Participants in the march for recognition of Israel’s Bedouin villages, which began in the unrecognised village of Wadi Al Nam in the Negev desert in southern Israel and ended with delivery of ‘The Alternative Master Plan for Unrecognised Bedouin Villages’ to the Head of State’s office in Jerusalem, March 2015. Credit: Silvia Boarini/IPS

By Silvia Boarini
JERUSALEM, Apr 4 2015 (IPS)

There was a symbolic dimension to a recent four-day march from the periphery of Israel to the corridors of power in Jerusalem to seek recognition for Bedouin villages.

The march, which began in the unrecognised Bedouin village of Wadi Al Nam in the Negev desert in southern Israel, ended on Mar. 29 with delivery of ‘The Alternative Master Plan for Unrecognised Bedouin Villages’ to the Head of State’s office in Jerusalem.

On this occasion, Negev Bedouin community leaders and hundreds of representatives of civil society organisations (CSOs) were joined by Arab and Israeli members of the Knesset from a political society actor, the Joint List, a political alliance of four Arab-dominated parties in Israel – Hadash, the United Arab List, Balad and Ta’al.

The Joint List, headed by Knesset member Ayman Odeh, was born out of Arab civil society’s need for unity and is now very much a player able and willing to gain power and mediate between its constituency and the state.“We are trying to present a different narrative [of Bedouin villages] to the people based on history, on facts, on legal rights and international human rights” – Professor Oren Yiftachel, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

A recent European Commission report mapping CSOs in Israel describes their space for dealing with human and civil rights as shrinking and their contribution to governance often misunderstood or perceived as a threat by state authorities.

In this context, although it may not change the state’s perception of CSOs, a strong partnership with a recognised political society actor such as the Joint List might at least mean that the mobilisation achieved by these organizations at the grassroots level can translate into change at legislative level.

“Because the Joint List is stronger now and we have a common goal, we think we can put more efficient pressure on the parliament and on the government to find a just solution for the people in the unrecognised villages,” Fadi Masamra of the Regional Council of Unrecognised Villages (RCUV) told IPS.

RCUV is an elected civil society body that seeks to advance the rights of Bedouins in unrecognised villages,.

The common goal is gaining recognition for some 46 unrecognised Bedouin villages in the Negev which do not exist on any map and do not receive any basic services such as running water or electricity.

In 2011, the Israeli government approved a unilateral plan, known as the Prawer Plan, to “regularise Bedouin settlement” within five years by demolishing these unrecognised villages and forcibly relocating Bedouins to new localities. The plan sparked mass outcry and was eventually shelved in 2013.

Activists take pride in recalling that the Prawer Plan was stopped by people in the streets who demonstrated against it and not by representatives in the Knesset. They say that it this disconnect that both CSOs and the Joint List hope to be able to bridge by working together.

“I am very proud that the Joint List called for this march,” Hanan al Sanah of womens’ empowerment NGO Sidre told IPS as she walked with the marchers. “It shows that their commitment is real and they haven’t forgotten their electoral promise. They are making the issue of recognition more visible and they can build on the mobilisation that has gone on for years within the community.”

CSOs have worked tirelessly in the Negev not only to mobilise Bedouins against the Prawer Plan but also to produce alternative literature, reports and campaigns that challenge the government’s classification of Bedouin presence in the Negev as “illegal”.

By re-framing the issue of recognition around land rights, human rights and equality, they have been able to reach Jewish and international audiences and further shape the public debate.

CSOs have also been using a powerful state tool, that of mapping, to propose a tangible and viable solution in the form of the ‘The Alternative Master Plan for Unrecognised Bedouin Villages’.

The plan was drawn up by a team led by Professor Oren Yiftachel, who teaches political geography, urban planning and public policy at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, in collaboration with the RCUV and Bimkom, an NGO promoting equality in planning practices.

“We are trying to present a different narrative to the people based on history, on facts, on legal rights and international human rights,” Yiftachel told IPS. “We worked for three years on the Alternative Plan and we have created a different scenario for the future.”

