Dr. Yeela Raanan
Alternative Views
February 4, 2012
A new bill seeks to turn the controversial Prawer Plan into Israeli law. If the Knesset passes the legislation, it will pave the way for Israel to step up its efforts to disposess the Negev’s Bedouin and relocate them to impoverished townships. This bill has gone totally ignored by both local and international media.
On January 3rd the Government of Israel published the memorandum of a bill named “Regulation of the Bedouin settlement in the Negev”, which states the steps to be implemented in order to relocate the overwhelming majority of the residents of the Negev’s unrecognized villages and to confiscate about two-thirds of the land remaining in their possession.
As can be expected, the Government of Israel is anticipating resistance to this new bill, so within the bill are violent measures to ensure its implementation. This bill is currently going through the legislative process in the Knesset, and will likely become law soon.
We call all our friends to help us prevent the Knesset and government from passing this disastrous bill.
Following is a short history bringing us up to this legislature, then a short description of the bill, with a highlight on its most dangerous aspects.
(The memorandum can be found at this address (Hebrew only): http://www.tazkirim.gov.il/Tazkirim_Attachments/41151_x_AttachFile.doc)
Brief overview of current situation
Coerced urbanization: Israel has had destructive policies towards its Bedouin minority for decades. The results of these policies are seven Bedouin towns, which are always rated as the poorest municipalities in Israel, with severe social breakdown, harsh unemployment, and the absence of any traditional or modern positive roles for the women in the communities. Israel created these towns with willful disregard for the traditions and the needs of the community, rather with the lone aim of minimizing the land available for the use of the community. Over the last half century Israel has managed to “settle” half the Bedouin community in these failed towns.
Policies of non-recognition: The other half of the Bedouin community has been adamant in holding on to its traditional lands and culture and the government has made them pay a steep price by withholding basic services and infrastructure through the policies of non-recognition. Forty-five villages, of 1,000 -10,000 residents each, are not recognized, making the people live without roads, no connection to the electric grid, no running water or sewer system, very minimal health and education systems, and worst of all – no administrative system by which to request building permits, rendering all the homes “illegal” and therefore slotted for demolition.
Land use: Before 1948 the 90,000 Bedouin were virtually the only residents of the Negev. By 1952 there are only 12,000 Bedouin, the rest had been persuaded one way or another to leave the country. Today there are about 200,000 Arab-Bedouin, comprising 1/3 of the Negev population, and who are using only 320,000 dunams of the 13,000,000 of the Negev. The new bill will reduce this even further – to less than 150,000 dunams.
For comparison sake: the Jewish farmers in the Negev are using 1,000,000 dunams of land for agriculture, the Bedouin are currently using about 195,000 dunams, and this will be reduced by the new bill to close to zero. On the other hand – there are more people that make a living as farmers in the Bedouin community than among the Jews of the Negev. Needless to say the new bill will bring the Bedouin community to be even poorer and more dependent on governmental handouts than it is already; accordingly this will further decimate the community.
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