems.

The local UN agency, OCHA, says such a move would contravene international humanitarian law and "further endanger the Bedouin's way of life".

However the Civil Administration spokesman suggested the plans were not final. He said work had gone on for months "to find a solution for the relocation dilemma of the Jahalin tribe who are illegally located without the required permit".

"Talks are being conducted with the heads of the Jahalin tribe to find a solution that would suit them," he added.

Demolitions and harassment

The Israeli authorities ban most new construction by Bedouin in the West Bank zone they control.

Since the beginning of this year there have been increased demolitions of homes. UN data shows more than a hundred Bedouin structures have been demolished. Settler harassment is also a growing problem.

In Khan al-Ahmar, many homes are under demolition order, as is the primary school, set up with the help of an Italian charity two years ago. It was built out of rubber tyres covered in mud and concrete. Dozens of children attend classes there.

"All basic international laws support education. Today you must have it. It's as important as water and oxygen," says Eid Jahalin, the father of two pupils.

"The status of the school is like an intensive care patient: we don't know if it will make it or not," he goes on. "We are facing many lawsuits."

It is estimated that about 27,000 Bedouin living in the West Bank.

They mostly live in areas that Israel declared as state land or on private land leased from Palestinians. Some have deeds showing they bought territory when Jordan was in control of the area between 1948 and 1967.

Many of the nomadic communities settled there after leaving their ancestral land in the Negev desert. The Bedouin that remained became Israeli citizens but still have a tense relationship with the state.

'Unrecognised' villages

In September, the Israeli cabinet approved a plan that would see over 30,000 Bedouins moved from Negev villages which it views as "unrecognised", to land adjacent to existing urban centres. These are villages that often predate the State of Israel, are not officially recognised and therefore denied state support or services.

"A decision must be made for the country and for the development of the Negev and its residents, Jews and Bedouin alike," said the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.

Legislation is soon expected to go before parliament after a three-month consultation period.

Arab advocacy groups argue this reverses the usual planning process and that Negev Bedouin will never agree to relocate two-thirds of their population in "cramped towns" where they cannot pursue their traditional agricultural lifestyles.

They say they seek rights to land that amounts to just 2% of the Negev.

"We think the Prawer plan [named after Ehud Prawer, an Israeli official who led a team to resolve the issue of unrecognised villages] is bad for the Bedouin and Jews because it will upset Arab-Jewish relations," says Thabet Abu Ras of Adalah, the legal centre for Arab minority rights in Israel.

He sees it is an act of discrimination against the Arab-Israeli community who he says are looked at as "a demographic and security threat".

"They think they can push Arabs from the border, reduce the population and make room to establish more Jewish communities," he says.

"Jewish citizens who live in the Naqab [Negev] are free to live in cities, a kibbutz, even their own farm. Why is this not the right of all citizens?"

Large protests have already taken place and more are planned.

Bedouin Citizens of Israel Are Campaigning for Their Rights, in The Economist

2011-11-07T12:50:00.000-08:00

THE Bedouin of Israel are not a happy lot. Once nomadic lords, Binyamin Netanyahu’s government plans to pen tens of thousands of them into cities. This may be Israel’s biggest removal of Arabs from the land since the 1948 war.In the Israeli-occupied West Bank, soldiers knock down their shacks with abandon. Plans are afoot to transfer some 2,000 to the edge of a rubbish dump to make way for more Jewish settlers east of Jerusalem. To cap it all, religious Jews recently torched a mosque in Tuba, a Bedouin town in the north-east of Israel.

Traditionally split into often feuding clans, the nomads have been easy for Israel to divide, conquer, shift and, at least in the Israeli state’s early days, expel. Whole tribes of Bedouin once roamed from Libya to Iraq. But concrete walls and a regime of permits have splintered them, reducing contact, commerce and marriage between Israel’s 200,000 Bedouin, the West Bank’s 40,000 and millions beyond, in Gaza, Jordan, Sinai and the Arabian peninsular.

Forced first into narrow enclaves and then into towns, they have generally downsized from camels to goats. Many have abandoned their herds entirely. The West Bank’s last surviving herders are hemmed in by Israeli military bases, by-pass roads and Jewish settlements. Israeli soldiers confiscate flocks that stray. The settlers see them as trespassers and bar access to springs.

Life in Israel proper is little better. Nearly half the Negev’s Bedouin live in villages often predating the state but officially unrecognised and so denied state support. There are no paved roads, public transport, electricity or water. Alongside Wadi Naam, a dusty Bedouin camp of 4,000 people, a toxic waste plant puffs away.

The Bedouin once hoped to integrate. Unlike most Israeli Arabs, bar the Druze, some volunteered to serve in Israel’s army. But the latest plan for mass resettlement is changing the mood. Mr Netanyahu’s advisers say they are simply rehousing squatters. Even the Palestinian Authority, the proto-government on the West Bank, seems to hold its nose.