The Alternative Plan draws a different map of the Negev in which unrecognised villages are “legalised” and can access the same development opportunities as their Jewish neighbours.

“This is a very scientific and detailed solution that fits within state planning and comes from the community, it is not imposed on them. It can make the process easier,” explained RCUV’s Masamra.

Although Yiftachel admits that since it was first presented in 2012 the Alternative Plan has largely been ignored by Knesset commissions, he believes attitudes have shifted and CSOs must continue to push for change.

“After all, a solution is overdue since the future of the unrecognised villages, and of the 100,000 Bedouins living in them, remains uncertain,” he said, adding that “it is important to remember that the state is not a homogeneous body. There are people willing to consider recognition.”

For the CSOs and activists working day in day out in the field, mobilisation remains key. “I would say that the real challenge remains mobilising both the Jewish and the Bedouin community,” Michal Rotem of the Negev Coexistence Forum, a Jewish Arab NGO working in unrecognised villages, told IPS.

“Politicians come and go but it is the NGOs’ role to bring more communities and groups into the struggle and to maintain engagement.”

For Aziz Abu Madegham Al Turi, from the unrecognised village of Al Araqib, working closely with CSOs is important to bring new people to the Negev and come together in actions that reverberate beyond the Negev. “The worse it get gets the more united we become,” he told IPS.

“The state tries to break us up but we connect through different organisations and committees and we find new strength. We come together to support each other.”

Amir Abu Kweider, a prominent activist in the campaign against the Prawer Plan, sees the arrival of the Joint List as an occasion to form new alliances. “We need to intensify efforts to safeguard our rights against racist legislation and reach out to new Israeli audiences,” he told IPS.

In this sense, the march can certainly be judged a success. Tamam Nasra, for example, travelled from the north of Israel to join the march. “Arabs in the South are no different from me, their problems are my problems. Their oppression is my oppression. This is why I heeded (Knesset member) Ayman Odeh’s call,” she told IPS.

Omri Evron, a Joint List voter from Tel Aviv, also joined out of a sense of collective responsibility. “It is not possible that in 2015 in Israel there are people who are effectively not recognised by the state,” he told IPS. “This has to change.”

The positive atmosphere was not dampened even by the knowledge that a new Benjamin Netanyahu government will be sworn in shortly.

“It doesn’t matter if the right wing gets stronger,” stressed Masamra. “If you think that it is not worth struggling then nothing will be changed. We have a responsibility towards our people and this is about human rights, not about who is more powerful.”

Edited by Phil Harris    

Mariam Abu Madegham Al Turi sits with her niece in her family's tent in Al Araqib village in the Negev desert. The tent was built following the latest demolition of the village by Israeli government authorities on Jan. 14, 2015. Credit: Silvia Boarini/IPS

By Silvia Boarini
AL ARAQIB, Negev Desert, Israel, Feb 20 2015 (IPS)

Lehavim Junction in the northern Negev in Israel has been the backdrop to protests against home demolitions in Bedouin localities for the past four and half years.

Every Sunday, inhabitants of the Bedouin village of Al Araqib and their supporters stand behind a large banner reading ‘Stop Demolishing Al Araqib’ in English, Arabic and Hebrew. To the rhythm of clapping hands, the younger ones shout slogans into the PA system, ‘Jews and Arabs can live together’, ‘Stop demolishing our homes’.

Last month, the ‘unrecognised’ village of Al Araqib was demolished for the eightieth time in four and half years. Despite the absence of a ruling adjudicating ownership of the lands of Al Araqib, the state is planting a forest on the Al-Turi Arab Bedouin tribe’s ancestral lands.“Planting a forest is not in my view a reasonable excuse to demolish a village. And neither is making room for a Jewish settlement. These are racist and discriminatory excuses” – Michal Rotem, Arab-Jewish NGO Negev Coexistence Forum (NCF)

“The newspapers here don’t write about Al Araqib,” Mariam Abu Madegham Al Turi, a young inhabitant of Al Araqib told IPS. “These weekly protests are a way to show that we exist. It is part of our sumoud (steadfastness), our resistance.”

