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-authorised 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, 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 ($300m) once legislation due to be introduced
shortly becomes law.
“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,” 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.
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“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.
Some
new villages will be built for displaced Bedouin, Scop said 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 unorganised 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 maximising 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 UN 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.
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Like
most unauthorised Bedouin villages, Al-Sira is not hooked up to Israel’s
electricity grid. Alamour and his neighbours 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.
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