10/02/2003

Ignored amidst the cyclical violence of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the fate of the indigenous inhabitants of the Negev, the Bedouin.  Already prevented by the government of Israel from maintaining their traditional agrarian lifestyle and regularly subjected to land confiscation, house demolitions, and destruction of fields and trees, a new government plan threatens to forcefully displace them again.  “We are citizens and the law is supposed to protect us, but it does not.  Instead it is actually used against us,” one Bedouin told Refugees International.

Before 1948, the population of the Negev (“al-Naqab” in Arabic) was almost exclusively composed of Bedouin tribes.  Of the 95 Bedouin tribes living in the Negev at that time, only 11 remained following a systematic policy of expulsion during and after the 1948 war.  As late as 1953, the UN reported the expulsion of some 7,000 Negev Bedouin into Jordan, Egyptian-occupied Gaza, and the Sinai.  The remaining tribes were rounded up and spent the next 18 years under military rule in an enclosure zone.  Bedouin who remained in the Negev were transferred against their will to the northern part of Beersheba (Bir Saba').  Presently the Bedouin, who once owned 94 percent of the total land, own less than 3 percent. The rest of the Negev, some 85 percent of the total landmass, has been turned into blocs of military zones and conservation parks, and declared off-limits.  

Internal refugees who remained within the borders of the new state of Israel were unable to return to their villages.  Several tens of thousands Bedouin live in the Galilee in the north, but the majority of the Bedouin, some 130,000 individuals, reside in the Negev.  Since the mid-1960s, the Bedouin of the Negev have been forced to settle into seven urban townships planned and built by the Israeli government: Rahat, Tel Sheva, Segev Shalom, Arrara, Hura, Kaseifa and Lakiya.  Rahat, with a population of almost 60,000, is lacking basic infrastructure such as proper roads, public lighting, and adequate drainage.  

Worse still is the situation of the half of the Negev Bedouin population who refused to be relocated.  They live in 45 ‘unrecognized’ villages, where the provision of public services, such as water, electricity and sanitation, access roads and transportation, as well as medical clinics and schools, is absent.  The infrastructure for water, for example, consists of an opening in the national pipeline to which villages must bear the cost of extending their own pipelines.  Prevented from maintaining their traditional agrarian lifestyle through flock restrictions and limited access to land and water, today more than 90 percent of the population live off of labor wages.  The postal and telephone systems do not serve them.  There are no dentists, eye doctors, mental health specialists, or health education.  Only 10 villages have health clinics.  No high schools and no vocational secondary schools have been built in any of the villages. Furthermore, traditional concerns may keep girls from completing their education:  many families will not permit their daughters to make the journey outside the villages to learn.  The Bedouin population in the Negev suffers a high rate of infant mortality.

Israel's 1965 Planning and Construction Law did not include the unrecognized villages in municipal plans.  This means construction and residence in these areas are illegal under Israel law.  Residents are instructed to demolish their own houses.  Failure to do so can result in arrest and fines.  Owners have to pay the costs of houses demolished by Israeli police.  There has been a marked increase in destructions over the past year, with 150 warning notices delivered on July 1 alone. While the charges have formally been for unlicensed building, the state has now accused its citizens in the Negev of living on land that does not belong to them.  In one village, officials came at 2 a.m., woke the family, took them far away, and then destroyed the house.  “The worst effect is on the children,” one resident told RI.  

Since the villages are unrecognized, they have no local authority to apply for a change in the status of their lands, and no representation on regional or national planning committees.  In June 2002, the Ministry of Justice put forward an amendment to the Law on Public Land “Eviction of Trespassers Amendment 2002,” which has defined residents of the unrecognized villages as “Trespassers” and thereby subject to removal.  

National plans now threaten further dispersal.  In April 2003, the government of Israel approved a five-year plan, backed by a budget of more than NIS 1.175 billion Israeli shekels (more than USD $200 million).  Under this plan, prepared without participation of the residents of the villages, most of the 70,000 Negev Bedouin who live in 45 unrecognized villages would gain a new legal designation that will be used to transfer them from the 'scattered’ villages into three new reservations on the land of three former unrecognized villages and designed along the lines of the existing seven townships.  This action will make way for 14 new Jewish settlements, some planned for locations where actual Arab villages now exist, and a number of ranches designed for individual Jewish farmers.  

Through The Together Forum for Growth and Equality in the Negev, a coalition of organizations that represent Arab and Jewish citizens and works for the advancement of the rights of the inhabitants of the unrecognized villages, a civilian solution to the government’s plan has been proposed.  It calls for the Israeli government to open a dialogue with the representatives of the Arab Bedouin community and the preparation of a detailed plan to develop the Negev for the benefit of all the residents, Jews and Arabs.  In such a plan there is hope.

Refugees International therefore recommends that:

The Government of Israel

• Recognize the rights of village residents to their lands.
• Provide equal levels of service to all citizens.
• Immediately cease the policy of house demolitions.
• Actively solicit community participation in national planning and establish a municipal authority to represent the residents of the unrecognized villages.