[News] Why Israel is accelerating its expansionist plan in the Naqab

[Anti-Imperialist News]

middleeasteye.net
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/israel-naqab-bedouin-accelerating-expansionist-plan-why>
Why
Israel is accelerating its expansionist plan in the Naqab
Ameer Makhoul - January 24, 2022
------------------------------

A few weeks ago, Israel <https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/israel>'s
Prime Minister Naftali Bennett stood on a hilltop in the Naqab (Negev),
overlooking the Palestinian Bedouin
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/tags/bedouin> town of Rahat, and announced
that the Israeli state would shift to an attack strategy
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/video/bedouins-protest-israeli-plan-replace-negev-villages-trees>.
And “attack”, in Israeli parlance, means a renewed onslaught
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/palestinian-bedouins-negev-resilient-after-week-intense-israeli-crackdowns>
on the remaining Arab presence in this part of Palestine
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/palestine>.

The area has gained a new strategic importance within the rubric of Israeli
economic and security plans for the area, especially those pertaining to
international trade and regional relations with the United Arab Emirates
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/united-arab-emirates>and the
incumbent Saudi <https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/saudi-arabia>
crown prince, who has made a number of promises to Israel he intends to
fulfil once he succeeds his father.

Over the years, Israel has tried to uproot and expel the people
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/we-will-only-be-moved-bodies-israel-and-bedouins-face-negev>
of the Naqab through home demolitions and the destruction of wheat crops
through aircraft chemical dispersal. It has also destroyed agricultural
yields by annually bulldozing farmland, while confiscating livestock and
herds of goats from the Bedouin.

<https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-palestinian-negev-forestation-crisis-government-collapse>

Israel's crackdown on Palestinians in Negev threatens Bedouins and its own
government

Read More »
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-palestinian-negev-forestation-crisis-government-collapse>

It has further worked to weaken and fragment the community by allowing
crime and weapons sales to flourish, exhausting the inhabitants of the area
and making their lives unlivable, in the hopes that this would pave the way
for its expansionist plans.

Israel even worked to gain the support of Arab groups supportive of “Abu
Yair” - Benjamin Netanyahu’s moniker among Arab voters - which is in line
with Israel’s broader colonial history of Arab co-option first practised by
the Mapai Party (which would later merge into the Labor Party).

However, Bennett, a more violent proponent of settler-colonialism, who
believes that settlers are “today’s Zionist vanguard” and was the previous
head of the council of settlements in the West Bank, started his most
recent attack against the Naqab on that hilltop. This was because, for him,
and for the history of Zionism, settlement starts from the hilltops - and
failing that, it adopts the strategy of the “tower and stockade”, in which
a military camp is erected near Arab lands ahead of their confiscation, to
defend against reprisal from the land’s rightful owners.
Declaration of loyalties

Bennett came in armed with his coalition made up of the United Arab List
and the leftist Jewish-Arab Meretz Party, who declared their loyalties to
him and his government. These parties will not be saved by the familiar
political mantra that they so often parrot - that “being in the coalition
is a thousand times harder than being in the opposition” and that “our
responsibility to our society makes [membership of the coalition] an
imperative”, as if joining the current ruling Israeli coalition at the
expense of national principles was an acceptable sacrifice for the supposed
influence it would yield them over the state.

Despite being partners in the coalition, Arab politicians have not and will
not be partners in the act of governing - which itself is a proposition
that should be rejected as a matter of national principle.

The government tried to appear as if it were not directly carrying out its
prime minister’s orders, instead outsourcing them to the Jewish National
Fund

The government tried to appear as if it were not directly carrying out its
prime minister’s orders, instead outsourcing them to one of the most
important tools of Zionist colonisation in Palestine: the Jewish National
Fund (JNF).

Armed with rabbinical blessings, the JNF was exempted from observing the
*shmita* year, the seventh year of a seven-year cycle in which *halakha*
(Jewish law) forbids any kind of agricultural activity in the holy land.
Having been absolved of this duty, JNF had free rein to carry out its
activities in the Naqab, under the justification that the planting of tens
of millions of trees in the area was a grave necessity and “in the interest
of the Jewish people”.

As for the state, its duty was to protect those newly forested areas while
bulldozing 55,000 dunams of Palestinian Arab land, building artificial
hills and dams and erecting fences to keep out its owners. Then the role of
the law came in when those lands became protected under forestry and
agricultural ordinances.
Inherent part of Zionism

None of this is new, of course, as it is an inherent part of Zionism,
embodied by the ultimate crime of the 1948 Nakba
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/what-is-nakba-palestine-israel-conflict-explained-1948>,
which is a part of the state’s founding spirit and the military regime that
followed until 1966. During that period, the state used the regime of
“closed military zones” to prevent people's return to their lands,
villages, homes and property, before they became permanent refugees, either
in the diaspora or in Palestine.

[image: Bedouin protesters gather during a demonstration against the
forestation project on 13 January 2021 (AFP)]
Bedouin protesters gather during a demonstration against a forestation
project on 13 January 2021 (AFP)

And it bears remembering that Israel, having already exploited the “fog of
war” to carry out land theft, ethnic cleansing and massacres, has also used
many of the various “peace” agreements with Arab states to continue its
confiscation and theft of even more land. During the Camp David Accords of
1978 with Egypt, Israel confiscated a million dunams of Arab lands in the
Naqab, and today it builds strategic projects in partnership with the
Emirates for the transfer of natural gas through the Naqab to Europe.

And none of this is to mention the ethnic cleansing and expulsions that
take place in Palestinian Arab towns in the Galilee and the Naqab, both
considered to have the most fertile agricultural lands.
Policy of the deep state

The current onslaught on Arab lands in the Naqab and the repression that
has accompanied it constitute a war crime and a crime against humanity, as
it has entailed state-sanctioned terror and ethnic cleansing. This is how
the situation should be reported to the Commission of Inquiry of the UN
Human Rights Council
<https://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/HRC/Pages/COIs.aspx>investigating
Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians, as well as to all international
forums.

The government’s onslaught will not be deterred by absenteeism from the
Knesset sessions, but rather by their obstruction and abrogation - simple
absenteeism has no teeth.

<https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/palestinian-bedouins-negev-resilient-after-week-intense-israeli-crackdowns>

Palestinian Bedouins remain resilient after week of Israeli crackdowns in
Negev

Read More »
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/palestinian-bedouins-negev-resilient-after-week-intense-israeli-crackdowns>

At the same time, the Arab parties should not be fooled into believing that
what is happening on the ground is the product of the policy of a single
government. Rather, it is the policy of the deep state, backed by its
aggressive colonial history, from David Ben-Gurion to Bennett.

The only deterrence to this policy is popular struggle and Palestinian Arab
steadfastness in the Naqab and beyond. The Naqab today serves as the
current battleground, and the Naqab belongs not only to its current
inhabitants but to all of us. The same can be said of the Galilee, the
coast and the Triangle (a concentration of Israeli Arab towns and villages
adjacent to the Green Line), and all of Palestine.

What is most heartening to see is the strong presence of a new generation
in the Naqab, carrying the banner of struggle and fulfilling the promise of
its continuation. This is what will deter the colonial project, alongside
our struggle for freedom and national dignity.

*The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not
necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.*
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