naturalfeature:negev desert

Israel is playing a big role in India’s escalating conflict with Pakistan
Robert Fisk | The Independent - Thursday 28 February 2019
Signing up to the ‘war on terror’ – especially ‘Islamist terror’ – may seem natural for two states built on colonial partition whose security is threatened by Muslim neighbours
▻https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/israel-india-pakistan-conflict-balakot-arms-trade-jaish-e-mohammed-a8

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When I heard the first news report, I assumed it was an Israeli air raid on Gaza. Or Syria. Airstrikes on a “terrorist camp” were the first words. A “command and control centre” destroyed, many “terrorists” killed. The military was retaliating for a “terrorist attack” on its troops, we were told.

An Islamist “jihadi” base had been eliminated. Then I heard the name Balakot and realised that it was neither in Gaza, nor in Syria – not even in Lebanon – but in Pakistan. Strange thing, that. How could anyone mix up Israel and India?

Well, don’t let the idea fade away. Two thousand five hundred miles separate the Israeli ministry of defence in Tel Aviv from the Indian ministry of defence in New Delhi, but there’s a reason why the usual cliche-stricken agency dispatches sound so similar.

For months, Israel has been assiduously lining itself up alongside India’s nationalist BJP government in an unspoken – and politically dangerous – “anti-Islamist” coalition, an unofficial, unacknowledged alliance, while India itself has now become the largest weapons market for the Israeli arms trade.

Not by chance, therefore, has the Indian press just trumpeted the fact that Israeli-made Rafael Spice-2000 “smart bombs” were used by the Indian air force in its strike against Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) “terrorists” inside Pakistan

Like many Israeli boasts of hitting similar targets, the Indian adventure into Pakistan might owe more to the imagination than military success. The “300-400 terrorists” supposedly eliminated by the Israeli-manufactured and Israeli-supplied GPS-guided bombs may turn out to be little more than rocks and trees.

But there was nothing unreal about the savage ambush of Indian troops in Kashmir on 14 February which the JeM claimed, and which left 40 Indian soldiers dead. Nor the shooting down of at least one Indian jet this week.

India was Israel’s largest arms client in 2017, paying £530m for Israeli air defence, radar systems and ammunition, including air-to-ground missiles – most of them tested during Israel’s military offensives against Palestinians and targets in Syria.

Israel itself is trying to explain away its continued sales of tanks, weapons and boats to the Myanmar military dictatorship – while western nations impose sanctions on the government which has attempted to destroy its minority and largely Muslim Rohingya people. But Israel’s arms trade with India is legal, above-board and much advertised by both sides.

The Israelis have filmed joint exercises between their own “special commando” units and those sent by India to be trained in the Negev desert, again with all the expertise supposedly learned by Israel in Gaza and other civilian-thronged battlefronts. (...)

#IsraelInde

What’s in A Name? Exploring the Role of Law and Bureaucracy in The Everyday Construction of Holot, an ’Open Detention Facility’ for ’Infiltrators’ in Israel | Oxford Law Faculty
▻https://www.law.ox.ac.uk/research-subject-groups/centre-criminology/centreborder-criminologies/blog/2017/11/whats-name

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Approximately 38,000 asylum seekers from Sudan and Eritrea currently reside in Israel. All entered Israel since 2005 through non-authorized border points, and most claim to have fled persecution in Sudan or human rights abuses in Eritrea. In 2013, Israel established Holot ‘open detention facility’ in the middle of the Negev desert, approved by the Knesset (Israel’s Parliament). To date, approximately 10,000 people have been detained in Holot. Detainees must report to Holot for a year-long detention, under the 5th amendment to the Prevention of Infiltration Law. Detainees must be present for head counts in the mornings, evenings and sleep in the facility, while during the day, they are allowed outside the center’s confines. Israel’s Prison Authority runs the facility. Breach of disciplinary guidelines is punishable by sanctions, including removal to a closed facility, Saharonim, located across the road.

During interviews, three legal terms were frequently used by state employees or legal professionals to describe Holot as a non-punitive arrangement. I expand briefly on each term to trace how a punitive effect takes place, despite the claimed neutrality and administrative nature of these legal terms.

