The truth about Israel's Bedouin plan

A lot of Israel haters pretend that Israel is planning to uproot hundreds of thousands of Bedouin away from their ancestral lands and force them into concentration camps, or something like that.

Israel's MFA has put together a nice and accurate picture of how they plan to solve the problem of the Bedouin in the Negev.

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Recognizing that the Bedouin of the Negev need assistance, the government of Israel created a comprehensive policy aimed at improving their economic, social and living conditions, as well as resolving long-standing land issues.

This new policy constitutes a major step forward towards integrating the Bedouin more fully into Israel's multicultural society, while still preserving their unique culture and heritage.

The Bedouin in the Negev, numbering approximately 210,000, is one of many communities which comprise Israel's pluralistic society. Unfortunately, historically this community has been ranked low in socio-economic indicators.

Recognizing that the Bedouin of the Negev need assistance, the government of Israel created a comprehensive policy - called the Begin Plan - aimed at improving their economic, social and living conditions, as well as resolving long-standing land issues.

To this end, Israel has allocated approximately 2.2 billion dollars (8 billion shekels), including over 330 million dollars (1.2 billion shekels) for specific economic and social development projects.

This January 2013 policy - named after then-minister Ze'ev Binyamin (Benny) Begin - is designed to solve a wide range of problems affecting the Bedouin population. Among the numerous initiatives that have begun or are planned are the expansion of technological and adult education, the development of industrial centers, the establishment of employment guidance centers, assistance in strengthening Bedouin local governments, improvements to the transportation system, centers of excellence for students and support for Bedouin women who wish to work or start businesses.

Israel is working with the Bedouin community on all aspects of the Begin Plan. Indeed, the plan was developed through dialogue and in close coordination with the Bedouin: In an attempt to expand on the previous Prawer Plan, Minister Begin and his team met with thousands of Bedouin individuals and organizations during the development stage. As a result, Bedouin traditions and cultural sensitivities were taken into consideration, and a plan was formulated to reinforce the connection of the Bedouin to their culture and heritage.

Furthermore, contrary to some claims, Israel is not forcing a nomadic community to change its lifestyle. The Bedouin in the Negev, who moved to the area starting at the end of the 18th century, began settling down over a hundred years ago, long before the establishment of the State of Israel. By now, most Bedouin citizens live in permanent homes.

Still, one of the major problems facing the Bedouin is housing. Almost half of the Negev Bedouin (approximately 90,000) live in houses built illegally, many of them in shacks without basic services. Isolated encampments and other Bedouin homes may lack essential infrastructures, including sewage systems and electricity, and access to services such as educational and health facilities is limited.

There are solutions to this problem and to the many other difficulties facing the Bedouin. For example, under the Begin Plan, the government is giving every Bedouin family (or eligible individual) that needs it, a resident plot. These lands are being developed to include all the modern infrastructures and will be granted free of charge. Bedouin families can then build houses according to their own desires and traditions. Those that move will be offered their choice of joining rural, agricultural, communal, suburban or urban communities.

Most of the Bedouin citizens will remain in their current homes. 120,000 already live in one of the seven Bedouin urban centers or eleven recognized villages. Of the remaining 90,000 that live in encampments or communities that are not zoned, only 30,000 will have to move, most of them a short distance (a few kilometers at most). The other 60,000 will have their homes legalized under Israel's initiative, which will develop their communities and grant the residents property rights.

Much has been made of those Bedouin who will have to move. However, almost half of them (14,000-15,000) have settled illegally within the danger zone of the Ramat Hovav Toxic Waste Disposal Facility. Given the threat to their health, and even lives should there be an incident at the facility, the government of Israel has an obligation to relocate these families.

