Dear friends,
please find below my latest article on Israel's Prawer-Begin plan to ethnically cleanse between 40,000 and 70,000 Palestinian Bedouin from the Naqab (Negev) desert. The article appears in edition 3 of the newly launched socialist newspaper, Red Flag.
in solidarity, Kim
***
Israel
to escalate ethnic cleansing
The
Israeli Knesset (parliament) has approved the first reading of the
Arrangement
of Bedouin Settlement in the Negev.
More commonly known as the Prawer-Begin Plan, the bill allows for
mass forced expulsions of the Palestinian Bedouin community from the
Naqab (the Arabic name for the Negev desert).
According
to the Israeli human rights group Adalah, if the plan is fully
implemented it “will result in the forced displacement of up to
70,000 [Palestinian] Arab Bedouin citizens of Israel and the
destruction of 35 ‘unrecognised’ villages”.
Approximately
half of the Palestinian Bedouin population – around 90,000 people –
live in 46 towns and villages located on just 5 percent of the land
in the Naqab region. Israel currently recognises only 11 of these
villages, despite the fact that they have existed since prior to the
establishment of Israel in 1948.
Palestinian
Bedouin living in these villages are treated as “trespassers on
State land” and are denied access to infrastructure including
water, electricity, sewage, education, health care and roads. These
services are deliberately withheld by the Zionist state as part of a
war of attrition that seeks to “encourage” Palestinian Bedouin to
leave their land. As a result, the Palestinian Bedouin community is
one of the most socially and economically disadvantaged within
Israel. According to Adalah, 67 percent of Palestinian Bedouin were
classified as “poor” in 2009.
The
original Plan was conceived by Ehud Prawer, the former Deputy Chair
of Israel’s National Security Council, in 2011 – without any
consultation with the Palestinian Bedouin community. In January,
amendments to the bill were made by Benny Begin, the son of former
Israeli PM Menachem Begin who had been a leader of the Zionist terror
militia known as the Etzel (Irgun).
Begin’s
amendments resulted in the removal of some of the more offensive
language from the bill, which deemed Bedouins “squatters” on
their own land, as well as legitimising the use of “reasonable
force” to evict them. Both the original plan and the amended bill
have been rejected by the Palestinian Bedouin community.
The
Prawer-Begin bill will result in the largest single act of ethnic
cleansing of Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel since the first
decade following the creation of the Israeli state.
In
1948, Zionist terror militias carried out attacks on the Palestinian
Bedouin living in the Naqab. Then the newly created Israeli military
launched a full scale ethnic cleansing operation to expel Palestinian
Bedouin from the region for “military reasons”.
Over
the next two years between 70,000 and 90,000 Palestinian Bedouin were
expelled from the region. This systematic ethnic cleansing would
continue throughout the 1950s.
While
the vast majority were pushed outside the boundaries of the Zionist
state, approximately 10 percent would remain. They were evicted to
the Siyag
(meaning “fence” in Arabic) in the northern Naqab, where they
were forced to live under military rule until 1966.
However,
since the 1950s the Palestinian Bedouin have continually sought to
return to their traditional lands. Israel has prevented their return
both militarily and also by planting trees via the Jewish National
Fund. While the JNF claims that it is rehabilitating the land, the
main purpose of the tree planting is to ensure control of the land.
Haneen
Zoabi, one of the 12 Palestinian Arab members of the Knesset, told
the Jerusalem
Post
on 28 May that “This is not how a normal state or even a
dictatorship treats its citizens because it is very obvious that the
aim of this plan is to expel the Palestinian citizens from their land
and develop the land for the Jewish population.”
“We
didn’t immigrate to Israel, it was Israel that immigrated to us,”
she added.
Since
the Prawer Plan was first announced, Israel has demolished more than
1,000 Palestinian Bedouin homes in the Naqab, while at the same time
announcing plans to plant forests, build military centres and
establish new Jewish settlements in the place of Palestinian Bedouin
villages that will be ethnically cleansed.
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