Israeli officials say the masterplan for mass resettlement will entail an unprecedented transfer of government land to Israeli Arabs. Bedouin who can prove entitlement will receive half their land, or compensation. “By law the government owns the land,” says Ehud Prawer, the official who devised the plan. “But as long as the dispute continues, the Bedouin can’t cultivate it and we can’t develop it. We need a compromise.” “Concentrated” in new towns, he adds, the Bedouin will get all the services they are now denied.

The Bedouin are refusing to budge. “When a Jewish Israeli wants to go and live in the Negev, it is called the development of the south,” says Rawia Abu Rabia, a Bedou lawyer. “But when Bedouin already living there want to go on living in the same place, it is considered an effort to take over state lands.” Some people say it could be a dry run for transferring Arabs in northern Israel to the West Bank.

The Negev’s Bedouin are forming a Council of Bedouin Tribes. Less genially, Tuba’s youths protested against the torching of their mosque by vandalising the town council building. The sole Bedou in Israel’s parliament, Taleb al-Sana, warns of a Bedouin intifada if the planners persist.

In neighbouring countries, the Bedouin are also on the move. In Jordan, where they once were top dogs, they have staged protests against a monied, urbanised Palestinian elite. In Egyptian Sinai they have risen up against the remnants of the ousted Hosni Mubarak’s security regime.

Might a pan-Bedouin identity yet arise, linking the Bedouin under Israeli rule with the million or so scattered across the region? Many of Sinai’s angry Bedouin carry Israeli mobile telephones, renewing contact across borders after decades of separation. The lucrative tunnels linking Gaza to Sinai are reviving commercial ties. A high birth-rate adds confidence in numbers. A newly educated elite is fashioning a political identity. “We’re all victims of the same policy to dispossess us,” says Muhammad Korshan, a West Bank Bedou activist.

This year he went to New York to ask the UN’s Forum on Indigenous Peoples to recognise the Bedouin as an ethnic-minority people with rights to tribal lands. They have a long way to go. Unlike Berbers and Kurds, they have no flags or leaders. But a belated bid for recognition has begun.

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

2011-11-05T21:14:00.000-07:00

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

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

Photo: Ruth Pollard

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2011-10-29T03:03:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pro-Bedouin activists meet with White House officials

2011-10-28T11:29:00.000-07:00

WASHINGTON (JTA) -- A coalition of Israeli and U.S. groups that campaign for Israeli Bedouin rights met with White House officials to lobby against Israel's planned mass relocation.

Doni Remba, who coordinates a Bedouin project for Rabbis for Human Rights-North America and the Jewish Alliance for Change, said the White House officials met Wednesday with him and delegates from the Association for Civil Rights in Israel; Adalah-the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel; Sidre, a Bedouin women's empowerment group; and Dukium, a Negev Desert Jewish-Arab coexistence forum.

The Prawer plan, approved last month by Israel's government, is set to remove up to 40,000 Negev Bedouin from villages and settlements that the government does not recognize.

Bedouin activists say the compensation being offered by the government is too low and that some of the unrecognized villages should be incorporated as part of any government plan.

Israel says its planned resettlement program includes fair compensation, has been permitted by the courts and clears critical areas of the Negev for planned development.'

Published in JTA Oct. 27, 2011

Pictured from R to L: Michal Rotem (Negev Coexistence Forum for Civil Equality), Rawia Aburabia (Association for Civil Rights in Israel), (Gidon) Doni Remba (Campaign for Bedouin-Jewish Justice: A Project of Rabbis for Human Rights-North America and the Jewish Alliance for Change), Dr. Thabet Abu Rass (Adalah: The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel; Ben-Gurion University), Hanan Alsana (Sidre Association)

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

2011-10-27T10:56:00.000-07:00

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

2011-10-10T04:17:00.000-07:00

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

Negev Bedouin rally in Tel Aviv against government-approved relocation plan

2011-09-21T13:24:00.000-07:00

Protesters object to the cabinet's approval of plan addressing ongoing dispute between the state and the Bedouin over land ownership rights.

By Zafrir Rinat, Ha'aretz, Sept. 20, 2011

Negev Bedouin who oppose new government proposals to relocate some of the region's Bedouin residents and give official status to other currently unrecognized Bedouin communities brought their protests to Tel Aviv on Monday. They were joined by several hundred additional activists, including representatives of organizations active in social and human rights issues.

The protesters are objecting to the cabinet's approval two weeks ago of a plan that would address the ongoing dispute between the state and the Bedouin over land ownership rights. Although the plan grants official recognition to some unrecognized Bedouin communities, it also calls for the relocation of 30,000 Bedouin to recognized villages.

Monday's demonstration started at a building on Rothschild Boulevard that has become a center of the social protest movement. Among those attending the gathering was Sheikh Sayah Al-Turi of the unrecognized Al-Arakib village, which has been demolished and rebuilt 29 times. From there, the demonstrators marched to the government offices in the vicinity of the Defense Ministry headquarters.

"We have to tell the truth. Did we invade the State of Israel or did the State of Israel invade our land and the land of our ancestors when the state was established?" Al-Turi asked, adding that while the Bedouin wanted to forget what happened with the establishment of Israel in 1948, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wanted to revive the issue.

