Terra Incognita: Equal rights in the Negev for all Israelis
Beduins should not receive preferential treatment because of the government’s historic abandonment of the land.
The government recently approved a plan to deal with the complicated issue of
Negev Beduin who have been illegally living on hundreds of thousands of dunams
of state land and laying claim to them. The government plan envisions the
relocation of tens of thousands of Beduin to existing communities, building new
Beduin settlements and settling some of the land claims. Parts of the plan have
been praised by much of the Israeli media. However, this praise is predicated,
generally, on a misunderstanding of what has taken place in the Negev, and
misses a major discrimination inherent in settling any of the Beduin land
claims.
There are around 160,000 Negev Beduin and the population has
historically had one of the highest birth rates in the country. Around half the
Beduin population lives in more than 45 “unrecognized” or illegally occupied
settlements they have established on state lands. That the Negev is entirely
composed of state land is an accident of history. The Negev contains more than
half the land area of Israel, about 12 million dunams (3 million acres), and
since the time of the Ottoman Land Law of 1858 the entirety of the Negev has
been legally defined as state land. Only a tiny percent of that land was turned
over to private use, primarily in Beersheba, beginning in 1900.
During
the last years of the British Mandate Zionists set their eyes on the Negev as a
potential area of development for the future Jewish state. In 1950s Israeli
planners, particularly Polish-born Arieh Sharon, saw the Negev as a tabula rasa
upon which an idealized planning regime could be grafted. Their plans called for
the establishment of small rural communities (Kibbutzim and Moshavim), populated
by Jews from Europe, to be equally spaced throughout the northern Negev. Between
them would be larger Development Towns where the Jewish immigrants, mostly from
Muslim countries, would live. The result was the creation of Jewish Beersheba
and towns like Kiryat Gat and Sderot, and the building of numerous
Kibbutzim. The Beduin, who numbered only 19,000 in 1949, were not
included in any of these schemes.
Only later, in the 1970s, did the
Israeli government begin to build planned communities for the Negev Beduin who
had transitioned from a nomadic/seminomadic lifestyle to a sedentary one. What
took place next has become a national disgrace. Tens of thousands of Beduin who
refused to move to planned communities, such as Rahat, simply occupied state
land and began building sprawling settlements on it. They constructed a
narrative in which they had lived in these new communities since prior to 1948,
a fabricated history that many accept at face value without bothering to check
the relevant maps and aerial photos.
NOW THESE Beduin who chose to
illegally occupy state land are demanding 800,000 dunams of that land, which
most commentators point out is only about six percent of the Negev. But the 6%
issue ignores reality. Around 194,000 Jews live in Beersheba on 100,000 dunams
of land (.5 dunams per person). At the same time some 70,000 Beduin claim
800,000 dunams of land (11 dunams per person). There seems to be something
dreadfully wrong in this equation, namely that Jewish immigrants that the
government sent to Beersheba lived in a law-abiding fashion, crammed into
apartment buildings, while those who decided to squat on state land are on the
cusp of being rewarded.
There is some notion that the culture of the
Beduin requires that they should dominate much of the northern Negev by virtue
of the fact that they are farmers. But this also doesn’t make sense. The
immigrants from Ethiopia who make up a significant minority of the Jewish
population in Beersheba also had an agricultural background, yet the government
never thought that this meant they should be awarded 11 dunams each and given a
shovel to go farm the Negev. Instead the government pursued a strict policy of
social engineering, taking Jews from all over the world into the Negev and
conditioning them to live in tenement monstrosities built to house
immigrants.
The cabinet decision regarding the Negev Beduin who live
illegally on state land is a slap in the face, not only for the Jewish community
in the Negev, but also for the Beduin who moved to planned communities in the
1970s and 1980s. In October, 2010, Khaled al-Sana, the Beduin council head of
Lakiya, a planned community, cut off the water to 4,000 Beduin who had illegally
tapped into the town’s line. “I have 10,000 residents in the town, and I have to
pay the bills of another 4,000 residents? That just isn't right,” he said. But
of course, the Beersheba district court ordered that Lakiya keep providing free
water for the squatters, while the law-abiding Beduin paid higher water
bills.
THIS STORY is the story of the Negev in general. The Israeli
government, especially the court system whose members are partly behind the
recent plan, has conspired to disenfranchise and discriminate against all the
people who have legally paid taxes and water bills and lived where they were
told to in the Negev, by rewarding a tiny minority a hugely disproportionate
amount of land. The only way that the government can do justice to the
law-abiding Beduin in places like Lakiya and all the other people in places like
Beersheba is to provide them the same access to 11 dunams of land each. That
means selling off about 15% of the Negev to law-abiding citizens to compensate
them for the injustice of awarding the law breakers. Ideally, lawabiding Negev
residents should be given the chance to homestead on lands that are not being
claimed by the unrecognized Beduin villages. Since the Israeli government has
proven in the past 60 years that it is not a good steward of public land, which
all Israelis (Beduin and otherwise) deserve an equal right to, it is time to
privatize that state land so that it can be defended from further invasions by
squatters. The government abandoned the land, the court system enshrined that
abandonment and now the cabinet retroactively approves the abandonment. Only a
popular outcry by others in the Negev will ensure they are
protected. Sadly, history has shown that the majority of the Negev’s
residents are unwilling to assert themselves on this issue.
The writer
has a PhD from Hebrew University, and is a fellow at the Jerusalem Institute for
Market Studies.