Twitter reveals JNF’s approach toward Palestinian Bedouin

Sunday, January 8 2012|Noam Sheizaf

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 also:

Protest against settler-friendly JNF expands, raises existential questions
Forced relocation of 30K Bedouin biggest dispossession since ’48

http://972mag.com/twitter-reveals-jnfs-approach-toward-palestinian-bedouin/32360/

Thousands protest Israel Bedouin relocation plan

Published Sunday 11/12/2011 (updated) 13/12/2011 10:19

 

Bedouin citizens of Israel pray during a protest outside the office of Israeli
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem on Dec. 11, 2011.
(REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun)

 

 

JERUSALEM (AFP) -- Several thousand people demonstrated on Sunday outside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office, protesting over a plan they say will displace tens of thousands of people from their land.

The demonstrators came from Bedouin communities across Israel, gathering outside Netanyahu's Jerusalem office holding signs reading "We are staying here" and "No to the Praver Plan."

Palestinian citizens of Israel closed schools and businesses for the day on Sunday, in a strike to protest the Praver plan approved by the government in September, Israeli news site Ynet reported.

Israel says the plan will address the problem of unrecognized Bedouin villages in the Negev desert of southern Israel, helping Bedouin better integrate into Israeli society.

But the proposal was formulated without any consultation with the community, with rights groups slamming it as a major blow to Bedouin rights and warning it would forcefully uproot tens of thousands from their land.

In October, several thousand Bedouin joined a similar demonstration in Beersheba, with Bedouin villages and towns observing a general strike.

The Higher Arab Monitoring Committee, which represents Arab communities in Israel, has described the so-called Praver initiative as a "disaster" which would have "dangerous" consequences.

There are around 160,000 Bedouin in Israel, most of whom live in and around the Negev desert, largely the descendants of Palestinians that managed to remain during the 1948 war that established the state of Israel.

More than half of them live in unrecognized villages without municipal services like water and electricity, and much of the rest also live in extreme poverty.

Ma'an staff contributed to this report

http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=444101

Israeli parliament approves plans to transfer 30,000 Palestinian Bedouin

Mansour Nsasra 

The Electronic Intifada 

1 October 2011

The Bedouin community in the Naqab (Negev) desert has remained steadfast in the face of property destruction and attempted displacement.

 

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Oren Ziv 

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ActiveStills 

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While attention is focused on the Palestinian Authority’s UN recognition initiative, Israel is quietly taking hugely significant steps to transfer 30,000 Palestinian Bedouin in the Naqab (Negev) desert from their ancestral lands.

Recently, Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, approved plans for another large-scale cleansing of the Bedouin community in the Naqab. The plan would “relocate” 30,000 of those who managed to remain on their land after more than two thirds of all Bedouin were uprooted during the establishment of Israel.

The Bedouin once were a flourishing community of some 90,000 persons who lived around the city of Bir al-Saba (Beersheva). Yet the expulsions that took place in 1948 were the prelude to their ongoing expulsion since then.

After the establishment of Israel, military rule was imposed on the Beersheva Bedouin for more than 18 years. Despite the end of the military rule in 1967, the Bedouin story of dispossession continues until today. Almost all their land was seized by the state using a set of legal maneuvers such as the absentee property law and the land acquisition laws of 1953.

Despite the expulsions that took place during the establishment of the State of Israel on their land, today the Arab Bedouin population is estimated to number more than 200,000 persons and constitutes one-third of the Naqab’s population. Today, half of Bedouin citizens of Israel live in 46 “unrecognized” villages. These are Bedouin villages in the Naqab which Israel does not recognize as legal; the villages are deprived of basic services like housing, water, electricity, education and health care. The rest live in townships that the state established for them in the 1970s in an aggressive policy of forced sedentarization.

