Truth from Eretz Yisrael: Law In Service to Thievery
http://peace4israel.wordpress.com/
Selected translations from the blog of a critical Jewish Israeli
December 29, 2009 by Eyal Niv
Note: I wish to thank all the dear friends who volunteered to translate posts to English. As in every translations, some things are lost, and if any mistakes have been made, they are my responsibility. Eyal.
Law in Service to Thievery
July 29, 2010 by Eyal Niv
The Israel Land Administration rep had the temerity to claim http://peace4israel.wordpress.com/ that everyone actually had somewhere to go and that they just happen to be there, as though the Bedouins are wealthy, greedy landlords who want more and more lands, and as if it were a matter of choice, despite the wealth of convenient opportunities offered to them, and despite their great holdings, they choose to sleep in the heart of the desert without health services or running water, all just to make a buck, at the expense of the public and the exhausted policemen.
Anyone who visits or tours the unrecognized villages can see plainly that these are ridiculous claims which portray the exploiter as the victim of exploitation, reminiscent of the satire about the greed of Native Americans. That’s also pretty much how the Ma’ariv daily paper (which makes Fox News look like honest reporting) portrayed them in its horrifying “investigative” piece.
We can guess now that it was merely a preliminary PR piece, meant to prepare the public to the giant operation produced by the Israel Land Administration, which has been spearheading the expulsion and destruction of the Bedouins. As a matter of fact, ILA staff have already admitted that it’s not a matter of the construction being licensed or unlicensed (because the state makes licenses conditional on consent to the land grab) but that it is, rather, a struggle to “Jewify” the Negev. In other words, it is an effort to expel its Arab residents, and the best interest of the Bedouins is of no interest to them, in any way.
Background to the Israeli “NO”: refusing to acknowledge the Bedouin entity.
Bedouin tribe territories in the Negev, as documented by the Ottomans
So this – in brief – is the story: this map (on the right) was made in the late 19th century by the Ottomans, who struggled to build Bir Es-Saba’ (Beer Sheva), despite the fact that no one really wanted to move there. The map clearly demonstrates the tribes land ownership arrangements over the Negev territories, respected by the various Bedouin tribes, some of which have switched from a nomadic to a settled lifestyle.
The arrangement was honored for generations and by administrations preceding Israel, such as the British and Ottoman rulers. It can generally be said that prior occupiers of the land did not violate their ways of life nor their arrangements. In other words, until the State of Israel was established, the Bedouins were the owners of the Negev (although they did have some competitors), within which they also held the fertile lands in its western territories, and the Zionist movement even recognized it when it bought pieces of land for settling.
Israeli sources put their number at 76,500 before the escape/expulsion/put to flight during the 1948 war; contrast that with only 13,000 people after that war. This is also why they neither needed nor could work all of their lands, initially, despite the fact that they had been recognized by the state and were even used to feed the general population during the Austerity years.
Israel, in contrast with its predecessors, cultivated from its very earliest days the myth of the Negev being an unowned wasteland waiting for a nation empowered by Zionism to come and make its deserts flourish. But the land was not empty. Rather, it had been emptied. And the people, they did not come. Beyond a some immigrant groups sent against their will to the blazing sands (mostly of Mizrahi origin), and a few self-styled cowboys, all in all Jews did not flock to the Negev, to put things very mildly.
However, this did not stop successive governments from “cleaning” the Negev of its Bedouins. This was how it happened that they were forced into a quite a small territory, and most of their lands were transferred into the hands of the government itself, which held them for the Jews – those who were already in place and those who were yet to come. In other words, despite the fact that Jews don’t move to the Negev and despite the fact that there is no population density problem in the Negev, a decision was taken to corral the citizens already living there in one small area, known as “the boundary region”.
The purpose of this corralling was to impose military rule on these citizens. This was in fact a military occupation regime applied to the citizens, just like they do it in China, and where you need a permit even to go to work or travel from village to village. Military rule was only lifted after about 18 years.
The second map shows the area where they were corralled. Take a moment to appreciate the difference from the earlier map.
