organization:bedouin

The goal: to expel as many Palestinians from their land as possible -
Forced relocation plan decrees overcrowding for West Bank Bedouin. Nearby Jewish settlements, meanwhile, sprawl free.
By Amira Hass | Dec. 8, 2014 |Haaretz
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Pages upon pages came out of the fax machine at the Civil Administration’s Central Planning Bureau on Wednesday. They contained objections to the establishment of a Bedouin township to be named Talet Nueima (in Hebrew, Ramat Nueima) north of Jericho, which is slated for 12,500 people. This comes on top of objections sent in by registered mail and email.

The Civil Administration subcommittee that deals with such objections will have to read more than 200 objections. Opponents of the plan include Bedouin from the Kaabneh and Jahalin tribes, whom the Civil Administration plans to expel from their homes and resettle in the township together with the Rashaida tribe which is already based in the area. Jericho and nearby Palestinian villages object to the plan as well.

The objectors are represented by the Jerusalem Legal Aid and Human Rights Center; Bimkom – Planners for Planning Rights; the Association for Civil Rights in Israel; and attorneys Sliman Shahin, Basem Karajeh, Tawfek Jabarin and Shlomo Lecker.

An oft-repeated objection is that the Civil Administration drafted the Talet Nueima plan without consulting the Bedouin or the Palestinian communities in the area, and without taking their needs into consideration.

Dozens of private individuals and activists in Israel/Palestine and abroad have also sent in standard objections to the plan.

The Hebrew standard objection states, among other things, that: “The plan disregards the cultural characteristics of Bedouin society – including the division of the family complex, to which entrance is highly restricted.” The objections note that the families “take great care to guard their privacy, and the privacy of women in particular.”

According to this argument: “Allowing this part of their culture to exist requires spatial planning that completely contradicts what the plan contains. Instead of small two-family lots of a half dunam each, the lots must be much larger and include a residential portion alongside a large area that will let family members keep their flocks near their places of residence.” This means at least three dunams (0.7 acres), instead of a quarter dunam, per family.

The plan was preceded by the state’s decades-old policy of uprooting the Bedouin in the West Bank (most of them refugees expelled from the Negev after 1948) by reducing the space available to them, demolishing their shacks and blocking their access to water and markets. The Civil Administration even considers the tarps that protect them from the rain illegal construction and confiscates them.

To solve the problem of the Bedouin’s subhuman living conditions, which as everybody knows came out of the blue, along comes the compassionate Talet Nueima plan (which is comprised of four detailed master plans and two additional plans for roads).

In a letter to attorney Shlomo Lecker, Capt. Yaniv Ya’ari, a consulting officer in the military legal adviser’s office in the West Bank, wrote: “The plan ... was prepared to create a suitable planning solution that took the population’s needs into account ... in accordance with proper planning principles .... Contrary to your claim, several meetings and hearings have taken place in recent years in which your clients and you were given full opportunity to have your say to present alternative solutions for the area’s inhabitants – the members of the Bedouin population.

According to Ya’ari, “As far as we are concerned, the fact that these talks did not result in agreements is no indication of unwillingness to include the community in the planning process, but only of the regional authorities’ position that the rationale and planning of the proposed programs was preferable to those that you proposed.”

The objection by Bimkom reveals significant shortcomings in planning (on top of the original sin of forced relocation).

It’s possible these shortcomings are innocent mistakes – such as the assumption that the Bedouin’s basic organizational unit is the nuclear, not the extended family, or that the size of the average Bedouin nuclear family is 5.6 people, not the actual 7.1. It’s also possible that because of human error, there are crude discrepancies in the various parts of the plan, which also includes the demolition of already-existing homes of the Rashaida tribe.

Plans ‘lack of sensitivity’

But is the planning of a very wide road right through a village, to be used mainly for military purposes (access to the nearby army base or training ground) a mistake?

Bimkom says this road “embodies the plan’s lack of sensitivity and brings into sharp focus the plan’s functionalist aspect, which justifies the substandard planning that forces the Bedouin, with their families and flocks, to crowd into closed and narrow boxes stuck close together, and puts a military road, on which weapons of war will be traveling, in the middle.”

Are the tiny lots allocated for the construction of public buildings a “mistake” as well? According to Bimkom experts, the plan allocates 3.4 square meters of public buildings per person: roughly one-third of the 10 square meters accepted for ultra-Orthodox Jewish families – and ultra-Orthodox and Bedouin families are about the same size.

By comparison, the new plans for the two settlements in the area has set aside several times more space for public buildings: 80.7 square meters per person in Beit Ha’arava and 449 (!) square meters per person in Almog’s new neighborhood.

