Israel saying it will ‘Develop the Negev’ is a ruse

The Israeli government postponed its vote on approving a plan said to develop Arab towns in the Negev desert on Sunday. This is due to objections by cabinet ministers Yoav Galant and Yariv Levin, who have demanded the addition of clauses regarding the project’s implementation and combatting unlicensed construction.

It seems that it is difficult for the government to make decisions that may be promoted or misconstrued by Israelis as being in favour of Arab citizens without somehow appealing to the expanding right wing. This is being done by increasing the rubble of demolished Arab homes, as it is the only way the right wing would be “okay” with Israeli officials providing services to Arab citizens.

The Palestinians, particularly the people in the Negev, have over the years developed a hypersensitivity to any plan with the term “development”. They accompany this not only with doubts, expressed by the people of the Negev towards the recently proposed plan, but also with bitterness due to what they have suffered under the pretext of “development and urbanisation”.  Various ministries that have sought to Judaise areas in the Negev, such as the Galilee region, and erase its history and geography have all called for the “development” of the Negev and Galilee.

Colonial projects have consumed land throughout the world under the pretext of bringing civilisation and the salvation of primitive people from their ignorance. In the eyes of the Zionist movement, the Negev was the most appropriate place to achieve this unique humanitarian work. According to them, the Negev is a barren desert destined to flourish and prosper at the hands of the “saviours”. Israeli historians have focused their study of the struggle in the Negev on a reading in which they consider the Bedouin’s problems to be a result of a struggle between modernisation and transformation from the Bedouin life to city life, and the accompanying social and economic problems. They ignored the reality of colonial settlement in the Negev in particular.

However, do the “development” plans seem naïve and good intentioned, or do they hide a policy aiming to dominate the geographic area and the creation of a “good” Arab citizen? Is the plan working to fragment the Arab community, highlight sub-identities, and remove the nomadic aspect of a lifestyle that carries distinctive cultural characteristics and replacing it with an identity that does not match the Arab identity, then putting this culture into museums bearing the names of Israelis who came to preserve this culture from extinction? Are these acts innocent and naive? The answer is absolutely not.

One of the first so-called “economic development” projects was the establishment of the seven Arab towns in the Negev by means of forced urbanisation and the imposition of planning patterns that suit the policy of concentrating the Arabs of the Negev in one area and confiscating their land, but clash with nomadic life. The project also tried to eliminate nomadism by making the Bedouins a cheap source of labour and depriving them from their traditional practice of agriculture, especially grain planting, which the Negev was known for before the Nakba in 1948.

More than four decades have passed and we are able to assess and review the experience of the seven towns and conclude that they have failed miserably in achieving development, if that was the actual desired objective. The Arab towns in the Negev are considered the poorest and all of them are classified at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder, according to the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics. These towns suffer from high unemployment rates, overpopulation, lack of building plots and are now surrounded by illegal Israeli settlements, camps and forests. These towns also failed to build any shared affiliations and instead live like tribes that coincidentally share the same geographic area, which dictated the political and social life for the generations that followed.

The main reason behind this failure is the unspoken aim of concentrating all of the Arab population in the Negev, and the imposition of urban planning patterns that do not match the needs of the people and their economic resources. Bedouin life is one of the clearest examples of harmony and cohesion with one’s geographical area. Bedouins see the wide-open space, the plains and the valleys as their homes, and are not concerned with barriers and walls. This is the deep connection that Israel worked to amputate by means of various legislations and measures in order to create a space confined by four walls.

Even if, for the sake of argument, we accepted the claims that these plans aim for economic development, an in-depth look would reveal, as did the state comptroller’s report, that only about one-third of the budget allocated for the “plan to support economic growth and development of the Bedouin population in the Negev” in accordance with the Israeli government’s own Resolution 3708, was actually used. The remaining funds were returned to the ministries.

The Ministry of Social Welfare, for example, used only a fifth of the budget allocated for the construction of mobile buildings in the Arab towns, while the Ministry of Health used 57 per cent of the budget allocated for the establishment of mother and child clinics and only a third of the budget allocated for planning and housing was used.

On the other hand, the bodies and committees that did use the full budget allocated to them for “development” were tasked with the destruction of Bedouin homes, prosecuting activists and spreading fear and panic amongst the peaceful citizens. In coordination with Resolution 3708, a special police unit equipped with the most advanced weaponry and gear was established. Its only task and goal was to demolish Arab homes, under the pretext of asserting the rule of the law. The Israeli Ministry of Public Security refuses to reveal the size of the budget allocated to the Yoav police unit, on claims of preserving state security. However, preliminary estimates confirm that the annual budget is over tens of millions of dollars for a unit made up of less than 400 employees.

While I mentioned earlier that the obstacles do not lie in the details and clauses, but rather in the hidden goals and intentions, the most problematic aspects of the plan discussed by the government on Sunday are revealed in tasking the so-called Bedouin Development Authority to supervise and implement the plan. This body is opposed to the Arab Bedouins, demolishes their homes and vandalises their property.

In addition to this, providing the budgets on the conditions of submitting and complying with the government’s policies, including the absorption of the unrecognised villages into the recognised towns is explicit exploitation and blackmail. Moreover, excluding the unrecognised villages from this decision and plan is a clear indicator of the government’s intention to crackdown on the people of these villages in order to force them to leave.

There is no doubt that the Negev is in need of large-scale investment and growth projects. However, using these projects and investments to impose the Israeli authority’s orders and exploit local Arabs in the Negev is rejected on every level.

Ultimately, we are talking about budgets allocated for the economic development plan for the Arab community. This plan is surrounded by doubt and discussions, and it will not bring about real change as long as the government continues to refuse to recognise Arab villages and deprive them of services.

Translated from Arab48, 17 January, 2017

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