nightcrawler
FULL MEMBER
- Joined
- Sep 10, 2008
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Social Preys: Israel: No Place for Bedouin
- Today, the extremely difficult conditions prevalent in unrecognized Bedouin villages in the Negev is being used as an excuse to promote the urbanization of the Bedouin population. This effort comes despite the fact that the Bedouins have lived on their lands (considered state lands by the Israeli government) for generations, and despite the reality that the sub-par conditions in the townships mean that there is no real incentive for the Bedouins to leave their communities, despite being unrecognized.
- According to Ismael Abu Saad, the founder of the Bedouin Studies Center at Ben Gurion University of the Negev, after Israeli military rule was imposed on the entire Palestinian population that remained in the territory now known as Israel, the Bedouins of the Negev were deprived of the ability to travel with their herds and cultivate their lands.
- Over 60 years later, not much has changed. Indeed, in 2005, the Israeli government publicly stated its goal to strengthen Jewish settlement in the region and increase the population by 70 percent by 2015, up to 900,000 residents. As such, virtually every Jewish development project in the Negev whether for a kibbutz, agricultural village, individual farm, or city is immediately given basic services and infrastructure and encouraged to grow, while these same resources remain at unlivable levels in Bedouin communities.