Israel refuses to respect the rights of its own citizens; in this case 100,000 persons (the population of the 46 unrecognized villages) who are part of the 1.5 million Palestinian national minority treated as second-class citizens in Israel. Despite continuous policies since 1948 to Judaize the Naqab, Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, is currently considering the possibility of a final push to modify the demography of the region once and for all and hence tighten Israel’s control over it. The recent Goldberg and Prawer Commission recommendations of “relocating” 30,000 Bedouin from their native land was approved in September by the Israeli government (Eliezer Goldberg is a former Israeli high court judge; Ehud Prawer a senior Israeli civil servant; both men have headed panels set up to study the status of Bedouins in the Naqab).

Since 1948, successive Israeli governments have not dealt seriously with the Bedouin land ownership question, or “problem” in the Israeli state’s lexicon, in the Naqab. Successive new governments formulated new plans for dealing with the unrecognized villages and land claims. To this day, no government has applied universal principles of human rights to resolve the dispute between the Bedouin community and the state over land ownership.

It appears that Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, is in the process of adopting extreme measures toward this segment of the Arab minority in Israel that remained within its historical homeland to achieve a final solution to this “problem.” The plan approved by the Israeli cabinet involves the expulsion and “relocation” of 30,000 Bedouins from their land out of a total of 100,000 residents of the unrecognized villages. It is no coincidence that such drastic measures are close to implementation.

With the regional shift in politics amid the Arab uprisings and the move towards recognition of a Palestinian state, Netanyahu’s coalition feels an urgent need to take the strategic decision of protecting space for Jewish settlers in the Naqab by dispossessing more indigenous Bedouin from their own historical land.

Land grab

The struggle between Israel and its Naqab Bedouin citizens is about a state bent on Judaizing the land by dispossessing its indigenous inhabitants, on the one hand, and indigenous land ownership rights, on the other. The land grab from the indigenous Bedouins started as early as 1949. By the 1950s, the majority of the remaining Bedouin (11,000) was expelled from the western part of the Naqab into a small enclosed military reservation north east of Beersheva (and became “internally displaced” citizens).

Since then, these remaining members of the community have consistently chosen to achieve land recognition through legal means in the Israeli court system. These cases are ongoing. The most recent case was that of the Bedouin village of al-Araqib. After years of legal discussions in the Beersheva district court, the land claims of the village were not recognized despite the fact that the residents of the village hold land deeds dating back to the times of Ottoman rule in Palestine. The response came in July 2010, when the Israeli authorities, accompanied by the Israel Lands Authority (ILA) and more than 1,300 police, demolished the village.

Since the initial razing of the village, and in an amazing display of steadfastness, the people of al-Araqib rebuilt their village with their own hands. In response, the state razed the village yet again, and as of the last destruction, the village has now been rebuilt on 29 separate occasions.

Such steadfastness has posed a fundamental challenge to an Israeli government seemingly unable to understand the nature of the people power unleashed in the region over the past nine months. The village’s plight has suddenly become the symbol of the land struggle between the indigenous peoples of the Naqab and the state.

Far-right sets the agenda

According to Turkish and British archival reports, previous governments in Palestine recognized Bedouin land claims. When Winston Churchill, the British prime minister, and Herbert Samuel, the first British High Commissioner for Palestine, met Bedouin sheikhs in 1921, they recognized Bedouin land ownership, according to specific customs and tribal laws. Yet since 1948, the Israeli court system has not recognized even one land claim, despite the fact that the Bedouin have made thousands of claims on their historical land.

In December 2007, Ehud Olmert’s administration established the Goldberg Commission, which was tasked with finalizing the status of Bedouin land claims in the Naqab. Nowadays, the Bedouin seek that 600,000 dunams(150,000 acres) of land is recognized and registered in the state registry as a small portion of their historical land. Today, the Bedouin populate approximately 5 percent of the Naqab’s land, a fraction of the area of southern Palestine they inhabited prior to 1948.

