"They will learn what it means to be unrecognized, how Israeli government policy creates this situation and what the community does about it."
By HAVIV RETTIG GURbeduin 88(photo credit: )
A group of British Conservative MPs will be touring the unrecognized Beduin villages of the Negev on Tuesday, and will be asked by representatives of those villages to pressure Israel to change its policy toward them.
The MPs are members of the Conservative Middle East Council, described by an Israeli Foreign Ministry official as "more or less the pro-Palestinian lobby in the Conservative Party in Britain."
"They will learn what it means to be unrecognized, how Israeli government policy creates this situation and what the community does about it," according to Dr. Yeela Raanan, public affairs officer for the Regional Council for Unrecognized Villages.
"This is one of the greatest injustices done to Israel's Arab minority, and we hope they'll do everything to [pressure] Israel about it," she said.
"As MPs and decision makers from Britain, they are connected to what happens in the Middle East, in Israel and around it," said Jamal Atamneh, a program officer in Oxfam who organized the visit together with the CMEC. "Until this year, visits [of CMEC members] would focus on the larger context of the conflict. This is the first time they'll see Israel's Palestinian population and the problems it faces from the inside."
According to a press release of the Regional Council for Unrecognized Villages, the MPs will visit the unrecognized village Wadi Na'am, "and will hear about life alongside the toxic waste dump and chemical factories of Ramat Hovav, about the establishment of a power plant in the village center and about living without basic services such as water and electricity."
The MPs will hear from the regional council head "about Israel's discriminatory policies."
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