Reporting on Israel’s Bedouin people is a sad and most disturbing experience. That ongoing events reported about Israel’s treatment of its Bedouin population could be happening in modern times is inconceivable. Our friends the Israelis could not be acting so callously toward the rights of other human beings, in this case, its own Arab citizens.
The first section of this diary covers the latest injustice reported by the Regional Council for the Unrecognized Villages (RCUV) in the Negev, Israel, which circulated the following news and photos on March 7, 2007. The second section provides a history of the plight of the Bedouins since the birth of Israel.
A person that dies, dies only once. But they make us die every month: live again and die again, over and over again.
If this statement by Yeela Raanan of RCUV reflects anything, it is the frustration that the Negev Bedouin people have experienced month after month, year after year, decade after decade as they stubbornly cling to their ancestral lands in the face of Israeli bulldozers. Almost from the birth of Israel, Israel has targeted the Bedouins in the Negev, making laws that essentially dispossess them of their lands.
The photos show how Aqil Talalqa looks today after the Israeli government demolished this small village for the third time in three months!
Again, hundreds of police congregated by the city of Rahat. Again, they accompanied the demolishing bulldozers. Again they drove by the train tracks on their way to the village of Twail Abu-Jarwal. And again – the destruction, the violence, and the pain they leave behind.
Is it not yet obvious that the villagers have no other options? Wouldn’t five waves of demolitions, two of which demolished the entire village, have convinced anyone who had options to leave? Evidently, the government is not yet sure that these people cannot still be convinced, so provide yet another lesson, maybe you will be convinced this time. Again the village was completely demolished: 15 structures, including the sheep dens, and eleven tents. Everything was destroyed. The tents they took.
Aqil Talalqa, the village’s elected head, sat with governmental officials, in an attempt to find some kind of compromise for his tribe, about 500 people, who have no place to build a home. With the lack of any other options they returned to their ancestral lands several years ago, and now are subject to the cruel repetitive demolitions. The compromise the government offered was a neighborhood in the Bedouin town of Laqia, on another family’s land. One wonders, why would the government suggest such an impossible solution? Scores of years ago, the government confiscated land from Arabs in the Negev in order to sell it to other Arabs. For the years that passed, no Arab has been willing to build his house on another Arab’s confiscated land. And this is the land that is suggested to Talalqa. The Authority for the “Advancement of the Bedouins” knows well that building a home on another’s land brings about serious conflicts. Sadly, it seems Aqil’s answer makes sense: “They want to create conflict between families and tribes, all sorts of conflicts. For them this is fun.”
Tonight again over 100 people will be without a roof over their heads, in the cold desert night.
Thanks for this report, Yeela. We feel your frustration.
For more information about the Bedouin injustice, contact Yeela Raanan, RCUV, 86 Trumpledor St, Beersheva, Israel. The RCUV (English) site where an email address is found may be linked here:
http://www.rcuv.com/site/detail/detail/detailDetail.asp?detail_id=233630&depart_id=23392
The Regional Council for the Unrecognized Arab Villages in the Negev (RCUV) is a democratically elected body, chosen to represent 45 of the unrecognized Bedouin villages in the Negev. The primary goal of the RCUV is unconditional governmental recognition of Arab Bedouin (unrecognized) villages, which have been completely excluded from any form of governmental support or recognition. There are several other rights organizations also focused on Israel’s treatment of the Bedouins.
The history of this unfortunate and continuing episode reminds one of the great injustices that befell the American Indian in America. The techniques used by the Israeli government to confiscate Bedouin lands through arbitrary laws, in particular, are quite similar. Both stand as outrageous and deceptive displays of official government discrimination and racism.
The recent history of the Bedouin people and their confrontation with the government of Israel is available from downloadable reports from the Arab Association of Human Rights.
http://www.arabhra.org/factsheets/factsheet4.htm
There are over 100 Palestinian Arab villages in Israel that the government does not recognize officially. Over 70,000 Palestinian Arab citizens live in villages that are threatened with destruction, prevented from development, and are not shown on any map. Despite the fact that most of the “unrecognized villages” existed before the establishment of Israel, state policy considers their inhabitants as lawbreakers. It prevents them from repairing existing homes or building new ones; withholds basic rights, such as drinking water and health clinics; and in certain cases even fences off whole villages. These measures coincide with a wider policy of concentrating Palestinian Arabs and “redeeming” their lands for new Jewish settlements. Many of these settlements are built next to their unrecognized neighbors, often illegally, yet with the complete provision of services. The Bedouin problem constitutes another dimension of the apartheid policies that infect Israel society.