The Begin Plan will also resolve land claims made by a number of Bedouin in the Negev, most of which have been in dispute for decades. Currently, there are 2,900 land claims regarding 587 square kilometers (227 sq. miles). Although these claims have no legal basis under Israeli law (and were not recognized under the previous Ottoman or British land law systems), Israel wants to resolve the issue. It will do so by adopting a compromise according to which all the Bedouin claimants will receive compensation in land and money equivalent to the full value of the land claimed. The Bedouin will no longer have to engage in lengthy court cases while the compensation process will be based on the principles of fairness, transparency and dialogue

There have been attempts to attack the Begin Plan (which its detractors deliberately misname the Prawer Plan in order to associate it with an outdated proposal). Many of those acting in the international arena against Israel's plan for the Bedouin belong to the camp which seizes upon any opportunity to harm Israel's reputation. Others have purer motives, but have based their opposition on false information distributed by Israel's opponents.

This opposition is unfortunate, particularly for the Bedouin who will benefit greatly from the Begin Plan. This new policy constitutes a major step forward towards integrating the Bedouin more fully into Israel's multicultural society, while still preserving their unique culture and heritage.

Most importantly, the Begin Plan guarantees a better future for Bedouin children. No longer will they have to reside in isolated shacks without electricity or proper sewage. Now they will live closer to schools and will be able to walk home safely on sidewalks with streetlights, alongside paved roads. They will have easier access to health clinics and educational opportunities. Their parents will enjoy greater employment prospects, bettering the economic situation of the whole family. To oppose the Begin Plan is to oppose improving the lives of Bedouin children.

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Here's an infographic

(h/t Irene)

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Video of Bedouin who supports Israel's Prawer plan

This video is from Israel's Minister of Foreign Affairs, so the people who hate Israel anyway won't believe a word of it, but what he is saying is exactly in line with what I saw when I last visited the Negev.



It should be required viewing for those who are only hearing the lies that "Israel is stealing Bedouin land".

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"We have to reconquer the Negev"

An op-ed at JPost:

Last Thursday TV personality Avri Gilad went on a trip to the northern Negev with Regavim – an independent, professional research institute and policy planning think tank involved in protecting Israel’s national lands. So disturbed was he by what he saw on that trip that upon his return he immediately penned the following post on Facebook:

“I came back from a tour of the Negev conducted by Regavim. I’m appalled by what I’ve seen. There’s no more Negev.

The Beduin have taken it over completely by force....

By shameless criminal activity, with insolence met only by fear and submission, the Beduin have taken over the entire Negev.”

He noted that though he had visited Beersheva and Arad, he had never entered Beduin towns like Laqia, Hura or the others he saw on this trip. Gilad also wrote that the government of Israel has virtually agreed to give Beduin clans in the Negev over 60 percent of the state land they have illegally settled on. On top of this, former MK Benny Begin sweetened the deal recently, offering them more land and additional monetary compensation. Avri Gilad, in his post, called on the government “to stop the Begin plan immediately,” and said, “We have to re-conquer the Negev.”

He concluded by saying “we must have one law for everyone – both for a Jew who encloses his balcony [without authorization] and for a Beduin who uses a fence he stole from Omer to enclose five dunams [0.5 hectares] of land as his.”

Gilad’s post went viral, and when interviewed later on Army Radio, he stated over 450,000 people had seen it.

However, it didn’t take long for the many defenders of the Beduin’s supposed right to take whatever land they want to jump into action. These foreign-funded, radical left-wing NGOs have done a great job training the various Beduin tribes to always refuse the Israeli government’s every offer of compromise and hold out for 100 percent of their claims.

They came out swinging with an opinion piece published in a daily newspaper calling Avri Gilad a racist.

The author of this piece continued with what she called “facts”: “What is known as the Beduin diaspora are 35 unrecognized villages in the Northern Negev on an area between Beersheva, Yeruham, Arad and Dimona.” This, however, is the “big lie” – that only 35 “unrecognized villages” exist.

The author appears to have forgotten that nowadays programs like Google Earth exist (although a tour of the facts on the ground with Regavim is preferable) allowing all and sundry a close-up look at what is really happening to the area between Beersheva, Arad and Dimona. Fact: There are not 35 illegally built villages on state-owned land, but over 2,000 illegal settlements, spread out over 80,000 hectares (800,000 dunams). How do these NGOs imagine they can continue to hide the facts when the means of independent verification are so accessible? ...

