Videos and photos of Israeli police violently suppressing Palestinian Bedouins in the Naqab have been flooding social media, as the campaign to #savethenaqab gained momentum amidst growing Israeli efforts to forcibly expel Palestinians from their lands.
Over the past week dozens of Palestinians in the Naqab (Negev Desert) in southern Israel have been injured and arrested, as Israeli police cracked down on protests against a forestation campaign by the Jewish National Fund (JNF) that is threatening the livelihood of Bedouin communities in the area.
The protests are focused in the al-Naqe area of the Naqab, a fertile area of land in the desert, which is home to around 30,000 Palestinians living in a cluster of several Bedouin villages.
Since December the JNF, a quasi-governmental agency that works to promote Jewish settlement in Palestine, has been razing Palestinian lands and uprooting trees belonging to Bedouin communities in the al-Naqe area, in order to prepare the area for forestation.
The JNF’s campaign in the Naqab, which is taking place under the full supervision and assistance of the Israeli police, has sparked widespread protests by the Palestinian Bedouin communities in the area, who say the forestation campaign is just another effort by the state to dispossess them from their land.
The protests have been met with violent suppression by Israeli forces. Videos and photos on social media have shown Israeli forces teargassing and violently detaining protesters, as well as demolishing tents in the area.
Middle East Eye reported that over the past few days, Isralei police have arrested at least 35 Palestinians from the Sa’awa andal-Atrash villages in the al-Naqe area. Al Jazeera reported that more than 80 Palestinians, including minors, have been detained since the protests began, with the “vast majority” still in detention.
Local media also reported Israeli police setting up checkpoints and blocking the entrances and exits to villages in the area in order to prevent people from attending the protests, which have swelled in recent days, and which have sparked solidarity protests in other Palestinian cities in Israel.
A history of violence & displacement
The Naqab makes up around half of Israel’s entire land mass, and is home to an estimated 300,000 Palestinian Bedouins who hold Israeli citizenship.
The Bedouins living in the Naqab today are the descendants of those who remained after an estimated 80,000-90,000 Bedouins were forced to flee the area during the Nakba in 1948.
Around half of the Bedouins living in the Naqab today reside in 40 “unrecognized” villages, which Israel refers to as “illegal clusters.” Despite the fact that many of the Bedouins are living on the ancestral homelands, while others were internally displaced after 1940, Israel views them as “trespassers” on their land and does not recognize their ownership over the land.
Due to their “unrecognized” status, Israel does not offer the Bedouins living in these communities any services and they are excluded from state planning. That means they have no local councils, are offered little-to-no government services in terms of education and sanitation, and are not connected to the electric grids or water networks.
As their communities and homes are considered “illegal”, these communities are also under constant threat of demolition, with Israel having destroyed some villages close to 200 times.
For decades the state has aimed to remove these communities from their homes and put them in planned residential areas, which rights groups say amounts to forcible transfer, a war crime under international law. All the while, Israel has invested billions of shekels to develop and promote Jewish settlement in the area.
The JNF: Colonialism disguised as environmentalism
Founded in 1901 as a non-governmental organization, the JNF was established to purchase land for European Jews to settle in Palestine, and eventually create and maintain a Jewish-majority state.
Historically, the early founders of the JNF advocated for the dispossession and expulsion of Palestinians from their land in order to create a Jewish state, and the destruction of Palestinian villages during the Nakba.
While the JNF touts itself as an environmental organization, most famous for its tree-planting initiatives in Israel, such initiatives are designed to cover up the ethnic cleansing of Palestine that took place in the year leading up to and after 1948, or in the case of the Naqab today, to actively dispossess Palestinian communities.
The areas where the JNF plants its forests — which are donated in large part by Jewish communities in the US and other countries — are often the sites of destroyed Palestinian villages, which organizations like the JNF aim to erase any existence of.
Today, the JNF owns an estimated 15% of all the land in Israel, and continues to promote racist, anti-Palestinian policies that result in the continued dispossession of Palestinians in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory.
In occupied East Jerusalem, the JNF has been tied to shadowy purchases of Palestinian homes which the organization then turns over to Israeli settler groups. In the West Bank purchases privately owned Palestinian land in Area C — where Palestinians are not allowed to build — for settlement expansion and construction.
Inside Israel itself, the group has worked with the Israeli government to make it nearly impossible for the country’s Palestinian citizens to gain access to state lands for residential, commercial and agricultural use. In the Negev desert, the group has advocated for the destruction of Palestinian Bedouin villages in order to plant trees as part of its “Ambassadors Forest” initiative.
