Land Rights and the Rights of basic services of the Negev Bedouins should be recognized!

In the southern Negev Desert of Israel (Naqab in Arabic) lives the Negev Bedouin minority. These semi-nomadic Bedouins have suffered for years under the legal destruction of their villages. The Israeli government does not recognize the traditional land rights or the rights awarded to them from the earlier Ottoman or the British rulers. Israel wants to use the land for ambitious farming projects while disregarding the rights of the Bedouins in the illegal villages in order to move them into state planed settlements.

Of the circa 150.000 Negev-Bedouins that live in Israel, about a half of them live in seven of the state planed settlements or in one of five villages that together make up the community of Abu-Basmaa. The other half, around 70.000 Bedouins, lives in 46 villages in the Negev desert. A large portion of these villages are not recognized by the Israeli government and are therefore considered illegal.

The condition of these illegal Bedouin villages is miserable. Electricity and running water are insufficient or do not exist. The infrastructure and medical provisions are inadequate. Poverty, unemployment and juvenile delinquency are all higher than average. The mosques, community buildings, and houses of the Bedouin villages without advanced notice are demolished under the Building and Planning Law of 1965. The crops and fields of the villagers are also destroyed.

The Bedouins resist the move to the state planned settlements. The needs of the Bedouins have not been taken into account during the planning of these settlements. A move into the state planned settlements would mean that the semi-nomadic Bedouins must give up their traditional way of life as well as loose their original community structure.

Today, the Bedouins make up about 25 percent of the population in the Negev Desert, where they have only two percent of the land to live on in the view of the Israelis. The displacement from their traditional lands is a catastrophe for the semi-nomadic Bedouin people. The land is a very important recourse for them that is complexly interwoven into their culture and way of life.

The Society for Threatened Peoples supports the UN demand that all Bedouin villages should have their land rights and rights to basic services, especially water, recognized. The destruction and damage of crops and fields of the unrecognized villages should also be stopped. Please support our appeal to the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

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