Global Protests Against Bedouin Ethnic Cleansing
Israeli Bedouin protest against the state's impending ethnic cleansing,
in the southern Israeli city of Beersheba, in the Negev, June 13, 2013.
Around 40,000 Bedouins are targeted. They're Israeli citizens. They're considered nonpersons. They're treated that way. They're denied all rights. The so-called Begin-Prawer Plan (Law for Arranging Bedouin Settlement in the Negev) is ruthlessly racist. It legitimizes ethnic cleansing. It wants Bedouin land for exclusive Jewish development. It authorizes destroying Bedouin homes. It calls for dozens of villages to be leveled. It sanctions mass ethnic cleansing on a scale not seen since 1948. Israeli authorities are trampling on the rights of their own citizens. According to Association for Civil Rights in Israel attorney Rawia Aburabia:
[Israel's plan] "will cause the displacement and forced eviction of dozens of villages and tens of thousands of Bedouin residents, dispossessing them of their property and historical rights to their lands, destroying the social fabric of their communities, and sealing the fate of thousands of families into poverty and unemployment. All of this while the government simultaneously promotes the establishment of new Jewish communities, some of which are even slated to be built on the fresh ruins of Bedouin villages. Rather than displacing these communities, the government should seek a true and just solution that facilitates the inclusion of Bedouin citizens into the civil and social fabric of the Negev by recognizing the unrecognized villages and acknowledging their legal ownership rights to their lands. For years, the Bedouin citizens have lived in (unrecognized) villages without basic conditions while around them more and more Jewish communities are built. The government must decide whether to seek a true and just solution that facilitates the inclusion of Bedouin in the Negev as equal citizens or a belligerent plan, that only increases the alienation, hostility and poverty in these communities."