Once in a while, a sympathetic driver passing the junction honks the horn in support, a sign of the niche interest that the situation of the Bedouin in the Negev still arouses in the wider Israeli public.

And yet according to a recent report titled ‘The House Demolition Policy in the Negev-Naqab’, published by the Arab-Jewish Negev Coexistence Forum (NCF) non-governmental organisation, the situation in Al Araqib is far from unique.

NCF advocates for civil equality in the Negev-Naqab and is the only NGO methodically documenting house demolitions affecting Bedouins. They counted 859 in the twelve-month period between July 2013 and June 2014

The level, it confirms, has remained virtually unchanged in the past four years and the high numbers “attest to the incompetence of the state in offering durable solutions” to the crisis affecting the region.

Since the Prawer Plan bill ‘to regulate Bedouin settlement’ was frozen at the end of 2013 following mass outcry from the Bedouin community, NCF claims that “in the absence of a legislated plan”, the government is using home demolitions as a policy to limit Bedouin land rights and still implement its vision of development for the Negev.

Naif Agele stands with his children and nephews by the ruins of his brother’s house in an ‘unrecognised’ section of the township of Kuseife in the Negev desert. The house took one month to build and was demolished by government authorities in 10 minutes in March 2014. Credit: Silvia Boarini/IPS

Development for whom and at what cost is the question posed in the NCF report. “The state does not need this land for development,” Michal Rotem who co-authored the report, told IPS.

“They just want it clear,” she said. “Planting a forest is not in my view a reasonable excuse to demolish a village. And neither is making room for a Jewish settlement. These are racist and discriminatory excuses.”

Bedouins are indigenous to the Negev, are Israeli citizens and number roughly 220,000, or 30 percent of the region’s population. About 140,000 of them have been forcibly urbanised and live in seven failing townships planned by the government in the 1960s and 70s, as well as in ten ‘recognised’ villages.

The remaining 80,000 live in 40 localities that are not recognised by the state, do not appear on any map and are at constant risk of demolition, as is the case with Al Araqib.

As Rotem explained, these communities often pre-date the state of Israel but a policy of nationalisation of land turned their inhabitants into ‘invaders’ of state land. “Imagine,” she said, “a state came, legislated its new laws and declared all of the Bedouin community in the Negev criminals, that’s what happened.”

In the past forced urbanisation was offered as the only path to becoming ‘not criminals’, but today those who did urbanise have very little to show for what they gave up.

The NCF report reveals that 54 percent of all demolitions in the period assessed took place in ‘legal’ localities. This means that no provisions were made to accommodate the lifestyle or the natural growth of the Bedouin community, which has the highest fertility rate in Israel.

“This completely contradicts state plans,” Rotem told IPS. “First they tell Bedouins to live in recognised localities and then they go and demolish there too.”

Jalal Abo Bneah is a field coordinator with NCF. He lives in the ‘unrecognised’ village of Wadi Al Nam and knows all too well how these ‘contradictions’ affect people’s lives.   “For example,” he told IPS, “the government wants to move the 15,000 people of Wadi al Nam to the township of Segev Shalom. But there is barely enough space in the township for the people already living there. How is this going to work?”

Abu Bneah stressed that there is growing dissatisfaction amongst the Bedouin community with unilateral governmental plans that ignore their needs. “They show no respect for anyone. Not for the people in the recognised localities nor for the ones in the unrecognised villages. Where do they want us to go?” he asked.

Last October, the United Nations Human Rights Committee adopted a number of concluding observations on the fourth periodic report of Israel. For example, it stressed that the state refrain from executing demolitions based on discriminatory planning policies and that it consult Bedouins on plans regarding their future.

Abo Bneah welcomes pressure from global actors but given the current right-wing political climate in Israel, he holds little hope that change will come soon.

