Israel¹s Prawer Devt. Plan of 'Cleansing the Negev Desert': Uniting Palestinians in New Ways
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sameeta ahmed
Jul 25, 2013, 9:27:36 AM7/25/13
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Material forwarded below is from UK-based International Group - APJP 'Architects and Planners for Justice in Palestine'.
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The State of Israel has a consistent method of using 'development' and 'planning' schemes to illegally keep taking over land and natural resources, morally and economically crippling those who have relied on those for ages - and spatially and culturally suffocating a nation.
Although this is also a pattern globally where indigenous and rural communities are bulldozed over everyday in the name of real estate devt. and city expansions.
They are saying that protest against the Prawer Plan of 'ethnically cleansing the Negev desert' is surprisingly uniting diverse Palestinian factions in new ways.
[for pakistanis' reference i've added some interesting maps of the region below...]
- SA.
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Forwarded Message:
Various articles below on Israel’s plan to ethnically cleanse the Negev of its Bedouin using a distinctly racist law, that will lead to a new Jewish-only settler city being built on the "cleansed" land, to prevent contiguity with the Bedouin in the West Bank, in South Hebron, who are also being displaced, to allow illegal settlements to expand, and where a thousand olive trees have been burnt, and EU funded solar installations and Bedouin villages are also being demolished.
Abe
------------------
Please follow the ACTION alerts to sign petitions and write to your MPs, Elected Representatives or Foreign Secretaries:
Here are the links:
1) Lobby the Foreign Secretary to stop Israel's Prawer Plan: <http://act.palestinecampaign.org/lobby/102>
2) Amnesty Appeal: Israeli lawmakers: Don't evict tens of thousands of Bedouin citizens: <http://takeaction.amnestyusa.org/siteapps/advocacy/ActionItem.aspx?c=6oJCLQPAJiJUG&b=6645049&aid=519975>
3) Avaaz Petition: <http://www.avaaz.org/en/no_to_forced_eviction_of_negev_bedouins/>
4) Get your MP to sign the EDM 306, "Ethnic Cleansing of Bedouin People in Israel" <http://www.parliament.uk/edm/2013-14/306>
Now the Articles:
1) Israel’s Prawer Plan: New Nakba Hits the Negev
http://english.al-akhbar.com/node/16438/
By Malik Samara, Al Akhbar
July 16, 2013
A Bedouin woman gestures during a demonstration against Israeli government's plans to relocate Bedouins in the Negev desert, on 15 July 2013 in the southern city of Beersheva. (Photo: AFP - David Buimovitch)
Bedouins of the Negev desert are facing perhaps the most dangerous attempt yet to cleanse them off and expropriate their land, in what Palestinians are calling a “New Nakba.”
In the south of occupied Palestine, a vast stretch of desert land has remained largely absent from the Arab consciousness. The Negev, which once made up fully 50 percent of historic Palestine, is home to 300,000 Palestinians today.
If the measure passes, Palestinian Bedouins could see 35 of their villages destroyed in an attempt to squeeze the whole Arab population onto 1 percent of the desert.The largely Bedouin population, which makes up a third of all Palestinians living on the lands occupied by Israel in 1948, have roots in the area that go back to the fifth century BC. The Israeli authorities have subjected the Negev’s people to repeated attempts at “resettlement” and land expropriation, trying to force as many Palestinians as possible to settle within the confines of a small area in order to seize their lands.
The Israeli government has succeeded so far in corralling nearly half the population into an area Palestinians refer to as al-Siyaj (the Fence), while the rest have fought to remain in 45 villages across the Negev unrecognized by Israel, which therefore refuses to provide the most basic services.
In perhaps one of the most dangerous transfer plans adopted by the Israelis since 1948 under the guise of “developing the Negev,” the Netanyahu government signed off on the Prawer Plan in 2011, which seeks to expropriate 800,000 dunams (1 dunam = 1000 square meters), and expel between 30,000 and 50,000 Palestinian Bedouins in the process.