Administrative detention, which includes the arrest and detention of persons without an indictment, trial or access to judicial review, has existed since the state’s founding in 1948. The early days of Israeli statehood were characterised by the mass movement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who had been displaced during the 1947-8 war. Those who crossed the border without the new State’s authorisation were titled ‘infiltrators.’ Increased organized smuggling by militant groups called Fedayeen in the early years of the state, led to the legislation of the Prevention of Infiltration Law in 1954. Since 2012 this law was expanded, contested in court, and amended to regulate asylum seekers who entered the country through non-authorised border points, and enable their detention.

State employees and legislators insist that administrative detention is not punitive, and therefore does not need to comply with individual criminal law procedures and protections. However, similarities between administrative detention and penal incarceration came under scrutiny in Israel’s Supreme Court and in legislative committees. As explained in the final verdict on detention in Holot by Justice Vogelman: “Long periods of detention cross the border between a ‘disciplinary’ sanction which is largely carried out for the sake of deterrence and a ‘penal’ sanction which is punitive in its essence” (author’s translation). This observation was picked up by scholars, activists and lawyers questioning the legislative aim of detention, its covert and overt goals.

The blurred or intersecting border between criminal law and immigration law has been vastly explored under the term crimmigration. Juliet Stumpf has written about the ways in which ‘the process is the punishment in crimmigration law’, drawing on Malcolm Feeley’s 1979 work. Stumpf identifies two criteria to ascertain when processes of crimmigration law may become punitive: when those subjected to the process experience it as punitive, and when the process is enacted as a sanction by the state.

Wife of Palestinian prisoner gives birth for second time using smuggled sperm
Feb. 20, 2017 9:56 P.M. (Updated: Feb. 21, 2017 10:58 A.M.)
▻http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?ID=775571

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TULKAREM (Ma’an) — The wife of a Palestinian prisoner serving 24 years in Israeli prison gave birth on Monday to a second child conceived using her husband’s smuggled sperm, her brother-in-law told Ma’an.

Ibrahim Hamarsha, the director of Tulkarem office of the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society (PPS), said his brother’s wife, Samira Hamarsha, gave birth to a baby boy named Ibrahim, conceived using sperm smuggled from her husband, who is being held inside Israel’s Ktziot prison in the Negev desert.

Samira’s husband, 40-year-old Yahya Hamarsha from the Nur Shams refugee camp in the northern occupied West Bank district of Tulkarem, has been in Israeli custody for the last 15 years. Three years ago, his wife gave birth to baby girl Yasmin using his smuggled sperm.

Yahya and his wife now have a daughter and two sons. Four years ago, the couple lost their 12-year-old daughter Fatima, who was run over and killed inside the refugee camp.

Samira gave birth by cesarean section at the Razan Medical Center for Infertility in Nablus.

“Succeeding to smuggle sperm from Israeli occupation’s prisons and giving birth to two babies in the last three years is a success story in defiance of the arrogance of Israeli wardens,” Ibrahim Hamarsha said.

Palestinian shot dead ’in cold blood’ by Israeli police during Negev demolition raid
Jan. 18, 2017 9:44 A.M. (Updated: Jan. 18, 2017 11:53 A.M.)
▻http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?ID=774987

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NEGEV (Ma’an) — Two people were killed and several others were hospitalized Wednesday after a predawn demolition raid into the Bedouin village of Umm al-Hiran in the Negev region erupted into clashes, as Israeli forces used rubber-coated steel bullets, tear gas canisters, and stun grenades to violently suppress locals and supporters who had gathered to resist the demolitions.

A Palestinian citizen of Israel was shot dead by Israeli forces after he allegedly carried out a car ramming attack on Israeli officers, leaving several injured, according to Israeli police. However, a numerous eyewitness accounts said that the driver lost control of his vehicle after he was shot, causing him to crash into Israeli police, one of whom was killed.

Israeli Knesset member Taleb Abu Arar said that the police killed Abu Qian “in cold blood," Israeli news site Ynet quoted him as saying. “The police shot him for no reason. The claims that he tried to run over police are not true.”

Locals identified the slain Palestinian citizen of Israel as 47-year-old Yaqoub Moussa Abu al-Qian , a math teacher at al-Salam High School in the nearby town of Hura.

Israeli police later confirmed that a policeman succumbed to injuries he sustained by being hit by the car. The slain officer was identified as 34-year-old Erez Levi.