"[Netanyahu] said the Arabs in Israel have a high standard of living, but I live in a village without running water, electricity or medical services," the Bedouin leader said in reference to his unrecognized village. Al-Turi said the Bedouin were not prepared to move to other land.

"I don't understand how Netanyahu wants to make peace with the Palestinians and with the Arab countries if he is incapable of creating good relations with the Arab citizens of his country," Al-Turi added.

Photo: Bedouin protesting in Tel Aviv on Monday. Sign says, “Bedouin land taken, given to cronies.” Photo by: Moti Milrod

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

2011-09-13T02:24:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2011-09-13T00:17:00.000-07:00

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

2011-09-12T19:21:00.000-07:00

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

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

2011-09-11T03:24:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reprinted from +972 Magazine

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

2011-09-03T19:57:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

I don't know where to begin…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Halil El-Amour, ycantmeetu@hotmail.com

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

English edition of Ha'aretz whitewashes Israeli govt plan to expel 30,000 Negev Bedouin

2011-09-03T19:28:00.000-07:00

The English edition of Ha'aretz has again whitewashed a major story about the Negev Bedouin from the Hebrew edition: the sub-head in the Hebrew reads in part (omitted from the English version):

"The plan involves evacuating 30,000 people from their homes. Bedouin: 'This is a declaration of war.'"

Is Israeli reality too ugly for delicate Western ears?

The English headline sounds positively charming, as if this is all good: "Israeli cabinet set to vote on approval of unrecognized villages," a headline which grossly misrepresents what the Israeli government is about to approve: the NON-RECOGNITION OF MOST BEDOUIN VILLAGES AND THE FORCIBLE EXPULSION OF THEIR RESIDENTS. (For background on this vote on the "Praver Plan," see "Cabinet Ministers will vote on the evacuation of 30,000 Bedouin from their homes," Ha'aretz Hebrew edition translation by Campaign for Bedouin-Jewish Justice).

And the English version omits the sub-head in the Hebrew original which makes clear that the Netanyahu-Lieberman government's plan involves forcibly relocating 30,000 Bedouin Israelis. This fact is relegated to the last sentence of the English version, and is attributed to the NGO Bimkom, relegating it to secondary importance, as if it isn't a significant facet of the government's plan - not worthy of a headline.

Ha'aretz has belatedly rectified these omissions by publishing in the English edition a report under the headline: "Negev Bedouin to ask UN for help to quash Israeli transfer plan; Cabinet delays vote on plan to move thousands to recognized Negev towns," 9/5/11.

Israeli social protest leader tells 300,000 at TA rally: whether you're an evacuee from Gush Katif, or Bedouin, situation must change

2011-09-03T19:26:00.000-07:00

Dafni Leef, who founded the "J14" social justice protest movement, spoke at length to 300,000 Israelis "about solidarity between all sectors in Israeli society, a new civic identity, and a political movement free of the right-vs-left discourse." Over 450,000 Israelis marched at protests for social justice held all over the country.

Whether you’re an evacuee from Gush Katif (in Gaza) or a Bedouin, she said, or a child whose parents can’t afford to send him on a school trip, the situation for you, too, must change.

See "Over 400,000 in largest protest in Israel's history" at +972 magazine

Here is Dafni Leef's inspiring speech to the largest protest in Israel's history:

Speech given at mass rally in Tel Aviv’s Kikar HaMedina 3 September 2011

Daphni Leef was the person who initiated the J14 movement in Israel by pitching the first tent.

Hebrew original - Translated by Sol Salbe of the Middle East News Service, Melbourne, Australia

Something tremendous, something huge has happened during this summer. Summer 2011 has been the great summer of Israel's new hope. This hope was born, as many hopes are born out of a sense of despair, of alienation. It was born out of the disparities that none of us could handle; disparities that have become well-nigh insurmountable.

The Israeli society that is present here - and, it is important to say, that part of Israeli society that had chosen to stay at home tonight – has reached its red line. Then it rose up and said: Enough! No more! You can fool some people some of the time, but you cannot fool all the people all of the time. This summer we woke up and refused to march towards the precipice with our eyes shut. This summer, we opened our eyes, and those eyes are not going to close again.

We have chosen to be. We are not invisible. If they can only understand numbers, then I would remind them today that there are more than seven million people, and every one of those people has a heart. There used to be a sign at Rothschild Boulevard [home of the original encampment-tr] that said: every heart is a revolutionary cell. It's true. Each of us forms a one person’s campaign headquarters.

We were confronted with a great obstacle course this summer. What hurdles didn’t they place in front of us. In what way didn’t they try to break us apart. The first thing they said about us was that we were spoiled kids who ate Sushi and smoked the hookahs. From that we learnt that our elected officials instinctively choose not to treat our actions with respect. Their first reaction was to say - it's nothing, nothing significant, just a bunch of kids. At that stage we only had the Rothschild encampment. They called us vague and dreamy. The resulting outcome: tent encampments were popping up all over the country. They had no choice but to figure it out that this is something bigger, something that belonged to all of us.