But as much as these NGOs try to frame and fudge the public debate around the illegal villages of those 20% of Beduin who have grabbed state land and claim to have ancestral title to it, Regavim hopes for an equitable solution to the problem. Because of growing public awareness, the government program to overcome the lawlessness in the south is scheduled for renewed discussion.

The Negev problem is quite real, as I documented in February during my own trip with Regavim:



Regavim is hardly a racist organization - they stress that the Bedouin were treated unfairly for decades and want to solve the problem fairly. But as long as anti-Israel NGOs reflexively attack the Jewish state no matter what, calling anyone who shows both sides of the story "racist," the problem will only grow.

(h/t Y Medad)

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Islamic Movement built many illegal buildings in the Negev - last week

PLS48.net has a large photo essay of Sheikh Raed Salah, the head of Israel's Islamic Movement who regularly tried to incite terrorism against Jews, being shown brand new buildings in the Negev and elsewhere in just in the past few days.

Most, if not all, of these buildings are illegal.

Apparently, the Islamists are trying to take advantage of Passover vacations by Israeli officials to put "facts on the ground" - especially mosques and schools.

Salah makes it clear that his intention is to cause the Muslim community to surround the Jews in Israel. He said:

When we build these mosques, we are demonstrating the fact that Allah wants the existence of these villages. Right on these places, by Allah, will continue to be strong. The injustice of the occupation is a disgrace to Allah. These mosques will become central to uniting the people of the Negev, with no exceptions, and bring the union between the Negev residents to those of the Galilee, the Triangle and the cities of humiliation, all uniting under the protection of Allah the Great....We are here to fulfill an ancient national commitment. Say to our brothers in the Negev we are with them in one body and one heart, with our money and our blood. We are brothers in this country, and we share common concerns. We came here to build houses and mosques to prove we were here on our land, and we live here in honor of Allah.

Mida magazine notes that this is an annual event, always happening around the time that Israeli inspectors are on Passover vacation.

I discussed the issue of illegal Bedouin Negev villages in this video I made last month.

For some reason, some illegal settlements don't get people too upset.

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EoZNews Video: The Bedouin problem in the Negev

While I was in Israel last month I was given a tour of the Negev by Regavim, an NGO that concentrates on the legal use of land in Israel.

A major concern is how the Bedouin have been illegally building villages throughout the entire Negev. This is not a small problem - it is an epidemic.

The problem is not all the Bedouins' fault, either. Regavim is very sympathetic to how badly they were treated by Israel in the decades following 1948. But if nothing is done now, the problem will only get worse.

Israel has tried to deal with the issue by giving them land, but as this video shows, that has not worked. The Bedouin are recklessly ignoring Israeli law and building wherever they want. These are not ancient villages but scattershot buildings all being built today on stolen land - on literally thousands of settlements.

What is also clear is that the people who say that Israel must simply make these buildings legal have no idea what they are talking about. No responsible state should cave in to what is simply theft. And many of these buildings start as mere shacks, but when nothing is done they become more permanent with cinder blocks and eventually fully functional housing.

But Israel does have to offer an alternative, and that will cost serious money.

The current state cannot continue.

Hopefully, this video will illustrate the problem a little better.

  

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Are the Negev Bedouin "indigenous"?

From the latest issue of Middle East Forum:

In the past few years, the Bedouin of Israel's Negev have begun claiming the status of an indigenous people, arguing that Israel like other colonialist regimes dominated their territory, refused to admit their lengthy presence in their native land, and denied their rights.[35] This line of argument is consistent with the position of the Arab leadership, voiced as early as the early 1920s, that disparaged the Jewish national revival as an alien, colonial intrusion into the pan-Arab patrimony. These arguments are both erroneous and misleading. To begin with, the Bedouin are by no means the only people who can lay claim to the notion of being a "first people" in Palestine: Jewish attachment to the land predates Arab presence there by millennia. Indeed, of the countless groups that have lived in Palestine since antiquity, Jews are the only nation that can claim an uninterrupted presence on the land from biblical times to date—for a significant amount of the time as its rulers.


