CPT Update: Israel displacing the Bedouin Arab children from land and schools

Bedouin man with his son in front of their demolished homeGreetings, friends.  Below is a release from one of our team on the situation regarding the  ongoing displacement of Bedouin Arab Israelis from their land, and the impact it is having on their chldren.  Just to be clear, these are Bedouin people who have lived in the Negev desert, inside Israel, for centuries.  These Arab people are given Israeli citizenship, (the right to vote and pay taxes) but they are not given the right to be identified as Israeli nationals.  These people are territorial pastoralist who rotate their herds to graze throughout large areas of land. Israeli government is systematically displacing them from their land, and attempting to move them all into newly constructed townships, where they would live in a home on one acre of land.  In these ghettoes, these Arab Israelis would loose their entire way of life, and could not sustain their needs, thereby becoming a people completely dispossessed and displaced. 

Bedouin water cistern that is under threat of demolitionIn one village, Al Arakib, the Bedouin village has been demolished 31 times by the Israeli army over the course of a few decades.  Each time, their homes and olive groves have been bulldozed into a valley, while the families take shelter in the only protected land around - their ancestral graveyard.  And despite the fact that the Jewish National Fund (i.e. the Israeli ministry of the interior) has monopolized all the water in the desert for their own purposes, the Israeli military has attempted to also destroy the Bedouin's cistern, which is their only water source.  This continuous action is an attempt to harrass these Arab Bedouins, who are Israeli citizens, so that they will eventually give up and leave Israel and take refuge in Jordan.  The Israeli military has already been successful in displacing a large population of Arab Israeli Bedouins, and continues to pressure the Bedouins of Al Arakib and Wady el Na'am, which you can read about in the release below.

Bedouins' Olive tree...hopeOne more thought about the Bedouin's demolished Olive Tree groves.  Two of the Bedouins' bulldozed Olive Trees have begun to voluntarily grow back out of the demolished wasteland.  Hope.

Peace,

Chad

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One school in the Bedouin village of Wady el Na’am is supposed to cover the educational needs of over 2200 children. When the villagers asked for another school and more supplies the Israeli government simply built a wall between the school buildings and deemed that to be making a second school.

Wady el Na'am schoolAccording to the Israeli compulsory education law of 1949, the state has to provide education for children aged three to fifteen and free education up to 17. Despite pleas from this community, who are full Israeli citizens, to improve this situation, the Israeli government refuses to do so because of their stance that Wady el Na’am is an illegal community grabbing Israeli land in the Negev desert.

Wady el Na’am is a community of Bedouins who have lived there since 1956 when the government forcefully removed them from their ancestral land. The authorities are now trying to displace the people of this village into the township of Segev Shalom. The village is also surrounded by a power plant, a chemical processing factory and a military base within its borders. During a visit by the Christian Peacemaker Teams on November 19, the delegation was told children suffer from a range of skin diseases, respiratory problems and the population as a whole has higher than normal cases of cancer as a result of their environment. The community of Segev Shalom is already already deprived of basic services such as electricity and running water which leaves the Bedouins of Wady el Na’am with no choice but to stay in their village.

Wady el Na'am power plant and chemical dumpThe Bedouin of the Negev have lost 90 percent of their land since 1948, despite many of them having title deeds dating to the time of the Ottoman Empire. They have been forced into the Sayag resettlement zone and are now being pressured to leave this into one of seven townships. They have continued to resist such pressure including one village, Al Arakib, which has been destroyed 31 times to make way for a forest. The Bedouin community are still living on the site.

In all there are some 45 unrecognized villages comprising of some 50,000 houses in the Negev inhabited by Bedouin. Since 1965 they have have been subject to a demolition order as none of them have building permission despite having been moved there by the Israeli government. If they build a new house they are subject to having it demolished and being presented with a bill to cover the costs of the demolition.