The original title of this essay was: Bedouin to set up tent city near Knesset to protest land policy, and the text was as follows:
This morning (Monday, July 16, 2007), Mijal Grinberg from the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, reported:
Bedouin leaders are planning to erect on Monday what they call a “refugee” camp for members of their community whose homes have been demolished or are slated for demolition.The encampment will be set up across from the Knesset in Jerusalem by the unrecognized village council. Its purpose is to demand from the government a solution to the Bedouin land problem and to the unrecognized villages. A demonstration will be held at 11 A.M.The Bedouin claim ownership to some 800,000 dunams of land, or 6 percent of the territory of the Negev desert in southern Israel. To this day, Israel refuses to recognize the claims, and an estimated 75,000 Bedouin live in villages unrecognized by the government, which do not enjoy public funding or services.
Along with two thirds of the Palestinian population, most of the Bedouin people were ethnically cleansed from Israel proper and presently live in refugee camps in Gaza and the West Bank. Roughly ten percent, however, remained and were put under t he jurisdiction of military rule.
Over the years since then, successive Israeli governments have passed laws which clearly discriminate against the Bedouin people, in spite of their status as Israeli citizens. A de jure segregationist policy made clear that they were not Israelis in the true sense.
Although eleven unrecognized villages subsequently received state recognition in recent years, thirty six have no legal status, and the homes in these villages have been subject to demolition. In 2007, the government destroyed 110 Bedouin homes and slated other communities, like A-Sira, for complete demolition.
Although the Israel Lands Administration (ILA) said the residents were offered plots in the permanent Bedouin settlement of Hura, under false claims that their lands were needed for military bases, the truth is much different.
Last month, Haaretz reporter, Mijal Grinberg, published an article entitled,
ILA destroys Bedouin homes to make way for Jewish town
The Israel Land Administration (ILA), with the assistance of an unusually large police force and IDF soldiers, demolished dozens of tin shack homes Monday in unrecognized Bedouin villages Um Al-Hiran and A-Tir in the northern Negev.
The ILA is destroying the village and evacuating the inhabitants so that a Jewish Community named “Hiran” can be established in the area. Fourteen shacks, which housed some 100 people, have been destroyed by bulldozers so far.
Some time ago, I reviewed the history of Israel legislation intended to disenfranchise the remaining Bedouin people of their ancestral lands and villages. Contrary to popular myth, the Bedouin are not nomadic, desert dwellers, but have always lived in established communities. As stated, most were ethically cleansed during the 1948 war and presently live in refugee camps in Gaza and the West Bank. Laws intended to deal with the remaining Bedouin are clearly segregationist and marginalize this Arabic people for the purpose of settling the Negev with Jewish only communities, which is happening.
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.
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.
The rest of this history of antiBedouin law can be read through the link provided.
As far as the tent city or refugee camp being erected in Jerusalem is concerned, if anyone would like to contribute to this effort, Yeela Raanan of the Regional Council for the Unrecognized Villages, is requesting that checks be sent to this address:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/7/14/6354/72935
The El-Auna Fund for the Refugee Camp
P.O. Box 10002
Beer Sheva, Israel
84105
A late report from Haaretz indicated the following:
More than 800 protest Bedouin house demolitions in front of Knesset
By Mijal Grinberg, Haaretz
More than 800 people protested in front of the Knesset on Monday against the government practice of demolishing Bedouin homes in the Negev.
The protestors came in 17 buses from southern Israel, and called on the government to “stop destroying homes.”
After the demonstration, in the afternoon, the Bedouin began constructing what they called a “refugee camp” in the Wohl Rose Garden across from the Knesset, which is to house both the Bedouin who have had their homes destroyed and those whose homes are slated for demolition.
Is this the sixties USA? You gotta love it. Support these people if you can, as you might have our own Black population in times of Jim Crow segregation.