[News] 100-year-old Bedouin woman left homeless as Israel continues Negev demolitions

[Anti-Imperialist News]

*100-year-old Bedouin woman left homeless as Israel continues Negev 
demolitions*

Feb. 8, 2017 - http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=775366


NEGEV (Ma’an) -- In the latest instance of Israel’s demolition campaign 
in the Negev region of southern Israel, homes were demolished in two 
unrecognized Bedouin villages on Wednesday, while Israeli police 
surrounded the village of Umm al-Hiran.


Israeli bulldozers, escorted by Israeli police, demolished a house in 
the village of Wadi al-Naam in the western part of the Negev in southern 
Israel.


Locals told Ma’an that the demolished house was owned by an elderly 
woman and her daughter. A member of the local committee, Yousif Ziyadin, 
said that an emergency session would be held to discuss the Israeli 
demolition.


A relative of the elderly homeowner, Ahmad Zanoun, told Ma’an that 
100-year-old Ghaytha Zanoun and her 60-year-old daughter Hilala were 
living in the house, both of whom suffer from various health issues.

Zanoun said that both Ghaytha and Hilala were unable to walk, and noted 
that the family had renovated the home in accordance with their doctor’s 
suggestions due to their health conditions.


He added that Ghaytha and her daughter now were homeless following the 
demolition.


The Wadi al-Naam village was established in the 1950s soon after the 
1948 Arab-Israeli war that established the state of Israel. Military 
officials forcibly transferred the Negev Bedouins to the site during the 
17-year period when Palestinians inside Israel were governed under 
Israeli military law, which ended shortly before Israel's military 
takeover of Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, in 1967.


I <http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?ID=772389>n July 
<http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?ID=772389>, the Israeli government 
approved plans to build townships for Israel’s Bedouin community. The 
planned township is expected to be built just south of Shaqib al-Salam, 
another Bedouin township, and would transfer at least 7,000 Bedouins 
from the unrecognized village of Wadi al-Naam, Israeli newspaper Haaretz 
reported last year.


The approved village would comprise of an area of approximately 9,000 
dunams (2,224 acres), while providing housing to some 9,000 residents, 
The Times of Israel also reported.


The proposal to expand the area of Shaqib al-Salam was challenged in 
Israel’s Supreme Court in 2015, as the Association of Civil Rights in 
Israel (ACRI), who assisted in the court proceedings, argued that any 
expansion of the town would be followed by the forcible removal of 
Bedouins from unrecognized villages, particularly from Wadi al-Naam.


Yaron Kelner, spokesperson for ACRI, confirmed to Ma’an on Wednesday 
that residents of Wadi al-Naam have continued to refuse the relocation 
deal.

Meanwhile, Israeli bulldozers also demolished a mobile home in the 
unrecognized village of al-Zarnouq in the Negev. However, no other 
details were provided about the demolition.


The Israeli government has plans to evacuate thousands of residents from 
al-Zarnouq to the recognized village of Rahat in order to build over the 
land for new housing for non-Bedouin Israeli citizens.


According to Israeli newspaper Haaretz 
<http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/israel-approves-plan-to-relocate-30-000-bedouin-from-unrecognized-villages-1.383772>, 
the Israeli government approved in 2011 plans to transfer tens of 
thousands of Bedouins in unrecognized villages, including al-Zarnouq, 
into officially recognized settlements.

The ongoing attempts at transferring the Bedouins originated from 
thePrawer Report 
<https://www.adalah.org/uploads/oldfiles/upfiles/2011/Overview%20and%20Analysis%20of%20the%20Prawer%20Committee%20Report%20Recommendations%20Final.pdf>, 
a document outlining expulsion plans for the unrecognized Bedouin 
community. It wasofficially adopted 
<https://www.adalah.org/en/content/view/8176> by the Israeli government 
in 2013.


According to Israeli human rights group Adalah, the plan would “result 
in the destruction of 35 ‘unrecognized’ Arab Bedouin villages, the 
forced displacement of up to 70,000 Arab Bedouin citizens of Israel, and 
the dispossession of their historical lands in the Negev.”


In another incident in the Negev on Wednesday, the Yoav unit of the 
Israeli police surrounded the village of Umm al-Hiran. According to 
locals, residents have expressed fear that their presence could signal 
another demolition, the last of which erupted into deadly violence 
<http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=774987> when Israeli police 
raided the village prior to demolishing homes 
<http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=774991>. A local Bedouin 
teacher and an Israeli police officer were killed at the time.


Meanwhile, the Bedouin village of al-Araqib was demolished for the 109th 
time on Wednesday <http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=775360>.


Bedouin communities in the Negev have been the target of a heightened 
demolition campaign in recent weeks, following Israeli leaders publicly 
expressing their commitment to demolish Palestinian structures lacking 
difficult to obtain Israeli-issued building permits across Israel and 
occupied East Jerusalem in response to the Israeli-court sanctioned 
evacuation of the illegal Amona settler outpost. 
<http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=775256>

In December, Netanyahu released a video to address settlers of the Amona 
outpost 
<http://www.timesofisrael.com/as-amona-evacuation-looms-pm-pledges-to-demolish-illegal-construction-all-over-israel/>, 
assuring them that he would commit to “enforcing laws” on “illegal 
construction” in Israel, referring primarily to Palestinian communities 
that are often forced to build without Israeli-issued building permits, 
due to what rights groups have attributed to discriminatory zoning 
policies in Israel which have excluded many Palestinian-Israeli 
communities from being included in the regional and municipal 
development plans.

According to the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), more 
than half of the approximately 160,000 Negev Bedouins reside in 
unrecognized villages.


Rights groups have claimed that the demolitions in Bedouin villages is a 
central Israeli policy aimed at removing the indigenous Palestinian 
population from the Negev and transferring them to government-zoned 
townships to make room for the expansion of Jewish Israeli communities.

-- 
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