A miracle has happened here.

My generation grew up with the sense of being alone in the world. It's us facing the screen. The other is our enemy, which is our competitor. We grew up with the feeling that we live in a race which could not win; that we cannot lean upon on anyone else. We were taught that it was either you or the other. That’s capitalism – a competition that never ends. The fact that it is precisely this generation - the most solitary and withdrawn generation – that stood up and took action is nothing short of miraculous. The miracle of Summer 2011. Ergo, everything that we thought, everything that they taught us is not true! What happened here is precisely what needed to happen.

We were all closed in, each one in their own circle, the circle of dissatisfaction, of a sense of absurdity. And suddenly we started to talk, and more importantly, we started to listen.

So they told us that we were the extreme Left. They tried to pigeonhole us. How do they know who I am? How do they know who you people are? Where did they get the hutzpah to make those assertions anyway? The best answer to their contention did not come from me and my friends. It came from the encampments that were established in the Hatikva neighbourhood, Jesse Cohen, Kiryat Gat, Kiryat Shmona, Modi’in, Rahat, Qalansawe, in Jerusalem, Haifa, Beit Shean and Yeruham and dozens of other places. All of us right throughout the country understood that there is no Left or Right, we all had to serve.

They told us go to the periphery. What a terrible and condescending statement. What exactly is "Go to the periphery"? This contention seems to suggest that there are no people there, only wilderness and silence. And you know what, how fortunate we were that they sent us to the periphery. We discovered there what we had already known - the whole country is full of pounding hearts. I went there and found new friends, for life.

And anyhow what exactly is "Go to the periphery"? The State of Israel has been banging up the periphery in a systematic and orderly fashion from the day it was founded till today. Look at Education, health, infrastructure, housing, welfare, culture saying "go to the periphery" is the height of hypocrisy. To speak of this periphery is to remain stuck in the old repulsive discourse. It’s the discourse that tells people that they are being shunted to the sidelines: you are a long way away, your needs are not as important, your demands are not as important. This summer we have proven to everyone that there is no such thing as the periphery – We are all at the centre! Every single one of us! We have reduced the physical distance between us and we found that it is a good thing, we want to stay close. They will fail to split us apart.

Then came the security escalation. But even the missiles that landed did not destroy this protest movement. On the contrary - they showed just how strong and how genuine is the movement. The fact that we did not fold over, and I have said that before, is the most exciting thing about this protest. The time has come for the term “security situation” to cease being an intrinsic value. It needs to revert what if is – a situation , and a situation that needs to be changed.

Missiles fell and we were quiet for a few days, we marched in silence. And then they spoke and said that the protest is fading out. Instead of recognising the fact that we empathised with the pain of a million Israelis living under the threat of missiles, that we felt the hurt of the people who were killed and wounded and whose homes were destroyed. But instead of understanding that we are with those Israelis, instead of seeing that silence comes from love, they said that "the protest is ebbing". They tried to turn our solidarity into a manifestation of folding down.

Frankly, it was sad. How does any Israeli government dare engage in such divide-and-rule games. This is the government has forsaken its residents - the elderly , the sick, the immigrants, the weak. How can it then come to us with such a claim? Israeli governments have divided us for years, and when we finally joined up together and indicated that we are no longer willing to just sit there and gaze at the television, they told us that we lack a sense of solidarity? We lack solidarity? Look at what is going on???

When one talks about security, one talks about securing the life of human beings - how does this square up with the Israeli government's policy of abandonment of its citizens?

I'm 25 years old and my most memorable memories are of this country: the Second Lebanon War, the terrorism of the Second Intifada, friends who were killed then, the Rabin assassination and Gilad Shalit. Not to mention that I belong to the third generation of the Holocaust. That is the state of my consciousness - moments and memories that are all intertwined with death, bereavement, pain, fear, the feeling that everything is temporary.

Proud to be Israeli

At the Afula rally [on 13 August] I saw someone holding a sign: "I have been proud to be an Israeli had 31 days". Well, I am standing in front of you here and I've been proud to have been Israeli for seven weeks. I feel that between us we're putting together our self-esteem as a society. To saythat I deserve something means that the other also deserves it as do all of us. This summer brought a lot of good moments and memories - of hope, of change, of fraternity, of listening.

A discourse of life has been created here. This is the most important awakening here. We are not here just to survive, we are here to live. We are not here just because we have no other place to go to. We're here because we want to be here. We choose to be here, we choose to be in a good, just society. We want to live in a society; we don’t want to be a collection of disjointed individuals each sitting in front of one box called a television, and every four years, place a piece of paper in another box, called the ballot box.

We are here, not because we have no other country. We're here because this is the country we want. Without any of us noticing it, people have began returning from abroad. Suddenly there as a feeling around that something is happening, something that nobody wants to miss.

We have created a new discourse here. This is what the new discourse is about: we have replaced pity with compassion. We’ve replaced charity with justice, handouts with welfare, and consumer with citizen. Instead of talking about waiting we talk about changing and instead of talking about being alone we talk about being together. It's the biggest thing we did here this summer. I don’t know what you think, my friends, but I think the process is irreversible. We will not go back! We are marching forward, towards a better future, a more just country. “Social justice.”

