NOVANEWS
On 30 March, we shall commemorate the 36th Anniversary of Land Day. Land Day
began as a general strike in 1976 to protest against Israeli governmental policies
of massive land confiscation of Arab-owned land. The day ended with the killing
of six Arab citizens of Israel from Sakhnin and Arrabeh in the Galilee by Israeli
security forces. Each year, Arabs in Israel hold memorials and demonstrations to
remember this day.
This year, 2012, one of the greatest threats to the land rights of Arab citizens is
the Prawer Plan. If this plan is enacted into law, it would lead to the forced
displacement of up to 70,000 Arab Bedouin from their homes in the
unrecognized villages in the Naqab (Negev) to government-planned townships
unsuited to their way of life, and the final dispossession of their ancestral lands.
Adalah and its NGO partners are campaigning locally and internationally against
this proposed law.
This month, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination
(CERD) raised concerns about the situation of the Arab Bedouin particularly
regarding the policy of home demolitions and the loss of their land and access to
new land. Notably, it recommended that Israel, “withdraw the 2012
discriminatory proposed Law for the Regulation of the Bedouin Settlement in the
Negev [the Prawer Plan Law], which would legalize the ongoing policy of home
demolitions and forced displacement of the indigenous Bedouin communities.”
Heeding the UN’s call, on this 36th Land Day, Adalah urges the Israeli government
to: cancel the Prawer Plan Law; recognize the unrecognized villages and Arab
Bedouin claims to their ancestral land; halt home demolitions and forced
evictions from Arab Bedouin villages; and engage in meaningful dialogue with
the Arab Bedouin community and the Arab politic
