[News] Palestinian Bedouins defy Israel's bulldozers

[Anti-Imperialist News]

https://electronicintifada.net/content/palestinian-bedouins-defy-israels-bulldozers/18351 



  Palestinian Bedouins defy Israel's bulldozers

Budour Youssef Hassan 
<https://electronicintifada.net/people/budour-youssef-hassan> - 28 
October 2016

The area around Bir Hadaj 
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/bir-hadaj> provides a stark 
illustration of how Israel runs an apartheid 
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/apartheid> system.

Located in the Naqab <https://electronicintifada.net/tags/negev-naqab> 
(Negev in Hebrew) region of present-day Israel, Bir Hadaj hosts an 
agricultural community of around 7,000 Palestinian Bedouins 
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/bedouins>. They are crammed into 
6,500 /dunams/ (a /dunam/ is the equivalent of 1,000 square meters).

By contrast, approximately 1,000 Jews live 
<http://revivim.kibbutz.org.il/info/test.htm/abut.htm> in the 
neighboring kibbutz of Revivim. It covers an area of 30,000 dunams, 
one-sixth of which is reserved for olive trees.

Unlike the residents of Revivim, the Bedouins of Bir Hadaj have been 
repeatedly attacked by the Israeli authorities.

On 9 October, Israel sent its feared bulldozers into the village, 
accompanied by a large contingent from the state’s militarized police force.

Seven homes in which members of the Abu Mreihil family lived were 
demolished <http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.747777>, along 
with three homes that were under construction. At least 36 people, 
including a week-old baby, were deprived of shelter.

Salameh Abu Mreihil, the mother of the baby, said that she will never 
forget how she became homeless so soon after giving birth. “This is the 
fate of our people here,” she said. “They have to suffer from the moment 
they are born.”

Her family is now living in a tent. “We don’t know where to go now,” she 
said. “Some people say we will rebuild the home, but then they [the 
authorities] will destroy it again.”

These fears were proven right.

Over the last week, Bir Hadaj residents mobilized to help the Abu 
Mreihil family rebuild. They set up structures on the ruins of their 
demolished homes.

However, Israeli police again raided the village on 26 October. They 
distributed demolition orders against the newly rebuilt homes. Ayesh Abu 
Atta, a member of the Bir Hadaj Local Committee, told The Electronic 
Intifada that fierce confrontations broke out between the police and 
local youth, who had gathered to protest the demolition orders.

Hundreds of homes in the village have been built without permits and 
these face the threat of demolition. The Israeli authorities trot out an 
all-too-familiar excuse to explain recent raids and the likelihood of 
more. The homes were destroyed, according to the provided excuse, 
because they were built without Israeli permits.

Bedouins, and Palestinians more generally, frequently encounter 
discrimination 
<https://www.hrw.org/news/2013/08/30/israel-bedouin-facing-mass-evictions-their-land> 
in attempting to secure necessary permits.

“We just want to live like normal human beings and to have a permanent 
roof over our heads,” said Dakhlallah Abu Mreihil, a 60-year-old 
resident of Bir Hadaj. He was speaking after he and a large number of 
other local residents protested against the first raid by blocking the 
nearby Highway 40, a road built over the ruins of a Palestinian village 
called Asluj.

“We wake up each morning and go to sleep each night to the threat of 
demolitions. We came here to demand a better, more dignified life,” he said.

According to local people, about 80 percent of Bir Hadaj’s residents 
rely on agriculture, primarily the raising of livestock. The amount of 
land available to them for grazing is just a fraction of what it used to be.

Before Israel’s establishment in 1948, the total area of Bir Hadaj – 
including its farmland – comprised around 50,000 /dunams/.

For most of the time since then, Israel has refused to confer any formal 
status on the village.


    Rights, not charity

After a protracted battle, residents pressured Israel into officially 
recognizing Bir Hadaj in 2004 and drawing up a master plan for 
developing the village the following year.

Twelve years on, the plan has still not been implemented 
<https://www.adalah.org/en/content/view/8207>, and under the terms of 
the recognition, Bir Hadaj was restricted to a small area. Local 
residents were forbidden from building homes outside the “blue line,” as 
the boundary of that area is known.

“Bir Hadaj has a population of 7,000 people,” said Muhammad Zannoun, a 
representative of the Bir Hadaj Local Committee. “Many of them are young 
couples. And you cannot cram them into 6,500 /dunams/.”

The community is demanding that the area allocated to it be expanded to 
19,000 /dunams/ at minimum. Bir Hadaj residents are not seeking the 
expansion as an act of charity. Rather, they are insisting that the 
sizeable amount of land taken from them in 1948 be returned.

Geography is not a barrier to such expansion.

The surrounding area is administered by the Ramat Negev Regional 
Council. It claims to be Israel’s largest regional council.

The area under its jurisdiction covers 
<http://www.negevtour.co.il/%D7%98%D7%A1%D7%98-%D7%A4%D7%95%D7%A1%D7%98-%D7%A8%D7%92%D7%99%D7%9C/?lang=en> 
22 percent of Israel’s land, according to official data. It is sparsely 
populated.

Large tracts of land in Israel have been reserved 
<https://www.adalah.org/en/content/view/6558> for the exclusive use of 
Jews. Some 93 percent of the territory is under state control.

Israel is deliberately preventing Bedouins from practicing traditional 
forms of agriculture and seeking to force urbanization on them, 
according to Thabet Abu Rass, a professor of political geography at Ben 
Gurion University of the Negev.

“The goal of concentrating as many Palestinians as possible in as narrow 
a land as possible is not exclusive to Bir Hadaj or the Naqab,” he said. 
“It’s a pillar of the Zionist project in Palestine. In the Naqab and in 
Bir Hadaj these attempts are dressed in the cloak of development. But 
residents know this is about demographics.”

