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<a class="gmail-domain gmail-reader-domain" href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/israel-naqab-bedouin-accelerating-expansionist-plan-why">middleeasteye.net</a>
<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">Why Israel is accelerating its expansionist plan in the Naqab</h1>
<div class="gmail-credits gmail-reader-credits">Ameer Makhoul - January 24, 2022<br></div>
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<div class="gmail-moz-reader-content gmail-reader-show-element"><div id="gmail-readability-page-1" class="gmail-page"><div><p>A few weeks ago, <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/israel" target="_blank">Israel</a>'s Prime Minister Naftali Bennett stood on a hilltop in the Naqab (Negev), overlooking the Palestinian <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/tags/bedouin" target="_blank">Bedouin</a> town of Rahat, and announced that the Israeli state would <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/video/bedouins-protest-israeli-plan-replace-negev-villages-trees" target="_blank">shift to an attack strategy</a>. And “attack”, in Israeli parlance, means a <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/palestinian-bedouins-negev-resilient-after-week-intense-israeli-crackdowns" target="_blank">renewed onslaught</a> on the remaining Arab presence in this part of <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/palestine" target="_blank">Palestine</a>.</p>
<p>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 <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/united-arab-emirates" target="_blank">United Arab Emirates </a>and the incumbent <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/saudi-arabia" target="_blank">Saudi</a> crown prince, who has made a number of promises to Israel he intends to fulfil once he succeeds his father.</p>
<p>Over the years, Israel has tried to <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/we-will-only-be-moved-bodies-israel-and-bedouins-face-negev" target="_blank">uproot and expel the people</a>
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.</p>
<div>
<p><a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-palestinian-negev-forestation-crisis-government-collapse" target="_blank"><img src="https://www.middleeasteye.net/sites/default/files/styles/read_more/public/images-story/Israeli%20police%20forces%20arrest%20a%20Palestinian%20citizen%20from%20Israel%27s%20Negev%20region%2C%20south%20of%20the%20country%2C%20during%20a%20protest%20against%20forestation%20plan%2C%2012%20January%202022%20%28Reuters%29.jpg?itok=Vwmnx7PI" alt="" width="400" height="250"></a></p><p>Israel's crackdown on Palestinians in Negev threatens Bedouins and its own government</p>
<p><a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-palestinian-negev-forestation-crisis-government-collapse" target="_blank">Read More »</a>
</p></div>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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).</p>
<p>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.</p>
<h3>Declaration of loyalties</h3>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>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</p>
</blockquote>
<p>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).</p>
<p>Armed with rabbinical blessings, the JNF was exempted from observing the <em>shmita</em> year, the seventh year of a seven-year cycle in which <em>halakha</em>
(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”.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<h3>Inherent part of Zionism</h3>
<p>None of this is new, of course, as it is an inherent part of Zionism, embodied by the ultimate crime of the 1948 <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/what-is-nakba-palestine-israel-conflict-explained-1948" target="_blank">Nakba</a>,
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.</p>
<div>
<p><img src="https://www.middleeasteye.net/sites/default/files/000_9W43NY%20%281%29.jpeg" alt="Bedouin protesters gather during a demonstration against the forestation project on 13 January 2021 (AFP)" style="margin-right: 25px;" width="420" height="277"></p>
Bedouin protesters gather during a demonstration against a forestation project on 13 January 2021 (AFP)</div>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<h3>Policy of the deep state</h3>
<p>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 <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/HRC/Pages/COIs.aspx" target="_blank">Commission of Inquiry of the UN Human Rights Council </a>investigating Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians, as well as to all international forums.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<div>
<p><a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/palestinian-bedouins-negev-resilient-after-week-intense-israeli-crackdowns" target="_blank"><img src="https://www.middleeasteye.net/sites/default/files/styles/read_more/public/images-story/2022_01_12t222149z_1_m7oJ9.jpg?itok=zHRkBBoy" alt="" width="400" height="250"></a></p><p>Palestinian Bedouins remain resilient after week of Israeli crackdowns in Negev</p>
<p><a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/palestinian-bedouins-negev-resilient-after-week-intense-israeli-crackdowns" target="_blank">Read More »</a>
</p></div>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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. </p>
<p><i>The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.</i></p>
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