When injustice becomes law
You don’t have to be an expert to understand that tens of thousands of people were cheated of their lands and their livelihoods. In practice, the Bedouins have had to waive their rights to the land thus grabbed, and they are no longer fighting for it. It’s only that now the state is trying to evict them even from this small area, by authority of weapons and by controlling the law.
The sixty-something years that the Bedouins have been trying to prove that they’ve cast their lots with the Jewish state have not helped them, simply because the laws of the land establish the ethnic dispossession and the insensitive greed of the regime, which still holds on to its fantasies of Zionist settling. It seems that the fantasies grow stronger especially when the Jews do not move to live in the desert. The more the Jews back away from the desert, the more their leaders toughen the force, frequency, and cruelty of the expulsion of its other residents.
This is how hundreds and, thousands, tens of clerks, lawyers, policemen, engineers, and other “experts” take part in the vicious and ongoing theft of the property of innocent citizens, solely because they are not Jews. Nuri Alokabi, for instance, is defending himself against criminal charges of “trespassing on state property”, and despite the fact that he is penniless, he is required to repay the state tens of thousands of shekels for the costs of his expulsion, rather than the state compensating him for the plunder of his lands. ( VN: I had to ask, does this sound familiar? The concept of paying for your own abuse?)
In contrast with the clean-cut, suit-wearing satiated government, which sits in air-conditioned offices and sends out thousands of policemen to maintain the thievery, no one can charge the state-barons for their invasion of Alokabi’s lands and those of the Bedouins, in general.
The way a stubborn, proud, and cruel folly repeatedly destroys people’s lives without any moral justification arouses anger and concern. Let’s overlook, for just a moment, the emotional burden and the trauma of families who lose their homes in front of their very eyes, in full view of their children, who grow up without having any safe place in their lives. Let’s overlook, for just a moment, the immense foolishness of creating a storehouse of hatred in good citizens, whom the state is making into enemies using its many resources, over many years, like a deluxe engine of self-destruction.
Let’s overlook, for just a moment, the racism inherent in preferring some citizens over others solely due to their nationality and religion, that very same racism which killed off our forefathers, which we vowed to prevent any repeated manifestation thereof, for us or for others. Really, all you need here is the cool and rational trend which demonstrates that the effort to torment the Palestinians is not made uniquely in the Occupied Territories, and that the house demolitions is not a small, local issue in East Jerusalem, or in Wadi Ara, or in the Negev, and that the issue is not the criminal conduct of the citizens but rather their powerlessness against the actions of the state. It is not a coincidence that this issue does not threaten Jews (whose settlements are planned and produced by developers, with state assistance).
No sentimental chatter can blur this crazy fact: the state has founded hundreds of settlements from the day of its establishment, including many in the Occupied Territories, where residential settlements cannot legally be established, because they are military territory – and not one of those settlements was built for Arabs (except 6-7 forced Bedouins burghs in the Negev, in order to limit their expansion. The so-called “state lands” were created in many ways, beginning with “eminent domain” through slimy legislative formulation and round-about arrangements which keep the loot in purely Jewish hands.
The final result of all of these arrangements is always this: the state steals the rights to most of the land from its Arab citizens. To this day the Arab settlements are bounded in clever ruses of establishing Jewish settlements around them and/or failure to zone and plan a region, which inevitably means that any construction they engage in is illegal, although it is obviously essential due to natural expansion growth.
The Bedouins have not yet been able to stop this land grab, but the little they can do is to cry out against the police, help to thieves(steal?). A minority of Bedouins hang on to Palestinian national-political aspirations, another minority compromises with the state, while the greater number wait and hope for a just (or at least reasonable) arrangement. In the mean time, the Bedouins aren’t going anywhere. They have nowhere to go. They return to the lands they still have, rebuild their houses that will be demolished in the summer and in the winter, and hope that this prolonged nightmare will someday come to an end.
Maybe if a more people cared about their just struggle they will – someday – be granted a bit of justice.
The article is reproduced in accordance with Section 107 of title 17 of the Copyright Law of the United States relating to fair-use and is for the purposes of criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research.
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