The plan passed its first reading in the Knesset in June and a committee was formed on July 15 to complete the approval process, with a second and third reading scheduled for Fall 2013. If the measure passes, Palestinian Bedouins could see 35 of their villages destroyed in an attempt to squeeze the whole Arab population onto 1 percent of the desert.
This will have a devastating effect on Bedouins and their tribal way of life. In the name of improving their lives by moving them into more developed urban centers – with only modest services such as schools and clinics offered – Israel hopes to break the communities’ ties to their land and culture, so it can be more easily expropriated, either for settling Jews or for military purposes.
In Rahat, one village “recognized” by Israel, local resident Iman al-Sanea explains that nearly 60 percent of the town’s 60,000 residents live under the poverty line. Here, young people have no hope whatsoever of finding work.
Nevertheless, the Bedouins of the Negev are struggling to foil attempts to subject them to another Nakba. On Monday, a national day of rage against the Prawer Plan was organized, leading to protests throughout occupied Palestine, including many areas within the Green Line, including the Galilee and the Triangle area in the country’s center.
Many young people now active in the Negev complain of negligence from their political leaders – including their representatives in the Knesset – who offer little more than one compromise after another.
This has prompted these young activists to pursue fresh ideas to mobilize people against the Prawer Plan, such as organizing simultaneous Nakba events in 10 Negev villages, linking the Palestinian catastrophe to the new expropriation plan.
The activists have made headway in improving ties to Palestinians in other areas who tend to know little about the plight of the Negev. Their latest protest quickly spread to other parts of Palestine, breaking the area’s isolation, which is but a further attempt by Israel to fragment Palestinian national identity into localized ones, be it in the West Bank, Gaza, Jerusalem, Akka, or elsewhere.
This article is an edited translation from the Arabic Edition.
2) Fighting new Nakba in the Negev
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/07/201371711611253362.html
Popular resistance against the Prawer plan has united Palestinians of all affiliations and origins.
By Ben White, Al Jazeera
July 17, 2013
From the refugees in 1949 looking over the Lebanese border at the land from which they were expelled, to the students in the Gaza banned by the Israeli Supreme Court from studying in the West Bank, Israeli colonisation has fragmented the Palestinian people over the decades with walls, fences, guns, bureaucracy and propaganda.
Overcoming that fragmentation has become further complicated in recent times on account of the moribund state of representative bodies like the Palestine Liberation Organisation, as well as the long-running split between Fatah and Hamas.
In the last few years, however, there have been moments when particular circumstances have prompted coordinated resistance, at least on a grassroots level, amongst Palestinians wherever they may be. One such example was the widespread protests prompted by the massacre in Gaza in 2008-9 (otherwise known as Operation Cast Lead). Another example is when Palestinians coalesced around the prisoners’ hunger strikes to launch solidarity activities from Haifa to Ramallah.
This week has seen Palestinian flags raised and slogans chanted regarding the same outrage, from Jerusalem to Syria and Tunisia
Now, Palestinians have united around opposition to a pending Israeli government plan to expel tens of thousands of Palestinian Bedouin from communities in the Negev that await destruction in the name of ‘development’.
The Prawer plan, some years in the making, is part of a historical drive by the Israeli government to prioritise and privilege Jewish settlement in the Negev while forcing Bedouin citizens – those who weren’t expelled in the first decade of the state’s existence – to live in approved zones and shanty towns.
On Monday, protests took place all across historic Palestine – in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and inside Israel – after the High Follow-Up Committee for Arab citizens of Israel called for a general strike and protests against Prawer. As plans for demonstrations were made from Nazareth to Hebron, Palestinians also hit social media to raise awareness and link up their actions, using hashtags like #AngerStrike and #StopPrawerPlan.
In Beersheva, to the south, a city ethnically cleansed in the Nakba and not far from many of the villages the Israeli government will seek to uproot under Prawer, a demonstration was targeted by the police and a number of protesters were violently arrested. In the north, some 400 people took part in a protest near Sakhnin in the Western Galilee, where another dozen participants were arrested. There were further demonstrations by Palestinians at Umm al-Fahm and many other towns and villages.
