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Unrecognized Bedouin villages in Israel

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The term unrecognized village refers to a Bedouin village in the Negev Desert which the Israeli government does not recognize as a legal settlement. As of 2008, there were approximately 45 such villages, with a population of over 80,000, comprising half of the Bedouin population in southern Israel. The residents of these villages are Israeli citizens, yet have extremely limited access to education, health, transportation and municipal trash services; they are also denied access to regional water and electrical grids. Because their villages are considered illegal, their homes are subject to demolition at any time. The unrecognized villages are not marked on any commercial maps.

History

Main article: Negev Bedouins

Between 1948 and 1966, the new State of Israel imposed a military administration over Arabs in the region and designated 85% of the Negev "State Land." All Bedouin habitation on this newly-declared State Land was retroactively termed illegal and "unrecognized."[1] Now that Negev lands the Bedouin had inhabited upwards of 500 years was designated State Land, the Bedouin were no longer able to fully engage in their sole means of self-subsistence – agriculture and grazing. The government then forcibly concentrated these Bedouin tribes into the Siyag (Arabic for 'fence') triangle of Beer Sheva, Arad and Dimona.[2]

Grazing

In order to reinforce the invisible Siyag fence, the State employed a reining mechanism, the Black Goat Law of 1950. The Black Goat Law curbed grazing so as to prevent land erosion, prohibiting the grazing of goats outside recognized land holdings. Since few Bedouin territorial claims were recognized, most grazing was thereby rendered illegal. Both Ottoman and British land registration processes failed to reach into the Negev region. Most Bedouin who had the option, preferred not to register their lands as this would mean being taxed. Those whose land claims were recognized found it almost impossible to keep their goats within the periphery of their newly limited range. Into the 1970s and 1980s, only a small portion of the Bedouin were able to continue to graze their goats. Instead of migrating with their goats in search of pasture, the majority of the Bedouin migrated in search of wage-labor.[2]

In 1979 Agriculture Minister Ariel Sharon declared a 1,500 square kilometer area in the Negev, a protected nature reserve, rendering a major portion of the Negev almost entirely out of bounds for Bedouin herders. In conjunction, he established the Green Patrol,[3] the 'environmental paramilitary unit' with the mission of fighting Bedouin 'infiltration' into national Israeli land by preventing Bedouin from grazing their animals, seen as creating 'facts on the ground.' During Sharon's tenure as Minister of Agriculture (1977-1981), the Green Patrol removed 900 Bedouin encampments and cut goat herds by more than 1/3. Today the black goat is nearly extinct, and Bedouin in Israel do not have enough access to black goat hair to weave tents.[4]

Sedentarization

Bustan Archives: "Goats grazing beneath disused garbage bins in the government township of Tel Sheva, on the Israeli side of the Green Line. The region is lauded as "Israel's Last Frontier," a pristine wilderness, while the government fails to extend proper municipal trash pickups within 'government-sanctioned' urban townships."

Counter to the image of the Bedouin as fierce stateless nomads roving the entire region, by the turn of the 20th century, much of the Bedouin population in Palestine was settled, semi-nomadic, and engaged in agriculture according to an intricate system of land ownership, grazing rights, and water access.[2]

We should transform the Bedouins into an urban proletariat - in industry, services, construction, and agriculture. 88% of the Israeli population are not farmers, let the Bedouin be like them. Indeed, this will be a radical move which means that the Bedouin would not live on his land with his herds, but would become an urban person who comes home in the afternoon and puts his slippers on. His children will get used to a father who wears pants, without a dagger, and who does not pick out their nits in public. They will go to school, their hair combed and parted. This will be a revolution, but it can be achieved in two generations."

