Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Israel's quiet war: Bedouin lands in south confiscated to make room  for more Jewish communities

 Israel's quiet war
Bedouin lands in south confiscated to make room for more Jewish
communities
Fred Schlomka Published:  01.06.08, 09:06 / Israel Opinion
While Ehud Olmert and Mahmoud Abbas were wheeling and dealing at
Annapolis, several Israeli government ministries and security agencies
were deploying their combined resources in a massive operation aimed
at Israel's southern Negev Desert. While the eyes of the world are on
the West Bank and Gaza, Israel is in the middle of a campaign to
complete the displacement of Palestinian Arabs who are also Israeli
citizens.
The indigenous Bedouin are the target, and their lands are required by
the state in order to complete the implementation a master plan for
the Negev. The plan relegates the Bedouin to ghetto enclaves while
allocating huge swathes of territory for Jewish suburban development
and agricultural communities. The Negev is the final frontier inside
Israel, the last tract of largely undeveloped land in the state.
Israel has virtually completed the dismemberment of Palestinian lands
in the center and north of the country, and now is consolidating the
"Jewish redemption" of the southern desert.
These Bedouin lands are coveted by the Jewish National Fund (JNF)
which has published plans to move large numbers of Jews to the Negev.
To make way for new JNF communities, the "unrecognized" villages of A-
Tir, Um Al-Hiran, and Twail Abu Jarwal were destroyed during 2007 in
military-style operations involving large forces of police and
soldiers, displacing hundreds of families. The Interior ministry has
also sent airborne crop dusters to poison the Bedouin fields with
broad-spectrum herbicides. The feared Green Patrol, a paramilitary
unit of the Ministry of Agriculture, conducts these operations.
There are over 150,000 Bedouin in the Negev desert, with well-
established territorial rights dating back to the Ottoman Era.
However, immediately after the founding of the state in 1948, the
government began to confiscate land and move the Bedouin to ever
decreasing areas, while allocating state resources for the development
of new Jewish-only towns and agricultural settlements. Although the
Bedouin were eventually granted citizenship of Israel, they were under
military rule until 1966.
The cost might be high
Through legislation and various legal mechanisms the state has decreed
the Bedouin to be squatters on their own land and thus the courts
support the demolition of homes and expulsion of the inhabitants. The
JNF, through its "Blueprint Negev" plan, intends to create 25 new
towns in the Negev over the coming years, bringing 250,000 new Jewish
residents to the region according to its website. The JNF is also
planting forests on Bedouin land, such as the Ambassador Forest on the
lands of the Elokbi Tribe north of Be'er Sheva.
Such measures would never be taken against Jewish citizens of Israel,
who enjoy the right to live almost anywhere in the country in relative
luxury, while the Bedouin are relegated to a pitiful remnant of their
patrimony. This institutional racism is supported by tax-deductible
donations from the USA.
The Bedouin have a long and proud tradition as a people. During the
first decades of the state, they gave allegiance to Israel, sent their
sons to the army and expected the respect they deserve. They received
none. Instead the state as continued its mission to serve only the
interests of Jewish citizens, and as a result few Bedouin serve in the
IDF today. The cost might be high. Bedouin leaders have warned that
the anger simmering under the surface may erupt, and Israel may face a
Bedouin uprising, an Intifada within the state. Perhaps it's time for
the State of Israel to become a democracy for the benefit of all its
citizens, before it's too late.
Fred Schlomka is an Israeli businessman and a board member of the
Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD). He is a 2003
Fellow of the Echoing Green Foundation and the founder of Mosaic
Communities in Israel.

 communities
eh, quante storie, i beduini so' nomadi, come si fa a dire che si
confisca la terra a chi si sposta di continuo? Meglio darla a chi è
stanziale....