Arab Israeli citizens in Negev face many difficult challenges
I helped organize a small gathering last night in Orland Park where I live on behalf of a group of Arab Israelis and Jewish Israelis touring the United States to help raise awareness for their plight. I was a little surprised at the depth of the harshness these Israeli Arabs are being forced to endure in the triangle in the Negev Desert just east of Beersheba. The two presenters were Devorah Brous, the founder of BUSTAN.ORG and Ra’ed Al-Mickawi, the organization’s director. Unfortunately, but typically, the turnout for the event was small. Some Arabs did not want to attend because of the mention of “Israelis” attending, and some Jews from the area who I thought would attend, did not, maybe also because of the “Palestinians” attending. I can only guess but still, some people react to each other rather tha looking beyond towards solutions.
It won’t discourage me, though, or the others who helped organize it because what Bustan is doing is very admirable. Admirable not only for the cause of helping the 172,000 or so Palestinian bedouin Arabs who are “Israeli Citizens” but also admirable because so many Israeli Jews are working to change this situation and force Israel to truly be the Democracy it claims to be.
The situation is this, the Israeli government wants all the Bedouins to abandon their lifestyle and move into Israeli townships nearby, into small housing units. The Bedouins don’t want to do it as it contradicts their cultural experience and heritage. In response, Israel has surrounded these bedouins, who were moved to this area from other areas in 1981, with waste disposal and toxic waste dumps. The Israeli electric company has refused to provide them with electricity and they barely get any water from the government. Worse, there is no sewage disposal service offered to them.
I guess that is the only way Israel’s government can think of as a way to push the Bedouins to accept their offer. I would compare it to the scene in the Godfather, the movie about the Mafia, in which one of the mobsters says they will convince someone to do something by making an offer they can’t refuse. Of course, in the movie, the “offer” is a direct threat, death by garroting or worse. In this real life drama, the “offer” is also a threat but in a more in-direct manner. If they don’t leave, they will eventually be the victims of toxic waste poisoning or of the denial of services like electricity, water or sewage.
Mow on the one-hand, the bedouin lifestyle is changing. They no longer wander around the Negev as they used to and they have to live in one spot where Israsel has ordered them to live until they accept the Israeli government offer. That basically has removed them fromt heir lifestyle forcing them to live in squallor. They have little homes with tin roofs … and tin absorbs the sun’s intense heat — I’ve been through the Negev to Beersheba and I know hot unbelievably hot that desert is. So it causes the little mud homes to turn into ovens.
The water that is available is scarce, but there is a river of sewage running through the collection of bedouin villages that is filled with raw sewage and people are forced to walk through it … well, by people, I mean the Israeli Bedouin Arabs, not the Israeli Jews who have been given, just hundreds of yards away from some villages, beautiful homes, lawns, electricity, water and everything they need. It’s amazing to see lawns being watered in the desert of the Jewish settlement areas (or townships as they call them since they are inside Israel) and then a few hundred feet away, someone starving because they can’t get water.
One of the Israelis helping the bedouins is Devorah Brous who created Bustan. I admire her as the kind of Israeli Jew that I look up too. A Jew who lives byt he principle of her religion, rather than the politics of it. She believes that what is being done to the bedouins is wrong, not for political reasons but for ethical and moral reasons. They are human beings living in a country that also claims to be fair to its citizens. With Devorah’s help, Bustan has built solar energy systems and water filtration systems. They have built, using Bedouin traditions, a small one room health clinic where the children who are showing signs of cancer from some of the toxic wastes being dumped there are being treated.
This isn’t a story many people have heard much about, althoug last July there was a good story about it in the Jerusalem Post. I wouldn’t say all Israeli Jews are insensitive to this plight.
But I wish I could do more to help them. I am just sorry so few people came out to listen to this important presentation. The reality in the Palestinian American community — at least in Chicago — is that the political Islamicists have grown in power greatly and they discriminate against Christian and Secular Palestinian Arabs, excluding them from their activism and boycotting their events, even ones that are as important as this. And, the secular Palestinian community is divided on political lines reflecting the divisions that exist back home. Hamas supporters, versus Jabha supporters, versus Fatah supporters, versus “independents” like me who are supporters of none of the major groups. Tragic for us and our tragedy here in the US, as it turns out, is a tragedy for the Israeli Arab citizens, the Palestinian Bedouins, in the Negev.