— Israeli General Moshe Dayan to Haaretz, 1963[2][5]

Dayan added, "Without coercion but with governmental direction ... this phenomenon of the Bedouins will disappear." Today, many Bedouin call themselves 'Negev Arabs' rather than ‘Bedouin,’ explaining that 'Bedouin' identity is intimately tied in with a pastoral nomadic way of life – a way of life they say is over. Although the Bedouin in Israel continue to be perceived as nomads, today all of them are fully sedentarized, and about half are urbanites.[2]

Urban Townships

Denied access to their former sources of sustenance via grazing restrictions, severed from the possibility of access to water, electricity, roads, education, and health care in the unrecognized villages, and trusting in government promises that they would receive services if they moved, in the 1970s and 80's tens of thousands of Bedouin citizens of Israel resettled in 7 legal towns constructed by the government.[6] In 2003, about half of the Bedouin population of approximately 150,000 lived in 7 urban townships, and half lived in 45 unrecognized villages.[7]

Harvey Lithwick of the Negev Center for Regional Development points out that the towns did not offer any alternative means of livelihood (to self-subsistence off the land): “....the major failure was a lack of an economic rationale for the towns....”[8] Today, Dayan’s vision of the transformation of the indigenous Bedouin into an urban proletariat has both manifested and failed: In the most established of legal urban townships, over 25% of Bedouin men (not to speak of the women) are unemployed.[citation needed] An additional 7 urban townships are 'planned' by the government today; none feature any business districts, and no permits for Arab-owned industrial zones have been dispensed (as is the case throughout Arab towns across Israel).[citation needed]

Extreme unemployment has bred extreme crime levels. Since grazing has been severely restricted, and the Bedouin rarely receive permits to engage in self-subsistence agriculture,[9] the only remaining source of income for Bedouin is trade in drugs and prostitutes. Few of the Bedouin in unrecognized villages see the urban townships as a desirable form of settlement.[10][11][12]

Jewish-only development

Bedouin advocates argue that the main reason for the transfer of the Bedouin into townships against their will is demographic.[13] Today there are around 160,000 Bedouins living in the Negev, and the number is increasing fast. With an annual growth rate of 5.5%, their birthrate is amongst the highest in the world; there will be 320,000 Bedouin in the Negev by 2020.[citation needed] In 2003, Director of the Israeli Population Administration Department, Herzl Gedj, described polygamy in the Bedouin sector a "security threat" and advocated various means of reducing the Arab birth rate.[14]

In 2003, Shai Hermesh, the treasurer of the Jewish Agency and head of its effort to establish a solid Zionist majority in the desert told The Guardian: "We need the Negev for the next generation of Jewish immigrants" and added, "It is not in Israel's interest to have more Palestinians in the Negev."[12]

In 2005, then-American head of the JNF, Ronald Lauder, announced the Blueprint Negev, aimed at settling over 500,000 Jewish people (particularly Americans) in the Negev/Naqab Desert by 2010. The numbers have since been revised down to 250,000. Ronald Lauder says: "Blueprint Negev answers the need for Jews in the Diaspora looking to make aliyah the pioneering way."[15]

In May 2006, Peres announced that his first task as minister in charge of development of the Negev and Galilee is to push forward the construction of a new Jewish community in the Negev, Carmit. Carmit is the first of many such settlements under the Blueprint, YNet reports, “designated for wealthy, young American immigrants who want to make aliyah and live in style.”[16]

Environmental concerns

Concentrating the indigenous Bedouin into urban townships so as to preserve National Reserve spaces for tourist uses and Jewish-only development purposes has been argued to be necessary to preserve the pristinity of the 'Last Frontier'. In 1979 Agriculture Minister Ariel Sharon declared a 1,500 square kilometer area in the Negev, a protected nature reserve, rendering a major portion of the Negev almost entirely out of bounds for Bedouin herders. In conjunction, he established the 'Green Patrol,'[17] the 'environmental paramilitary unit' with the mission of fighting Bedouin 'infiltration' into national Israeli land by preventing Bedouin from grazing their animals, seen as creating 'facts on the ground.' During Sharon's tenure as Minister of Agriculture (1977-1981), the Green Patrol removed 900 Bedouin encampments and cut goat herds by more than 1/3.[4] Today the black goat is nearly extinct, and Bedouin in Israel do not have enough access to black goat hair to weave tents.[citation needed]

Prominent Israeli environmental leader Alon Tal has openly referred to Bedouin construction as among the top ten environmental hazards in Israel.[4] However other environmentalists argue that the Bedouin should not be compared with large-scale industrial pollution, or for that matter, the role of the military in the Negev.[4] Not long after Sharon’s 1979 decision to set aside a portion of the Negev as a nature reserve, the military soon took over the State Lands from which the Bedouin had been evicted, conducting exercises on JNF lands designated as park space. Some argue that these exercises cause erosion or leave behind 'footprints' that can remain for decades.[4] This military range today amounts to 85% of the Negev (the Negev is 60% of Israel).