Knesset member Ayman Odeh and head of the Joint List, which represents parties led by Palestinian citizens of Israel, was injured in the head and back with rubber-coated steel bullets, locals said, and taken to Soroka Hospital in Beersheba.

Odeh wrote in a statement on his Facebook page saying that “a crime was committed in Umm al-Hiran as hundreds of police members violently raided the village firing tear-gas bombs, stun grenades, and rubber-coated steel bullets. Villagers, women, men, and children stood with their bare hands against the brutality and violence of the police.”

Hundreds of Israeli police arrived to Umm al-Hiran at around 5 a.m. to secure the area for Israeli authorities to carry out a demolition campaign in the village.

Israeli news blog 972 Magazine quoted witness and activist Kobi Snitz as saying that police began pulling drivers out of vehicles, and attacking and threatening others.

A short while later, Snitz said he heard gunfire and saw a white pickup truck about 30 meters from police, telling 972: “They started shooting at the car in bursts from all directions.”

According to the report, it was only after the driver appeared to have been wounded and lost control of his vehicle that it crashed into the police officers, contradiction Israeli police reports.

#Palestine_assassinée

Clashes break out in Bedouin village after Israeli police deliver demolition orders
Oct. 27, 2016 11:30 A.M.
▻http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?ID=773739

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NEGEV (Ma’an) — Clashes broke out on Wednesday between Israeli police and local youth in the Bedouin village of Bir Hadaj in Israel’s Negev desert, after Israeli police affixed demolition orders on some villagers’ homes.

Locals told Ma’an that Israeli forces detained a number of people during the clashes, and that some Bir Hadaj residents were injured in the process.

They added that Israeli police issued demolition notices for homes belonging to the Abu Murayhil family ordering that the houses be demolished within 24 hours.

Locals said these houses had been demolished by Israeli authorities two weeks earlier, and had been recently rebuilt with the help of the Higher Guidance Committee of Arab Residents in the Negev.

“Israel thinks that it will find a solution by using force,” Bir Hadaj local committee head Salama Abu Idesan said. “It is not accustomed to negotiate with citizens, but we confirm that we are willing to have a dialogue and will not leave our land.”

#colonialisme_de_peuplement_israélien

Is Israel forming an alliance with Egypt and Saudi Arabia? - Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East
▻http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2016/04/israel-al-sisi-egypt-saudi-arabia-islands-transfer-alliance.html#

According to a senior security official, who spoke to Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity, Ya’alon emphasized to his associates that security cooperation between Israel and Egypt had reached an all-time high. The security systems of the two countries share the same interests. Egyptians, for instance, help Israel contain and cordon off Hamas in Gaza.

The recent move — the transfer of the two islands to Saudi Arabia — reveals part of the dialogue that has been developing between Israel and its Sunni neighbors. A highly placed Israeli security official, who spoke to Al-Monitor anonymously, added some details: Israel’s relationships in the region are deep and important. The moderate Arab countries have not forgotten the Ottoman period, and are very worried about the growing strength and enlargement of the two non-Arab empires of the past: Iran and Turkey. On this background, many regional players realize that Israel is not the problem, but the solution. Israel’s dialogue with the large, important Sunni countries remains mainly under the radar, but it deepens all the time and it bears fruit.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s action has aroused sharp public criticism in Egypt. The president’s opponents argue that under the Egyptian Constitution he has no authority to give up Egyptian territory, but Sisi rightly warded off this criticism: These islands originally belonged to Saudi Arabia, which transferred them to Egypt in 1950 as part of the effort to strangle Israel from the south, and prevent the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) from taking control of them. Israel embarked on two wars (the Sinai War in 1956 and the Six Day War in 1967) for navigation rights in the Red Sea. It took over these islands twice, but then returned them to Egypt both times. Now events have come full circle, and the Egyptians are returning the islands to their original owner, Saudi Arabia. This is a goodwill gesture from Sisi to King Salman bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud, after the Saudis committed themselves to the economic solvency of the Egyptian regime for the next five years. The Saudis are making massive investments in Egypt and providing financial support to save the Egyptian economy from collapse.