All of the JNF’s activities in Israel and Palestine are subsidized by American taxpayers, as the organization is a registered 501(c)(3) charitable organization, and takes in millions of dollars a year in tax-deductible contributions and grants in the US.
1 of 2
https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-subhuman-is-harsh-but-how-else-would-you-call-settlers-crimes-1.10524252
“‘Subhuman’ Is Harsh, but How Else Would You Call Settlers’ Crimes?”
Gideon Levy, Haaretz. Jan. 8/22
“They’re the scum of the earth. Anyone who snatches a Palestinian teen, abuses him for hours, beats him and kicks him, ties him up under the car’s hood and then finally hangs him from a tree and burns the soles of his feet with a lighter is subhuman. How is it possible to say otherwise?
“Anyone who expels the legal owners of the land he stole by threatening to shoot them, destroys their gravestones, tramples their harvests into the dust, vandalizes their cars and torches their fields is subhuman. What else?
“Anyone who attacks elderly shepherds with sticks and stones is subhuman. Anyone who cuts down thousands of olive trees every year is subhuman. The Nazis used that term? Well, they also called tomatoes ‘tomatoes,’ yet we’re still allowed to use that word.
‘“Subhuman” is a harsh word, but it’s not uncommon. Just seven years ago, Haaretz columnist Yossi Verter used it to describe supporters of then-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. About them, incidentally, it’s permissible to say anything.
“But the outcry by the settlers and their abettors over Yair Golan’s use of the term also has a deliberate subtext that shouldn’t be overlooked. If ‘subhuman’ is a Nazi expression that was used against Jews during the Holocaust, then when someone uses it against settlers, they instantly become involuntary victims of another Holocaust. And if they’re victims, then of course they’re allowed to do anything – to abuse, steal and torch.
“Once again, the victimizers have become the victims, this time because a deputy minister said something nasty about them. This is another step forward in enhancing their image. First, they were pioneers; now, they are also victims. It’s heart-rending how sensitive they are to what others say about them.
“What was no less heart-rending was the way members of the center-left bloc distanced themselves from Golan’s statement as if they were fleeing a fire. It’s not nice to talk that way, Yair. The bloc that was silent in the face of rampages by the Jews who squatted in the evacuated settlement of Homesh stirred to life only when one of its own members got as angry as the entire bloc should have gotten and publicly called them what they deserve to be called.” (cont’d)
An ethical tradition betrayed.
Still using the Zionist narrative – “Israeli efforts to forcibly expel Palestinians from their lands”?
Tell it straight: “Israel efforts to ETHNICALLY-CLEANSE Palestinians from their lands
“Palestinian Bedouins who hold Israeli citizenship“
But Israel is not a state of all its citizens.
2 of 2
“The hypocritical teacher from the Labor Party, MK Efrat Rayten, demanded that Golan apologize. ‘Such comments are out of line,’ she declared pedagogically. Why are they out of line? Actually, they’re entirely justified, & then some.
“The culture minister said, incredibly, that the Homesh squatters are ‘Israelis with a different view’ – just like organized crime kingpin Yitzhak Abergil is an ‘Israeli with a different view.’ The defense minister said they are ‘moral people who love the land & the state.’
“So the Homesh settlers have already become moral, or at least citizens with different views. Who needs the right when we have a center-left like that? The settlers can rely on this left, even more than the right, to refrain from hurting them & always whitewash their actions.
“No less appalling is the political culture that has taken root in Israel, in which a comment by a single individual is food for scandal, with the result that scandal follows scandal, each lasting roughly the lifespan of a butterfly – a day or two – & then dying down as quickly as it erupted until a new one takes its place.
“These scandals generally revolve around someone who said something. Or more accurately, someone unimportant who said something unimportant. And they are meant not just to inflame the public, but also to divert its attention.
“When Israel is in an uproar over a single word said by a deputy minister, it’s evading the main issue. Golan said ‘subhuman,’ & a minute later, there was a consensus about Homesh. Instead of talking about its residents’ crimes, people are talking about Golan.
“Talking about the crimes would be divisive, whereas denouncing Golan is unifying. And what do we crave more than unifying words that bring us together & whitewash everything?
“The bottom line is depressing. An angry but accurate description of the settlers is a crime that will spark a public storm. In contrast, the settlers’ daily crimes are at most a performance by Israelis with a slightly different view.
“From now on, they’ll be saying ‘Homesh, now & forever,’ and the same goes for the Evyatar outpost. After all, they’re just communities of Israelis with slightly different views. And perhaps not even that.”