We are all trapped in some sense in terms of our social status, where we live, our religion, and gender. Then I realised it is not just that we're imprisoned, it is that they have locked us up. We all have an overdraft, but us having an overdraft is in the interest of the banks, it’s in the interest of the country's entire economic system. It’s in their interest to keep us in some form of distress. This because when there is distress there is no hope, and when there is no hope there is no prospect for change and when there is prospect for change there is nothing to live for. But this summer, day after day, week after week, we went out into the streets and made it clear, not only to the government, but also to ourselves, that there is something to live for! And once we understood that, once we started to think about tomorrow together, we were all set free!

Because things must change

What will happen tomorrow? Everyone asks what will happen tomorrow. What about the tents, what will happen with the protest movement? Where are we heading and what we are doing and what’s next and saw on. All this yearning for a fateful day, a victory picture, a decisive moment - there is no such thing, friends. Was there one fateful day in which the disparities in our society had become unbearable? Was there triumphant moment for swinish capitalism? Can we put our finger on a single privatisation that went too far? There was no such moment. It was a process. Even now, there is moment - there's a process. Our process is just starting now. We have demands to the government and its head that things must change.

If you are a resident of [the development town of] Yeruham - things must change.

If you are a child whose parents have no money for the annual school excursion - things must change.

If you are a pensioner or a Holocaust survivor - things have to change.

If you are a Gush Katif evacuee - things must change.

If you are a Bedouin - they must change.

Forty per cent of us are considered to be "financially fragile". That means that forty per cent of us cannot deal with an unexpected expense: a child dental care, a plumbing mishap, an injury. We all live on the edge, on the dot, enticed to take another loan, consume more, save less. Our life has become a war of economic survival, while the state has forsaken our pensions for stock market games, and has privatised more basic services.

Do you know which is the worst turn of phrase? It’s the little guy. There are laws against insulting a public servant, but there's no law against insulting the citizenry, and we have been insulted enough in recent years: they have pushed into poverty, played cat and mouth games with us and set us at each other. The ministers who are meant to discuss ameliorating the situation are y the very ministers responsible for, among other things, the worsening of our situation in the first place! I don’t know what you, but I do not like people laughing at me and I do not like those who fudge around while dealing with me.

We have established a different discourse

The citizen is not the little guy! The citizen is the big guy! To be a citizen, a big-guy citizen, and comprehend its significance is the biggest challenge facing us. This campaign’s demands are on the realisation that are no longer willing to be “little citizens” consumers, we are no longer willing to be just a target audience, only a sector, only a decile. We will no longer willing to ensconce ourselves in our little bunkers and fight our own individual battle of existence. That era is over. From now on there is something new. Now we're together. We are demanding a change and we are demanding to be part of that change.

We have established a different discourse, a discourse of hope, of sharing, of solidarity and responsibility. I want to ask the prime minister and all politicians: Look at what happened here, look at what is happening here, is that what you want to beat? Is it something you can beat? You have been chosen by the people. You ought to be listening to the people. This protest, it gave so much hope to so many people is this the hope that you want to break? Is this what you want - to dispel the hope? You'll never succeed!

And after we had cleared all these hurdles and their spin failed, what form of attack remained in their armoury? Attack me personally. This whole thing started with a person who took action. I put up my tent in Rothschild Boulevard with a personal feeling of being or ceasing to be. A man who was very dear to me, Alex, had killed himself. He was a poet, he wrote that even if you have a heart of gold, you cannot change the world. Two months before the whole thing started he could not take being be here any more, he chose to cease being.

We all have a place

How could it be such a dreamer, an idealist, felt that he had no more room in this world? If there is no room for him in this world, than probably there is none for me either. And my heart ached. My heart was broken. What kind of world is it with no room for dreamers, idealists and poets? What kind of world is forcing them out? It's a world of poverty. We all dream and we all have the right to dream. Being poor is not only not having enough money to complete the month or being homeless. To be poor is to be so fundamentally preoccupied with these things, that you do not have the ability to dream, think, learn or hug your children.

So I started this thing. But once I started it, it is no longer just mine. It's not just my story, this is the story of multitudes of people who rose up and started to walk, rose up and began to act. We all chose to be. We chose to be here. Here we are.

This summer we learnt that we all have a place, that tomorrow would be what we'll make it to be. We don’t need somebody else to determine who we are, we know very well who we are. And after this summer we know is permitted to dream. More than that, we realised that dreaming is a must! To dream is to be!

Seven weeks ago I was 25 years old young woman struggling alone to realise her own dreams - to make films. Last week they attacked me from every direction, and almost managed to take me go back to when felt alone. I do not know what you, but I just started my protest.

I'll be here while it is necessary. I want to show Alex that yes, you can change the world, anyone can. You just need to believe, stand up and do. The responsibility is on all of us, rise up and walk and walk and talk and never give up. By us all going to the street, we found the home!

