New UNRWA fact sheet on Jahalin
Israel freezes plan to move East Jerusalem Bedouin to site near garbage dump- Ha’aretz
Civil Administration pushed for plan’s approval, despite opposition from green, human rights groups
June 29 2012
A Bedouin of the Jahalin tribe walking in his encampment near Ma’aleh Adumim, seen in the background, in June, 2012. Photo by Reuters
“The state has suspended a plan to forcibly relocate Bedouin from East Jerusalem to a site next to a city garbage dump. The state told the High Court of Justice two weeks ago it was putting off the plan until surveys were conducted to assess the environmental repercussions and hazards involved.
Some 2,400 Palestinian Bedouin of the Jahalin tribe petitioned the High Court against the state’s intention to evict them from their village and relocate hundreds of them, against their will, to a neighborhood barely 75 meters from a landfill site in Abu Dis, east of Jerusalem.
Since the Civil Administration prepared the relocation plan in 2005, officials in charge of environmental affairs have warned against settling people so close to an active landfill site. The officials even voted against the plan at one stage. But the Civil Administration went ahead with the plan despite the warnings and even speeded it up at the end of last year, according to documents that the state attached to its response to the petition. ”Nowhere in the world or in Israel are people housed near an active pirate garbage dump… it’s irresponsible to place people there,” said Nitzan Levy, CEO of the Municipal Environmental Associations of Judea and Samaria..
But this too did not stop the administration from moving ahead with the plan. Earlier this year the state promised the Bedouin leaders and senior UN officials that the Bedouin community would not be required to move next to the garbage dump, as was initially proposed. But since then various Civil Administration inspectors and officials have told the Bedouin that their forced relocation to an unknown place was drawing closer, prompting the Bedouin to file a High Court petition against their eviction. The petition also protests the fact that the administration planned their relocation without consulting them. The petition was submitted by five members of the recently formed Bedouin Protection Committee and the NGO, Bimkom Planners for Planning Rights.
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Full article here:
UK parliamentary debate about Area C- transcript
“Mr Frank Doran (Aberdeen North) (Lab):
I am grateful for the opportunityto speak on the important issue of Area C in Palestine. Following the Osloagreement in 1995, the occupied Palestinian territories were divided into threeareas: Area A, about 18% of the west bank, contains most of the mainPalestinian settlements and is under full Palestinian civil and security control;Area B, roughly 22% of the west bank, is under Palestinian civil control andIsraeli security control; and Area C, on which I want to concentrate, makes upthe other 60% of the west bank and is under complete Israeli civil and securitycontrol. The Oslo agreement as concerned with the west bank was intended to beinterim and to last for only five years. The lands should have been handed overgradually to Palestinian control, but that has never happened.
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Settlers consume between six and 10 times more per head than theirPalestinian counterparts. Many settlers have swimming pools and are able toirrigate their farmland. By contrast, 190,000 Palestinians live in 134 villageswithout running water. Palestinian consumption in the occupied territories isabout 70 litres per day, well below the 100 litres recommended by the WorldHealth Organisation. In some rural communities, people survive on 20 litres perday, and many Palestinians are forced to buy water of dubious quality frommobile water tanks at high prices. Wells and systems built without permits arefrequently destroyed by the Israeli army.
Demolition orders are in place, and actual demolition has occurred, all overArea C. On a recent trip, we visited two Bedouin communities. The first wasKahn al-Ahmar. The residents are a Bedouin community who are refugees fromthe Negev. The area in which they live could not be described as remote. Theylive cheek by jowl with a main highway, and there is a substantial settlementon the other side of the road. However, the actions of the ICA have led to thecommunity being isolated in practical terms.
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Full 25 page transcript here:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/99171728/Area-C-in-British-Parliamentary-Debate
Video- MEP Paul Murphy speaks against oppression of Jahalin Bedouin
Paul Murphy speaks against the oppression of the Jahalin Bedouins by the Israeli state. Demolition orders have been passed to destroy their homes in the Ma’ale Adumim settlement district. The Jahalin Bedouins are one of the poorest communities on the West Bank. The Israeli state plan to move them to a site which is 300 metres from a huge landfill site.
Click here to watch the video!
European Parliament condemns Israel’s policy toward Bedouin population- Ha’aretz
Human rights groups hail resolution as unprecedented; European Parliament calls on Israel to withdraw government-approved plan to regulate Bedouin communities in Negev.
