Israel’s Prawer Bill: Aiming to fully marginalizing and dispossess its Bedouin citizens

Israel’s Prawer Bill: Aiming to fully marginalizing and dispossess its Bedouin citizens

By Raluca Besliu

The Israeli Knesset recently passed the controversial Bill on the Arrangement of Bedouin Settlement, also known as the Prawer Bill, in the Negev, which would force the relocation of over 30,000 Bedouin currently living in unrecognized village in the Negev to recognized communities and would compensate the Bedouin for land claims. The disputed bill passed its first reading by 43-40 votes. It will be submitted for two more readings, before entering in force. In response to the passing of the bill, some Arab-Israeli legislators poured water on the bill and tore it apart and condemned it as racist and discriminatory. Several of them were moved over their action. While the government claims that this bill aims to enable the Bedouins to take advantage of the growth opportunities available to all citizens of Israel, it represents in fact the most recent form of decades of marginalization, discrimination and dispossession of this group of people. The bill will force the relocation of hundreds of thousands of Bedouins, destroying their traditional lifestyles and their historic right to their land, while condemning them to a life of poverty and alienation in inappropriate towns set up by the Jewish government.

Although currently Israeli citizens, the Bedouin have been historically discriminated against by the Israeli government. Bedouin have traditionally had their own system of land ownership and engaged in agriculture and animal husbandry. After the establishment of the Israeli state in 1948, the Bedouin were placed under severe limitations of movement, while, in 1951, the imposition of a military rule maintained until 1966 forced the Bedouin to move to an area between Dimona, Arad and Beer Sheva. When the military law was finally lifted, both the government and the Bedouin started claiming ownership over vast areas of the Negev and tried to register land. Many of the land claims have remained unresolved.

In 1963, Israeli military leader Moshe Dayan proclaimed that the Bedouins should be transformed into an urban proletariat. This has ultimately become the objective of the Israeli state. Israel has built seven towns for the Bedouin and demanded those living in the unrecognized villages move there. Many Bedouins refused to relocate in the towns, claiming that their agricultural practices are incompatible with life there.

The Bedouin in Negev

The Bedouin currently represent 30 percent of the Negev population and claim only 5.4 percent of the land. Out 0f the around 200,000 Bedouin Negev, around 90,000 live in 45 villages, ten of which are in the process of being recognized. The other 35 are not officially recognized by the Israeli authorities and are, therefore, denied access to services such as paved roads, water, sanitation, electricity, and garbage collection. The unrecognized villages have some of the highest poverty rates in Israeli, with over 71.5 percent of Bedouin households living below the poverty line in 2007, compared to 54.5% in non-Bedouin Arab household and 16.2% in Jewish households. Only 28 percent of Bedouin children complete high school.

The new bill would force the Bedouins to leave their villages and traditional lifestyles and settle in over-crowded and impoverished towns, which fall under the lowest socio-economic standards in Israel, as they suffer from high-levels of unemployment and poverty and often lack basic services, just like the Bedouin villages. After relocation, most of the unrecognized villages will be destroyed. The bill therefore condemns the entire Bedouin community to an urbanized life of marginalization and poverty within Israel.

The T’ruah: Prawer Bill is extremely problematic

Moreover, the T’ruah, an NGO based in North America, aptly highlights the fact that the Prawer Bill is extremely problematic and must not be passed, because it disregards Bedouin property rights and fails to recognize Bedouin land ownership, ignores many Bedouin villages’ historic ties to their lands, while its proposal for compensation in alterative land or money at a maximum rate of 50% of the actual value is arbitrary and unreasonable. The T’ruah further emphasizes the fact that the Prawer Committee did not adequately consider the people affected by the plan and failed to seriously consider alternatives and that it constitutes unlawful racial discrimination with regards to land, planning, provision of government services, and the criteria for establishment of towns between Arabs and Jews in the Negev. Moreover, the Bedouin were only consulted about the bill’s content after the government’s plan to displace them was almost finalized, while a Bedouin-developed proposal was practically ignored by the state.

If implemented, the Prawer bill aims to compress to the largest extent possible the space inhabited by the Bedouins and allow the Jewish population to take over Negev. It will also strip the Bedouins of their right to choose where to live and threatens to destroy their lifestyle, while ignoring their traditional connection to the land.

The Bedouin vs Jewish-Israeli citizens

While striving to remove the Bedouin, the government is providing incentives for the Jewish citizens to move to Negev, in order to significantly shift the population to the detriment of the local Bedouin residents. While the Israeli government is forcing the Bedouin to urbanize, Jewish-Israeli citizens are encouraged to live wherever they want, from agricultural villages to cities, towns or individual farms. In 2010, the Israeli government retroactively recognized dozens of individual Jewish farms, built illegally without approval, while refusing to recognize the Bedouins their rightfully owned lands.

Simultaneously, the government and media have been leading an aggressive campaign of incitement and disinformation of Israeli citizens, by claiming that the Bedouin are taking over the Negev and that they only have grievances and demands, but never solutions. The Bedouin are further delegitimized as threatening, violent individuals and criminals.

Instead of aiming to remove the Bedouin from their villages, the Israeli government should simply recognize them, thus allowing them access to services, including education, health care and adequate infrastructure, as well as employment opportunities that they have been strategically denied since the founding of Israel. Through this, the Israeli government will prove its willingness to treat the Bedouin justly and to recognize them as equal citizens.

Raluca Besliu graduated from the University of Oxford with a degree in Refugees and Forced Migration Studies.

Picture credit: Reuters