...Until the twentieth century the Bedouin of the Middle East, including those of the Negev, were livestock-raising nomads whose movements were dictated by a constant search for pasture and water.[43] It has long been noted that what characterizes the Bedouin is their relationship to the tribe, rather than to a specific place or territory.[44]

Among the Bedouin tribes living in the Negev today, most view themselves as descendants of nomadic tribes from the Arabian Peninsula.[45] In fact, most of them arrived fairly recently, during the late eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries, from the deserts of Arabia, Transjordan, Sinai, and Egypt.[46] Part of this migration occurred in the wake of Napoleon's invasion of Egypt and Palestine in 1798-99 and subsequent Egyptian rule under Muhammad Ali and his son Ibrahim Pasha (r. 1831-41). During this period, Egyptian forces moved through Sinai and into the Negev using the coastal road that runs through Rafah, accompanied by numerous camp followers, peasants, and Bedouin. Some of the Egyptian peasants who followed in the footsteps of the army established new settlements and neighborhoods in Palestine, others joined Bedouin tribes in the Negev.[47]

Ottoman tax registers demonstrate that the tribes which lived in the Negev in 1596-97 are not those residing there today.[48] According to historians Wolf-Dieter Hütteroth and Kamal Abdulfattah, the tax registers that reflect material collected in those years show names of forty-three Bedouin tribes living in what became Mandatory Palestine, including six in the Negev. There is not much information on what became of those tribes.[49] However, the names of the tribes currently living in the Negev do not appear on the tax registers from 1596.[50] The Ottoman government did not maintain reliable records for this area after 1596, so these registers are the best indicators of which tribes existed in the early Ottoman period. Clinton Bailey, a scholar of Bedouin culture, also found no evidence in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries of the continuity or existence of Bedouin tribes, which later lived in the Negev in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.[51]

Bedouin consolidation of their Negev foothold was achieved through armed intertribal struggles as well as raids on established Arab settlements that caused the latter's demise.[52] Although the nomads depended upon sedentary populations for survival, they looked down upon them while settled Arabs viewed the Bedouin as opportunists or worse, as cruel robbers.[53] Numerous authors have documented the Bedouin role in conquering the Negev as well as the plundering and expulsion of settled Arabs from other parts of Palestine.[54] British surveyor and archeologist Claude R. Conder, writing in the 1880s, described a situation of unending war between the Bedouin tribes and the settled villagers.[55]... 

(h/t zozosophie)

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A little context on "Israeli racism"

While racism must always be condemned, the next time you read an article about how Israelis are supposedly racist for mistreating illegal African immigrants flooding the country, keep in mind how Egyptians treat them.

From CNN, last November:

"I wanted to build a good future for my family, but I failed," a weak Issam Abdallah Mohammed said in a videotaped statement.

The refugee from the Darfur region of Sudan was trying to illegally cross the border from Egypt to Israel when he was discovered and shot by Egyptian border guards.

Less than an hour after taping the statement, Issam was dead, succumbing to the wounds inflicted by the gunshots.

Every year, thousands of refugees, mostly from Eritrea, Ethiopia and Sudan, attempt the dangerous journey from their war-torn countries to Israel in search of economic prosperity and stability.

Very few make it, and the results of the failed migration can be seen in the morgue of the central hospital in the Egyptian port town of El Arish.

On any given day, the morgue will be packed with the bodies of African refugees who died trying to make it to Israel.

Hamdy Al-Azazy spent the past seven years helping the refugees. Many are enslaved and tortured and the women raped by the Bedouin tribes of the Sinai if they are unable to come up with large sums of money the Bedouin try to extort from them and their families, to smuggle the refugees across the border into Israel. As a result, many remain imprisoned in camps on the Sinai Peninsula.