What Bustan is doing given the limited resources, is tremendous. Besides funding that they desperately need, they could also use some professional communications assistance. They have this great story that is not being told. There are too many slogans and not enough clear concise messaging. That is not unusual, nor is it a criticism. It’s something that happens too often in tragedies with such powerful passion and feelings. You can’t expect activists to be great communicators, although in this case it was like a theater with a great movie inside but nothing explaining it fully on the outside marquee. I think this project deserves getting the word out more and I hope this helps. Devorah makes a powerful presentation of the situation once you get to sit down and listen and more people definitely need to hear her message. It was very moving.
– Ray Hanania
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I don’t get it. the bedouins want the modern comforts, but don’t want to move into the townships? they want to maintain their cultural lifestyle, but have stopped being nomads?
if you want the modernity of the state of israel, why not take israel’s offer? if you want to continue being cultural nomads then why not do that and shun electricity? they seem to have setup shanty towns, which obviously is going to be pretty low on modern comforts that require engineers and heavy equipment.
I would propose that the bedouins either be resettled into modern society where they can acquire jobs and education as per the norms required to maintain such a society and then get all the benefits of it. or they just continue to wander the desert and shun the technology. though its hard for me to grasp exactly what is happening.
I think you make a good point, except they don’t want the modernity. They want to return to their bedouin lifestyle, but Israel’s government will not let them. So, they have corraled them in a region in the Negev and then are surrounding them with toxic waste industry, while also denying them basic services like electricity. It’s obvious Israel is pressuring the bedouins to 1) give up their lifestyle, and then abandon any claims to land that they have roamed for centuries … if they could wander the desert they would probably be happy, but that is the point defenders of what Israel’s government is doing, always forget.
Ray Hanania
do the bedouins have any claims to land? I didn’t know nomads owned property, which is one of the chief problems nomads have had.
at any rate, it all sounds very unfortunate, certainly being “surrounded by the toxic waste industry” sounds like comic book villianery. and how exactly does israel stop them from wandering? unless its across national borders it doesn’t seem to be all that terribly a relevant thing to stop ppl from doing.
Bedouins do have a claim to be ablew to roam freely on lands they have romaed upon for years … not in the modern system of domicile, for example where nations have boundaries … but they were put into a specific area and told to stop moving around, and then ordered to assimilate into the “townships.” I understand what’s happening but what I dislike is the intentional process of putting them in a dumping ground that is a place where Israel puts its worst industries that polute the land and area … polution is a fact of life, but you don’t build polution around populations that you have defined … seems wrong to me …
Ray Hanania
http://www.ArabWritersGroup.com
sounds like israel is going to have some serious pollution lawsuits, even the desert don’t deserve to be polluted.
here’s the problem w/ nomads, their “claim” vastly exceeds their economic efficiency. in lease contracts for property there’s this concept called “highest and best use” whereby regardless of what the lessee DOES use the property for the value of the lease is upon the its highest and best use. so if you build a 1 story mom and pop store and sign that contract and its highest and best is a 15 story condo complex, you have to pay the rent on that.
I understand there’s this whole cultural tolerance thing, but I think its just a matter of their socieities being unfortunately too backwards to compete. perhaps some kind of reservation accomodation has to be made, nature preserve or something, hard to say.
I would say it all sounds quite seedy and I hope one day the nomads can be assimilated because any other solution is probably going to be painful and awkward(keeping a nomadic society in an area of encroaching land owners).
do you think the nomads could be convinced with better houses? one thing to worry about in nativist societies is the current power structure on the tribal level can be quite strong and xenophobic. seeing as assimilation will eradicate their power.
The real tragedy, though, is too many Arabs objective to any kind of “normalization,” and oppose even help from Israelis who are doing everything they can to help the Palestinians. They argue that no one should give any spotlight to anything any Israelis do to help Palestinians, and I disagree. But, I take the heat from some in the community who easily agitate moderate Arabs into submission and silence. It can change but we have to recognize the problem.
Ray Hanania