Wikileaks releases US Embassy-Israel cable describing institutionalized discrimination and denial of public services to Israel's own Bedouin citizens

2011-08-29T17:14:00.000-07:00

INTRODUCTION TO THE US EMBASSY CABLE TITLED: "BEDOUIN OF THE NEGEV'S ILLEGAL VILLAGES LIVE IN POVERTY, SQUALOR"

A cable just released by Wikileaks from the US Embassy in Tel Aviv describes institutionalized discrimination and the denial of public services to Israel's own Bedouin citizens. Despite their citizenship and the fact that Bedouins "continue to serve voluntarily in the IDF and otherwise support the state, media commentators and Israeli politicians often refer to the threat of a second ’intifada’ coming from the Negev Bedouin."

The 70,000 Bedouin of the Negev community have never been included in GOI (Government of Israel) land planning, do not qualify for provision of any public services, and therefore do not officially exist on Israeli maps. Many Bedouin are life-long residents of these communities, but are considered squatters by the government. Without legal status, these communities receive no government resources, including municipal services and infrastructure development.

The cable describes the squalor and poverty of one of the villages under the heading "Is this Israel?" The Government of Israel decided to forcibly relocate Bedouin communities in order to create a ’buffer zone’ around an airbase because they feared Bedouin may acquire anti-aircraft missiles for use against Israeli aircraft, or to prevent vandalism and theft.

Comment: The Bankruptcy of the Israeli government's concept of "security":

The cable notes the government's claim that some of the Bedouin are a threat to the security of the Nevatim air base in the Negev. This is yet another example of the bankruptcy of the Israeli government’s concept of "security." Israel can gain the security it needs by recognizing the Bedouin villages and providing Bedouin Israeli citizens of the Negev with the same basic human and civil rights that Israeli Jews enjoy, and remedying the extreme poverty – the worst in all of Israel – from which 200,000 Negev Bedouin suffer. That would work wonders for strengthening the loyalty of the Negev Bedouin to the state, who have voluntarily served and fought in the Israel Defense Forces for decades. And it would help solve the problem of impoverished Bedouin engaging in crime.

Instead, the government egregiously mistreats and discriminates against the Negev Bedouin, increasingly alienating the younger generation, and then, claiming that they are a threat to national security, insists that the homes of those near the Nevatim air base must be demolished and their villages uprooted so that they can be relocated elsewhere to continue to live in neglect that the government has been all-too-happy to perpetuate.

The government’s claim that the Negev Bedouin are a threat to national security and must therefore be forcibly relocated reminds us of the boy who kills his parents and then begs for the mercy of the court because he is an orphan. Who is creating, and exacerbating, threats to Israel's security? The government's own self-destructive policies towards the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza and towards Israel's own Palestinian Arab citizens. Moreover, national security can't be invoked with even a shred of credibility to justify the woeful mistreatment of the many Negev Bedouin who live nowhere near Nevatim - such as the Bedouin of the village of Al-Arakib, demolished 26 times this past year. Al-Arakib is about 10 miles north west of Beersheva, while Nevatim is some 25 - 30 miles southeast of Beersheva.

Following is the text of the US Embassy cable reprinted from Wikileaks.

Reference ID Created Released Classification Origin

05TELAVIV1124 2005-02-25 11:23 2011-08-26 00:00

UNCLASSIFIED//FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY Embassy Tel Aviv
This record is a partial extract of the original cable. The full text of the original cable is not available.
UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 TEL AVIV 001124

SIPDIS

SENSITIVE

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: PGOV PREL PHUM SOCI IS GOI INTERNAL ISRAELI SOCIETY ISRAELI PALESTINIAN AFFAIRS
SUBJECT: BEDOUIN OF THE NEGEV'S ILLEGAL VILLAGES LIVE IN
POVERTY, SQUALOR

REF: 2004 TEL AVIV 3393

¶1. (SBU) Summary: Emboffs met February 17 with Bedouin
community representatives in two Negev desert Bedouin
villages not legally recognized by the GOI to discuss issues
affecting their lives and possible PD small grants assistance
to educational programs. The Bedouin in these two
unrecognized communities live in poor, makeshift conditions,
without the benefits of municipal services or basic
infrastructure. Highlighting the Bedouin's tenuous
residential status in the state, and GOI distrust of this
segment of the population, the Jerusalem Post reported
February 18 that the GOI intends to relocate hundreds of
Bedouin families in illegal Negev communities near the
perimeter fence of an airbase. The report draws the
conclusion from unnamed Israeli military sources that the GOI
fears that the Bedouin, who are citizens of Israel, may
acquire anti-aircraft missiles for use against Israeli
aircraft. This cable offers a snapshot of life in these
illegal villages and a Bedouin perspective on the political
context. End summary.

