Bedouin in the Negev Face New “Transfer”
By Jonathan Cook, 10 May 2003
The White House’s hoped-for restructuring of the Middle East has begun: Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has been ousted from power by US and British troops who now patrol the streets of Baghdad, while a few hundred miles away Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat has been shunted aside in favor of the more Washington-friendly Mahmoud Abbas. With these tectonic shifts dominating Middle East coverage, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has been preparing a smaller-scale reordering of the region which he hopes will escape attention. He has devised a plan to rid the huge semi-desert area of the Negev, located in the south of Israel, of its Bedouin farmers. [More]
Dear all,
How pleasant it is to wake up to the news in Israel in the morning. The 6:00 AM and 7:00 AM news reports are the juiciest! Then we learn that in the West Bank ? Palestinians have been arrested during the night (somewhere between 10-20 usually), all, of course, ‘wanted persons.’ On these newscasts we learn about matters often not repeated in later newscasts as the event below. But today I didn’t hear either the 6 or 7 AM newscasts (because I worked till 2:00 AM and slept a bit longer), so don’t know if this bit of info was transmitted then or not. I can relate, however, that it was not on any of the newscasts from 8-10 AM, and that I learned of it only from the message below!
But then, such an event really isn’t important to most Israelis. Only a handful of us Jews feel with Israeli Arabs about such things. Other things concern most—the important matters are ones that catch attention—e.g., war is imminent (probably next summer), sanctions on Iran are likely, Baker’s report won’t pressure Israel, the bad-mouthing of an Israeli Arab member of the Knesset, and the escape from the police of a serial rapist and the police failure to find him for over a week–are all items of interest that get repeated from news cast to news cast. Yesterday’s juiciest item was the anger at Minister of Education, Yuli Tami, by her insistence that the ‘green line’ be shown on maps in school history books! What presumption! That history books should reflect actual fact! As a result of her audacity to represent history as it was, an order has gone out by ultra orthodox rabbis to disallow such books to be used in the religious school classroom.
Wow! With all of that, who cares about a Bedouin village!
Listening to the news in this country makes one feel under constant threat! Great place to live—poverty growing, cuts in social services increasing, and always war war war on the horizon!
But even when the media report events as the one below, the media seldom report the true motive behind the event. From the media you are likely to learn the government justification that a village was demolished because the homes had no permit (as if the Israeli government ever gives them permits!). Here, for instance, is the Ynet update on this morning demolitions:
Israel Lands Administration destroys houses in Bedouin community in the Negev
An Israel Lands Administration manager destroyed a number of houses in a Bedouin community in the Negev because they were built illegally.
MK Talab El-Sana (United Arab List-Ta’al) said in response, “This damage is greater than the incident in Beit Hanoun. This is a racist act. While there are lone farms being erected for Jews, houses of Bedouin residents of the Negev are being destroyed.” (Anat Bereshkovsky)
Indeed, the act not only is racist, it is also a means of making life intolerable for the Bedouins. The motive that the media does not mention is the demographic problem, which now is especially irking the Israeli government. A Jewish state needs a Jewish majority, say Israel’s leaders! But with tourism and immigration down, nearly the only way to maintain the Jewish majority is to get rid of the Palestinians—in Gaza demolish everything and kill them, in West Bank rural areas steal the agricultural lands from the villages and prevent villagers from finding work so that they have nothing to live from and will be forced to move to the few Palestinian urban centers, and in the OPT generally, for those Palestinians who do not have residency rights (because Israel refuses to give them these rights) refuse to renew their visas—thus forcing them and their families to leave the OPT(about ½ a million people), and, as for Israeli Arabs, keep them from having equal rights with Jews and demolish their homes (even of the Bedouins who have served in the Israeli military—after all, they are Arabs not Jews, so what if they were good soldiers! does that give them the right to live where they want, even though their families might have lived there from the time before there was an Israel, even for centuries!!!).
Am I angry? Yes. There is so much to be angry about!
Today an entire village was demolished!—not a Jewish village (these are never demolished), but a Bedouin village, which often suffer demolitions, if not of the entire village, of individual homes. Do you know what that means? Do you have any idea of what it is like to suddenly find yourself without a roof over your head, without a kitchen to prepare food in, without a bathroom or bedroom or any room??? Do you know what it is like to have nothing to shelter you from the cold in the winter (it is cold now in the Negev), nothing with which to protect your children and infants, the elderly, the ill from the cold? Do you know what it is like to in the flick of a finger lose your meagre belongings—clothing, family photo albums, children’s toys, shoes, school books . . . . DO YOU KNOW WHAT IT IS LIKE TO BE A BEDOUIN IN AN UNRECOGNIZED VILLAGE IN ISRAEL???
If not, then count yourself lucky, but help those less fortunate than you!
[ For more information on unrecognized villages (an Israeli innovation) see http://www.assoc40.org ]
Dorothy