A couple thousand Beduin Negev residents and their Jewish and northern Arab-
Israeli supporters gathered around a makeshift podium in a jam-packed square
across the street from Beersheba’s Soroka University Medical Center on Thursday,
waving flags and chanting in protest against a September cabinet decision to
resettle and provide economic development assistance to tens of thousands of
villagers.
“Israel has stolen the lands of its Arab Negev citizens,” read
a huge white banner draped across some of the men, in Arabic, Hebrew and
English.
According to the cabinet’s plan, approximately two-thirds of the
current rural Beduin population would be relocated to new homes in already
recognized towns within the Abu Basma Regional Council as well as in communities
within the Beersheba District.
In addition to shifting people’s
residences, the government would also be funneling NIS 1.2 billion toward
economic growth in the Beduin community, with particular goals of improving
employment prospects of women and young people, as well as developing
infrastructure such as transportation.
The program stems from two years
of planning on the part of Ehud Prawer, director of planning policy in the Prime
Minister’s Office, who was charged with turning previous recommendations about
Beduin development of retired Supreme Court justice Eliezer Goldberg into an
executable platform.
“The plan is part of the government’s overall
activities in developing the Negev. Its goal is to bring about a better
integration of Beduin in Israeli society,” the Prime Minister’s Office had said
in a statement following the September 11 cabinet decision.
“The plan is
also designed to significantly reduce the economic and social gaps between the
Beduin population in the Negev and Israeli society as a whole.”
But for
so many of the Beduin people and their supporters, the plan is unacceptable –
not only because they would be forced to leave their homes, but also because
they were not consulted first, they say.
“The biggest problem with the
Prawer plan was that there was no negotiation, no talking. They want to
cooperate, but the government ignored them,” Oren Pasternack, one of the
organizers of the Rothschild Boulevard tent protests in Tel Aviv, who was
attending the Beduin demonstration with several of his friends, told
The
Jerusalem Post.
“We came here in support because we see the fight for
social justice as a fight for social justice for all. We believe that all
Israelis, including Beduin, should join in the fight,” Pasternack added, noting
that he met 10 days ago with a group of Beduin leaders in order to express
solidarity. “The power of the Beduin population is non-violence – it’s the power
we had in Tel Aviv – men, women, young people trying to change the priorities in
Israel’s government.”
While exact estimates as to the number of
protesters varied, the square and surrounding lawn was filled to capacity – some
partaking in the chanting and others rehydrating under the trees.
Alma
Elsana, one of the main coordinators of the demonstration, told the
Post that
“this is the first step in our struggle – it’s only the beginning.”
This
Friday, she explained, a steering committee made up of all the Beduin community
leaders will meet to determine how to move forward with building a strategic
plan to combat this “struggle.”
“Our struggle in four tracks – one is
lobbying, the other is the media issue, the third is the field and raising
awareness among the people and the fourth is an alternative plan for our
villages, and it [will be] presented in the Knesset,” said Elsana, who is also
the co-executive director of The Arab Jewish Center for Equality, Empowerment
and Cooperation at the Negev Institute for Strategies of Peace and Development,
and a resident of the recognized town of Lakiya.
Elsana expressed
confidence the new Beduin strategic plan will be received positively by the
Knesset.
“They have to, they must,” she said. “We are working very hard
to make it happen, and today the Beduin in the Negev are aware of the situation
and they are going to be very, very active in this issue.”
Khalil
Alamour, a teacher from the unrecognized village of al-Sira, agreed, calling the
demonstration an “exciting moment.”
“I am very proud, very happy for the
large number of protesters who arrived here to support us – Jews and Arabs – we
are brothers here, supporting the same idea, the same principle, to stop the
Prawer plan from being implemented,” Alamour told the Post. “I am more
optimistic now when I see this huge crowd, this huge people that arrived from
all the cities and towns and the unrecognized townships.”
One such
supporter, Wafaa Zriek Srour, came from her northern Arab-Israeli community of
Eilaboun, located near Haifa, to join the cause.
“I see that today the
last stitches of the tapestry of the Arabs in Israel,” said Srour, who works for
the Haifa-based Mossawa Advocacy Center for Arab Citizens of Israel. “For many
years the Israeli policy was to try to divide and rule and they tried to
separate the Beduin and to take them into the army and to disconnect them from
the other Arabs.”
Even though she is not part of the Beduin community,
Srour said she identifies with the Negev residents.
“I think that it is
my problem too. This day reminds me of the days in 1976 when the land in the
north was confiscated from us in the Galilee,” she said. “This is the first time
I see so many people here and they’re all here for the same reason – before it
was in the North and then it was in the center but it’s the same issue for all
the Arabs – the issue of the land and the home.”
Like Srour and Alamour,
Elsana was extremely pleased with the outcome of the demonstration, and
expressed hope that the Beduin voice would be heard in the government.
“I
am very excited,” Elsana said. “I feel I want to cry because to see this amount
of people, and after working in the field for two weeks recruiting the people, I
am very proud of my people.”