In the meantime, to counteract state efforts to erase the Bedouin, NCF has launched a website that seeks to set the record straight regarding the true topography of the Negev. The ‘Arab Befouin Vilages in the Ngev-Naqab’ project puts all 40 ‘unrecognised’ villages on the map of Israel, something the state has so far refused to do.

The website allows visitors to learn basic facts about each village, such as date of establishment, number of inhabitants or distance from public services and to see photos of the homes, the nature or the inhabitants. The residents themselves will soon be providing more images, especially documenting demolitions

Just like the weekly demonstrations at Lehavim, the ‘Arab Bedouin Villages project’ helps make the Bedouin more visible, their experience of state power public and their narrative of the past known, but there is more work ahead says Abu Bneah.

“There is still a lot of ignorance out there, especially among the Jewish public,” he stressed. “They still think we took the lands of the state and that is not true.”

For Mariam and the others in Al Araqib, being told by their state that the Bedouin do not exist or that they are ‘criminal invaders’ only makes their commitment to sumoud stronger. “We are here and we are not going anywhere,” Mariam said. “This is our land and, until we live, we will stay.”

Edited by Phil Harris   

Makeshift Bedouin home in a camp east of Jerusalem on the way to Jericho. Credit: Mel Frykberg/IPS

By Mel Frykberg
RAMALLAH, West Bank, Oct 18 2014 (IPS)

Thirty-year-old Naifa Youssef and 50 other members of her Bedouin community live a precarious life, eking out a hand-to-mouth existence alongside the main road which links Jerusalem with the Dead Sea and the ancient city of Jericho.

Home for this community, east of Jerusalem, comprises a collection of shanty structures and hovels as well as tents erected on the rugged and rocky hills which line the road.

These makeshift homes are not connected to the electricity grid or to water and waste infrastructure. In winter the bitter cold rain and howling winds creep into the structures while mud and sewerage build up in pools around the tents.“We have nowhere else to go, we’ve lived here for many years and have no other land. We also can’t afford to move into a Palestinian village because we can’t afford the rent” – Naifa Youssef, a Palestinian Bedouin

Water has to be purchased and brought in by hand from the nearest village of Anata, a 15-minute and 5-km taxi journey away costing about two dollars per person.

Youssef’s community lives below the poverty line as the men folk struggle to make ends meet from casual day labour and herding their goats and sheep, with the area they can graze on limited by Israeli settlements.

The community has lived there for 50 years following their expulsion from the Negev Desert in 1948 when the Israeli state was established. The majority of the West Bank’s Bedouin communities were expelled from the Negev Desert during the same year.

Over the next few years, Israel plans to forcibly expel and relocate approximately 27,000 Palestinian Bedouins from Area C of the West Bank to make way for Israeli settlements.

This followed an announcement by the Israeli government in August that it planned to confiscate over 1,000 acres of West Bank land – the biggest land grab by the Jewish state in three decades.

The West Bank is divided into Area A, under nominal Palestinian control, Area B under joint Israeli-Palestinian control, and Area C (which comprises approximately 60 percent of the territory) under full Israeli control, although overall control of the entire West Bank ultimately falls under Israeli control.

The Israelis argue that under the 1993 Oslo Accords, Area C does not belong to the Palestinians and that most of the structures built there were constructed without permits.

However, obtaining the requisite Israeli building permits for Palestinians is notoriously difficult in East Jerusalem and most parts of the West Bank, and almost impossible in Area C. Critics argue that this is a deliberate policy by the Israeli authorities to keep the occupied territory part of Israel.

The Israeli authorities have warned the Youssefs and their neighbours that they have less than two months to evacuate and that if they refuse to leave they will be forcibly expelled by Israeli security forces.

“We have nowhere else to go, we’ve lived here for many years and have no other land. We also can’t afford to move into a Palestinian village because we can’t afford the rent,” Youssef said.