July 2012
Bedouin children of the Jahalin tribe near the Israeli settlement of Maale Adumim (seen in the background), June 16, 2012. Photo by Reuters
The European Parliament passed a resolution on Thursday condemning Israel’s policy toward the Bedouin communities living in unrecognized settlements in the Negev Desert. Human rights groups have called the resolution, which passed 291 to 274 with 39 abstaining, unprecedented.
The European Parliament called on Israel to withdraw its government-approved Prawer plan to regulate the Bedouin communities in the Negev. The resolution was brought to a vote by the Group of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists & Democrats in the European Parliament and was based on work done by the European Parliament’s Working Group on the Middle East, which held consultations with representatives of human rights groups including Attorney Suhad Bishara of Adalah – The Legal Center for the Arab Minority Rights in Israel, who briefed working group on the legal ramifications of the plan, and its relations to Israeli and international law.
The situation of the Bedouin citizens of Israel has never before been addressed by the European Parliament. The Director of Adalah’s Negev bureau, the geographer Dr. Thabet Abu Rass commented on the decision saying that “achieving recognition by the European Parliament that the Israeli government practices the same policies of displacement and dispossession against Palestinian citizens of Israel as it does against Palestinians living under occupation is a tremendous step forward.”
Last march, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination called on Israel not to implement the Prawer program.
“Whereas Arab Bedouins are indigenous people leading a sedentary and traditionally agricultural life on their ancestral lands and are seeking formal and permanent recognition of their unique situation and status,” The resolution stated. “whereas Arab Bedouin communities, threatened by Israeli policies undermining their livelihoods and including forced transfer, are a particularly vulnerable population both in the occupied Palestinian Territory and in the Negev.”
In another relevant clause the resolution said: “The European Parliament Calls for the protection of the Bedouin communities of the West Bank and in the Negev, and for their rights to be fully respected by the Israeli authorities, and condemns any violations (e.g. house demolitions, forced displacements, public service limitations); calls also, in this context, for the withdrawal of the Prawer Plan by the Israeli Government.”
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Original article here:
Water torture- Ha’aretz
IDF confiscates water containers from Palestinians and Bedouins in Jordan Valley.
July 2012
“Avi is an inspection coordinator for the “Civil Administration” – the occupation regime, to speak without euphemisms. Presumably Avi likes his job. Maybe he’s even proud of it.He doesn’t bother mentioning his last name in the forms he signs. Why should he? His ornate “Avi” signature is sufficient to carry out his diktats. And Avi’s are among the most brutal and inhumane diktats ever to be imposed in these parts.
Avi confiscates water containers that serve hundreds of Palestinian and Bedouin families living in the Jordan Valley.
The containers are these people’s only water source. In recent weeks, Avi has confiscated about a dozen containers, leaving dozens of families with children in the horrific Jordan Valley heat, to go thirsty.The forms he takes pains to complete, in spiffy style, say: “There is reason to suspect they used the above merchandise for carrying out an offense.” Avi’s bosses claim the “offense” is stealing water from a pipe. This is why the containers are seized – with no inquiry, no trial. Welcome to the land of lawlessness and evil. Welcome to the land of apartheid. Israel does not permit thousands of these wretched people to hook up to the water pipes. This water is for Jews only. Even the greatest Israeli propagandists could not deny the nationalist, diabolical separation taking place here.
The axis of evil is located about an hour’s drive from your home. But emotionally distant and far from the heart, it inspires no “social protest.” And on the scale of Israeli evil, it is one of the worst. Backed with forms and bureaucracy, applied by ostensibly nonviolent inspectors, it involves not a drop of blood, yet leaves no drop of water either.
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Full article here:
http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/water-torture.premium-1.449448
Pack up your homes, people, the IDF needs to hold a drill- Ha’aretz
When the army needs to hold drills with live fire, the Bedouin of the Jordan Valley have to vacate their tent encampments.
July 2012
Amjed Zahweh lies in his iron crib. His family's tent was destroyed, but rebuilt again this week. Photo by Alex Levac
“Amjed Zahweh is 10 days old. Last week, Civil Administration inspectors demolished his family’s tent in the Jordan Valley. Now he’s lying in his iron crib, covered with a blanket and rags in the stifling heat. His family sprawls on the ground near him in the tent that was destroyed but was rebuilt again this week. With them are dozens of families that live without running water, without electricity, without minimal sanitary conditions. Across from their encampment are verdant settlements.
We have visited here dozens of times in recent years. This time we heard that the Civil Administration had apprised some 40 families in the northern part of the valley that they had a few hours to vacate their homes and encampments for a period of 24 hours, because of a live-fire drill by the Israel Defense Forces. The announcement came practically without warning, and none of the families was offered an alternative dwelling.