There is another aspect to the Egyptian transfer of the islands to Saudi Arabia: In the past, several proposals were raised regarding regional land swaps, with the goal of resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The framework is, in principle, simple: Egypt would enlarge Gaza southward and allow the Gaza Strip’s Palestinians more open space and breathing room. In exchange for this territory, Egypt would receive from Israel a narrow strip the length of the borderline between the two countries, the Israeli Negev desert region from Egyptian Sinai. The Palestinians, in contrast, would transfer the West Bank settlement blocs to Israel. Jordan could also join such an initiative; it could contribute territories of its own and receive others in exchange. To date, this approach was categorically disqualified by the Egyptians in the Hosni Mubarak era. Now that it seems that territorial transfer has become a viable possibility under the new conditions of the Middle East, the idea of Israeli-Egyptian territorial swaps are also reopened; in the past, these land swap possibilities fired the imaginations of many in the region. In his day, former head of Israel’s National Security Council Maj. Gen. Giora Eiland led a regional initiative on the subject. But he was stymied by Egypt.

#Israël #Egypte #Arabie_Saoudite #Turquie

Israel has 115 nuclear warheads: Report | Middle East Eye
▻http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/report-israel-has-115-nuclear-warheads-1915845762

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The report by the Washington DC-based Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), indicates that the arsenal is larger than previously thought, with most previous estimates suggesting Israel had around 80 warheads, which brought it roughly on par with the nuclear capabilities of India and Pakistan. Other estimates have put the figure much higher, at closer to 200, highlighting the secrecy that continues to shroud Israel’s nuclear programme. 

The ISIS report, which was based on previous reports and investigations, also states that Israel has produced about 660 kilograms of plutonium at the Dimona reactor in the Negev desert.

The site includes a heavy water reactor, a fuel fabrication plant and a plutonium separation plant, all of which were secretly provided by France in the 1950s and early 1960s. 

The US, France, Germany, Britain and even Norway are also widely believed to have supplied Israel with nuclear materials at the time, allowing it to build up a clandestine and as yet never officially declared nuclear arsenal, neither confirming nor denying its stockpiles.

„#stabilité“ #moyen-Orient „#équilibre_des_forces“ #armes #nucléaire #Israël #Israel #dirigeants_occidentaux #foutage_de_gueule

Sunday stabbing and shooting attack in Negev desert leaves two dead - The Washington Post

▻http://www.washingtonpost.com/rweb/world/attack-in-negev-desert-leaves-two-dead-as-israeli-violence-continues/2015/10/19/79767c0e-7637-11e5-a958-d889faf561dc_story.html?wpisrc=nl_draw2

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JERUSALEM — Two people were killed and nearly a dozen injured in a shooting and stabbing attack on Sunday evening carried out by an Israeli Bedouin Arab in the southern Israeli city of Beersheva, Israeli police confirmed Monday.

One of the dead was identified as 19-year-old soldier Omri Levy, whose military rifle was taken and used by the assailant in the attack. The second victim, police said, was an Eritrean asylum seeker, whose name has not yet been released. His death was the result of mistaken identity after a security guard shot him believing he was a second attacker, they said.

#jérusalem #occupation #colonisation

One last appeal before a Bedouin village in the Negev is demolished and a Jewish town is built in its place – Mondoweiss

▻http://mondoweiss.net/2015/06/bedouin-village-demolished

The Bedouin village of Umm el-Hieran in Israel’s southern Negev desert is running out of time and appeals before it will be razed to the ground and an exclusively Jewish town will be built in its place. After a decade of legal battles—a matrix of court cases over lands, houses, and demolition orders—the Bedouins now have one final petition at their disposal, a re-trial. If they lose this hearing their township will be demolished and the saga will end with a modern Jewish bedroom community owned by a private Israeli developer that does not sell homes to Arabs.

“We exhausted the appeals process. What we are trying now is a second hearing/review,” said Khalil Alamour, a lawyer with Adalah the legal group representing Umm el Hieran. “At the same time we are submitting a separate request to ‘freeze’ the demolitions until the hearing.”

In the lead up to the final ruling expected in the next few months the 25 Jewish-Israeli families who want to move into Umm el-Hieran are already living in mobile houses in a nearby nature reserve. They relocated there in 2009. Set behind a barbed-wire fence and a gate, they are ready to motor their caravans downhill to the Bedouin town as soon as the bulldozers remove the last shanty structure. Their hope is to construct 2,500 units serving more than 10,000 Israelis.