Youssef’s problems have been experienced by thousands of other Bedouins and will be experienced by thousands more once again as Israel moves to keep most of the West Bank free of Palestinians and exclusively for Israeli settlers and settlements.

In preparation for what some have labelled an accelerated wave of ethnic cleansing, officials from Israel’s Civil Administration, which administers the West Bank, have been demolishing Palestinian infrastructure in Area C including shacks, tents, animal shelters and homes and other structures deemed to have been built “illegally”.

As part of the forced relocation, more than 12,000 Bedouins will be relocated to a new settlement near the West Bank city of Jericho where they will be surrounded by a firing zone, settlements and an Israeli checkpoint which will limit their ability to graze their herds, the main source of income for these nomadic pastoralists.

Several Bedouin communities were forcibly relocated in the 1990s by the Civil Administration from near East Jerusalem to an area of land near a garbage dump in Abu Dis which falls in Area B.

The expulsion of the Bedouins in the 1990s was primarily to make way for enlarging the Israeli settlement of Maale Adumim, one of the largest in the West Bank.

Further to enlarging Maale Adumim, part of Israel’s plan has been to keep an area known as the E1 corridor, which links the settlement with East Jerusalem, contiguous and under Israeli control by building more settlements, effectively dividing the West Bank in two.

The move also further isolates East Jerusalem from the West Bank. East Jerusalem is of great importance to Palestinians due to cultural, educational, family, business, and religious ties. Palestinians also hope to establish a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital.

“The Civil Administration’s plan blatantly contravenes international humanitarian law, which prohibits the forced transfer of protected persons, such as these Bedouin communities, unless the move is temporary or is necessary for their safety or to meet a military need,” says Israeli rights group B’tselem.

“The Civil Administration’s expulsion plan meets none of these conditions. Israel, as the occupying power, is obligated to act for the benefit and welfare of residents of the occupied territory. Expansion of the settlements does not comport with this requirement.”

(Edited by Phil Harris)

Eid Jahalin. Credit: Lucy Westcott/IPS

By Lucy Westcott
UNITED NATIONS, May 30 2013 (IPS)

For thousands of years the Bedouin people have made their home in the desert of what is now Israel. But for almost the last six decades, the Bedouin have been on the move, repeatedly relocated to make room for Israeli settlements.

As the Bedouin fight to be recognised as an indigenous people by Israel, Eid Jahalin, 49, who lives in the desert near the Jerusalem area, is advocating for them. Jahalin believes that “land without people” is Israel’s sole focus, while the Bedouin’s vast knowledge about living in the desert, practiced over centuries and crucial to preserve with climate change looming, stands to be lost."Many children, some eight and younger, have diseases after being born next to the garbage dump." – Eid Jahalin

IPS correspondent Lucy Westcott spoke to Jahalin, who was in New York City and the United Nations for the first time, about the current state of the Bedouin and how their relocation impacts climate change.

Q: What are the most recent developments by the Israeli government concerning relocation of the Bedouin?

A: The Israeli government is continuing with the same proposals, the same project, and they’re working faster. There is no pressure on Israel and nobody is stopping the plan.

A few days ago there was resistance to the plan because when it was published at the beginning of last week, the settlers talked about a Bedouin city in Nuweimeh. The settlers said they don’t want to give a “prize” to the Bedouin when they have been told, because of Secretary of State John Kerry, who recently visited Israel, that they have to stop their settlement plans.

Moshe Ya-alon, the minister of defence, is new and he said he will study the Bedouin relocation plan, so at the moment there’s a little less pressure. I believe that the government and settlers are working together, that they’re partners. When there is pressure and the government is stuck in the mud, then they activate the settlers, and then they say it’s the settlers. What they can’t do, they get the settlers to do.

Q: How long has this situation been going on for?

A: It’s been going on since 1967. From 1967-78, it was only an issue with the army, who would take land and declare it as a military zone. A year and a half later they would give that land to the settlers. After 1978 began all the chaos with the settlers.