"They are chained and kept in camps in the open with no bathrooms and little water and food and treated worse than animals," Al-Azazy said.

"Some of them are taken to Libya, but 80% of them are smuggled to Israel. Those who escape are shot by the Bedouins, and others who make it to the border are sometimes shot by the Egyptian authorities and transferred to hospitals before spending a year in different prisons in Sinai and deported back home."

The CNN crew found two victims in the hospital in El Arish, handcuffed to their beds and awaiting their transfer to an Egyptian detention center and eventual deportation.

One of them, Mahary Taklay Abraham of Eritrea, says he hit his head falling off a rock while trying to cross the border and was caught by Egyptian border guards. But before making it to the border, Mahary says, he spent about two months with the Bedouins.

"They beat and tortured me continuously and demanded money from my family," Mahary said.

Al-Azazy says this is a common scheme. The refugees will pay Bedouin tribes in the border area between Sudan and Egypt around $2,000 to be smuggled out. The smugglers then sell the refugees to the Sinai Bedouin, who blackmail the refugees and their families back home.

Ibrahim Yehia of Eritrea says he fell prey to the Bedouin.

"When we arrived to Sinai, the Bedouins tied me up with metal chains in the desert. They tortured us. Many of us died," he said, displaying his wounds, including scars that he says came from electroshock torture.

"They wanted me to pay $12,000 and forced us to call our families to transfer the money. My family sold all their lands and even their donkey to collect the money. They transferred $6,000 to the Bedouins."

After his family paid, Yehia says, the Bedouin finally let him go.

"I spent three months tied up in the camp close to the Israeli border. After I paid, the Bedouins drove me to the border crossing and set me free. I was then shot by plainclothes men close to the wired fence at the Israeli-Egyptian border. The military took me to the hospital."

Some of the refugees are forced into slave labor, often working marijuana fields that flourish all over Northern Sinai, Hamdy Al-Azazy says. Refugees who made it across the border into Israel have told harrowing accounts of rape, torture and slave labor.

Women are especially vulnerable. CNN spoke to one victim who made it to Israel and spoke on condition of anonymity. She said she was raped almost daily on a journey that took several months to get to Tel Aviv.

"Every night, they took me separately, and they did whatever they wanted to my body," the Eritrean said.

Al-Azazy hears stories like this all the time. "The women and men are kept in open areas. These Bedouins don't have any morals or conscience. One girl told me that three Bedouins had raped 14 girls in one night," he said.

How many articles have you read in 2012 about Egyptian murder, rape and enslavement of African migrants?

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Israel's Bedouin out of control (JPost editorial)

This is much worse than I was aware of:

The Knesset Committee on the Status of Women last week turned its attention to Israel’s Beduin. The emergent picture was no less than shocking. Most Israelis wouldn’t imagine such repression within our enlightened country.

Pro forma, we have progressive laws that are enforced vigorously and equitably. However, beneath this enlightened surface lurks a reality so unseemly that it’s hardly inaccurate to speak of another country-with-the-country, where our system of justice is plainly absent.

That country-within-the-country is mostly located in the Negev, but not exclusively so. It thrives wherever Beduin populations congregate. In those areas our laws appear all but irrelevant.

The statistics speak for themselves. More than 70 percent of all Beduin women in Israel are wed by coercion.

Their preferences or aversions are never taken into account.

According to an exhaustive two-year survey conducted by the Itach (Women Lawyers for Social Justice) NGO, 85% of Beduin women report that they are subjected to severe physical and/or psychological violence. Of these, 90% were openly battered in public.

The researchers believe that the true situation is considerably worse because the respondents were visibly frightened and reluctant to answer questions.

It gets worse. Abused women in Beduin communities are the least likely to enlist outside help. Of them, 67% admitted that they refrain from involving outsiders in their misfortune for fear of a backlash from their families, as well as of escalated brutality, ostracism and the loss of their children.