#bédouins #néguev #israël #démolisseurs

A march from Negev to Jerusalem in bid to recognise Bedouin villages | Middle East Eye

▻http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/march-negev-jerusalem-bid-recognise-bedouin-villages-1994051856?can_i

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The head of Israel’s third largest political party Ayman Odeh began a four-day walk on Thursday from the Negev desert to Jerusalem in order to bring attention to the issue of unrecognised Bedouin villages.

Odeh has long campaigned for the rights of the Bedouins in the desert, where there are as many as 40 unrecognised villages that are not connected to the state’s electricity or water grids and lack basic infrastructure.

“The existence of unrecognised villages, which have no water, electricity, schools or institutions is not just a stain on the government but a continuous crime and tragedy,” Odeh said. “These villages existed before the creation of Israel by decades. I decided to walk from the Negev to the Knesset before the formation of the new government to emphasise the priority of the issue and the depth of the ongoing crime.”

#bédouins #israël #néguev #al_araqib

African migrants speak out about life in Israel’s detention centres

In September the supreme court ruled that Holot detention centre should close within 90 days. Still open as the deadline looms, a film shot in April this year captures the lives of Sudanese and Eritrean refugees sent to this centre deep in the Negev desert

▻http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/19/-sp-african-migrants-speak-out-about-life-in-israel-detention-centres-h
#Israël #migration #asile #réfugiés #détention

Hundreds of African refugees launch hunger strike in Israeli prison
▻http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/hundreds-african-refugees-launch-hunger-strike-israeli-prison

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Israeli policemen and immigration officers raid a protest camp set up by African asylum seekers near a border crossing with Egypt in the Negev Desert on June 29, 2014. (Photo: AFP - Oren Ziv) Israeli policemen and immigration officers raid a protest camp set up by African asylum seekers near a border crossing with Egypt in the Negev Desert on June 29, 2014. (Photo: AFP - Oren Ziv)

Hundreds of jailed African refugees began a hunger strike on Monday after Israeli police violently broke up a sit-in they were staging along the Egyptian border and arrested them. Around 1,000 Africans, mostly from Eritrea and Sudan, had marched Friday to the border and set up a makeshift camp to protest against their “inhumane and unlimited” (...)

#African_immigrants #Israel #Palestine

#Gaza fighters fire #rocket into the Negev
▻http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/gaza-fighters-fire-rocket-negev

Palestinian fighters in Gaza fired a rocket Wednesday into Israeli-occupied territory without causing any casualties or damage, Israeli officials claimed. A statement from the occupation authorities said the rocket hit an area of the northwestern Negev desert that #Israel refers to as the Eshkol region, with a police spokesman telling AFP it caused no damage. A spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blamed Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas for the rocket fire. read more

#palestinians

#Gaza group fires five #rockets over northern border
▻http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/gaza-group-fires-five-rockets-over-northern-border

An armed group in the besieged Gaza Strip fired at least five rockets over the northern border on Monday but caused no casualties, #Israel's army said. In a statement, it said three homemade rockets fell in Palestine’s occupied Negev desert region. Later in the morning two more were fired at the town of Sderot. Police said in a statement that a road in a residential district of Sderot was slightly damaged. (AFP, Al-Akhbar)

#Top_News

#Ariel_Sharon buried in the Negev desert
▻http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/ariel-sharon-buried-negev-desert

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Israeli occupation forces walk past a newspaper with a picture of late former prime minister Ariel #Sharon on the front page, on January 12, 2014, in Jerusalem. (Photo: AFP - Ahmad Gharabli) Israeli occupation forces walk past a newspaper with a picture of late former prime minister Ariel Sharon on the front page, on January 12, 2014, in Jerusalem. (Photo: AFP - Ahmad Gharabli)

#Israel was on Monday burying former premier Ariel Sharon who died two days earlier at the age of 85 after spending eight years in a coma. His corpse will buried at a ranch in the southern Negev desert, which lies a few miles from the northern border of the Gaza Strip. His memorial service took place outside the parliament in Jerusalem which was (...)

