Israel's strategy to Judaise the Negev

The Palestinian tragedy is most evident when examining the situation in the Negev Desert in the south of occupied Palestine. Israel is continuing to confiscate what is left of Arab lands through the demolition of houses, destruction of Arab villages and the arrest and targeted killing of Arab youth, such as what happened in Rahat a few days ago.

What has made the situation worse is the increasing number of racist statements of intent made and implemented by the Israeli government, all of which generally call for a comprehensive ethnic cleansing campaign against the Palestinian people by driving them out of their lands, especially those living in the Negev. In order to expedite this, successive Israeli governments since 1948 have denied Palestinian Negev residents of their fundamental human rights, from access to basic services to health care and education.

What is still more dangerous is what happened on Sunday, 18 January, when two Israeli officers killed two young Palestinian men in Rahat, the largest urban cluster in the Negev region with a population of 60,000 Arabs. Prior to this incident, Israeli forces used bulldozers to completely demolish the town of Al-Araqeeb for the umpteenth time. This was part of a broader Israeli strategy to eliminate the Arab presence in the region, which is why it is imperative to discuss Israel’s Judaisation of the Negev.

Geography and demographics

The Negev Desert makes up 50 per cent of historic Palestine and it covers around 27,000 square kilometres. The majority of the inhabitants are Palestinian Bedouins and the population has increased from 15,000 in 1948 to approximately 200,000 at of the beginning of 2015, making the Negev’s inhabitants 12.5 per cent of the total Arab population living inside what is now Israel. Since the state was established in 1948, the Israeli authorities have sought to use the territory across the Negev for military purposes and to create government and privately-owned ranches.

To aid them in this policy, at the beginning of the 1970s the authorities ordered Negev residents to register their lands at the Israel Land Registry. The government was well aware that at that time many Bedouin families in the Negev did not have the proper paperwork to prove their ownership of the land, especially in the areas surrounding Beer Sheva, which is the regional capital.

It is important to note that the Israeli courts had approved a declaration stating that many Palestinian Bedouins no longer had the right to the land upon which they and their forefathers had lived for generations. Israel’s land confiscation programme has been going on for more than 66 years. Various studies indicate that the state is claiming that the original area inhabited by Arabs did not exceed more than 240,000 acres out of the total 13.5 million acres. This, of course, is merely a ploy to justify Israel’s project for the Negev, which includes building military bases, airports and factories among other facilities. All of these tactics are part of its plan to Judaise the region; we cannot ignore the fact that Israel’s largest nuclear reactor is also located in the Negev.

Through demographic policies and court judgements, Israel has been able to expand its takeover of the Negev by prohibiting and restricting the urban expansion of its Arab population. The Israeli government has long been focusing its efforts on breaking the large demographic concentration of Arabs in the area and has also been forcibly uprooting the desert’s population at the same time.

Israel’s plan for the Negev includes relocating the Bedouin populations in three main areas: Dimona, Arad and Beer Sheva. Moreover, the government’s policies are also marginalising populations in approximately 70 villages by depriving them of healthcare, education and other social services.

The Prawer Plan

There are a number of studies being conducted in Israel that indicate that the state plans to appropriate Bedouin lands in the Negev for the establishment of facilities and farms in the desert meant exclusively for Jewish citizens. The government’s plans also include converting Arab villages into military zones and it is within this context that the village of Al-Araqeeb has been completely destroyed (and rebuilt by the townspeople) repeatedly. Furthermore, several Israeli media outlets have alluded to the government’s plans to confiscate more than 800,000 acres of Palestinian Bedouin land, thus depriving the inhabitants of their basic human rights and citizenship.

In its attempt to Judaise the remainder of the lands where its Arab citizens are concentrated, Israel has also implemented what has been termed the “Galilee development plan” as part of the Star of David development project for the year 2020. This entails the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians similar to the government’s plans for the Negev, which seeks to divide and isolate clusters of Arab land and villages from one another. The Prawer Plan, the alternative name for the “Bill on the Arrangement of Bedouin Settlement in the Negev”, seeks to relocate approximately 200,000 people in an area of 100,000 acres, that’s less than one per cent of the Negev.

Absentees

It was determined that the number of Palestinians who remained inside Israel post-1948 was 156,000. Soon afterwards, the Israeli government took control of the land and properties of Palestinian refugees by establishing the so-called Absentee Law on 20 March, 1950. At a stroke, many of the Palestinians living within the Green (1949 Armistice) Line, approximately 45,000 refugees, were regarded as “absentees”, according to UN reports. The majority of those who were driven out during the Nakba (Catastrophe) of 1948 were those who lived in villages in the northern Galilee. Those who are living as a minority within Israel are suffering due to racist and discriminatory policies, while those who were forcibly expelled are suffering due to their inability to return to their homes.

The Negev and the Jewish state

It was only a matter of time before all political parties inside Israel began to call for the Judaisation of the remainding Palestinian land and this is reflected clearly in the policies that are being implemented on the ground, which aim to increase settlement activity and obliterate the Palestinian presence in all parts of historic Palestine. Israel’s determination to achieve its goal can be seen in the decision to bulldoze villages in the Negev more than 80 times after they have been rebuilt by the owners. They have used many names to justify their Judaisation project, which aims to swallow the remaining Bedouin villages whole.

Now more than ever, the deteriorating situation for Arabs living inside Israel is no longer sustainable and it is imperative that we work to shed light on the forces working against them. While it is interesting that the number of Palestinian citizens of Israel make up more than 20 per cent of the population, they are being pushed into areas that make up less than two per cent of their historic homeland. These realities expose the seriousness of Israeli policies and confirm that Israel is presenting the Palestinians with a very dangerous fait accompli indeed.

Translated from Al-Araby Al-Jadid, 27 January, 2015

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.