Bedouins in the Negev

If a country decided to force all its Jews into towns constructed just for them, and demolished their original homes, and confiscated their land, I hope Israel would take a bold, determined stand against such gross injustice.  And I hope that I would be standing shoulder to shoulder with my Israeli brothers and sisters to fight (non-violently!) against the actions of that nation.

The Negev is the southern part of Israel

The Bedouins who live within Israel are experiencing this exact scenario.  Our group traveled to the Negev area in southern Israel where we had the opportunity to sit with Bedouins in their tents, drink tea, and hear their stories.  One of the biggest tragedies faced by Bedouins is that most of the world is blind to their existence and their plight.  One put it this way:

“The issue of Palestinians within Israel is less known than the issue of the Palestinians in the West Bank.  The issue of Bedouins in Israel is even less known than the issue of Palestinians in Israel.”

The Bedouins in Israel are Israeli citizens.  Haziz, our host at our first stop, pulls out his id card that attests to his citizenship.  About 150,000 Bedouins live in the Negev, a large section of southern Israel that has been part of Israel since the U.N. partition plan in 1947.

             But like Palestinians in Israel and in the West Bank, the Bedouins are being forced from their land by the Israeli government.  The government is trying to concentrate the Bedouins in several approved cities.  The dispersed villages where they have been living are “unrecognized villages” and are given no water or electricity and are all experiencing demolitions.

Haziz and part of his family in their tent/house.

Tea made the Bedouin way

            We sat with Haziz in a tent in the unrecognized village of Al Arakib.  As we drank tea, he told us that this village (once including stone/concrete structures, but now made up only of tents) has been demolished by the Israeli police 26 times in the last year.  Four days before we were there, 3 more houses had been destroyed by the government.  We saw the scraped ground where bulldozers pushed up rubble, much of which has been hauled away to remove evidence that a village was here.

Forest planted on Bedouin land by the JDF; bulldozer rubble in foreground

Haziz showed us where his family used to have 4500 35-year-old olive trees – all bulldozed.  On the land where productive olive trees used to grow, now non-fruit bearing trees have been planted by the JDF (Jewish Defense Fund) and the area has been declared a green zone – closed to agriculture.  An official sign identifies it as the "Ambassadors' Forest" named in honor of ambassadors from around the world who have contributed to this "greening" project, presumably with no knowledge of the back story.

Rubble of a demolished Bedouin home, built before the big tree was planted

Here is the rubble of a house in Wadi El Na’am, our next stop where we sat in the tent of a Bedouin named Abrahim.  The picture shows a tree standing, a tree that took years to grow.  The house was built before this tree was planted.  The house had been there a long time.  Now it is a pile of rubble, bulldozed by the Israeli police.  While in the West Bank it is the Israeli army that carries out house demolitions, here within Israel it is the Israeli police that do so.

            Abrahim describes how the Bedouins were moved to this land by the state in 1963, but in 1988 the state came to them and told them that they were invaders.  They have appealed their case in the court system.  In one high court, the judge asked them, “What was the name of the officer who transferred you to the land originally?”  The Bedouins answered, “We don’t know.  They just pointed guns to our heads so we came here.”  The Supreme Court eventually made a ruling that the 2 sides had three years to come up with an agreement, but for the next three years no one from the government talked to the Bedouins.  And the government continues to try to force the Bedouins off their land.

            Haziz asked us to do three things:

1)   Tell the JNF to stop taking over their land.

2)   Tell our people back home to come here to see Arabs, Jews, and Christians working together.

3)   Try to help with jobs.  If people can stay on the land, they can have olive trees and sheep.  But when they are forced off the land, some have to work in the Israeli factories in the area, dehumanizing work they do not want to do.  Many others are unemployed and can’t even get factory work.

Our guide for the day was a Jewish man named Amos who has been advocating for the Bedouins for a decade.  He and Haziz have become friends.  “How can I hate the Jews?” says Aziz.  “Amos is my friend.”

He takes us out and shows us the shoots of an olive tree, coming up through the bulldozed ground.  “If the trees refuse to die, I will not leave them.  I will not leave this land.”

Haziz and a shoot sprouting up from the roots of a bulldozed olive tree, with piles of rubble behind