-------------------------
Many Bedouin Marginalized
-------------------------

¶2. (U) Emboffs met February 17 with Attia El-Asam, southern
region coordinator of the Association of Forty, a Bedouin
advocacy organization, and Haled Abu Huti, manager of the
Association to Promote Advanced Technological Community in
El-Asam's spartan Be'er Sheva office. El-Asam explained that
his organization was established in 1987 to advocate for
Bedouin communities in the Galilee that did not receive legal
recognition from the GOI. Since then, El-Asam said, the GOI
has recognized about 70 percent of those Galilee communities
and his organization has turned its focus to the Bedouin
population of the Negev.

¶3. (SBU) According to the Association of Forty's data,
El-Asam said, the Negev has about 45 so-called "unrecognized"
Bedouin villages, with some 70,000 Bedouin residents, or half
of the total Negev Bedouin population. These unrecognized
villages have never been included in GOI land planning, do
not qualify for provision of any public services, and
therefore do not officially exist on Israeli maps. Many
Bedouin are life-long residents of these communities, but are
considered squatters by the GOI. Without legal status, these
communities receive no government resources, including
municipal services and infrastructure development.

¶4. (U) El-Asam highlighted that, while the Bedouin now
compose about 30 percent of the Negev population, the GOI has
recognized as legal only seven communities or "townships"
wherein the Bedouin population can legally reside. According
to The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights In Israel -
Adalah, the GOI initiated a program to resettle the Bedouin
in these seven townships during the 1960s-70s. Many Bedouin
refuse to move to the legal townships, El-Asam said, because
they assert that conditions in the townships are not much
better than those in the unrecognized communities. The GOI
is in the process of recognizing another 10 of the 45
unrecognized villages, El-Asam noted.

¶5. (SBU) (Note: Seven of the 10 villages slated for such
recognition will ostensibly house Bedouin from surrounding
areas as well. GOI plans for these villages include new
houses, landscaping of surrounding hills to allow for grazing
of camel and sheep, installation of sewage systems, and
construction of schools, mosques, and community centers. The
GOI planning team responsible for these seven villages,
however, told emboffs in the summer of 2004 that the GOI does
not have even a quarter of the money needed for completion of
the projects. End note.) El-Asam claimed that the GOI
nonetheless provides electrical and other municipal services
to 60 Jewish National Fund-sponsored single-family farms in
the Negev for Israeli Jews, none of which are connected to
larger communities.

¶6. (U) No high schools exist in any of the unrecognized
villages, according to El-Asam, and only 16 of the villages
contain even makeshift elementary schools. El-Asam claimed
that 70 percent of the children in the unrecognized villages
live below the poverty line. (Note: According to Adalah, a
September 2004 Supreme Court ruling rejected Adalah's
petition demanding establishment of preschools for 300
Bedouin children in two unrecognized Negev villages. The
Court deferred to the Ministry of Education, which argued
that existing preschools in neighboring villages are
sufficient to meet the children's needs and that since the
villages are unrecognized, publicly funded preschools could
not be set up there.)

---------------
Is this Israel?
---------------

¶7. (U) After the office meeting, Emboffs followed Haled Abu
Huti to the unrecognized village of Elfawy, population 3,500,
where he resides. Emboffs drove down dirt roads that ribbon
the barren Negev landscape into a congested, tin-roofed
shanty town. Livestock were scattered in the living areas of
homes, parts of which were outdoors. A gaggle of children
played on the dirt floor porch of the provisional
kindergarten. Piles of garbage lay at the village entrance.
Abu Huti said that his organization received assistance from
the German Embassy to construct a kindergarten in Elfawy that
serves some 20 children during the day. In the afternoons,
Abu Huti's organization conducts courses for mothers in the
school. The one-room facility is equipped with some toys and
educational material and a generator provides electricity for
only three hours in the evening.

¶8. (U) In the neighboring village of Abu Ashiba, population
1,500, Abu Huti showed Emboffs a kindergarten for which he is
soliciting funding. The school is held in a stable-like
structure with concrete floors and a corrugated sheet metal
roof, but without a toilet, electricity, or playground
equipment for its 25 children. The children playing on the
dirt porch and single swing seemed oblivious to the
still-nursing camel and her baby standing several meters
behind them. According to Abu Huti, the village is currently
in what he described as the long process of being recognized
by the GOI.

----------------------------
Bedouin Viewed with Distrust
----------------------------

¶9. (SBU) Although many Bedouin -- who are citizens of Israel
-- continue to serve voluntarily in the IDF and otherwise
support the state, media commentators and Israeli politicians
often refer to the threat of a second "intifada" coming from
the Negev Bedouin. The February 18 Jerusalem Post reported
that the Israel Air Force (IAF) is currently moving scores of
Bedouin families to create a buffer zone around the Nevatim
airbase in the Negev to "reduce any missile threat" from the
Bedouin. "(Israel Defense Forces) intelligence didn't rule
out the possibility," the Jerusalem Post reported, that
anti-aircraft missiles from Gaza could "reach" the Bedouin
living near the airbase "since the smugglers were Bedouin
from the Sinai with close links with their Negev tribesmen."
(Note: According to Embassy sources, another possible reason
for the IAF to create the buffer zone is to prevent vandalism
by the surrounding Bedouin communities, including the
stealing of construction materials. The Jerusalem Post
article notes that members of the Bedouin community around
Nevatim "apparently" have stolen equipment and left gaping
holes in the fence.... ") The GOI reportedly plans to expand
the Nevatim base and has already issued orders to demolish
some 50 illegal structures, home to some 300 Bedouin.