A report submitted in 2008 recommended that some of the Bedouin land be recognized. According to the Goldberg proposal, half of Bedouin claims on agricultural lands they currently occupy should be granted: around 200,000dunams (50,000 acres) to be listed as Bedouin territory in the land registry bureau. In fact, this is less than half of the Bedouin land claims made since the 1970s. In addition, the Goldberg Commission recommended the recognition of a limited number of the unrecognized villages.

In January 2009, the government formed a team tasked with the implementation of these recommendations headed by Ehud Prawer, chief of the Policy Planning Department within the Prime Minister’s Office. The Prawer panel worked to implement Goldberg’s recommendations by offering 27 percent of the Bedouin claim. The Bedouin who are represented by the regional council of the unrecognized villages, and by other local and grassroots organizations, refused the offer.

The Bedouin argued that the Goldberg and Prawer recommendations would mean another catastrophe (Nakba) for them, with the loss of their land and demolition of most of their villages. The Bedouin campaigned against the Goldberg recommendations and asked for full recognition of their 46 villages and the all the land claimed by them.

In response to the possible implementation of the Goldberg recommendations, Yisrael Beiteinu, a right-wing party headed by foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman, urged the government to cancel the “offer” and reduce the amount of land to be recognized altogether. Right-wing members of the Knesset, and local Israeli council leaders in the Naqab, came out against a plan of dividing the Naqab.

Shmulik Rifman, head of Ramat Negev Council, stated that Netanyahu’s government was taking a major risk, explaining that if “they don’t finalize the Bedouin settlement it will be very hard to enhance Jewish settlement in the Negev. This must be addressed if one wants 700,000 Jews in the Negev.” From Rifman’s viewpoint, the Naqab and Bir al-Saba/Beersheva region is still central to the state’s ideology of colonizing more of the indigenous Bedouin land.

This pressure from Israeli right-wing politicians paid off. Modifications to the official recommendations of the Goldberg report were made, including the reduction of the amount of land available to Bedouin communities, as well as reducing the compensation offered to them in order to leave their land. The stance of the Israeli right-wing parties reflects the growing anxiety of the Israeli authorities to secure the Naqab for Jewish settlers. David Rotem, a Yisrael Beiteinu member of the Knesset, argued that “The occupation of state land has come to an end. We are returning the Negev to the state of Israel’s hands.” He also recommended employing 300 civil police to enforce what amounts to the state’s dispossession of Bedouin communities so as to stop their “encroachment” on “state” land and building “illegally.”

The struggle continues

Bedouins’ peaceful actions in the face of these policies of dispossession and expulsion are ongoing. The Bedouin campaign against the implementation of the Goldberg and Prawer recommendations includes organizing protests in Arab villages across the country and boycotting the government plans at different levels. Bedouin demonstration included organizing central demonstrations in Jerusalem.

But the local indigenous population are not willing to give up the claim to their land despite the continued weekly house demolition. The Bedouin continue to raise the banner, demanding their villages and land claims be recognized. The continually shifting policies of the state and its agencies towards the local indigenous Bedouin is a clear sign of their fear of losing more land for Jewish settlements in the Naqab, and it is a natural reaction to Bedouin steadfastness. The facts clearly indicate that indigenous peoples of the Naqab do not meekly submit to state oppression, and that they are not going away.

Dr. Mansour Nsasra teaches Middle East politics and international relations at the University of Exeter.

http://electronicintifada.net/content/israeli-parliament-approves-plans-transfer-30000-palestinian-bedouin/10444

Poverty rife among Bedouin women denied status by Israel

The Electronic Intifada

Tel Aviv

2 August 2011

 

Khadra El Saneh started a weaving center that employs seventy women.

(Phoebe Greenwood /IRIN)

 

TEL AVIV (IRIN) - More than 180,000 Bedouins live in the Negev (Naqab) desert but there is a big gap in terms of life opportunities between those Bedouins who live in 35 unrecognized villages, and those for whom Israel has created seven towns or who live in seven officially recognized villages, say human rights workers.
Those in unrecognized villages face a constant threat of eviction and are cut off from even basic services. Aside from the threats to their homes, not enough is being done by Israel to lift these Bedouin communities out of poverty, they say.

