Last summer, 2009, the Jewish National Fund began massive works in the al-‘Araqib area. The works involved preparing the ground, construction of dams and reservoirs and the planting of thousands of trees.
A forestation plan, number 305/02/7, which constitutes part of the National Master Plan 22 for forests and forestation, has been approved for the al-‘Araqib area. But the Israel Land Administration requested to expand the planting area, and so the JNF initiated plan number 485/03/7, which is presently under discussion by the Southern District Appeals Committee.
Even while the plan is being discussed by the Committee and no decision has yet been approved, the JNF is in the process of implementing it!
As that were not enough, a surveyor we sent to the area found that not only is the JNF acting on the basis of a plan that has not been approved, thereby breaking the law, but JNF employees are also carrying out works not included in the plans, and are operating in areas where nobody asked for the plan to be implemented. The JNF’s war “for every dunam and every goat” is so intense that under heavy police cover they are doing everything possible to remove every Bedouin from the lands of his fathers.
All attempts to understand the legal basis for the JNF work while the ownership claims submitted by Bedouin Arabs have not yet been deliberated have been in vain. All that has been said by the inspectors on the ground is that the Land Administration has appointed the JNF as a contractor for the work. How was that done? Through a 49-year lease or in an authorization agreement for 4 years and 11 months, as stipulated in Israel Land Council Decision Number 1045?
Attempts by people from al-‘Araqib, such as Nuri al-‘Uqbi, to file a complaint with the police were also in vain. And his attempts to act non-violently to resist the planting on his land while the matter was under judicial clarification at the Be’er-sheva District Court resulted in 40 charges against him for trespassing, destruction of property, etc. (As they say in popular language, “they stitched up a case against him”). Houses were destroyed in al-‘Araqib during the winter, and about 3,500 dunams of barley, that had just begun to grow, were ploughed up by employees of the Israel Lands Administration accompanied by police Special Patrol Units (“Yasam”).
The police too were pressed into service in the “defence” of the JNF people. Members of the Negev Coexistence Forum for Civil Equality, which had decided to protest against the works that were being done without authorization, were forcefully repulsed by members of the Special Patrol Units who were guarding those carrying out the work, and who did not permit the people who came to protest even to stand near the place where the work was occurring – as if they were guarding a nuclear facility, or a “security” facility at least. Requests to the police to see the plans according to which the contractors were working were met with refusal on the grounds that the Bedouin, the people of al-‘Araqib, had seen the plans!
The al-‘Araqib residents who were present at the scene immediately contradicted the claims of the police, saying that they had never seen the plans. But that did not prevent the Special Patrol Units from demanding that the people who had come to protest leave the scene immediately.
JNF employees built parking lots on the site for the giant tractors and other heavy machinery that they used to carry out the work, as the people of al-‘Araqib stood by dumbfounded. Those people, who submitted claims of ownership over those lands more than thirty years ago, and thought that their land would be returned to them at the end of a long and wearying process, naively believed that justice and fairness would prevail in the end. But their hopes were frustrated. Most of their claims for the lands were never heard, and some of them are under a prolonged process of judicial review the end of which is not visible on the horizon, while on the ground irreversible facts are being created before their eyes.
We asked MK Dov Henin to submit a parliamentary question on the subject and instead of getting an answer from the responsible ministers, Minister of the Interior Eli Yishai and Housing Minister Ariel Atias, both of the Shas Party, the answer was given by Agriculture Minister Shalom Simhon of the Labour Party.
Minister Simhon is not familiar with the issue, but some of the words in his reply were so crude, racist and wicked that it would have been better if they had not been uttered. Certainly not from the lips of a minister who was elected with the help of votes from the Arab population.
Below is an excerpt from Minister Simhon’s reply to parliamentary question number 142 “Activities of the Jewish National Fund in the Negev” from 3 March 2010:
“… You know as well, Member Knesset Member Dov Henin, and also Knesset Member Haim Oron, former Agriculture Minister – both of you know that in every place where a forest is planted, national land is best preserved there, for all sides know not to touch a forest that has been planted. For my part, from my professional standpoint, I think that the more forests that are planted in order to preserve National Land, even if in the future it will be necessary to uproot them in order to use the land for other purposes – that is the most correct course of action. It is correct in the Galilee, it is correct in the Negev, it is correct in the centre of the country, it is correct in all possible places. At the end of the day it makes no difference what is decided regarding the land, that is the best way to protect the land from being appropriated for incorrect use”…
Simhon’s words reveal, for those who did not yet know, the Labour Party’s approach from time immemorial, and the JNF’s modus operandi: confiscating lands from Arabs for innocent, welcomed and green purposes like forestation, prevention of erosion by rivers, setting up gardens and water reservoirs, and after a few years there will be construction on those same areas for the exclusive use of the Jewish population! And all while sweet-talking the Jewish People into supporting for the project of Judaization. We are green here at the JNF, no?
Faced with these developments, the people of al-‘Araqib stand by nearly helpless, without being defended by ministers, without protection from the police or the State Comptroller and without the support of anybody in authority. In various ways, many of those institutions are acting against the Bedouin.
Under these circumstances the only “weapon” in the hands of the Bedouin is their faith in the justness of their cause – and that is no small thing!
A few organizations like the Recognition Forum, which is composed of a coalition of organizations for the recognition of unrecognized villages, conduct solidarity activities with those villages and they sometimes visit the area. And the Negev Coexistence Forum for Civil Equality too visits the area frequently, and is in regular contact with the people of the village and the popular committee. Among other things, the Forum brings groups to the scene, lobbies the authorities and supports the ongoing activities of the villagers. But those activities are not enough!
The planting is continuing and al-‘Araqib has “changed its face” due to the ambitious effort undertaken by the JNF to conclude the project in which are planted tens of thousands of trees. The Coexistence Forum calls on organizations of jurists to join in helping the people of al-‘Araqib in every way possible and not to leave them to wage their struggle alone. We must not leave them as the only ones struggling against the injustice in which so many institutions have a hand.
I would be astonished if the donors to the JNF, whose money makes it possible to carry out all those activities that are thwarting any chance of the communities in the Negev living together side-by-side in peace, are aware of what is done with their donations. Is this what they intended when they contributed money to the JNF?
It is a shame that the JNF has turned overnight into an instigator of discord and contention between Arabs and Jews in the Negev, and all that under the cover of the colour green – the colour of the camouflage for the war they have declared on the Bedouin population in the Negev – and with sweet words about water-works and planting trees and forests. We, residents of the Negev, renounce those activities and hope to continue to live in partnership with the Arab population in the Negev.
On Tuesday 16 March, 2010, the State’s campaign against the people of al-‘Araqib and the organizations that support them reached a new level when Shlomo Zeizer, manager of the inspection department in the Israel Land Administration called one of our members who signed an announcement of invitation to the summer sowing at al-‘Araqib next Saturday, and said that he would file a complaint against the Recognition Forum at the Rahat police station over the activities planned for next Saturday.
Have we mentioned that this is the only democracy in the Middle East?
Haya Noach
Negev Coexistence Forum for Civil Equality
Translated from Hebrew for Occupation Magazine by George Malent.
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