Meanwhile, Palestinians with Israeli citizenship were joined by those under military rule in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, where demonstrators rallied in solidarity with the ‘Anger Strike’ in Ramallah, Hebron, and Nablus. Even in a small village like Hussan, near Bethlehem, Israeli forces broke up a peaceful demonstration against the Prawer plan. The coordinated day of action also reached prisoners, with Palestinians in Gilboa jail announcing their participation and support.
What is interesting here is not simply how, in the words of Palestinian activist and blogger Abir Kopty, “protests took place across Palestinian cities and villages from the river to the sea”, with people “communicating and organising, to defy a ‘border’ that”, Kopty told me, “separated us physically but failed to do so mentally”. Even more unusually, she pointed out, “Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza joined their brothers’ and sisters’ struggle within 48 hours, when it is usually the opposite”.
Salah Mohsen, spokesman and media director of legal rights centre Adalah, called the 15 July demonstrations against Prawer “an extraordinary show of solidarity”, with Palestinians from “the Galilee, the Triangle, and the Naqab joined by activists from around the world”. Kopty remarked how the protests, to her mind, show that “hope lies in the determination of the youth”.
The art of Palestinian resistance
As if to prove her point, West Bank-based Palestinian activist Linah Alsaafin linked the events to Land Day, describing the Anger Strike as “assert[ing] that despite political division, non-representative and collaborative leadership, Palestine remains from the river to the sea, with the Bedouins in the Naqab an integral component of the Palestinian population”.
This week has seen Palestinian flags raised and slogans chanted regarding the same outrage, from Jerusalem to Syria and Tunisia. Briefly, colonially-imposed borders seemed weaker, as Palestinians demonstrated that new strategies have emerged and will continue to develop as a means of confronting the age-old problems of fragmentation and artificial divisions.
3)Watch this Video: Bedouins resist Israeli plan to expel 40,000 and “Judaize” their land
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZY6rpRsxIU&feature=player_embedded
Submitted by Ali Abunimah on Sun, 07/21/2013 - 14:39
Israeli parliament approved the deportation of 40,000 Bedouin from their land
With the European Union’s recent decision to stop subsidies to any Israeli projects in the occupied West Bank, a lot of media attention has once again been focused on Israeli settlements there.
Watch video discussion on this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMCd08p1J1w&feature=player_embedded
What has attracted much less international attention is an Israeli plan to force tens of thousands of Palestinian Bedouins out of their homes in the southern Naqab (Negev) region, land that most countries recognize as part of present-day Israel.
This video report from The Real News Network provides essential background, noting that some 200,000 Bedouins live in the Naqab, about half of them in so-called “unrecognized villages” that have existed since before the Israeli state was founded.
“Intruders” in their own homes
But Israel considers the Bedouins to be intruders and trespassers on their own lands, even though they are nominally citizens of Israel.
Israel has long refused to connect their villages to the power grid or running water, build roads, health clinics or schools.
Instead, on 24 June, the Israeli parliament passed the Prawer-Begin law, that would see 40 Bedouin villages demolished.
40,000 will lose their homes
Under the Prawer plan, their land will be confiscated in order to establish a wedge of Jewish communities separating Arab communities in the western and eastern parts of the Naqab.
This is an intensification of an already ongoing assault. As the video notes, in 2005, 30,000 Bedouin homes had an Israeli demolition order. In 2011, about 1,000 were demolished.
Under the new plan, up to 40,000 people will lose their homes in the latest phase of the violent “Judaization” of Bedouin lands.
Those affected are not accepting their fate and are mobilizing to stop the Prawer plan, as the Bedouin activists featured in the video explain.
Racist incitement against Bedouins
Meanwhile, government and media continue a campaign of incitement against the Bedouins, painting them as criminals, in order to justify the assault.
For example, the video says, Israeli lawmaker Danny Danon – a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling Likud party – claimed that in 2011, 1,000 women and girls were “seduced, kidnapped or enslaved” by Bedouins, even though the Israeli police did not record even one such case.