The last major forced displacement was in 1997-8 and almost 2,000 people were displaced. During that time, there was a process of taking those families and people and putting them in containers, leaving them next to the garbage dump. To this day, there are some people who don’t have money who are still living there, in tin shacks.

Q: What is the situation like for the Bedouin in 2013?

A: One of the worst problems is that many children, some eight and younger, have diseases after being born next to the garbage dump, that not even Hadassah, the main Israeli hospital in Jerusalem, recognises. There is one family – a mother, father and three children – that have this disease, and nobody knows what it is. Hospitals have said it’s the first time they’ve seen this disease and it’s unusual. The children are sick to this day, staying at home with the parents.

If you go down to Jerusalem from the Bedouin valley you’ll see Bedouin living next to the side of the roads. The government pressured the Bedouin: they can’t be on the desert on either side of the road, so they’re only able to be next to the road. If you allowed them, if you gave permission, you wouldn’t find one Bedouin next to the road. The Bedouin don’t always need to be near the road for communication and transport.

Q: What has your contact with the Israeli authorities been like?

A: If only the Israeli government would leave the Bedouin alone. They’ve closed access to the road for the school, for the whole community, and that’s their help?

The government won’t allow us to have any access to natural spring water, and if a Bedouin goes out into the desert, they take you to court and put you in prison with a fine of 1,000 to 2,000 shekels. The desert is the natural place for Bedouin, but the government won’t allow it. They’re closing the Bedouin off as though we’re people in a box.

And if they, the Israeli government, say ‘we’re helping the Indigenous people,’ I want to hear one example.

Q: What specialised knowledge about living in the desert do the Bedouin stand to lose with continued relocation?

A: A month ago, for example, I was down in the JordanValley in Jericho, and everybody was complaining about the unusually extreme heat. When I went home, none of my family was complaining about the heat because as Bedouin, we’re used to the heat and know when to go in the sun and when not, when there is danger in the desert and when there’s no danger.

In New York, I don’t know exactly where I am, but if I’m in the desert, I know everything. The weather is changing these days, but now we have to think forward and think what needs to be done. Because I live in the desert, it’s easy for me to deal with the changes, not like in the city or in villages.

This planet is a very small ball. If somebody makes a problem or damages on one side, then we feel it on the other, so we have to protect the land.

Q: As this is your first time at the United Nations, what do you hope the community will learn about the situation of the Bedouin people?

A: I hope they learn a lot. We hope to shine a red light on the situation of Bedouin, what’s happening to them, and the situation of global warming. I came here to alert the world to that.

Excerpt:

Eid Hamis Jahalin from Khan Al-Ahmar village warns of the dangers from the eviction of Bedouin people. Credit: Jillian Kestler-D’Amours/IPS.

By Jillian Kestler-D'Amours
KHAN AL-AHMAR, Occupied West Bank, Apr 29 2013 (IPS)

Dozens of metal and wooden tents cling to the rocky hillside, just outside of Jerusalem along the road leading to the Dead Sea, while the unmistakable red roofs of Israeli settlements peak out from behind opposite hilltops.

For 49-year-old Eid Hamis Jahalin, this quiet spot symbolises the potential centre of peace in the region, and one thing is clear: his family must be allowed to stay in its community.

“The Bedouin are fighting to exist (here) since 1967. Israel has been trying to displace us since then,” Jahalin said, sipping tea in the shade of his family’s tent in the village of Khan Al-Ahmar. The Bedouin are an indigenous people

“The whole world is talking about two states and two governments. If they get the Jahalin out of here, the border of Jerusalem will be the Dead Sea and the Jordan Valley. After that, where can you have two states?” Jahalin told IPS.

Last week, local human rights groups announced that the Israeli Ministry of Defence is soon expected to unveil a new relocation plan for almost two dozen Bedouin communities living in the Jerusalem periphery, including Khan Al-Ahmar.

This proposal involves forcibly displacing some 3,000 Jahalin Bedouin to an area in Nwei’mah near the city Jericho in the Jordan Valley, which would be under Palestinian Authority control.