#Sabra-Shatila #Top_News

#Ariel_Sharon, the “Butcher of Beirut,” is dead
▻http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/former-israeli-pm-ariel-sharon-85-dies

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This fil photo shows then-Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon waving to the audience as he arrives to participate in a memorial ceremony for #Israel's first Prime Minister David Ben Gurion, in Sde Boker in the Negev desert on December 7, 2005. (Photo: AFP - Menahem Kahana)

Former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, whose legacy includes the killing of tens of thousands of Arabs over his six-decade military and political career, is dead. He took his final breath on Saturday at the age of 85 after lying comatose for eight years following a stroke on 4 January 2006. His death marks the end of a bullish Israeli leader who commanded the respect of his subordinates, amassed loyal partisans, and struck fear in the hearts of his enemies. Natural Born Killer (...)

#Top_News

In act of civil disobedience, 150 Sudanese refugees walk out of Israeli ’open prison’

The 150 men walk six hours through the #Negev desert in bid to reach Jerusalem, are currently in #Be’er_Sheva and rebuffing authorities’ offer to bus them back to the ‘Holot’ open prison facility that opened late last week.

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►http://972mag.com/sudanese-asylum-seekers-walk-out-of-open-prison-en-masse/83751

#désobéissance #Sudanais #Israël #migration #requérants_d'asile #réfugié #asile #centre_pour_requérants_d'asile #prison_ouverte #Holot

How to stir up hatred between Jews and Bedouin in Israel -
By Rabbi Arik Ascherman | Nov. 4, 2013 |
Haaretz
▻http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.556001

The struggle on behalf of “unrecognized” Bedouin villages in Israel’s Negev Desert comes to the Knesset Interior Committee this week, as its members begin to debate the Begin/Prawer bill.

If this bill is passed, dozens of villages are likely to be demolished. Bedouin will be dispossessed of most of their remaining land. Up to 40,000 Israeli citizens will be transferred from their homes to townships that are magnets for crime and poverty because the Bedouin living in them have been torn from their agricultural sources of income and their culture. In his op-ed “Why don’t Rabbis for Human Rights care about Bedouin women?” Alon Tal attempts to delegitimize Rabbis For Human Rights’ support for this struggle by claiming that we neglect Bedouin women’s rights. But what is planned in the bill, and its consequences, will harm Bedouin women even more than men.

The issues facing Bedouin women are very serious, as we frequently hear from the Bedouin women activists we partner with. But the reality is that these women still choose to fight this bill while struggling in their communities on women’s issues because they know just how deeply they will be harmed by the bill’s passage. Unemployment in townships like Rahat is four times higher than in recognized villages (there are no statistics for unrecognized villages). In addition to suffering transfer and dispossession as Bedouin, women will be the first to be unemployed. The social anomie created by urbanization only increases violence against women. 

While fighting the Begin/Prawer bill would be legitimate and necessary were Rabbis for Human Rights doing nothing on behalf of Bedouin women, a quick Google search reveals that we just concluded Women Citizens For Equality, a three-year empowerment program for Jewish and Bedouin women. Tahrir Elatika, the young Bedouin woman who co-coordinated the project, has written to Prof. Tal. After describing the projects that Bedouin women have established in cooperation with RHR to promote women’s rights, she concludes: “Let the women flourish and develop in their own villages, as they do not want to move to townships like Rahat, that offer only poverty and neglect.” 

Tal plays on the stereotype that the Bedouin have no legitimate land claims and are illegally taking over the Negev. In 1920, the Palestine Land Development Company of the Zionist movement recorded nearly 650,000 acres as belonging to the Bedouin. When the Bedouin were invited to submit their land claims in the ’70s they submitted claims for less than half of this (many landowners had fled or been expelled). The government said it would not recognize Bedouin claims to 124,000 acres of communal grazing land, and nearly 50,000 acres have been dealt with since then either through arbitration or in court.

Most of these cases have not gone well for the Bedouin. Unlike the Ottomans, British and pre-state Zionist movement, Israel does not honor the internal Bedouin system of land ownership. Some 150,000 to 160,000 acres of land are still unresolved. Altogether the Bedouin land claims amount to around 5.4 percent of the Negev, while the Bedouin compose 30 percent of the Negev population. When stereotypes about the Bedouin “taking over the Negev” are peeled away, an RHR-commissioned opinion poll shows that most Israeli Jews think the Bedouin land claims are fair.