The Arab Bedouin are the indigenous inhabitants of the Negev and represent approximately 12% of the Palestinian Arab minority in Israel. Prior to 1948, they lived from agriculture and raising livestock. During the 1948 war, the majority of the Negev’s Bedouin was driven out or fled the state’s borders. The remaining tribes were rounded up and spent the next 18 years under military rule in an enclosure zone. During this period, a number of laws were used to dispossess them of their traditional lands. Today approximately 110,000 Arab Bedouin live in the Negev, half in the poorest recognized localities in Israel. The other half of the Bedouin population lives in villages unrecognized by the state. They are denied all forms of basic services and infrastructure, and are unable to build or develop their communities in any way.
Since the mid 1960s, the Bedouin of the Negev have been subject to a forcible process of “sedentarization” into urban townships. This relocation policy, designed to “modernize” the Bedouin, has been conducted without consulting them and in manner that is culturally inappropriate. Like policies enacted on other indigenous peoples, it has had two main aims:
- To concentrate the Bedouin and make their traditional lands available for settlement programs for Jews only.
- To domesticate the indigenous Bedouin economy and create a cheap source of labor for the Jewish economy.
The methods of pressure on the Bedouin used to enact this policy include cutting the Bedouin off from their own culture and making life as difficult as possible until they move into the townships.
British mandate (pre1948) records list 12,600,000 dunams (.25 acre) in the Negev as used by the Bedouin. Today the Bedouin are struggling to avoid eviction from the 240,000 dunams of this area remaining to them. Although Bedouin land rights and tribal boundaries were respected by Ottoman and British authorities, the State of Israel’s sedentarization policy has been accompanied by the registration of Negev lands as state property. Unlike the rest of mandatory Palestine, no formal registration process of Negev lands was undertaken during the mandate period.
The state of Israel has been able to develop a legal process that makes Bedouin land claims invisible. This process has been achieved through three principal laws:
- The Land Acquisition (Validation of Acts & Compensation) Law (1953) states that land that was not in the possession of its owner in April 1952 could be registered as state property. It facilitated a massive transfer of lands in the Negev, since at the time the Bedouin had been transferred by the state into the enclosure zone. Although some tribes returned to their lands after the enclosure zone was lifted, they found that, since the land was now registered with the state, they either had to lease it or “trespass.” Consent to lease has been taken in court as proof that the land was never theirs.
- The Land Rights Settlement Ordinance (1969) classified all mawat lands (Ottoman term) as state property, unless a formal legal title could be produced. Mawat (literally dead) land was defined as unworked and more than 1.5 miles from the nearest settlement. The last opportunity for the Bedouin to register their lands against mawat status had been in 1921, at a time when their rights were not challenged by anyone. The category became a major means for expropriation in the Negev because, although Israeli courts acknowledged that Bedouin had been living in the areas they claimed, they did not recognize Bedouin tents as constituting settlements in terms of the law. Further, they defined working the land as changing it; pastoralism was an unrecognized form of living. The law abolished all previous conflicting registrations.
- The Negev Land Acquisition (Peace Treaty with Egypt) Law (1980) facilitated large-scale confiscation orders of Bedouin lands to build military bases and an airport in the wake of the peace treaty with Egypt. No appeal against the confiscation was allowed, and the compensation terms offered ranged between 2%-15% of the terms granted to relocated Jewish Sinai settlers. The military base at Im Tinan (56,000 dunams taken) was never built, and in 1994 was turned over for use by Jewish farmers.
In 1976 the Land Settlement Department opened to finally settle Bedouin land claims, according to the following deal: it would recognize 20% of the total claim (with documented proof), would offer compensation for 30% (at 65% its value) and would expropriate 50%. To date agreements on these terms have been reached for 160,000 dunams; claims on 743,327dunams still remain outstanding.