“It would put them all together in blocks of 800 units, which of course were not created according to the needs of these communities. They are very small plots. The density is too high. There will be no area for grazing, and this area is already used by other Bedouin communities,” said Alon Cohen-Lifshitz, an architect with Israeli planning rights group Bimkom.

The new plan would also place the Jahalin community between numerous restricted areas, including an Israeli closed military zone, checkpoint and settlements, and a Palestinian Authority security forces training area.

The Israeli government, however, says moving the Bedouin from their current location will greatly improve the quality and level of services they receive.

“They are living there illegally and we are looking at a series of options,” Guy Inbar, spokesperson for the Israeli Civil Administration, told The Media Line, adding that no plan has been finalised yet.

“We want the Bedouin to live in an area where they get all the infrastructure they need, like water and electricity, instead of living in tents that could be demolished.”

“It’s like being a sardine in a tin, one next to another."
The Israeli Civil Administration is an Israeli military body that governs Area C of the occupied West Bank, which accounts for 60 percent of all the West Bank. Area C is under full Israeli control, and the Civil Administration regulates all Palestinian building and planning therein.

According to Cohen-Lifshitz, numerous Israeli restrictions have made it so that Palestinian construction in Area C is only allowed on one percent of the land.

“They are trying to create a huge pressure with the demolition orders, with other restrictions, and creating what’s called the silent transfer. If (Palestinians) understand that they cannot live freely in Area C, then people will move to Area A and B, where they can build and live without restrictions,” he told IPS.

The Jahalin Bedouin tribe was evicted from its land near Tel Arad, in Israel’s southern Negev desert region, in the early 1950s. Since then, the community has lived on the outskirts of Jerusalem. It is now surrounded by a handful of Israeli settlements, including the mega-settlement Ma’ale Adumim, which has a population of 40,000.

Residents of Khan Al-Ahmar don’t have access to running water or electricity, and each structure in the village, including the local school, is subject to an Israeli demolition order. Israeli settlement expansion – including construction in the E-1 corridor located near Khan Al-Ahmar – also continues to threaten the village. The expansion would sever East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank.

In the late 1990s, in an earlier effort to expand Ma’ale Adumim, Israel displaced 200 Bedouin families living near Jerusalem to a new location near the municipal dumping grounds in Abu Dis, posing a serious health hazard for residents.

“Previously relocated families report negative consequences, including health concerns, loss of livelihood, deteriorated living conditions, loss of tribal cohesion and erosion of traditional lifestyles,” the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) found.

The latest round of expulsions was quietly unveiled in October 2011, with the Israeli Civil Administration hinting that approximately 27,000 Bedouins would be evicted from their homes in the Jordan Valley area within three to six years.

The first phase of this plan – which was met with staunch local and international condemnation – involved expelling the Jahalin near Ma’ale Adumim.

At the time, the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which supports Palestinian refugees, stated that efforts to move the Jahalin, “may amount to individual and mass forcible transfers and forced evictions contrary to international humanitarian and international human rights law”.

According to Eid Jahalin in Khan Al-Ahmar, the Israeli government must abandon its new plan to relocate the community. The state has only two options, he said: allow the Jahalin to live peacefully in their current location, or let them go back to their original lands in the Negev.

“I want to live in a Bedouin village,” Jahalin said. “It’s like being a sardine in a tin, one next to another. Take that (relocation) plan and show it to Israelis and see if they would want to live there. Nobody would live there.” (END)

A home recently demolished in the village of Bir Hadaj, part of the Abu Basma regional council. Credit: Jillian Kestler-D’Amours/IPS

By Jillian Kestler-D'Amours
BEERSHEBA, Israel, Dec 22 2012 (IPS)

As campaign posters pop up around Israel ahead of the country’s upcoming parliamentary elections, Bedouin citizens of the state are still reeling after being denied the chance to elect their own local council representatives.