This “mistake” reflects the Civil Administration’s raison d’etre and activity in the West Bank: to expel as many Palestinians as possible from as much Palestinian land as possible. Then crowd them into as tiny an area as possible to give Jews as much space, comfort, convenience and quality of life as possible.

BEDOUINS DU NEGEV. En Israël, des tractations avec les Bédouins du Negev pour les dédommager de leurs terres expropriées...
Les Israéliens sont formidables : eux ont absolument le droit d’occuper les terres des autres et de se répandre tandis que les autres n’ont pas le droit d’occuper et de se répandre sur leurs propres terres...

Israeli government seeks to settle Bedouin issue once and for all - National Israel News | Haaretz Daily Newspaper
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A new bill addresses disputed ownership of thousands of acres in the Negev, offering Bedouin residents compensation while leaving the state with vast swaths of land that it had expropriated for various purposes.
By Zafrir Rinat

Countless reports, resolutions and action plans have failed over the years to address the complicated issue of recognizing Bedouin villages in the Negev. It’s the new government’s job to implement the previous cabinet’s plan, and many observers say this is the last chance to solve the problem effectively.

More than 40 Bedouin villages in the Negev are unrecognized by the state, as well as hundreds of thousands of acres where the Bedouin claim ownership. The state thus has to operate on two tracks: a master plan for these communities and a negotiated settlement for land ownership.

Otherwise, the expansion of unrecognized villages will continue to obstruct development plans, tens of thousands of people will remain living in dire conditions, and the lack of infrastructure and unregulated use of land will damage the environment.

The previous government’s plan was crafted by a team led by then-Minister Without Portfolio Benny Begin; it included a bill to regulate land-ownership claims. Two weeks ago, on his last day in office, Begin said it was very likely most Bedouin would join the arrangement. But some human rights groups and Bedouin activists are unwilling to accept the program.

In any case, the town-planning process has been launched by companies working for the Authority for Regulating Bedouin Settlement in the Negev. Areas where new towns will be established (some based on existing communities) have been marked in the district master plan.

According to Begin’s staff, fewer than 3,000 families would have to move (excluding residents of the village of Wadi Na’am, who are willing to move). Families would move to sites under 10 kilometers from their current homes, and could move to a new rural community or an expansion of an existing one.

But planning isn’t possible without settling the Bedouin’s ownership claims to the land. The draft bill to regulate claims is ready. A green light from the Ministerial Committee for Legislation will set the legislative process in motion. Begin says the bill is better for the Bedouin than previous government decisions.

The main change is the decision to compensate families claiming land they don’t currently hold. This is because Begin’s people couldn’t provide an answer for Bedouin who said they couldn’t remain on their land because the state had forced them to settle elsewhere. But the bill also leaves the state with 180,000 dunams (nearly 45,000 acres) that it had expropriated for various purposes.

Officials at the Israel Lands Administration have criticized the bill, saying the Negev doesn’t contain enough land to provide compensation. Begin, however, says land is available and that the issue will be reviewed again soon with the ILA. A source dealing with the issue said that even if the proposed arrangement stretches the land-allocation options to the limit, the opportunity shouldn’t be missed.

The Negev Coexistence Forum, which includes Bedouin activists, says the willingness to recognize villages is limited by the regional master plan, which designates land currently occupied by communities for other purposes.

“The threat of evacuation of tens of thousands of Bedouin citizens remains," the forum said. “We call on the state to commit to a full recognition of every village.”

As for settling ownership claims, the forum argues that the state is offering only partial compensation, unlike cases in which Jewish settlers have been evacuated. Moreover, sometimes the compensation will be in money, not land. The forum also attacks the bill’s stipulation that ownership claims must be settled within five years.

“This condition reveals the true nature of the arrangement, which is not a generous compromise but an acute threat and evidence of the state’s attempts to force oppressive policies of concentrated settlement in the area,” the forum said.

Begin said in a report that the government had to set a deadline to create an incentive for claimants to join. This would also prevent reductions in compensation due to the constant increase in the number of heirs that might join claims. According to Begin, there is no way to impose the arrangement on tens of thousands of people, and it’s hard to take action against illegal construction in the absence of a framework for legal construction.

“There is no moral or practical foundation for extensive enforcement actions against illegal construction in the absence of master plans that provide a framework for settlement,” Begin told Haaretz before he left his post. “That’s why we must try to reach a situation where ownership claimants agree to be part of the proposed arrangement."

In the report, Begin wrote that “we cannot reconcile ourselves to the reality that the Bedouin live with in the Negev, and changing it will require effort, both by the government and the Bedouin."