********************************************* ********************
Visit Embassy Tel Aviv's Classified Website:
http://www.state.sgov.gov/p/nea/telaviv

You can also access this site through the State Department's
Classified SIPRNET website.
********************************************* ********************
KURTZER

Read the cable on Wikileaks at http://wikileaks.org/cable/2005/02/05TELAVIV1124.html

Hat tip to Jerry Haber for the link.

Israel sues 34 Bedouin for costs of repeated demolitions of their homes (Ha'aretz)

2011-07-28T13:17:00.000-07:00

Unprecedented law suit seeks NIS 1.8 million in damages from Negev Bedouin; Israel Lands Administration says defendants built homes on land belonging to the state. By Jack Khoury

The state filed an unprecedented suit against 34 Negev Bedouin in Be'er Sheva Magistrate's Court on Tuesday, seeking NIS 1.8 million in damages for the expense repeatedly incurred in evicting the defendants from state land and demolishing their homes.

The state, through the Israel Lands Administration, told the court that the defendants had built homes in the Al-Arakib area, northeast of Be'er Sheva, on what had been state land since the time of Ottoman rule.

"The squatters against whom the suit was brought, of the Abu Madigham and the Abu Jaber families, already have houses built on land the state gave them in the area of Rahat," the court was told by the ILA, representing the state. The ILA said the defendants keep returning to the disputed land, despite court orders prohibiting them from doing so.

The agency's representative told the court the fact that the Bedouin have homes in Rahat, some distance from Al-Arakib, shows they have no lack of housing, and that they are using public relations activities to accuse the state of repression, while they are the ones in breach of the law.

The ILA said that it had leased the lands in question until 1998 for seasonal agricultural activities for Bedouin in the area. But, in 1998, members of the defendants' families ousted the leasees and began squatting on the land.

In 1999, the state took action to evict the squatters, according to the prosecution.

In March 2000, the parties consented to a judgment in which a permanent injunction was issued barring the squatters from the land except to visit a cemetery and a small mosque, the only structures on the land at that time.

A source in the ILA said that suing for damages "can be an efficient way to deal with squatters and illegal construction."

Sheikh Siyah Abu Madigham al-Turi, the leader of the village of Al-Arakib, said neither he nor any of his family was told about the lawsuit, and that he first heard about it from the media.

"We also submit a lot of complaints but no one listens to us, about all the buildings of ours that they destroyed - and the state does not care. The first demolition cost us NIS 4 million. The trees that were uprooted in the village cost us NIS 500,000. They destroyed the village 27 times; that cost us NIS 150,000 each time.

The sheikh said the land belonged to them - and that the matter is still under consideration by the courts.

Dr. Awad Abu-Frih, a resident of Al-Arakib and an activist in the campaign against its demolition, told Haaretz the residents expect compensation from the state, not the other way around. "The state is afraid of a precedent over Al-Arakib, and so they talk to us in a language reserved for enemies who must be defeated, so the hold over the land won't be an inspiration to other Bedouin in the Negev."

Abu-Frih said hundreds of Bedouin, who are joined by Jewish and foreign volunteers, come to rebuild the village every time it is demolished.

The residents and activists are to hold a march Wednesday night from the Lehavim junction north of Be'er Sheva to Al-Arakib.

Dr. Thabet Abu Ras of the human rights group Adalah also said the matter is still before the courts. "The state recognizes ownership rights over the lands of Al-Arakib and is constantly offering them [the Bedouin residents] meager compensation for the land. What's more, a law requiring the builder of a house to pay for its demolition was not passed by the Knesset."

The state has demanded compensation for the demolition of illegally built houses in the past in the Galilee and the Arab communities of central Israel; those cases are still before the courts. However, most of those claims are against homes built on private land, not state land, for sums between NIS 300,000 and NIS 400,000. This is the first time such a large suit for damages has been brought against such a large number of defendants.

Published in Ha'aretz, July 27, 2011

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

2011-07-10T19:20:00.000-07:00

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

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

2011-07-09T21:10:00.000-07:00

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.

Map of the Unrecognized Negev Bedouin Villages and JNF/Israeli Government Forestation Plans

2011-07-09T20:52:00.000-07:00

Click on the map to enlarge image

The two unrecognized Bedouin villages of Atir and Um Al-Hiran (spelled here "Um El Chiran"), slated for demolition by the Netanyahu government with the expulsion of 1,000 Bedouin to make way for a new Jewish settlement called Hiran, are located in the upper right within the blue-colored line, marked by red dots.

JNF's Wadi Attir project is located near Chura (also spelled Hura), just to the West (left) of the Bedouin villages of Atir and Um El Chiran.

Map provided courtesy of Bimkom: Planners for Planning Rights, and the Negev Coexistence Forum for Civil Equality