Israeli jets bomb northern #Gaza
▻http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/israeli-jets-bomb-northern-gaza

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An Israeli war jet takes off from the Ramon air force base in the Negev Desert on October 21, 2013. (Photo: AFP - Jack Guez)

The Israeli air force attacked sites in the northern Gaza Strip on Monday, just hours after Palestinian fighters there fired a pair of rockets into Occupied #Palestine, witnesses and the army said. It was the first air strike on Gaza in more than two months and took place as the Israeli government pushed forward with plans to release 26 (...)

#Israel #Top_News

Israel Refuses To Recognize Children Of Detainees Conceived By “Smuggled Semen” - International Middle East Media Center
▻http://www.imemc.org/article/66151

Israel Refuses To Recognize Children Of Detainees Conceived By “Smuggled Semen”
author Sunday September 22, 2013 10:08author by Saed Bannoura - IMEMC & Agencies Report post

Saturday [September 21, 2013] the Israeli Prison Administration at the Nafha Detention camp, in the Negev Desert, refused to allow detainee Abdul-Karim Reemawi, from visiting with his new born son, and his wife, as the child was conceived through artificial insemination using smuggled semen.

Image Wattan TV
Image Wattan TV

The Prison Administration said that the detainee never fathered a son before he was taken prisoner, and that it does not recognize his son as the father’s semen was obtained illegally.

Israel does not allow any conjugal visits to Palestinian prisoners, held in its various prisons and prison camps.

Head of the Palestinian Detainees’ center, former political prisoner, Ra’fat Hamdouna, stated that “the Israeli decision is flawed” and comes as a punishment for the detainees who managed to father children despite Israel’s illegal measures and unconstitutional laws.”

He said that several detainees, sentenced to high very terms, managed to father children while behind bars through artificial insemination using smuggled semen due to the Israeli restrictions.

Hamdouna further stated that all related international laws and treaties guarantee the right to family visits, especially between parents and their children, and that that detainee will file lawsuits against Israel for its arbitrary and illegal actions.

He added that there are around 18 Palestinian detainees who will father children, in the coming few months, after their wives have been inseminated using the same technique, while additional sixty semen samples collected the same way from additional detainees are now preserved in Palestinian labs while the wives are being prepped for the procedures.

Several Palestinian detainee have successfully been through the entire procedure, and fathered children. The first detainee who managed to father a child through “smuggled sperm” is Ammar Az-Zibin, 28.

He was kidnapped by the Israeli army 15 years ago, and was sentenced to 37 life terms; he managed to father a child, in August of last year, after being able to “smuggle” his sperm that was carefully carried by his visiting wife to a local fertility center in the northern West Bank city of Nablus.

Exclusive: Does Israel Have Chemical Weapons Too? - By Matthew M. Aid | Foreign Policy
▻http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/09/09/does_israel_have_chemical_weapons_too

A newly discovered CIA document indicates that Israel likely built up a chemical arsenal of its own.

(...)

Reports have circulated in arms control circles for almost 20 years that Israel secretly manufactured a stockpile of chemical and biological weapons to complement its nuclear arsenal. Much of the attention has been focused on the research and development work being conducted at the Israeli government’s secretive Israel Institute for Biological Research at Ness Ziona, located 20 kilometers south of Tel Aviv.

But little, if any, hard evidence has ever been published to indicate that Israel possesses a stockpile of chemical or biological weapons. This secret 1983 CIA intelligence estimate may be the strongest indication yet.

A new Nakba looms as Israel plans ethnic cleansing of Palestinian village in the Negev

Anger and worry prevails amongst the people of Umm Al-Hayran, a Palestinian village in the Negev Desert following a decision by the Israeli Building Council to expel villagers in order to build a settlement for extremist Jews. An appeal by the humanitarian groups on behalf of the villagers was refused last week by the Israeli National Council for Planning and Construction.

Around 1,000 people will be affected by the latest bout of Israeli ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their land. The District Committee for Planning and Construction in Beersheba has approved a proposal for a Jewish settlement called “Hayran” on the land belonging to Umm Al-Hayran village. This will not be the first time that the families in Umm Al-Hayran have been expelled by the Israelis. They used to live in the Zebala Valley in the Negev from where they were expelled by the nascent Israeli state; in 1956 they were uprooted again and forced to move to the site of Umm Al-Hayran. The current threat first arose in 2004, when the Israeli state accused the villagers of living illegally on state land.

