NOVANEWS
Many of you have been asking for a response to Alon Tal’s attack on RHR in “Haaretz” on Monday. We have preferred not to rush to respond to Alon because I have been communicating with him in the hope that he might be willing to himself publish corrections of the factual errors in his piece, and we have suggested setting up a forum to air our differences of opinion. We respect Alon, and I have actually been dialoguing with him intermittently for around two years. Others have chosen to respond more quickly. Here is a piece by Rabbi Jill Jacobs of T’ruah, which fiscally split from RHR and with whom we continue to work on the Bedouin issue. Until we decide how to precede, here is a quick response to some of the factual inaccuracies:
“Why do Rabbis for Human Rights ignore the violation of Bedouin women’s rights in the Negev”
1. I am not sure why concern for the welfare of Bedouin women is a reason not to be concerned about the attempts to displace and dispossess the Bedouin. Clearly, these actions won’t make the lives of either Bedouin women or Bedouin men any better.
2. What RHR does or doesn’t do on one worthy issue shouldn’t be a reason to criticize our involvement in another worthy issue. There are an infinite number of additional issues we would like to be involved with if we had the resources.
3. Anybody who is truly interested in what we do on behalf of Bedouin women should ask us or go to our website. They would know that we just finished an amazing three program for Jewish and Bedouin women at Sapir College, Women Citizens For Equality. We have been tutoring English to young girls from the Jahalin tribe in the Occupied Territories since 1997, some of whom have gone on to be some of the first women from the tribe to obtain higher education. Many of the Negev Bedouin’s amazing women activists will attest to the work of RHR.
“Consistently, a range of judges were not convinced by the testimony about historic ownership and called the violent behavior of the petitioning Bedouin families into question.”
4. It is not always easy to know when Alon is writing specifically about El-Araqib, or about “Unrecognized villages in general.” The courts have not yet determined the status of El-Araqib. The State tried to argue that any proofs of ownership are irrelevant because the land was expropriated in 1953. Furthermore, they have argued that the courts have no authority to determine whether or not the expropriation was legal. In December, the High Court ordered the District Court to hear the case. This has been delayed because the State is asking the High Court to rehear the case with an expanded panel of judges. The residents of El-Araqib have Ottoman, British and even Israeli documents attesting to their ownership, in addition to their cemetery with graves dating back to 1914. Their problem is that, if the Begin/Prawer Bill is passed (See below), they live outside the “Pale of Settlement,” the map attached to the bill delineating where it is permissible for a Bedouin community to exist. The entire village was demolished in July 2010, and has been re-demolished some 56 times since then. Tractors with JNF logos have been photographed at some of those demolitions.
5. When Beer-Sheva District Judge Netzer agreed to hear the case, she made a non-binding request to the JNF and the Israel Lands Authority not to continue creating facts on the ground before either the court could rule on El-Araqib land claims, or the Knesset would pass a law on Bedouin settlement. She said that she would not continue to impose a restraining order on planting and demolishing because of the fact that the residents of El-Araqib had been building without permits. (Permits that an “Unrecognized” village could never obtain because they can’t have an approved building and zoning plan. ) There is no mention of violence. Perhaps Alon is referring to some other ruling regarding some other village. In general, accusations that the Bedouin are violent is one of the more widely held stereotypes about them.
6. In 1920 the PLDC of the Zionist movement recorded 2.6 million dunam as belonging to the Bedouin. Much of that land belonged to people who fled/were expelled. When the Bedouin were invited to submit their land claims in the 70′s they submitted some 3,200 claims that fit together without contradiction for 1,250,000 dunam. The government said they would not recognize Bedouin claims to 500,000 dunam of communal grazing land. 200,000 dunam have been dealt with since then in either arbitration of in court. Most of these cases have not gone well for the Bedouin because many Bedouin do not have the same written proofs of ownership that El-Araqib residents do. Unlike the Ottomans, British and pre-state Zionist movement, the State of Israel does not honor the internal Bedouin system of land ownership. Some 600-650,000 dunams are still unresolved, some 5.4% of the Negev. Pre-State aerial photographs from 1945 actually show extensive Bedouin agriculture, and the late 19th century Zionist Levontin notes in his diary extensive agriculture and friendly Bedouin willing to sell land. El-Araqib actually sold much of the land that Kibbutz Lehavim sits on today. Bedouin ownership was not questioned when the Bedouins sold.