Just over half of the Bedouin living outside the townships live in unrecognized villages. Under the Law of Planning and Construction (1965) their houses can be demolished. To speed up the sedentarization process, in 1986 the Markovitz Committee on unlicensed building, which did not consult any representative of the Negev Bedouin, recommended the demolition of 6,601 existing homes and all new buildings in the Negev. Subsequent governments have maintained this policy.
Aerial photographs of the villages are taken to check for new buildings. When a new construction is discovered, the owner is served with an administrative order to demolish the house. If they fail to do so, they are criminally prosecuted for unlicensed building. The policy turns homeowners into criminal defendants and makes the history of land ownership irrelevant. Defendants are fined and have to pay the costs of the demolition. As the Markovitz Committee recommended, these are double the cost of the house. After demolition, no consideration is given to where the evicted family will live.
According to the Association of Forty, there are currently 22,000 unrecognized houses in the Negev. In 1998, 370 houses were demolished by the authorities. Approximately 1,700 cases are currently being prosecuted in court. These figures do not include those houses demolished by the owners themselves.
Prior to 1948, approximately 90% of the Bedouin in the Negev earned their living from agriculture and 10% from raising livestock. Today over 90% live from wages earned through labor. It has been policy since 1948 to prevent the Bedouin from maintaining their ties to the land by making their traditional lifestyle unworkable, according to the following methods:
- Restricting Access to Land and Water: While handing large areas of former Bedouin land over to Jewish farmers on long-term leases, the state will only lease lands to Bedouin farmers for a three month period, never the same land twice in a row, and will not permit any permanent cultivation. Bedouin farmers are either not given water quotas, or are charged at domestic rates (12 times agricultural ones). No assistance is given for drought years.
- Flock Restrictions: The Plant Protection (Damage by Goats) Law (1950) requires Bedouin shepherds to get a permit from the Ministry of Agriculture to graze their goats outside of their privately owned land on surrounding state lands (mostly military areas). Permits are issued on the condition that the state is not responsible for any casualties, and at the discretion of Ministry officials. Since the mid 70s, it has been policy to seize unregistered flocks and reduce the flocks registered by 10-15%.
- Green Patrol: The Green Patrol is an environmental paramilitary unit established by Ariel Sharon. It mobilizes for special operations to pull down Bedouin tents, seize flocks, and destroy crops planted without the appropriate permit. During its first three years, Bedouin flocks were reduced from 220,000 to 80,000. Physical coercion of Bedouin farmers has led to hospitalizations and a number of deaths. In 1997 the Green Patrol was expanded to help speed up the sedentarization process.
In order to put pressure on the Bedouin to leave the unrecognized villages, official policy is to deny these communities basic services and prevent them from developing infrastructure. Planning laws are used to prevent villagers from building any permanent constructions or even repair existing temporary ones. Connection to water and electricity networks is prohibited.
Approximately 55,000 Bedouin now live in seven townships in the Beersheva area, which are listed as the poorest municipalities in Israel. They have no sewage systems, few paved roads, and a lack of local employment opportunities. Unlike the facilities offered to neighboring Jewish communities, there is no provision for maintaining livestock or engaging in agriculture. Five townships have government appointed councils and only two townships are able to elect their own local representatives. Thus far, half the Bedouin have refused to be relocated there.
The villages were de-legalized by the enactment of the (1965) Planning and Construction Law. This law set down a framework of regulations and a national outline plan for the country’s future development. It zoned land for residential, agricultural and industrial use, and forbade any form of unlicensed construction or construction on agricultural lands. The unrecognized villages were not incorporated into the planning schemes.
The Planning and Construction Law allows the planning authorities to prosecute homeowners for building without a permit and to demolish their houses when it is deemed to be in the public interest. Moreover the law allows the courts to issue demolition orders retroactively. This is significant because 95% of the houses in the unrecognized villages were built before this legislation was enacted.
The political use of these legal powers was amplified following the report of the Markovitz Committee on unlicensed construction in the Arab community, which made three main recommendations:
- Demolition of 1,000 existing unlicensed houses immediately, and the administrative demolition of all new unlicensed construction.