The Jewish National Fund (JNF), which raises tax exempt charitable funds in the US, UK, Canada and other countries, plays a key role in the ethnic cleansing of Bedouins and theft of their land.
----------------------
See also: Protests against Prawer Plan to forcibly move Negev Bedouin spread across Israel/Palestine
http://mondoweiss.net/2013/07/protests-against-prawer-plan-to-forcibly-move-negev-bedouin-spread-across-israelpalestine.html
Abe
------------------
Please follow the ACTION alerts to sign petitions and write to your MPs, Elected Representatives or Foreign Secretaries:
Here are the links:
1) Lobby the Foreign Secretary to stop Israel's Prawer Plan: <http://act.palestinecampaign.org/lobby/102>
2) Amnesty Appeal: Israeli lawmakers: Don't evict tens of thousands of Bedouin citizens: <http://takeaction.amnestyusa.org/siteapps/advocacy/ActionItem.aspx?c=6oJCLQPAJiJUG&b=6645049&aid=519975>
3) Avaaz Petition: <http://www.avaaz.org/en/no_to_forced_eviction_of_negev_bedouins/>
4) Get your MP to sign the EDM 306, "Ethnic Cleansing of Bedouin People in Israel" <http://www.parliament.uk/edm/2013-14/306>
Now the Articles:
1) Israel’s Prawer Plan: New Nakba Hits the Negev
http://english.al-akhbar.com/node/16438/
By Malik Samara, Al Akhbar
July 16, 2013
A Bedouin woman gestures during a demonstration against Israeli government's plans to relocate Bedouins in the Negev desert, on 15 July 2013 in the southern city of Beersheva. (Photo: AFP - David Buimovitch)
Bedouins of the Negev desert are facing perhaps the most dangerous attempt yet to cleanse them off and expropriate their land, in what Palestinians are calling a “New Nakba.”
In the south of occupied Palestine, a vast stretch of desert land has remained largely absent from the Arab consciousness. The Negev, which once made up fully 50 percent of historic Palestine, is home to 300,000 Palestinians today.
If the measure passes, Palestinian Bedouins could see 35 of their villages destroyed in an attempt to squeeze the whole Arab population onto 1 percent of the desert.The largely Bedouin population, which makes up a third of all Palestinians living on the lands occupied by Israel in 1948, have roots in the area that go back to the fifth century BC. The Israeli authorities have subjected the Negev’s people to repeated attempts at “resettlement” and land expropriation, trying to force as many Palestinians as possible to settle within the confines of a small area in order to seize their lands.
The Israeli government has succeeded so far in corralling nearly half the population into an area Palestinians refer to as al-Siyaj (the Fence), while the rest have fought to remain in 45 villages across the Negev unrecognized by Israel, which therefore refuses to provide the most basic services.
In perhaps one of the most dangerous transfer plans adopted by the Israelis since 1948 under the guise of “developing the Negev,” the Netanyahu government signed off on the Prawer Plan in 2011, which seeks to expropriate 800,000 dunams (1 dunam = 1000 square meters), and expel between 30,000 and 50,000 Palestinian Bedouins in the process.
The plan passed its first reading in the Knesset in June and a committee was formed on July 15 to complete the approval process, with a second and third reading scheduled for Fall 2013. If the measure passes, Palestinian Bedouins could see 35 of their villages destroyed in an attempt to squeeze the whole Arab population onto 1 percent of the desert.
This will have a devastating effect on Bedouins and their tribal way of life. In the name of improving their lives by moving them into more developed urban centers – with only modest services such as schools and clinics offered – Israel hopes to break the communities’ ties to their land and culture, so it can be more easily expropriated, either for settling Jews or for military purposes.
In Rahat, one village “recognized” by Israel, local resident Iman al-Sanea explains that nearly 60 percent of the town’s 60,000 residents live under the poverty line. Here, young people have no hope whatsoever of finding work.
