[News] Israel's Negev 'frontier'
Anti-Imperialist News
news at freedomarchives.org
Thu Apr 8 14:02:08 EDT 2010
Israel's Negev 'frontier'
By Ben White
http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/2010/04/20104592655951622.html
On this year's Land Day, tens of thousands of
Palestinian citizens of Israel marched in
Sakhnin, an Israeli city in the Lower Galilee, to
protest against past and present systematic
discrimination. But with the focus on Israel's
policies of land confiscation, there was
significance in a second protest that day.
In the Negev (referred to as al-Naqab by
Palestinian Bedouins), over 3,000 attended a
rally at al-Araqib, an 'unrecognised' Palestinian
Bedouin village whose lands are being targeted by
the familiar partnership of the Israeli state and the Jewish National Fund.
The historical context for the crisis facing
Palestinian Bedouins today is important, as the
Israeli government and Zionist groups try to
propagate the idea that the problems, so far as
they exist, are 'humanitarian' or 'cultural'.
Even the category of 'Bedouin' is historically
and politically loaded, with many disputing what
they see as an Israeli 'divide and rule' strategy towards the Palestinians.
Alienated and 'unrecognised'
During the Nakba, the vast majority of the
Palestinian Bedouins in the Negev - from a
pre-1948 population of 65,000 to 100,000 - were
expelled. Those who remained were forcibly
concentrated by the Israeli military in an area known as the 'siyag' (closure).
The military regime experienced by Palestinian
citizens until 1966 meant further piecemeal
expulsions, expropriation of land, and
restrictions on movement. Ultimately, only 19 out of 95 tribes remained.
The defining dynamic between the Israeli state
and its Palestinian minority has been the
expropriation of Arab land and its transfer to state or Jewish ownership.
Israel refused to recognise the land rights of
the Palestinian Bedouins, who today are alienated
from almost all of their land through a complex
combination of land law and planning boundaries.
An estimated 70,000 to 80,000 Palestinian
citizens in the Negev live in dozens of
'unrecognised villages' - communities that the
state refuse to acknowledge exist despite the
fact that some pre-date the establishment of
Israel and others are the result of the Israeli
military's forced relocation drives.
These shanty towns are refused access to basic infrastructure.
One approach the Israeli state has taken is to
create, or 'legalise', a small number of towns
and villages in the hope that more Palestinians will move into these areas.
Yet even this policy, often presented as a
'humane' response to 'Bedouin' needs, highlights
a disparity: Jewish regional authorities and
individual farms enjoy a massively lower
population density compared to the space allotted
by the state to Palestinian townships, which are
ranked among the most deprived communities in the country.
'Developing the Negev'
The Israeli government, meanwhile, along with
agencies like the Jewish National Fund and Jewish
Agency, are preoccupied with the idea of
'developing the Negev', and boosting its population.
In March, the 'Negev 2010' conference was held in
Beir al-Saba' (Beersheva), drawing hundreds of
politicians and business people, with the focus
being attracting 300,000 new residents to the area.
Speakers included Shimon Peres, the Israeli
president, Silvan Shalom, the Negev and Galilee
development minister, and Ariel Atias, the housing minister.
Last year, Shalom held a joint press conference
with religious Zionist rabbis to outline plans
for increasing the south's population, with one
of the rabbis stressing the need for a "Jewish majority" in the region.
Atias, for his part, has previously expressed his
belief that it is "a national duty to prevent the
spread" of Palestinian citizens.
It is not, therefore, hard to read between the
lines when Israeli policy makers and Zionist
officials from organisations like the Jewish
National Fund talk about 'developing the Negev'.
Zionist frontier
The Negev is the location for classic, unfiltered Zionist frontier discourse.
The Jewish National Fund in the UK talks about
supporting "the pioneers who are bringing the
desert to life", while an article in the Zionist
magazine B'Nai B'Rith called the Negev "the
closest thing to the tabula rasa many of Israel's
pre-state pioneers found when they first came to the Holy Land".
The idea of the 'empty' land sits uncomfortably
alongside another important emphasis - 'protection' or 'redemption'.
As the Jewish National Fund's US chief executive
put it in January 2009, "if we don't get 500,000
people to move to the Negev in the next five
years, we're going to lose it". To who, he did not need to say.
There were no illusions about the meaning of this
discourse, and its consequences, at a February
conference which brought together academics and
experts specialising in issues facing the Bedouins of the Negev.
Through the seminars and discussions, one theme
clearly came through: The relationship between
the Palestinian Bedouins and the Israeli state was rapidly deteriorating.
A number of the organisers of, and speakers at,
'Rethinking the Paradigms: Negev Bedouin Research
2000+' were themselves from the Negev, where
overcrowding, home demolitions, and dispossession
are features of everyday life for Palestinians.
The conference was one of the first of its kind
in the UK, sponsored by the British Academy and
Exeter University's Institute of Arab and Islamic
Studies and Politics Department.
Excluded from discourse
Western media coverage of the structural
discrimination and discriminatory land and
housing policies experienced by Palestinian Bedouins has generally been poor.
In a discourse shaped by Zionist and Orientalist
tropes, the Negev is a vast, wild, desert; a
frontier to be civilised. The 'Bedouin',
meanwhile, are either invisible or exotic
savages, objects of benevolent philanthropy.
Furthermore, the international 'peace process'
has meant that the question of Palestine has
become the story of negotiations between Israel
and the Palestinian Authority. Palestinian
citizens of Israel have been left out, a
situation exacerbated by the media mentality of
'if it bleeds it leads'. Core issues facing
Palestinian Bedouins - land control, zoning,
bureaucratic and physical boundaries of exclusion
- are not considered suitable fare.
This nonexistent or weak coverage is regrettable,
particularly as Israel's policies in the Negev
towards the Palestinian Bedouin minority are
highly illuminating for understanding the state's
position vis-à-vis the Palestinians in a more general sense.
Moreover, tension is building in the Negev over
Israel's continued apartheid-like policies.
Palestinian Bedouins continue to resist the
strategies of the Israeli state and Zionist
agencies, through legal battles, and grassroots
organisation, like the Regional Council for the Unrecognised Villages.
Perhaps one of the main kinds of resistance being
offered by the Palestinians in the Negev is their
determination to stay. This steadfastness is a
direct refusal of a strategy of home demolitions,
dispossession and Judaisation.
The recent protest in al-Araqib could only be a
foretaste of things to come, as Palestinian
Bedouins demand equality from a state seemingly unwilling to change.
Ben White is a freelance journalist and writer
specialising in Palestine/Israel. His articles
have appeared in publications like the Guardian's
'Comment is free', New Statesman, Electronic
Intifada, Middle East International, Washington
Report on Middle East Affairs, and others. His
first book, Israeli Apartheid: A Beginner's
Guide, was published in 2009 by Pluto Press.
The views expressed in this article are the
author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.
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