BADIL Site |
|
Displacement of Palestinian Bedouin ContinuesPoisoning Palestinian Bedouin Land in Abda Unrecognized Villages (E/08/03) BADIL Resource Center
Attached Press Release from: On 3 March 2003, the Israel Lands Administration (ILA), which controls most of the land inside Israel (including land expropriated from Palestinian refugees), destroyed more than 2000 dunums (500 acres) of crops belonging to residents of the unrecognized Bedouin village of Abda located in the Naqab (Negev). During the operation, toxic chemicals were sprayed on the crops, including land where men, women and children were working in their fields (See attached RCUV Press Release). This is the second time in a year that the ILA has used toxic chemicals to destroy Bedouin crops in the Naqab (See BADIL Press Release E/09/02). The destruction of the crops is another example of a consistent pattern of gross violations of the basic human right to property committed by the government of Israel against the indigenous Palestinian Bedouin community. In February 2003, officials from the Israeli Interior Ministry destroyed a mosque in the unrecognized Bedouin village of Tel al-Mileh based on claims that it was an unlicensed building. At the beginning of the year, the Israeli government revealed the budget (US$ 1.75 billion) and timeframe (5 years) for a plan to remove the remaining indigenous Palestinian Bedouin living in unrecognized villages from their land and concentrate them into three townships. The plan includes funds to restart a legal process, suspended in 1976, to settle all outstanding land claims. No Bedouin has ever won a land claim to any of the more than 3,000 lawsuits filed over the past several decades. It also includes funds for land confiscation, destruction of Bedouin crop land claimed by the government as ‘state land’, and the destruction of unlicensed buildings. (For details on the plan see RCUV Press Release 22/1/03). The Israeli government is also planning to construct 14 new Jewish colonies on land belonging to the Bedouin in order to increase the size of the Jewish population living in the Naqab. The indigenous Palestinian Bedouin inhabitants of the Naqab have been subjected to more than five decades of expulsion, internal transfer, land confiscation, and a policy of forced sedentarization. The Bedouin comprised approximately 13 percent of the total Palestinian refugee population in 1948. Today there are an estimated 650,000 Bedouin refugees (including their descendants) who were initially displaced in 1948. Many live in so-called unrecognized villages inside 1948 Palestine/Israel. Unrecognized villages do not receive any government services. A durable solution for Palestinian refugees must also permit Bedouin refugees and newly internally displaced Bedouins to return to their homes of origin and repossess their properties. ------------------ Attachment: Poisoning Palestinian Bedouins Land in Abda Unrecognized Village
The Regional Council for the Palestinian
Unrecognized Villages (RCUV) – Negev As part of the Israeli government’s policy of confiscating, uprooting and resettling the Bedouins into townships, a new measure [destruction of crop land with toxic chemicals] was introduced on February 15, 2002, against the residents of 10 unrecognized villages (with a population of 20,000 Israeli citizens).(1) On 3 March 2003, without prior warning, two airplanes belonging to the Israel Lands Administration (ILA), accompanied by a large number of police forces and Green “Black” Patrol members, sprayed toxic chemicals on houses and on more than 2,000 dunams (500 acres) of crops belonging to the residents of Abda, an unrecognized village in the Negev. Elderly people and children who were in the fields were also sprayed. The children started to panic, and suffered from trauma because they believed that war started and chemical weapons were used against them. Village residents immediately evacuated those children to the closest clinic at Mitzpah Ramon (a Jewish locality). The doctor refused to receive them until the Vice President of the Regional Council for the Unrecognized Villages of the Palestinian Bedouin in the Negev (RCUV) contacted the Ministry of Health and Kupat Holim. The RCUV sent an urgent letter to the Health Ministry requiring an official investigation in the matter. Labad Tasan, the head of Abda Local Committee said that the ILA sprayed the crops, the people, and even the animals were not saved. A Green Patrol officer aimed his gun at one farmer who tried to stop them from spraying his land. Labad added that spraying the crops created panic among the children. The children, who had just received gas masks, thought that the war had started in Iraq. Jaber Abu Kaff, the RCUV President who visited the children at the clinic said that spraying the crops with chemicals at Abda village was a barbarian, inhuman, and immorale act. He emphasized that the new Sharon government is proceeding with its plan to try to uproot the Bedouin from our father’s and grandfather’s land. “But we will stay in our land as long as we are alive and we urge all those people with a conscience to stand with us.” Background: Abda was ‘formally’ recognized by the Israeli government in 1992 after a 6-month sit-in, in front of the Knesset (the Israeli parliament). Despite formal recognition, Abda’s residents continue to lack municipal infrastructure, including water, electricity, access roads, health care, education, etc., like all other unrecognized villages. Formal recognition came as part of a government plan to attract tourists and transform the surrounding area, including the original village site of Abda, into a national park due to the presence of Nabatean ruins. Residents of Abda were expelled from the village and today live some 4 km from the village site.
------------------ (1) There are 45 unrecognized villages in the Negev (Naqab) with a total population of 70,000. For more information contact: The Regional Council for the Unrecognized Villages of the Palestinian Bedouin in the Negev (RCUV), PO Box 10002, Beer Sheva. Tel. 08-628-3043; Fax. 08-6283315; Email, mqupty@hotmail.com; or visit the RCUV website, http://www.arabhra.org/rcuv/index.htm. |