Nevertheless, the Bedouins of the Negev are struggling to foil attempts to subject them to another Nakba. On Monday, a national day of rage against the Prawer Plan was organized, leading to protests throughout occupied Palestine, including many areas within the Green Line, including the Galilee and the Triangle area in the country’s center.
Many young people now active in the Negev complain of negligence from their political leaders – including their representatives in the Knesset – who offer little more than one compromise after another.
This has prompted these young activists to pursue fresh ideas to mobilize people against the Prawer Plan, such as organizing simultaneous Nakba events in 10 Negev villages, linking the Palestinian catastrophe to the new expropriation plan.
The activists have made headway in improving ties to Palestinians in other areas who tend to know little about the plight of the Negev. Their latest protest quickly spread to other parts of Palestine, breaking the area’s isolation, which is but a further attempt by Israel to fragment Palestinian national identity into localized ones, be it in the West Bank, Gaza, Jerusalem, Akka, or elsewhere.
This article is an edited translation from the Arabic Edition.
2) Fighting new Nakba in the Negev
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/07/201371711611253362.html
Popular resistance against the Prawer plan has united Palestinians of all affiliations and origins.
By Ben White, Al Jazeera
July 17, 2013
From the refugees in 1949 looking over the Lebanese border at the land from which they were expelled, to the students in the Gaza banned by the Israeli Supreme Court from studying in the West Bank, Israeli colonisation has fragmented the Palestinian people over the decades with walls, fences, guns, bureaucracy and propaganda.
Overcoming that fragmentation has become further complicated in recent times on account of the moribund state of representative bodies like the Palestine Liberation Organisation, as well as the long-running split between Fatah and Hamas.
In the last few years, however, there have been moments when particular circumstances have prompted coordinated resistance, at least on a grassroots level, amongst Palestinians wherever they may be. One such example was the widespread protests prompted by the massacre in Gaza in 2008-9 (otherwise known as Operation Cast Lead). Another example is when Palestinians coalesced around the prisoners’ hunger strikes to launch solidarity activities from Haifa to Ramallah.
This week has seen Palestinian flags raised and slogans chanted regarding the same outrage, from Jerusalem to Syria and Tunisia
Now, Palestinians have united around opposition to a pending Israeli government plan to expel tens of thousands of Palestinian Bedouin from communities in the Negev that await destruction in the name of ‘development’.
The Prawer plan, some years in the making, is part of a historical drive by the Israeli government to prioritise and privilege Jewish settlement in the Negev while forcing Bedouin citizens – those who weren’t expelled in the first decade of the state’s existence – to live in approved zones and shanty towns.
On Monday, protests took place all across historic Palestine – in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and inside Israel – after the High Follow-Up Committee for Arab citizens of Israel called for a general strike and protests against Prawer. As plans for demonstrations were made from Nazareth to Hebron, Palestinians also hit social media to raise awareness and link up their actions, using hashtags like #AngerStrike and #StopPrawerPlan.
In Beersheva, to the south, a city ethnically cleansed in the Nakba and not far from many of the villages the Israeli government will seek to uproot under Prawer, a demonstration was targeted by the police and a number of protesters were violently arrested. In the north, some 400 people took part in a protest near Sakhnin in the Western Galilee, where another dozen participants were arrested. There were further demonstrations by Palestinians at Umm al-Fahm and many other towns and villages.
Meanwhile, Palestinians with Israeli citizenship were joined by those under military rule in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, where demonstrators rallied in solidarity with the ‘Anger Strike’ in Ramallah, Hebron, and Nablus. Even in a small village like Hussan, near Bethlehem, Israeli forces broke up a peaceful demonstration against the Prawer plan. The coordinated day of action also reached prisoners, with Palestinians in Gilboa jail announcing their participation and support.
What is interesting here is not simply how, in the words of Palestinian activist and blogger Abir Kopty, “protests took place across Palestinian cities and villages from the river to the sea”, with people “communicating and organising, to defy a ‘border’ that”, Kopty told me, “separated us physically but failed to do so mentally”. Even more unusually, she pointed out, “Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza joined their brothers’ and sisters’ struggle within 48 hours, when it is usually the opposite”.