- Classification of 4,419 houses (i.e., those of the unrecognized villages) as “gray” houses, which are slated for demolition at a later date and in the meantime are not entitled to any services and cannot be repaired.
- Granting powers to administrators of regional planning committees to issue demolition orders without going to court; and the establishment of a “gray” unit empowered to implement these administrative demolition orders.
In the wake of the Markovitz report, article 238A was amended to allow officials to issue administrative demolition orders on houses within a month of their completion. Consequently, planning officials maintain monthly check ups of the villages through aerial photographs and visits. Villagers have been prosecuted for extensions, repairs and even fitting a toilet.
Home demolition is a planning policy choice rather than a legal requirement. Article 97A allows for retroactive approval for buildings established on agricultural land, and was used to retroactively legalize the illegally built settlements. Equally, the demolition policy is implemented unevenly: A 1997 Interior Ministry report on house demolitions admitted that it focused on “open” (unrecognized) areas. Between 1993-1996, 1440 Palestinian Arab houses were demolished, 624 of them outside of any court process. During this period, Arab homes accounted for 94% of all demolitions, despite forming only 57% of all recorded unlicensed building.
In court appeals, villagers have found that all building in the unrecognized villages has been defined as against the public interest. They are usually required to demolish their own homes, which then go unregistered in the statistics. Should they fail to do so, they are fined for contempt of court and can be imprisoned for up to a year. Equally the authorities can implement the demolition order at the cost of the homeowner. Once issued, demolition orders cannot be cancelled. However, since the “gray houses” cannot be repaired, and houses that are found to be hazardous can be demolished immediately, the authorities implement orders randomly, and wait until the other houses become unlivable.
Beyond the consequences of a very high population density within the unrecognized villages, with an average of 10 people per house, there is also a clear policy to make the villages unlivable through depriving their residents of basic rights and services. For example, a 1993 internal report for Misgav Regional Council on how to concentrate the residents of 22 unrecognized villages includes the following methods of pressure: obstructing villagers’ farming, neglecting to provide school transport from the villages, failing to meet the residents’ needs for health services and withholding drinking water.
This policy is entrenched in law under article 157A of the Planning and Construction Law, which prohibits national utility companies from connecting a building to national electricity, water or telephone networks if they have no building permit. It was designed specifically to dislodge residents from the unrecognized villages.
According to Association of Forty surveys, the consequences of these policies on 150 unrecognized localities are as follows:
Water: 130 localities are not connected to the water network. The residents transport water from neighboring villages. The quality and quantity of water available for each resident is far below normal health standards. Following a 1992 International Water Tribunal ruling that the government policy was illegal, one tap has been fitted for each village.
Health & Sewage: Health services are only available in 4 Galilee villages and in 1 village in the Negev. None are connected to a sewage network. Many homes do not have bathrooms and cannot build them. Outbreaks of jaundice and diarrhea among children have occurred due to polluted water.
Electricity: Only one village is connected to the electricity network. Most villages run private generators that provides sufficient electricity for lighting only.
Access: None of the villages are connected to the main road network, whereas nearby Jewish settlements are connected. Some villages have fences placed around them, to prevent the villagers from gaining access to their traditional lands.
Education: Schools were closed in three unrecognized villages in the North, and only one remains. In other villages, students travel 10-15km to school. Due to distance and the lack of a suitable study environment at home, achievement levels are low and there is a high student dropout rate. In Arab El-Naim (pop. 400), only one student has ever completed high school.
In the early 90s, the government agreed to recognize nine of the unrecognized villages in the north and center, and to partially adopt some of the solutions of the Association of Forty plan. Despite this decision, none of the meaningful effects of recognition have yet been carried out. Budgets that were put aside in 1996 to implement recognition still have not been released by the government finance committee. In some villages, areas to be recognized have been reduced to 20% of the original area and in others up to 40% of the existing houses have been left off the approved plan. In all the villages, demolition orders are still outstanding, and in some new ones have continued to be issued.
If you read this history, your conclusion is probably not different from my own. The Bedouins of the Negev remain an oppressed people in spite of their status as citizens of Israel.