In the remaining portion of the Negev available for civilian purposes, a large number of citizens live together in close proximity to a range of types of hazardous infrastructure. The most toxic infrastructure in the Negev, including waste dumps, mines, and chemical factories, is located adjacent to unrecognized Bedouin villages and grazing grounds, as well as in close proximity to Jewish towns. Given the small scale of the country, in the past few decades both Bedouin and Jews of the region have come to share some 2.5 % of the desert with Israel's nuclear reactors, 22 agro and petrochemical factories, an oil terminal, closed military zones, quarries, a toxic waste incinerator (Ramat Hovav), cell towers, a power plant, several airports, a prison, and 2 rivers of open sewage.[18] However, much of this infrastructure is concentrated on the grounds of the unrecognized village of Wadi el-Na'am; the Ramat Hovav toxic waste facility, the largest in the region, as well as over half of Israel’s chemical plants, were built on village grounds starting in 1979. Until recently, the health impacts of Ramat Hovav on the unrecognized village of Wadi el-Na'am were largely ignored, and Ben Gurion University epidemiologist Batya Sarov, formerly a specialist at Chernobyl, told the Negev environmental justice organization Bustan: "The environmental monitoring at Chernobyl was better, and the health risks no more severe, than at Ramat Hovav;"[19] however with the establishment of an army town at Ramat Hovav starting in 2008, reports of the area's health risks have flooded the press..[20].[21] Mathew, Jennie. "Beduin struggle for land in Israel desert", AFP September 28, 2007

References

  1. ^ Jonathan Cook."Bedouin in the Negev face new 'transfer"; MERIP, May 10, 2003
  2. ^ a b c d e Rebecca Manski."Criminalizing Self-Subsistence"; News from Within", Summer 2006
  3. ^ Devorah Brous: "Uprooting Weeds"
  4. ^ a b c d e Manski, Rebecca. "Bedouin Vilified Among Top 10 Environmental Hazards in Israel;" News From Within, Vol. XXII, No. 11, December 2006
  5. ^ Donald Macintyre.End of the road for the Bedouin The Independent, November 29, 2005
  6. ^ Jonathan Cook."Bedouin in the Negev face new 'transfer"; MERIP, May 10, 2003
  7. ^ Sonia Nettnin."Negev: Bedouin Health, Bustan Eco-Builders"; Arabic Media Network, October 26, 2007
  8. ^ Desert Timeline
  9. ^ Aref Abu-Rabia. The Negev Bedouin and Livestock Rearing: Social, Economic, and Political Aspects, Oxford, 1994, pp. 28, 36, 38 (in a rare move, the ILA has leased on a yearly-basis JNF-owned land in Besor Valley (Wadi Shallala) to Bedouins)
  10. ^ Desert Timeline
  11. ^ Jonathan Cook.Making the land without a people"; Al-Ahram Weekly, 26 Aug-1 Sep 2004
  12. ^ a b Chris McGreal."Bedouin feel the squeeze as Israel resettles the Negev desert: Thousands displaced from ancient homeland; The Guardian, Thursday February 27 2003
  13. ^ BUSTAN on the Blueprint; Excerpt of (Rebecca Manski."The Rising Role of American Money in Negev Development"; News from Within, October/November 2005
  14. ^ MERIP on Gedj
  15. ^ Blueprint Negev
  16. ^ YNet on Peres as Minister of Development
  17. ^ Uprooting Weeds, by Devorah Brous, picked up by MonaBaker.com
  18. ^ Rebecca Manski.A Desert Mirage: The Rising Role of US Money in Negev Development;News from Within October/November 2006
  19. ^ Desert Timeline
  20. ^ Patricia Golan "Bad Air in Base City" Jerusalem Post, March 23, 2008
  21. ^ UJA-Toronto on Boot Camp City United Jewish Federation of Toronto, 2007
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