In addition to restricting the space allocated to its residents, Israel 
has denied Bir Hadaj access to essential services. Bir Hadaj is not 
connected to the water or sewage networks and the Israeli authorities 
refuse to collect the town’s garbage.

Because it is cut off from the electricity grid, residents have tried to 
generate their own energy using solar panels. Israel has destroyed some 
of the solar panels during its raids on the town.


    History of displacement

“Israeli governments have always seen the Naqab Bedouin as a security 
threat,” Abu Rass noted. “That is how Israel has sought to legitimize 
how it has continuously overlooked their needs and demands.”

Many Bedouins in the Naqab were displaced 
<https://electronicintifada.net/content/zionists-massacred-bedouins-1948-threaten-them-again-today/12692> 
during the Nakba <https://electronicintifada.net/tags/nakba>, the 1948 
ethnic cleansing <https://electronicintifada.net/tags/ethnic-cleansing> 
of Palestine by Zionist forces. The dispossession continued for years, 
though residents repeatedly tried to return. In 1978, Israel declared 
Bir Hadaj a closed military zone, causing further displacement.

Most took refuge in Wadi al-Naam 
<http://www.dukium.org/village/wadi-a-naam/>, a town in the Naqab that 
has still not been recognized by Israel. There, they lived 
<http://www.arabhra.org/HraAdmin/UserImages/Files/HRA-RCUVCESCRReport.pdf> 
next to a chemical waste dump. Residents have blamed pollution from that 
dump for the high rate of miscarriages among women who lived beside it.

Despite the exodus, the people of Bir Hadaj were determined to return to 
their original village. As part of a collective initiative, many moved 
back in 1994.

“Bir Hadaj residents took matters into their own hands and decided to 
implement in practice their right of return, offering a really rare 
model,” said Marwan Abu Frieh, a political activist from the Naqab. “So 
they returned to the village in 1994 accompanied by their livestock. 
They put decades of displacement behind them, while knowing that 
difficulties lay ahead.”

The problems faced by Bir Hadaj have worsened since 2007. In that year, 
a number of right-wing settlers affiliated with the Habayit Hayehudi 
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/habayit-hayehudi> (Jewish Home) 
party moved into a nearby area called Retamim, not to be confused with 
the aforementioned Revivim.

Some of the settlers in Retamim have committed 
<http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=597177> acts of violence 
against their Bedouin neighbors. The homes recently demolished were in 
the part of Bir Hadaj closest to Retamim.

“This is not an attractive area to live in and it was not easy for the 
government to draw Jews to live here,” Abu Rass said. “These are 
ideologically motivated settlers and the Israeli government stressed the 
element of ‘settling in the heart of the desert’ to bring them here.”


    Racist motives

Local residents suspect that the recent demolitions may be connected to 
forthcoming elections to the Wahat al-Sahraa Regional Council. The 
council manages the affairs of Bir Hadaj and other Bedouin communities 
in the Naqab.

At present, the top local authority of the area is a Jewish Israeli who 
has been appointed, rather than elected. But there is a possibility that 
a Palestinian citizen may assume that position after the election.

According to Zannoun, the Israeli authorities may be trying to assert 
their power over Bedouins. Arguing that the policy of demolitions has 
“clear racist motives behind it,” he added, “The aim is to drive Bir 
Hadaj residents out to make way for the expansion of Retamim.”

There is an ironic twist behind the recent demolitions: Israel had, in 
effect, forced the victims to move into Bir Hadaj.

In 2003, the Israeli authorities bulldozed 
<http://www.arab48.com/%D9%85%D8%AD%D9%84%D9%8A%D8%A7%D8%AA/%D8%AF%D8%B1%D8%A7%D8%B3%D8%A7%D8%AA-%D9%88%D8%AA%D9%82%D8%A7%D8%B1%D9%8A%D8%B1/2016/10/16/%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%86%D9%82%D8%A8-%D8%A3%D9%87%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%8A-%D8%A8%D9%8A%D8%B1-%D9%87%D8%AF%D8%A7%D8%AC-%D9%8A%D8%B9%D9%88%D8%AF%D9%88%D9%86-%D9%84%D8%A3%D8%B1%D8%A7%D8%B6%D9%8A%D9%87%D9%85-%D9%88%D9%8A%D8%AA%D8%AD%D8%AF%D9%88%D9%86-%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%85%D8%B3%D8%AA%D9%88%D8%B7%D9%86%D9%8A%D9%86> 
the previous homes of the Abu Mreihil family in nearby Magrah.

Following the demolition, the authorities gave the family a verbal 
commitment that they would be allowed to live in Bir Hadaj permanently.

The Bedouin of Bir Hadaj are accustomed to protest. In October 2012, 
they joined forces with other communities in the surrounding region to 
organize 
<https://electronicintifada.net/content/protests-and-strikes-israel-raids-bedouin-villages-threatens-destroy-homes/11792> 
a general strike following an Israeli attack on a local school.

“It is important for the entirety of the Naqab to support the struggle 
in Bir Hadaj and to make sure it extends to other villages,” Abu Rass 
said. “Israel knows that if the resistance in Bir Hadaj is broken, this 
will be a blow for all Bedouin in the Naqab.”

When the people of Bir Hadaj returned to their village in 1994, the 
Israeli army responded by burning their tents. Despite the state’s 
violence, the community remained determined to stay on its land and 
fight for its rights.

The community remains just as determined today.

/Budour Youssef Hassan is a Palestinian writer and law graduate based in 
occupied Jerusalem. Blog: budourhassan.wordpress.com 
<https://budourhassan.wordpress.com/>/


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