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20.02.04, 02:54
ust beduin
By Jonathan Cook in Beer Sheva
Monday 16 February 2004, 12:25 Makka Time, 9:25 GMT
Sheep have miscarried as a result of crop spraying
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Four crop-spraying planes circling overhead have brought silent death to the
fields of wheat and barley that Shaikh Salih Abu Darim and his beduin tribe
will need to feed themselves and their goats and sheep for the year.
The Araqib tribe have farmed the land close to the city of Beer Sheva in
southern Israel for generations. But in the past year the Israeli government
has declared war on them and some 70,000 other beduin living in 45 communities
it refuses to recognise in the Negev (al-Naqab).
On 15 January the authorities stepped up the pressure on the Araqib to leave
by spraying powerful herbicides on their crops, making the young shoots
shrivel and die in the following weeks.
It was the third time the Araqib's crops had been sprayed in the past two
years by a government agency, the Israel Lands Authority.
"This time we hurriedly took what crops we could for feed," says Abu Darim.
"We made the mistake of giving them to our animals. Nearly 400 of the sheep
miscarried."
The recent campaign of crop-spraying by the authorities - more than 6000 acres
have been destroyed over a wide area of the Negev in the last two years - is
not the only weapon being used by the state.
Over the past 12 months, there has also been a wave of house demolitions,
making nearly 2000 beduin homeless. At least three mosques have also been
destroyed. Another 10,000 structures are under threat of demolition.
Forced off
The surge in activity is not accidental. It is the result of a government
plan, personally approved a year ago by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and backed
by $200 million, to force the rural beduin off their lands and into a handful
of urban reservations the state is building for them.
Critics have accused the government of plotting a quiet transfer of the beduin
from their historic lands and the destruction of their traditional way of life.
Professor Yitzhak Nevo, of Ben-Gurion University in Beer Sheva, says: "When
crops are destroyed, the population is at risk of malnutrition and hunger. And
that's what the government aims at: to use poverty and hunger to coerce
the beduin to accept a townships policy."
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel
Sharon who himself has a ranch
If successful, the five-year plan will make these 70,000 unrecognised
villagers join a similar number of beduin who were forced into seven
reservations built in the 1970s. Those towns are at the very bottom of all
Israel's social and economic league tables.
"Sharon is struggling to persuade the villagers that refused to be driven from
their lands 30 years ago to move now, especially when it is clear how
unsuitable the new communities created by the state were," says Jabr Abu Kaff,
a beduin leader. "This is why he has to use such drastic measures this time."
High price
The stakes are high. The government wants the huge land reservoir of the Negev
- two-thirds of Israel's total territory -for Jewish immigration over the
coming decades, and possibly for settlers evacuated from the West Bank and
Gaza if peace ever arrives.
In 2002 the World Zionist Organisation (WZO) announced plans to start building
settlements to bring 350,000 Jewish immigrants to the Galilee and the Negev
the first time the WZO has funded settlements outside the occupied Palestinian
territories in 26 years.
The beduin, with one of the highest fertility rates in the world and a
semi-nomadic way of life, are seen as posing a severe threat to these ambitions.
If the beduin can be forced out of their villages, their place will be taken
by 14 exclusive Jewish settlements and dozens more private farmsteads,
modelled on Sharon's own huge agricultural estate in the Negev, known as
Sycamore Ranch.
Ethnic cleansing
"The plan is little more than ethnic cleansing," said Abu Kaff, who lives in
one of the 45 threatened villages, Umbatin. "The government says it cannot
build the infrastructure for our communities because they are remote and then
replaces them with even more scattered Jewish settlements."
In fact, even though the beduin comprise a quarter of the population in the
Negev, they control only two per cent of its land.
Nonetheless, government ministers and officials accuse the beduin of "invading
state lands" by refusing to be moved from their historic villages. Sharon
himself gave a speech shortly before he became prime minister in which he
said: "The beduin are eating away at the last land reserve of the state."
"Come on friends, get a stick and beat any beduin criminal until he leaves”
Tzachi Hanegbi,
Israli minister of public security
Another minister, Tzachi Hanegbi, was recently rebuked by the attorney general
for inciteful comments he made in August to a Jewish community concerning
their beduin neighbours: "Come on friends, get a stick and beat any beduin
criminal until he leaves.”
The first stage of the transfer of land from the beduin to Jews began last
month with the establishment of a settlement on the lands of the Ughbi tribe
near the town of Rahat.
Fifteen caravans were hastily erected under the cover of night on 19 January
under the personal direction of the rightwing housing minister Effi Eitam. The
settlement of Givot Bar will eventually house 150 families.
Bitter battle
The Ughbi tribe were evacuated from the land in 1951 for a temporary six-month
period under orders from the Israeli army and told to resettle some 25km away.
They have been waging a futile battle in the Israeli courts to be allowed to
return ever since.
"There are plenty of government lands in the Negev where settlements can be
built, so why do the Jews have to settle on lands that are claimed by the
Ughbi tribe?" said Talib al-Sana, an Arab member of the Knesset who lives in
the Negev.
Refused permission to return to their lands, the Ughbi tribe has been living
in one of the 45 villages unrecognised by the state. In these villages some of
the worst social conditions anywhere in either Israel or the West Bank and
Gaza can be found.
The government justifies the gross discrimination on the grounds that the
beduin are "invading state lands", a view accepted by the Israeli courts. But
that is a gross simplification, says Maha Qupty, a spokeswoman for a lobby
group for the unrecognised villages known as the Regional Council .
"In the 1950s, after the foundation of the Israeli state, the army forced all
the beduin tribes to move off their lands, usually using emergency evacuation
orders, and settled them in an area close to Beer Sheva," she says.
"Now it says they have no historic rights to the land on which they were
forcibly resettled. It wants to make them refugees yet again."
"Now Israel says they have no historic rights to the land on which they were
forcibly resettled. It wants to make them refugees yet again"
Maha Qupty,
lobby group the Regional Council
While progress has been allowed to reach all other areas of the Negev, however
remote, the rural beduin have been kept in a condition probably recognisable
to their grandparents.
They are denied access to all public utilities, including electricity, water,
sewerage and telephones. They must generate their own electricity and have to
buy and transport water from standpipes often several miles away.
Metal homes
Most of the villages also have no schools or health care, even though several
have as many as 5000 inhabitants. Because there is no municipality to apply to
for construction permits, all building work is by definition
