Briggs - Al-Zarnog and Beit El: A tale of two settlements

Ari Briggs..
Op-Ed Contributor/JPost..
09 June '12..

In the beginning of the twentieth century, a group of Zionist Jews acquired a parcel of land measuring around 65 hectare (26 acres) in the Negev, in the area of Moshav Nabatim, between Beersheba and Dimona. It was registered in the names of the purchasers in the Land Registry of the British Mandate, and after the establishment of the state, in the Israel Land Registry (Tabu). Over time, their successors' names were also registered.

However, even though the land was fully registered in the names of the legal owners in the land registry, the Beduin of the Abu Kwider tribe took control of the land and established an illegal settlement called Al-Zarnog. At various times the many landowners wrote to local authorities yet their pleas for help were ignored. Today this illegal settlement contains more than 350 solid structures, mostly homes, all of which were built illegally, on land privately owned by Jews.

There is no need to mention that throughout the years the authorities did not act to prevent the establishment of the settlement and definitely did not move to destroy its illegal buildings.

This week, Regavim, an Israeli not for profit organization dedicated to the protection of national land, turned to the minister of the interior and other relevant enforcement authorities, in the names of the landowners, to demand the evacuation of the illegal Beduin settlement and the return of the land to its true owners.

Frantzman - Incitement U: Confronting hate at Israel’s academy

Seth J. Frantzman..
Opinion Columnist/JPots..
07 June '12..

It is widely known that the topic of Israel is contentious on campuses throughout the world. Israel’s ambassador to the US, Michael Oren, was booed at the University of California in Irvine in 2010. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu had to cancel a speech at Concordia in Canada after riots in 2002. The symbols of the state get a worse welcome at many western universities than Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad got when he spoke at Columbia in 2007. Be that as it may, what is perhaps more shocking is the degree to which even academic discussions in Israel have become poisoned.

An international academic workshop began Monday, June 4, at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, under the rather mundane title “Social-Legal Perspectives on the Passage to Modernity In and Beyond the Middle East.”

The workshop consisted of a prestigious roundtable of some 40 scholars from diverse academic backgrounds at universities in Nantes, Princeton, Amsterdam and Cambridge, among others.

Along with colleagues Prof. Ruth Kark and Havatzelet Yahel, I was invited to co-present on the topic of “Negev Beduin Land Claims: Between Ottoman Land Laws and Indigenous Rights.” Our discussion examined whether the Beduin constitute an indigenous people in international law and how they came to be defined as indigenous.

After the initial short presentations were finished, questions and a roundtable discussion followed. It was obvious from the tone of the first comments that criticism of the assumptions underlying Beduin land claims to nearly 200,000 acres (some 80,000 hectares) in the Negev was simply not acceptable to most in the audience.

Amrousi - Israel's shadow government

Emily Amrousi..
Israel Hayom..
04 May '12..

Why is everyone making such a big deal over elections? The real government, Israel's shadow government, has never been elected. The elite that pulls the marionette strings, that in effect controls the State of Israel (its legal system, capital reserves, media, academia) will never stand the test of the ballot box. Once again this week they mocked the stupid average citizen. Israel's official democratic government asked the shadow government to delay the destruction of Ulpana Hill by three months. In response, the shadow government issued a petition by "senior jurists" describing the government's request as "decimating the rule of law" and as a "threat to democracy's future."

On the same day, 100 kilometers to the south of Ulpana Hill in the Negev, the rule of law is being decimated on a daily basis with nary a peep from a single "senior jurist." Since 1999, the Jewish National Fund has been planting trees in the northern Negev as part of a national forestation plan. The forestation project, under the auspices of the Environmental Protection Ministry, was funded by the Israel Lands Authority for the purpose of "preserving national land." In other words, forestation is the only way to protect state lands from Bedouin encroachment.

In the village of Al-Araqeeb, north of Beersheba, residents are in the habit of uprooting trees to make way for single-family homes. This destruction of forests and illegal seizure of land takes place with the enthusiastic support of the Higher Arab Monitoring Committee, and is cheered on by vocal radical leftists.

Stotsky - The Economist Misrepresents Bedouin Resettlement as Ethnic Cleansing

Steven Stotsky
CAMERA Media Analysis
14 November '11



http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=2&x_outlet=10&x_article=2147

The Economist is known for its unsympathetic portrayal of Israel. But its recent article "The Bedouin under Israeli rule have begun to campaign for their rights" (Nov. 5, 2011) goes beyond the usual slant and into the realm of propaganda by portraying the Israeli government's attempt to address the problem of housing a growing population on already densely populated territory while preserving limited open land as akin to ethnic cleansing.

Resettlement of Bedouin into modern cities can be a wrenching process. But the sense of loss of a traditional lifestyle must be balanced with the benefits derived from access to electricity, water and sewage systems and other accoutrements of modern living. In its zeal to condemn the Jewish state, the article fails to give adequate or fair consideration to the difficult choices confronting planners who must grapple with the demands of an expanding and modernizing population while preserving Israel's dwindling landscape. Instead The Economist reduces the issue to an Israeli land-grab scheme.

Israel has one of the highest population densities in the world and its population has doubled in 25 years. With a high birthrate, its population will grow by several million more in the next two decades. The Bedouin, traditional herders who reside in spread-out dwellings, have the highest rate of population increase of any group in Israel, several times higher than anything experienced in the United Kingdom or the rest of the West.

The Economist presents the Israeli government's resettlement of Bedouin into cities as part of a program driven purely by ethnic chauvinism. But Israeli planners have long been forced to contend with living space limitations foremost in their minds when constructing homes for the majority Jewish population in order to maintain adequate open space and agricultural land. The disruption of Bedouin lifestyle creates particular tension, but the state has an overriding responsibility to wisely plan for and accommodate its growing population.

Israel "Ethnically Cleansing" Bedouin Arabs?

The demolition of an unrecognized Bedouin settlement in the Negev attracts some foreign media looking to fit the story into their own one-sided agenda.


Honest Reporting
Media Critiques
28 July '10

It had all the elements that the foreign press in Israel could have hoped for - a mass eviction accompanied by the destruction of homes, a large Israeli police presence, the potential for confrontation and, even better, the fact that those being evicted belong to the Arab minority within Israel.

So it was that CNN, BBC, AFP and the LA Times saw fit to cover the demolition of an unauthorized Bedouin settlement in the Negev region. Indeed, irrespective of the rights or wrongs of the issue, such scenes are never pleasant and involve some level of human suffering. The foreign media, however, based on the quotes of non-governmental organizations, managed to portray a complex story in very black and white terms.

Writing in The Guardian's Comment is Free, notorious anti-Zionist academic Neve Gordon, not even bothering to address the wider context of the demolition, even went as far as to state that he

suddenly understood how far the state is ready to go to accomplish its objective of Judaising the Negev region; what I witnessed was, after all, an act of ethnic cleansing.

While the rest of the media did not sink to Gordon's level of vitriol, most of them certainly did nothing to dispel a one-sided narrative that portrays Israel as the usurper of Arab land. The status of the Bedouin in Israel is far more complex, as is this particular case of the demolished unrecognized village. As the Jerusalem Post explains:

(Read full critique)

If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.
.