Amal Elsana al-Hajooj, a Bedouin woman living in the Negev and the director of the Negev Institute for Strategies of Peace and Development, explains that unemployment and poverty rates among the Negev Bedouin in unrecognized villages are the highest in Israel.

“Residents of unrecognized villages have no status,” she says. “They have no address, their Israeli IDs state only the name of their clan. They have no claim to land. Their communities have no water, electricity or roads. There are no education or health services. The Negev is the backyard of the State of Israel. We are struggling to get any investment here.”

Al-Hajooj says the situation is most difficult for Bedouin women who face the dual challenges of living as Bedouin in Israel but also as women in a patriarchal society, where 30 percent of families are polygamous.
The conditions for women living in unrecognized villages are dramatically worse than for their counterparts in Israeli-built Negev towns, she says. “Today 75 percent of the Bedouin students [largely from recognized Negev towns] in university are women. But in the unrecognized villages the situation is very different — 65 percent of girls are out of school because there are no schools.”

Sued to pay demolition bills

The Israeli government’s recent suing of the Bedouin residents of al-Araqib village in the Negev — for $500,000 to cover the cost of repeatedly demolishing their homes — has sparked fresh debate over Israel’s treatment of its Bedouin minority.

Claims by Bedouin residents that al-Araqib is built on ancestral land have been dismissed by Israel, which has carried out more than twenty demolition and eviction operations in the village since July 2010. Israel considers al-Araqib, along with 34 other Bedouin villages in the Negev, an illegal village.

Ortal Tzabar, spokesperson for the Israel Lands Authority, says, “This case is not about demolitions; these people are criminals. This land has been deserted since 1950, when it was taken by Israel. We had even leased the land to other Bedouins for agricultural use and they chased them away. But their claim that the land belongs to them is now under investigation and if it is found they have any rights at all, they will be allowed to return.”

In response, a spokesperson for al-Araqib residents, Awad Abu Freih, says: “The court [process] is going to take some time, the next hearing is not soon. It has been very exhausting. The government doesn’t like us; they don’t want us but this is our land. They have been using our land for over sixty years. We don’t owe them any money. They should give us compensation.”

Empowerment through weaving

Khadra El Saneh is the director of Sidreh, the only organization of its kind in Israel working to educate and promote the rights of Bedouin women. A mother of four, El Saneh overcame initial opposition from the traditional elements in her community to set up a weaving center. The center now employees seventy local women to make rugs that sell in boutiques across Israel and are exported as far afield as New York and Tokyo.

“Our aim is to empower women here with basic things. Bedouin women are at the lowest level of employment in Israeli society; 90 percent of Bedouin women living in recognized villages are illiterate. In unrecognized villages, that number is more like 100 percent. If a woman has education and economic empowerment, she can take more control, make decisions, be more useful to her society and her family.”

In an effort to combat low literacy rates, Sidreh also runs courses teaching Arabic, Hebrew and English. Since it opened in 1998, 1,400 women have graduated from its literacy course. It also offers community services, like early childcare.

Sidreh’s weaving business was launched in 2007. The 70 women employed to spin wool, stitch and weave the rugs each earn on average 2,000 shekels ($586) a month. The organization is supported by a number of international and national aid agencies, including Oxfam, but has received no support from the State of Israel.
According to El Saneh, the solution to her community’s education and employment crisis is simple: “If we have schools, girls can go to school. If we don’t have schools, girls can’t go. If a woman doesn’t have skills, transport and basic logistics she can’t open a business. If she has, she can.”

This item comes to you via IRIN, a UN humanitarian news and information service, but may not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations or its agencies. All IRIN material may be reposted or reprinted free-of-charge; refer to the copyright page for conditions of use. IRIN is a project of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

http://electronicintifada.net/content/poverty-rife-among-bedouin-women-denied-status-israel/10227