Legal rights activists say the move represents the limits of democracy in Israel, particularly with regard to its non-Jewish citizens.

“Every citizen wants to have a say in the affairs of their lives. This is their legal right,” Jazi Abu Kaf, a local leader in Um Batin, a Bedouin village of some 4,000 residents in Israel’s southern Negev desert region, told IPS.

“The authorities don’t want to allow elections or see leaders (emerge) from among the local people.” The current head of the council is not from the villages, making locals feel alienated from the local government.

Um Batin is one of 11 Bedouin communities in the Negev that make up the Abu Basma regional council. Formed in 2004, the council is the newest, and one of only three, non-Jewish local councils in Israel.

As of 2011, 53 regional councils governed approximately 850 rural towns and villages in Israel. Made up of elected representatives from communities within each council’s jurisdiction, regional councils help distribute local budgets, provide services to residents, and liaise with various government bodies.

While it now represents approximately 30,000 Bedouin citizens of Israel, the Abu Basma regional council is still run by an Israeli government-appointed representative, and Israel has repeatedly delayed elections to appoint representatives from among the local people.

The Israeli ministry of interior passed an amendment to the Regional Councils’ Law in 2009, which allowed it to indefinitely postpone elections in new regional councils. Before this, Israeli law mandated that elections be held within four years of the creation of a new regional council.

In 2011, after local human rights groups appealed the amendment, the Israeli Supreme Court ordered the state to hold elections in December 2012 for the Abu Basma villages.

But only a few months before the elections were set to take place, a special committee created by the Interior Ministry suggested splitting the Abu Basma regional council into two new councils: Al Kasum and Neve Midbar.

In its justification of the split, the state argued that the residents of Abu Basma were not ready to hold elections, and the council didn’t cover a contiguous territory.

“Even if they had reasonable arguments, the timing of appointing such a committee – a few months before the elections were supposed to take place – indicates that their purpose was to avoid the Supreme Court verdict and to split the council,” said Rawia Abu Rabia, an attorney with the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), which represents the villagers in their efforts to hold elections.

“(Bedouin) are excluded from democratic processes that (their) Jewish neighbours are not. People feel more alienated from the state authority. They feel a lack of trust.  It’s also weakening leadership within the Bedouin society,” Abu Rabia told IPS, explaining that without elections, local Bedouin leaders feel powerless to positively impact their communities.

There are approximately 200,000 Bedouin citizens of Israel living in the Negev area. In addition to the Abu Basma council villages, more than 60,000 Bedouin live in about 35 ‘unrecognised’ Bedouin villages in the Negev, while about 100,000 live in state-built Bedouin townships.

Virtually all the Bedouin communities in the Negev – whether recognised, or not – suffer from a widespread lack of services, high unemployment, and abject poverty. The government-planned Bedouin towns, for instance, annually fall into the lowest socio-economic bracket in Israel.

A government proposal passed in 2011, known as the Prawer Plan, also aims to uproot at least 30,000 citizens from their homes in unrecognised villages and relocate them to the townships. The government justifies this move as a way to modernize the Bedouin community and provide it with better services.

Bedouin citizens of the Negev, however, have flatly rejected the Prawer Plan as an affront to their basic rights.

“This policy sees the Bedouin not as citizens, but rather as the enemy or a demographic threat. In order to be able to implement the government policies that the Bedouin are opposing, the Israeli government is re-organising the space in different ways, through planning, land use and local municipalities,” Abu Rabia said.

According to Jazi Abu Kaf, denying thousands of Bedouin citizens the right to elect their own leaders only adds to a sense of dispossession growing within the community.

“Nine years after the (Abu Basma regional) council was established, the situation in the villages is no different than before. The council didn’t do anything for the villages,” said Abu Kaf, adding that some homes in Um Batin are still without electricity, despite the village’s on-paper recognition.

“Israel is not a democratic state. There is no equality between Arabs and Jews. Young people see that they are present in this state, but don’t have their rights. They have no hope for the future.”

(END)