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<h1><font size=4><b>Israel finds new "home" for Bedouins: a
garbage
dump</b></font></h1><font size=3>
<a href="http://electronicintifada.net/people/jillian-kestler-damours">
Jillian Kestler-D'Amours</a> <br>
<a href="http://electronicintifada.net/content/israel-finds-new-home-bedouins-garbage-dump/10530#.TqrTN7LZdBk" eudora="autourl">
http://electronicintifada.net/content/israel-finds-new-home-bedouins-garbage-dump/10530#.TqrTN7LZdBk<br>
</a><a href="http://electronicintifada.net/location/jerusalem">
Jerusalem</a> <br>
28 October 2011 <br><br>
<br>
JERUSALEM (IPS) - As Israel moves ahead with a plan to forcibly displace
tens of thousands of Palestinian
<a href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/bedouins">Bedouins</a> in the
occupied West Bank, Mohammad al-Korshan and his family are facing the
real prospect of not only losing their home, but their traditional way of
life.<br><br>
“The Bedouins depend on animals. We can’t take care of them in the
village or in the city. All the Bedouins work with animals. If we go to
the city, they kill us. They kill the Bedouins. After a few more years,
you won’t have Bedouins in the area,” said al-Korshan, who lives in a
Bedouin encampment with more than ninety other families near the West
Bank town Anata, northeast of Jerusalem.<br><br>
“We want to stay in our homes. If they damage our homes or our tents, we
want to build again. We won’t move. Even if they want to kill us, we want
to stay. We haven’t any place to go,” he said.<br><br>
Quietly unveiled to local aid organizations in early October,
<a href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/israeli-civil-administration">
Israel’s Civil Administration</a>, the body that governs
<a href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/area-c">Area C</a> of the
occupied West Bank which is under full Israeli military and
administrative control, plans to expel approximately 27,000 Bedouins from
their communities in Area C within three to six years.<br><br>
According to Israeli human rights group
<a href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/btselem">B’Tselem</a>, the
first phase is planned to begin as early as January 2012, and would
forcibly evict approximately 2,300 persons who are currently living in
about twenty communities near the
<a href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/israeli-settlements">Israeli
settlement</a> of
<a href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/maale-adumim">Maale
Adumim</a> and transfer them to a new location near the Abu Dis garbage
dump, just east of Jerusalem.<br><br>
<b>“They want to take our land”<br><br>
</b>The Civil Administration will expel Bedouins from the
<a href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/jordan-valley">Jordan
Valley</a> in the second phase of the plan.<br><br>
“We live now on the road between Jerusalem and Jericho. The Israeli
government wants to close this area because we are near the settlement of
Kufr Adumim. They want to take our land for their settlements,” said
al-Korshan, who heads the Jerusalem Bedouin Cooperative
Committee.<br><br>
“It’s very difficult for us. We haven’t any place to move. Our land is in
<a href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/bir-al-saba">Beersheba</a>
[Bir al-Saba] and we are refugees.”<br><br>
According to the United Nations’
<a href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/un-ocha">Office for the
Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs</a> (OCHA), more than 80 percent of
the Bedouin families living in the hills east of Jerusalem are refugees.
Most have demolition orders against their homes and aren’t connected to
electricity, while about half do not have regular access to
water.<br><br>
OCHA also found that the proposed relocation site for the Bedouins near
the town of al-Eizariya, where 200 Bedouin families were relocated in the
1990s to make way for the expansion of the Maale Adumim settlement
would threaten the community’s health, lifestyle and overall
well-being.<br><br>
“The proposed site does not meet minimum standards in terms of distance
from the municipal dumping grounds, which is likely to pose a health
hazard to the communities, and provides limited access to grazing lands.
Previously relocated families report negative consequences, including
health concerns, loss of livelihood, deteriorated living conditions, loss
of tribal cohesion and erosion of traditional lifestyles,” the
organization wrote in a statement.<br><br>
<b>Destroying our life<br><br>
</b>Suleiman Mazarah and his family, members of the
<a href="http://electronicintifada.net/content/jahalin-bedouin-suffer-without-representation/8541#.TqoHvnHO-iQ">
Jahalin Bedouin tribe</a>, were forcibly transferred to this area by the
Israeli authorities in 1997. Mazarah said that the community continues to
suffer from the move.<br><br>
“[The Israelis] put us in an area near the garbage dump of the
municipality of Jerusalem. They are going to move the rest of the tribe
now from Area C to our area. This action will destroy the Bedouin life.
When they put them in a small area, their jobs will be destroyed because
there is no place to keep animals. They won’t have work,” Mazarah
said.<br><br>
“Most of the people here are without work, so they don’t have anything to
give their children. If they move another group of people here, it will
be much worse.”<br><br>
Forcibly transferring Bedouin communities without their consent, OCHA
stated, also violates international law. “As an occupying power, Israel
has an obligation to protect the Palestinian civilian population and to
administer the territory for the benefit of that population. Any
voluntary move or transfer of civilians must meet international
standards, including relating to a free and informed choice,” the
organization said.<br><br>
According to Mazarah, plans to forcibly displace Bedouin communities in
Area C of the West Bank can be linked to the historical and ongoing
dispossession of Bedouin tribes since the founding of the state of
Israel, including recent Israeli plans to displace 30,000 Bedouins
currently living in the southern
<a href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/naqab">Negev (Naqab)</a>
desert.<br><br>
“The same thing they are doing with the people in the Naqab, they are
doing with us here. But in the Naqab, the Bedouins there have Israeli
nationality, and here we are Palestinian. The Israelis don’t want any
Bedouins in the land,” Mazarah said.<br><br>
“Our condition, and their condition also, is very bad. These forgotten
people are suffering from the forced displacement, and it’s destroying
their lives.”<br><br>
<br><br>
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