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The Beduoin want to live where they are living - what's wrong with that?
It depends. It may be because Israel is building a road there. It may be that it is too close to a military area. It may be that it is a nature reserve or place of archeological significance.
It also depends on whether or not they are actively assisting the Palestinians to create "facts on the ground".
The Beduoin are Israeli citizens, and have even volunteered in the IDF. Therefore, it would seem to me they should get the SAME treatment as Jewish citizens. Every argument you make (without giving specifics I might add) seems to be arguing in favor of this discrimmination.
The example I gave was for Umm al-Hiran.
There is no road. It's not a nature reserve. It's not an archaeological preserve. What is replacing it is another, new village which will be a Jewish community. On the surface at least, it appears to be replacing one unrecognized village, with another recognized village and the only difference is ethnicity. Granted lack of appropriate infrastructure is a an understandable issue. However, illegal Arab communities built on state owned land do not get provided with infrastructure, legal assistance or funding while they are illegal. Many Jewish communities seem to.
According to this article:
The court’s decision ignored the fact that it was the state that moved the residents to the area 60 years ago, after removing them from their own land during the the 1948 Nakba. During those 60 years, people were born in the village, grew up, married, built houses, gave birth to children and even had grandchildren.
Moreover, the court did not relate to the fact that the state is not planning to use the land for a different purpose. Houses will be built on it and people will live in them, exactly as they do today — but they will be Jewish residents, not the Bedouin of
Thus, for example, the planning authorities based themselves from the start on the assumption that the original residents had tresspassed on the land. In addition, according to the admission of the state representative in court, the possibility of integrating the residents of the village within the new community was not even considered, as fairness would require.
The same article also notes the following:
- It is convenient to forget that the lack of housing in Arab communities stems to a great extent from their limited municipal boundaries, which do not include state land and have never been expanded. Twenty percent of the population lives on 2.5 percent of the land.
- It also stems from the lack of up-to-date master plans in most Arab comunities and from the consistent discrimination in the allocation of resources — only 5 percent of the tenders published by the Israel Lands Authority for new housing in 2014 were for Arab towns.
- And it stems from the systematic exclusion of Arabs from government benefits and support. One example is the “target price” plan for affordable housing, which will be implemented in 30 Jewish communities and not a single Arab one.
Umm al-Hiran
Israel's Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected a petition by residents of the unrecognized Bedouin village of Umm al-Hiran against their removal and the demolition of the community – in order to construct a new town for Jewish residents in its place. The court ruled the land belongs to the state and the Bedouins have no legal rights to it.
...In November 2013, a number of families from the Abu Alkiyan clan, who live in the unrecognized community of Umm al-Hiran, filed a petition with the aid of Adalah – Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, to prevent the demolition of their homes and the evacuation of the residents – after the cabinet approved the creation of Hiran and the demolition of their unrecognized village.
The petitioners claimed they did not squat on the land, but were transferred to the area in the Yattir Forest in 1956 by direct order of the military administration of the time. But now, their lands lie within the master plan of the Be’er Sheva metropolitan area. The government has never denied that the residents were moved to Umm al-Hiran by state authorities. Umm al-Hiran is now home to about 700 people, say residents, but like other Bedouin villages that lack official recognition as local municipal communities, it lacks infrastructure and electricity.
The Abu Alkiyan clan now resides in two villages, Atir and Umm al-Hiran, located near Wadi Atir, close to Route 316 and east of the village of Houra. Until 1948, the clan lived on the land now used by Kibbutz Shoval. After the War of Independence, they traveled across the Negev looking for new land, but did not find any, because most of it was already claimed by other tribes. In 1956, it approached the military administration and was transferred to the Wadi Atir area. A classified military administration document dating from 1957 says the clan received 7,000 dunams of land near the wadi. It then split into two hamlets that shared the land. Unlike in many Bedouin communities, the houses in Atir and Umm al-Hiran are built of stone.
Decade of house demolitions
Over the past decade houses in the village were demolished a number of times, and residents were offered a compromise of moving to the nearby town of Hura, where they would be compensated with an 800-square meter plot of land. But the families who petitioned the court refused the offer, saying they will not be removed from their land a third time.
Rubinstein wrote about this claim: “This is not expulsion and not expropriation, but the proposed evacuation involves various proposals of moving, construction, compensation and the possibility of homes, whether in the town of Hura where most of the residents of the illegal villages involved will be moved, or in the community of Hiran, which is to be built.”
In conclusion, Rubinstein said the issue of the Bedouin lands is one of the most difficult and challenging the court has dealt with, and is filled with sensitive emotions and political disputes.
Justice Daphne Barak-Erez, who disagreed with parts of Rubinstein’s opinion, criticized the government’s actions: “The petitioners cannot receive the full support they asked for, but it is also not possible to reconcile oneself with the flaws in the authorities’ actions concerning the decision on the evacuation and compensation involved.” She said the authorities should reconsider the compensation offered, since the residents had lived there for 20 years and were not trespassing. In addition the state should consider offering them a plot to live in the new town to be built on the land, in addition to the previous proposals, she suggested.
In 2012, the National Planning and Building Council approved the master plan for Hiran, the latest in a series of decisions on the matter by the state. Despite being approved, work on the town was delayed following the appeal by the Bedouin residents. Hiran is slated for 2,400 housing units, and the Bedouin can also choose to live there if they want, attorney Moshe Golan, representing the government, told the court in one of the hearings. But he noted the Bedouin residents would not receive the same 800-square meter plot in Hiran they would receive elsewhere, since the plots in Hiran were much smaller. The core group of families slated to move to Hiran are national religious Jews, who are to be joined by secular residents moving to the site from the nearby community of Meitar, along with others.
I agree, from everything I've read, the situation regarding the Beduoin is complicated. However, here is what I see.
This group of people have been displaced, forceably, twice. They are now to be displaced yet again from a community they've built and lived in for 20 years.
Supposedly, they can "choose to live" in the new village if they want, however, Israeli law allows communities to determine whether or not to allow residents to buy into the community and that law has allowed them to, in practice exclude certain ethnic groups. It's also creates the question of can they afford to?
Looking at this particular situation, I would ask the following questions:
- Why should they be required to move yet a third time from a community they have been in for 20 years?
- Would the same thing have happened if it were a Jewish community? You have made the case for the unfairness of forcing illegal Jewish communities and settlements that have been established to be evacuated - do you not have the same standard for Arab communities?
- There are many examples where illegal Jewish communities have been funded, provided by the state with infrastructure, and legal help to fight demolition - why not this community?
- Would you consider this discrimmination?
It rather reminds me of the way we treated native Americans - forced them out of their nomadic lifestyles onto reservations and then when something valuable was discovered on the reservation land or they wanted to open it up to settlers, they moved them again.
SOME have accepted Israeli citizenship, which is great, but the ones that haven't don't fall under the protections of nationals.
Even so ANYONE building a structure without a permit is subject to having it torn down
