July 24, 2007
In this week's NIF News we provide an update on the latest developments in the protests against the demolition of homes in unrecognized Negev Bedouin villages. We also report on the humanitarian assistance and legal aid being given by the NIF family to the Sudanese refugees reaching Israel, many of them fleeing the genocide in Darfur. And we report on a series of SHATIL sponsored empowerment programs for the residents from two unrecognized neighborhoods in Ramle and Acco.
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Weekly Message
I often wonder, especially when I spend extended time in Israel, whether the establishment of a self-defined Jewish state was designed as a peculiar test. Can the Jewish people create a state that conforms with our deepest values, or do internal and external exigencies make such a reality impossible? Despite sometimes troubling government policy decisions, I am convinced that we must struggle – and it is a struggle – for what is just and not compromise with respect to universally recognized fundamental rights, including the right to equality. This commitment deserves particular attention today when many Jews around the world observe a fast to mark various tragedies in our collective history.
Last Tuesday, I visited a tent constructed by the Regional Council for Unrecognized Villages (RCUV) near the Knesset in Jerusalem to protest the demolition of Bedouin homes in the Negev. Visitors to the tent heard how homes were destroyed and property confiscated, as the government seems determined to move the Bedouin from their homes into neighboring cities and villages.
While I was sitting in the tent, an elderly Israeli entered. He had traveled from Haifa to express his solidarity with the protesters. He did not understand what the government was doing; visiting the tent provided him with an outlet to express his shame. As he left the tent, he removed the remaining 100 shekel note from his wallet and placed it in the box for contributions outside the tent.
The following day, accompanied by my good friend and long-time NIF supporter, Max Ticktin, I traveled to Beersheva to observe first-hand the outcome of the government's three-year initiative to recognize nine Bedouin villages and to place them under the jurisdiction of the newly-formed Abu Basma Regional Council. We met the head of the Regional Council, a senior Israeli government official, who is trying to improve the lives of the Bedouin by building new schools, roads and other amenities in the villages. However, as a result of limited budgets and continued conflicts regarding the borders of the Bedouin villages included within the Regional Council, progress is proceeding at a snail's pace. And, on the issue of fundamental importance to the Bedouin, the head of the Abu Basma Regional Council is impotent to prevent the demolition of homes in the unrecognized villages.
We visited Um Battin, one of the previously unrecognized villages that now form part of the Abu Basma Regional Council. To my surprise, I saw several new homes that had been built during the past year. I was told that this was a product of the recognition process, which provided a legal basis that encouraged those Bedouin with the requisite resources to invest in permanent homes. However, even these impressive new homes lack running water or electricity (other than that provided by generators). The roads to the homes remain unpaved and life in this village appears much as it did before the Abu Basma Regional Council was formed.
What is so hard about extending the electricity grid or the water network to these villages where Israeli citizens are residing? In other regions, including to illegal outposts in the West Bank, such tasks are accomplished in a matter of days. There may be bureaucratic answers to this lack of development, but the reality is that, even regarding matters that should be relatively easy to solve, excuses are found. The consequences are an increasingly frustrated and alienated Bedouin population.
My despair diminished somewhat when we were invited to join in a celebration marking the certificate ceremony of two classes for Bedouin women organized by SHATIL, in cooperation with Ben Gurion University. The 40 women completed 56 hours of study in one of two courses: Healthy Life Styles and Dialogues about Education. These women represent the future of the Bedouin and of Israel as a country.
The two-faced nature of government policy in addressing the Bedouin and the broader Arab minority is hard to fathom. While I was visiting the Negev, Bedouin activists, supported by SHATIL staff, were describing their plight to a special session of the Knesset devoted to the Bedouin. And, as described below, government ministers were promising to halt demolitions of Bedouin homes, although incomprehensibly 20 Bedouin homes were destroyed the next day. Most troubling, a majority of the Knesset voted on first reading to authorize discrimination against Arabs in the allocation of land by the Jewish National Fund; if approved as law, this would reverse major gains that have been achieved during the past decade in proscribing such discrimination. |
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