Salah Mohsen, spokesman and media director of legal rights centre Adalah, called the 15 July demonstrations against Prawer “an extraordinary show of solidarity”, with Palestinians from “the Galilee, the Triangle, and the Naqab joined by activists from around the world”. Kopty remarked how the protests, to her mind, show that “hope lies in the determination of the youth”.
The art of Palestinian resistance
As if to prove her point, West Bank-based Palestinian activist Linah Alsaafin linked the events to Land Day, describing the Anger Strike as “assert[ing] that despite political division, non-representative and collaborative leadership, Palestine remains from the river to the sea, with the Bedouins in the Naqab an integral component of the Palestinian population”.
This week has seen Palestinian flags raised and slogans chanted regarding the same outrage, from Jerusalem to Syria and Tunisia. Briefly, colonially-imposed borders seemed weaker, as Palestinians demonstrated that new strategies have emerged and will continue to develop as a means of confronting the age-old problems of fragmentation and artificial divisions.
3)Watch this Video: Bedouins resist Israeli plan to expel 40,000 and “Judaize” their land
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZY6rpRsxIU&feature=player_embedded
Submitted by Ali Abunimah on Sun, 07/21/2013 - 14:39
Israeli parliament approved the deportation of 40,000 Bedouin from their land
With the European Union’s recent decision to stop subsidies to any Israeli projects in the occupied West Bank, a lot of media attention has once again been focused on Israeli settlements there.
Watch video discussion on this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMCd08p1J1w&feature=player_embedded
What has attracted much less international attention is an Israeli plan to force tens of thousands of Palestinian Bedouins out of their homes in the southern Naqab (Negev) region, land that most countries recognize as part of present-day Israel.
This video report from The Real News Network provides essential background, noting that some 200,000 Bedouins live in the Naqab, about half of them in so-called “unrecognized villages” that have existed since before the Israeli state was founded.
“Intruders” in their own homes
But Israel considers the Bedouins to be intruders and trespassers on their own lands, even though they are nominally citizens of Israel.
Israel has long refused to connect their villages to the power grid or running water, build roads, health clinics or schools.
Instead, on 24 June, the Israeli parliament passed the Prawer-Begin law, that would see 40 Bedouin villages demolished.
40,000 will lose their homes
Under the Prawer plan, their land will be confiscated in order to establish a wedge of Jewish communities separating Arab communities in the western and eastern parts of the Naqab.
This is an intensification of an already ongoing assault. As the video notes, in 2005, 30,000 Bedouin homes had an Israeli demolition order. In 2011, about 1,000 were demolished.
Under the new plan, up to 40,000 people will lose their homes in the latest phase of the violent “Judaization” of Bedouin lands.
Those affected are not accepting their fate and are mobilizing to stop the Prawer plan, as the Bedouin activists featured in the video explain.
Racist incitement against Bedouins
Meanwhile, government and media continue a campaign of incitement against the Bedouins, painting them as criminals, in order to justify the assault.
For example, the video says, Israeli lawmaker Danny Danon – a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling Likud party – claimed that in 2011, 1,000 women and girls were “seduced, kidnapped or enslaved” by Bedouins, even though the Israeli police did not record even one such case.
The Jewish National Fund (JNF), which raises tax exempt charitable funds in the US, UK, Canada and other countries, plays a key role in the ethnic cleansing of Bedouins and theft of their land.
----------------------
See also: Protests against Prawer Plan to forcibly move Negev Bedouin spread across Israel/Palestine
http://mondoweiss.net/2013/07/protests-against-prawer-plan-to-forcibly-move-negev-bedouin-spread-across-israelpalestine.html
------ End of Forwarded Message ---------
--
Sameeta Ahmed
Principal Architect
Saleem Ahmed Associates
PERSPECTIVE DESIGN GROUP
Member, ICOMOS Pakistan National Committee
Member, ICOMOS Pakistan National Committee
Karachi, Pakistan
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