In the Jordan Valley, which a majority of Israelis do not consider to be occupied land per se, there actually aren’t any fanatical settlers with long earlocks. Here we are dealing with moshavniks. From their zooming cars they can see a barrier of dirt dozens of kilometers long that Israel built in recent years, to imprison the Palestinian occupants of Ain al-Hilweh, thus preventing them from being able to reach the road easily. “Good” Israelis – who rush to volunteer for relief and rescue delegations dispatched to the four corners of the earth – do not come here in response to the humanitarian disaster that is taking place just an hour-and-a-half’s drive from Tel Aviv and about an hour from Jerusalem.
Only a handful of Israeli women, those from the Machsom Watch organization, are still coming here, to provide some humanitarian aid and to try bring this locally made disaster to the knowledge of Israelis and the world.
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Full article here:
Israel: A taste of Bedouin hospitality- LA Times
A culinary Birthright trip to Israel features a stop at Chan Hashayarot, a Bedouin camp where the food, stories and activities offer a glimpse of another world.
July 2012
“Negev Desert, Israel — It was night in the Negev Desert, and our bus driver Mich’ael had just turned onto a narrow dirt road. I was on Day 6 of a 10-day culinary Birthright trip and was exhausted.
My 29 colleagues and I had spent the earlier part of the day exploring the old city streets of Jaffa, making our way down cobblestone walkways, through hidden alleys and into small shops. I had tried to stretch my weary legs as much as possible before boarding our bus for the 90-minute drive south to the next stop on our journey, an overnight stay with a Bedouin tribe.
Birthright is a free educational trip to Israel for Jewish youth ages 18 to 26, provided by a group called Taglit Birthright. My sister had gone on a Birthright trip a couple of years earlier and had told me how wonderful it was, but I never felt inclined to go until recently. I’d read that a culinary-themed trip was being offered in mid-February, and at 26, I was quickly going to age out of eligibility.
After sleeping in warm, comfortable hotels, I was less than excited about having to move on to a tent in the desert, but opting out wasn’t an option. Everyone must participate in every activity on the itinerary. That’s how I found myself on the trip to Chan Hashayarot, a Bedouin camp in the middle of the Negev off Route 40.
The Bedouins are an Arab nomadic people who live in the deserts of Israel, Syria, Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Yemen andSaudi Arabia. They once traveled with their camels and other animals in search of food and water, but now most live in settlements.
The 60,000 or so Bedouins in Israel had been living here peacefully for thousands of years, our tour guide Erad told us. For many, poverty continues to be a pressing issue. Some Bedouin tribes, like the one we were about to visit, had created camps, open to the public, as hospitality businesses.
When the bus finally crawled to a stop, we got off and made our way through the small camp to the sleeping and dining tents. They were not as tall as I had expected, but they were still large enough to hold about 100 people. Cold air nipped at my cheeks, forcing me to pull my hood over my face and tuck my fingers into my jacket sleeves. “If we have to spend the night in a giant tent in this weather, we’ll surely freeze,” I thought to myself.
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Bedouins take guests on a camel ride through the desert. (Hanan'el Edri)
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Full article here:
http://www.latimes.com/travel/la-tr-bedouinhospitality-20120702,0,1285.story
Dateline piece on Negev Bedouin
Israel eyes landfill site for Bedouin nomads – Reuters
Bedouin tents and wandering goats dot the barren hills on the drive from Jerusalem down to the Dead Sea, giving residents and visitors a glimpse of how the Holy Land must have looked in ancient times.
June 2012
With their corrals, water cisterns and tractors the camps look more like rudimentary homesteads. But the Bedouin tradition is slowly dying out as Israel clears the camps to make way for expanding Jewish urban settlements.
The Bedouin say they are being forced to forgo many aspects of their traditional way of life which relies on land, livestock and tents. All have been targets of Israeli restrictions. ”Our lifestyle relies on being able to move around, to live in dispersed tents on large plots of land and raise animals, which we love doing,” said Mohammad Korshan, a resident of al-Khan al-Ahmar of the Jahalin Bedouin tribe. ”The Israeli authorities just don’t understand our lifestyle,” he added, sitting in his airy tent held up by wooden sticks, the rocky floor covered with a thick rug.
Israel says the camps are set up illegally without permits, and sometimes stand in the way of urban planning. In remoter parts of the occupied West Bank, the army evicts Bedouin it says are squatting inside live-firing ranges. Critics say these are just excuses for land grabs.
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Full article here:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/06/20/us-palestinians-israel-bedouin-idUSBRE85J0TU20120620