Israel doesn’t “recognise” villages occupied by around 90,000 Bedouin living in Southern Palestine. As a result, their homes are regarded as “illegal” by the state and they can be demolished at any time.

Residents of such “unrecognised” villages do not receive any basic services or amenities provided by the state, including electricity, proper roads, health facilities, schools or water supplies.

Commenting on the latest decision, lawyer Suhad Beshara of the Legal Centre for Arab Minority Rights in Israel (Adala) said that the decision made by the appeal committee is part of the official policy of confiscating Bedouin land in the Negev. The intention is not only to provide land for Jews but also to be able to gather together the Bedouin communities in one place. According to Ms. Beshara, the authorities’ decision confirms that the villagers of Umm Al-Hayran have no rights in the village to which the Israeli government itself moved them in 1956.

The Palestinian law specialist clarified that the village of Umm Al-Hayran was established in its current location by order of the Israeli military authorities in 1956 after the army expelled its people by force from their homes in the area of Zebala valley. “They have established themselves with proper homes,” she said, “and they have invested all their efforts in order to resume their social and tribal lives which were shaken every time they were expelled from their land.” Today, a hundred and fifty families, totalling one thousand people, live in the village, all from the Abu Alqean tribe.

“We’re ready to die defending our land,” said the Mayor of the village, Saleem Abu Alqeaan. “They want to expel us and claim that our buildings are illegal, and they deprive us of all services; they even denied us drinking water in order to push us to leave the village and expel us.”

Mayor Abu Alqean added that the villagers refuse to accept the decision and that they will not leave their land even if the Israelis use force to expel them: “We have sworn to die on this land and we will not leave it this time, like previous times, and we will defend our land and our village with all our might and with all our means, because if they succeed in getting us out, the same tactics will be applied to other villages in the Negev which are not recognised by Israel.”

Commenting on the decision of the Israelis to name the proposed settlement “Hayran”, the mayor accused the Israeli government of trying to hijack Palestinian history in the area. “They want to make it look as if there is an old Israeli presence in the Negev,” he added.

Knesset Member Ibrahim Sarsoor, the head of the United Arab Bloc for Reform, condemned the government’s move. “This is yet another attack on the Arab presence in the Negev of the kind which has been taking place since the establishment of the Israeli state in 1948,” said Sarsoor. “It poses a serious threat to the already poor relations between Jews and Arabs in Israel.”

He pointed out that there is a systematic Israeli policy of uprooting the Arab presence in the Negev Desert. The latest decision, he insisted, shows how the Israeli government can act against its Arab citizens with impunity and with no just, legal or moral reason.

Stressing that the expulsion decision is “the biggest witness to the racism of Israeli governments’ policies towards the Arabs,” Sarsoor said that it confirms that ethnic cleansing of the indigenous population is an integral part of Israel’s Zionist ideology. “In short,” he concluded, “it is a policy of apartheid, pure and simple.”
Related articles

Army Demolishes Four Homes In the Negev (imemc.org)

The Bedouin vs Israel’s bulldozers (The Independent)
►http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/the-bedouin-vs-israels-bulldozers-6256918.html

At the top of an unmarked track leading into the small village of Alsra, in the Negev desert, somebody has placed a triangular road sign barring the entry of bulldozers. They will come, nevertheless, for every family in this village has been served with a demolition order by the Israeli authorities. (...) Source: The Independent

The Bedouin vs Israel’s bulldozers - Middle East - World - The Independent
►http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/the-bedouin-vs-israels-bulldozers-6256918.html

At the top of an unmarked track leading into the small village of Alsra, in the Negev desert, somebody has placed a triangular road sign barring the entry of bulldozers. They will come, nevertheless, for every family in this village has been served with a demolition order by the Israeli authorities.

The indigenous Bedouin Arabs have eked out an existence in the desert for generations, but despite being citizens of Israel, their communities do not exist officially. Alsra, and others like it, does not appear on any official map; does not connect to any roads, and does not receive basic services from the state, such as electricity or sewage treatment.

By contrast, Jewish families have been encouraged to settle in this part of the country to make the desert “bloom” and small, gated farming communities – fully serviced with water and electricity – have sprung up close to the Bedouin villages.