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News Archive - MIDDLE EAST
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The Government of Israel Continues to Demolish Bedouin Homes
April 2008
April 16 2008, in the morning three Israeli soldiers were killed in battles along the Gaza Strip – one of them a Bedouin. Immediately after that the Government of Israel demolished three Bedouin homes in the Unrecognized Villages – and arrested three women.
 Read more (doc)
Read it in Hebrew (web link)
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Israel: Despite the drought, pasture denied to Bedouin camels and sheep
March 2008
Despite the drought and despite the high prices of animal food, the Government of Israel has not yet opened the main pasture areas for the Bedouin flocks. Many livestock owners are selling their flocks, and will loose all their sources of income.
Read more (pdf, 6 pages, Hebrew and English)
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Israel: Bedouin houses destroyed to make way for Jewish settlement
June 2007
The Israel Land Administration (ILA), with the assistance of an unusually large police force and IDF soldiers, demolished dozens of tin shack homes Monday in unrecognized Bedouin villages Um Al-Hiran and A-Tir in the northern Negev. The ILA is destroying the village and evacuating the inhabitants so that a Jewish Community named "Hiran" can be established in the area. Fourteen shacks, which housed some 100 people, have been destroyed by bulldozers so far.  Read Bustan.org's update online
Read the RCUV's press release (pdf)
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Israel: 17 Beduin homes demolished in the Negev dessert
December 2006
Dec. 6, 2006, the Interior Ministry and Israel Land Authority demolished 17 homes in the unrecognized village of Twayyil. This is the fourth demolition in this village since the beginning of the year.
Read the RCUV statement
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Israel: Beduin village to be destroyed
September 2006
The Israeli government intents to destroy an entire indigenous Bedouin village in the Negev (Southern Israel).
Read the appeal for action
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Israel: Destruction of Bedouin Crops in the Negev continues
April 2006
On April 14, police and Israel Land Authority destroyed crops on 100 acres of Bedouin "unrecognized" fields. In a press release, Adam Keller, spokesperson of Gush Shalom (Israeli Peace Bloc) calls "The treatment of the Negev Bedouins, citizens of Israel, [is] a badge of infamy for our country. The intensified aggression against the Bedouins might also be the first 'down payment' in Acting PM's Olmert courting of the arch-racist Avigdor Lieberman, slated to be a government coalition partner. Lieberman's entire elections campaign in the recent parliamentary elections consisted of racist demagoguery against Israel's Arab citizens. Specifically, Lieberman and his partner Pini Badash, Mayor of the Be'er Sheba suburb of Omer, spent much time and energy on inciting Jewish inhabitants of the Negev against their Bedouin neighbors."
As Adam Keller writes: the cause of the Bedouins in the Negev is an existential one. Over the years they are pushed out of their lands on which they subsist with their herds, and with their cunning way of water non-intensive agriculture. Their bad luck is that the struggle against the occupation takes so much energy of what could expected to be their natural allies. But there is the Jewish-Arab organization Dukium (Negev Coexistence Forum). And the Bedouins themselves are getting organized better and better." The Regional Council of the Unrecognized Villages is one example, the recent protest action by el-Okbi Tribe another.
Read more
Read about the protest of the members of the el-Okbi Tribe against the Israeli authorities' harassment
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Israel: Report on the Indigenous Bedouin of the Negev Desert
March 2006
A report titled "The Indigenous Bedouin of the Negev Desert in Israel" presented at the Working Group on Indigenous Populations in July 2005 has been publicised by the Negev Coexistence Forum. The report provides good background information on the Bedouins and their situation.
Download the report (PDF)
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Israel: Another Destruction of Bedouin Crops in the Negev
February 2006
Forces of the Israeli Land Authority have destroyed today (8 February 2006) 2,500 dunams – or approximately 3.400 square meters - of crops belonging to Bedouin families in the Negev. The fields, belonging to the families of Abu-Zaed – Alturi and Abu-Altayef, are located southern to the city of Rahat and have been in their possession prior to the establishment of the State of Israel. During the past several years, the Israeli Land Authority (ILA) has destroyed crops in fields belonging to Bedouin families for generations, claiming that they were planted on State land, and therefore illegal.
Read more
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Israel: Massive NGO protest defers threats against the Negev Beduins of forced transfer
January 2006
The National Security Council (NSC) has published a set of recommendations to the Israeli Government to transfer some 40,000 Bedouins from 30 unrecognized villages in the Negev, in order to implement what is called a "governmental plan for the Negev Development". The draft plan implies that historical land of the Negev Arabs, on which they have lived before the establishment of Israel, will be taken away from them. The draft plan has been met with massive protests from various Jewish and Arab organizations and the demonstration held on January 23rd seems so far to have had an effect since the presentation of the plan at the conference was cancelled.
Read more
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Israel: Negev Bedouins injured and detained in police action
November 2005
On Tuesday November 15, 2005 yet another case of human rights abuse was perpetrated by the Israeli government against an "unrecognized" Bedouin village in the Negev. 18 villagers were injured and 11 people detained.
In Israeli terminology, an unrecognized village is a settlement that does not exist officially - i.e. it does not appear on maps, is denied adequate access to a host of rudimentary rights such as electricity, water, school and health care, and all constructed structures are considered illegal and therefore susceptible to demolition. There are some 45 such unrecognised villages in the Negev inhabited by some 77,000 Bedouins (or half of the total Bedouin population in the Negev). These 77,000 Bedouins are all Israeli citizens, yet they continually suffer violent human rights abuses, where their homes are demolished and their crops destroyed – all because the Israeli government wants them to give up their traditional life and move into urban areas, the so-called townships that have been built by the government for that purpose.
Read the statement by the Regional Council for the Unrecognized Villages
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