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Israelis kill crops to oust beduin
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Israelis kill crops to oust beduin
By Jonathan Cook in Beer Sheva
Monday 16 February 2004, 12:25 Makka Time, 9:25 GMT
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."
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."
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."
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 illegal. Most of the unrecognised villagers are
therefore forced to live in tents or metal shacks that offer little
protection from the desert heat or night-time cold.
Those who dare to build a permanent structure soon find it demolished,
and are then billed for the work of the wrecking crews.
Until now only their homes had been declared illegal. But allied to
the Negev plan is a new law which classifies any beduin living in an
unrecognised village as a "trespasser" on state lands and liable to up
to two years in jail.
In Araqib, the tribesmen sit in their communal tent drinking strong
coffee and contemplating the cost of being defined as a trespasser.
Last month they lost 260 acres of crops to the government spraying.
Each acre would have produced more than 1500kg of flour, says Abu
Darim. To buy enough flour for the whole village's needs on the open
market would cost them some $200,000, a sum no one in the village can
even consider paying.
But it is not just about money, says another tribal leader, Shaikh
Sayyah al-Turi: "I don't differentiate between myself and my crops.
When they come and spray the crops, my feeling is that when they
finish spraying my crops they'll start spraying me and my children." |
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| Yoepus |
good to know that Israel is an equal opprotunity "ethnic cleanser":rolleyes: ;)
I'm just wondering since when do the beduin, a nomadic people, have crops? |
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| priveye03 |
| I definatly think using the term ethnic cleansing in the situation is a little bit strong, in any case, un-right to say. Until they start actually going into the villages and lining the people up and shooting them one by one, it isn't. (or something of the sort) They are basically just doing to them what the Americans did to the Indians. This, of course, isn't right and I think Isreal should be repremanded for it. I just hate the idea of destroying all the houses and spraying the crops so the tribe basically implodes. Just starve them and they will eventually get the picture. :whip: :whip: :whip: |
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| Yoepus |
| for some reason - and I get this feeling with most post from Palestinian and the like - I always feel I don't get the "whole" picture when reading their articles... and since any info is useless without context (what is the State of Israel's official quarrel with the Beduin for instance?) I tend to really ignore articles that don't at least attempt to bring both sides. |
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