“There is nothing in the present campaign that goes to the critical issue of creating economic opportunity for Israel’s poorest citizens.”
7. One of the reasons the Bedouin oppose the desire to move them into the development towns is because they can no longer engage in farming and shepherding that have been a significant part of their income. As mentioned below, poverty and unemployment are 4 times higher in the townships than in recognized villages. There are no statistics for “Unrecognized: villages, because they don’t exist. Those Bedouin who wish to move to an urban setting should be able to do so. Like all of us, they should have choice.
“Even a teaspoon of utilitarian justice requires the preservation of these open spaces to ensure that the citizens of Rahat city today and the future enjoy a green belt around their city.”
8. At some point I hope that Alon and I can have a public dialogue on issues of proper land use. Let me just say that Route 31 and the relatively new Jewish community of Givaot Bar stands between Rahat and the lands of El-Araqib. It would be very difficult to have a greenbelt south of Rahat in the direction of El-Araqib. The government desire is to prevent Rahat from expanding south of Route 31. It is hard to see how Rahat is going to benefit from the lands taken from El-Araqib. At best they could have picnics in the forest replacing El-Araqib’s fruit trees. However, a recreational area could be just as easily created by foresting the lands between El Araqib and Rahat that are not owned by anybody living in the country and/or coming to an agreement with El-Araqib that doesn’t entail confiscating their land. As Dr. Awad Abu-Freikh from El-Araqib told Russel Robinson, CEO of JNF USA, the residents of El-Araqib would be thrilled to sit down without bulldozers and transfer orders, and talk about making El-Araqib into a “Green village.’
It is most infuriating to have the Rabbis for Human Rights campaign focus so much of its energies on discrediting the Jewish National Fund.
9. RHR focuses very little energy on the JNF since we were part of successful letter writing campaigns to get them to agree to not forest over El-Araqib until either the courts or the Knesset determine the status of their lands (Alon supported our position on this) and to not expel the Sumarin family from their home in East Jerusalem. The greatest threat to the Bedouin today is the Begin/Prawer Bill. If passed, tens of villages may be destroyed, up to 40,000 citizens may be transferred from their village homes to artificially created urban townships where poverty and unemployment are 4 times higher than in recognized villages. They will probably be dispossessed of most of their lands. In our video clip on the subject it is true that one woman from El-Araqib asks why her home is slated to be a forest, and there is a sign for one of the forests with the JNF logo.
10. As one can see from my January 2011 op-ed in the Jerusalem Post, RHR acknowledges the many wonderful and holy things that the KKL/JNF does, but we also note the fact that many JNF forests around the country have the remains of Arab villages at their heard. We call upon the JNF not to sully themselves by foresting over villages. We recognize that the KKL/JNF doesn’t set policy, but sometimes “You just have to say ‘no.’
“The level of violence associated with the El-Araqib campaign is enormous. The foresters of the JNF have been attacked on innumerable occasions, their vehicles torched and their lives threatened by the small minority of Bedouin who oppose the afforestation work there. “
11. Much of my dialogue with Alon since his article appeared (And before) has been around the issue of Bedouin violence. Alon has not yet come up with even one incident involving El-Araqib in which JNF personnel were attached or their cars torched. This is not to say that there have been no incidents involving Bedouin violence. RHR condemns such violence. However, I have personally seen only police violence directed at Bedouin. There has certainly been no violence in El-Araqib or elsewhere that would justify the collective punishment of destruction/transfer/dispossession. In fact, these things, as well as uprooting Bedouins from their culture, societal structure and sources of income, explain the high levels of crime and despair in the townships. Our sages taught that “The sword comes into the world because of justice delayed and justice denied.” (Pirke Avot) The rabbis expected human beings to overcome the urge to act violently. However, they were also realists.
