Rights group urge Israel to repair school access road in Bedouin village

Israeli authorities are being urged to repair an “often impassable” school access road in a Bedouin village in the country’s southern Negev region.

According to legal rights group Adalah, the access road that leads to schools in the Bedouin village of Al-Fur’a is narrow, “pothole-riddled” and “often submerged during heavy winter rains”.

Adalah has now written to the Israeli Education Ministry, Al Qasoum Regional Council, national transport infrastructure company Netivei Israel, and the Bedouin Negev Development and Settlement Authority, demanding they repair the school access road and connect it to Highway 31.

Al-Fur’a, which was recognised by the Israeli state in 2006, has 6,000 residents, and “around 3,000 children from Al-Fur’a and neighbouring Bedouin communities attend kindergarten, elementary school, middle school, and high school in the village”.

Despite the fact that “the state committed in 2005 to repairing the access road”, today the schools remain “connected to Highway 31 only via a cracked and often impassable 600-meter long ‘agricultural track’ that is riddled with potholes”.

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“Connecting [the schools] to the highway interchange via an agricultural track does not satisfy the state’s commitments made before the Supreme Court,” wrote Adalah Attorney Myssana Morany in the letter, “which has already ruled that ‘agricultural tracks are not to be considered ‘statutory roads’, and are therefore not considered roads at all”.

“Village residents are reporting difficulties for vehicles – particularly school buses – when winter conditions create potholes in the track making it inaccessible. The track is also too narrow for two vehicles traveling in opposite directions to drive down at the same time. Further, during days of heavy rain, the track becomes entirely submerged and completely impassable.”

According to Adalah: “The current situation threatens students’ lives and violates their constitutional rights to dignity and equality, as well as their right to education, as enshrined in the Compulsory Education Law. It is clear to all that an agricultural track is not a safe way to get students to school and that an asphalt access road must be paved in accordance with the relevant standards.”