Additionally, these women don’t on the whole have monogamous marriages. The law notwithstanding, Beduin society practices unbridled polygamy. Official Israel’s only input appears in the form of generous child allotments paid to uncontrollably outsized family frameworks, whereby a man can boast 40 or more offspring.

Such social settings do not augur well for women’s welfare.

But the abandonment of these women to a cruel fate right under our noses is only one facet of the conspiracy of silence that envelopes the Beduin enclaves. The result is large areas to which the state opts to turn a blind eye and where it doesn’t exercise its authority.

For years Negev residents have been calling their region the Wild South. The appellation stuck, and has become common also in police and political parlance, and with good reason.

There’s no denying the state of anarchy especially in Beersheba and its vicinity. Beduin operate protection rackets in broad daylight; their victims fear for their lives.

Theft and robbery are daily occurrences. Numerous homeowners pay protection fees to uninvited Beduin “guards.” The protection-providers’ threats are so potent that victims shrink from testifying. Those who stop paying face penalties. Homes are broken into and ransacked and in one case boiling tar was poured throughout the premises.

In Beersheba’s Emek Sarah industrial zone, stores are raided openly and without hesitation during business hours. Pickup trucks are driven through showroom windows and loaded with merchandise before backing out.

Some establishments have suffered numerous attacks.

Most popular are electrical appliance and building supplies outlets.

Insurance firms frequently refuse their services to local entrepreneurs. Businessmen accuse the police of apathy.

The Mekorot national water company installed hidden cameras in its many Negev installations and discovered photographic evidence of gangs dismantling pumping equipment, loading it onto trucks and then engaging in wanton sabotage of what was left, before disappearing down dusty trails. The police often prove helpless. Pumping stations are rebuilt with the clear knowledge that it is only a matter of time before they are again destroyed.

Farmers feel abandoned. Everything – from irrigation equipment to ripe produce packed for distribution – is stolen.

Thousands of illegal Beduin buildings proliferate throughout the Negev while the courts appear dormant.

The conclusion that official Israel has abandoned all authority in and around Beduin communities is inescapable. This extends to all aspects of life – from the sad status of women to drug-smuggling, human-trafficking and tax evasion.

We mustn’t lose sight of the risk that disrespect for the law might spread to other segments of society. Ignoring a problem may be easy but won’t prevent it from mushrooming.

Yet when Israel tries to enforce even the most basic of laws in the Negev, anti-Israel activists claim that they are engaging in ethnic cleansing.

See also my previous post here.

(h/t Sophie)

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Sinai Bedouin hijack a fuel tanker (photos)

Palestine Today has photos of how Bedouin in the Sinai yesterday hijacked a fuel truck that was meant to go to  the international forces military base.

They siphoned out the fuel, they said, to distribute them to citizens who suffer from fuel shortages, saying they don't want the fuel to go to their "enemies."

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Sinai Bedouin claim Israel sent them jeans that caused infertility

From MEMRI:

Following are excerpts from a debate on the "invasion" of Israeli products into Sinai, which aired on Egyptian Dream2 TV on February 1, 2012:

Muhammad Al-Mane'i, Sinai Bedouin: There was a time when they would bring us jeans. These pants used to have belts. If you looked at these belts from the front, you'd find a secret compartment, and when you opened it, you would find a magnet inside. When we asked what these magnets were, we were told that they cause sterility. 

Interviewer: In other words, it causes infertility.

Muhammad Al-Mane'i: Exactly.

Interviewer: There was a time when these jeans with belts would invade us from Israel, and we used to take the magnets out and chuck them away. 

[…]

Interviewer: Israeli products contain lethal poison. You might not feel this poison now, but you will in the future. Israel will remain an enemy lying in wait for Egypt, no matter what happens and regardless of the agreements, because Israel has its eye set on Egypt. 

With all these great Israeli inventions that painlessly cause sterility in men, why do people still get vasectomies?

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