Two people were killed and several others were hospitalized on Wednesday after a predawn demolition raid into the Bedouin village of Umm al-Hiran in the Negev region erupted into clashes, as Israeli forces used sponge-tipped bullets, tear gas, and stun grenades to violently suppress locals and supporters who had gathered to resist the demolitions. A Palestinian citizen of Israel was shot dead by Israeli forces after he allegedly carried out a car ramming attack on Israeli officers, leaving several injured, according to Israeli police. However, numerous eyewitness accounts said that the driver lost control of his vehicle after he was shot, causing him to crash into Israeli police, one of whom was killed. Locals identified the slain Palestinian citizen of Israel as 47-year-old Yaqoub Moussa Abu al-Qian, a math teacher at al-Salam High School in the nearby town of Hura. Israeli police later confirmed that a policeman succumbed to injuries he sustained by being hit by the car. The slain...

BEERSHEBA (Ma'an) -- A relative of a Palestinian Bedouin citizen of Israel allegedly being held in the Gaza Strip said no Israeli officials have contacted their family in regards to the disappearance. The 28-year-old from al-Sayed village near Houra in the Negev went missing on April 20 and is believed by relatives to be held in Gaza. It is unknown if the 28-year-old is one of the two Israelis who are reportedly being held captive in the Gaza Strip, including one detained by Hamas after crossing into the territory last year. Reports from Israel's Ministry of Defense confirming that two Israeli men are currently being held in Gaza said Thursday that information on the unidentified Palestinian citizen of Israel was still under a gag order. more

NEGEV, (PIC)-- A general strike took place on Sunday in the Palestinian Bedouin town Tel Assabea (Tel Sheva) in the Negev in protest at the Israeli police failure to curb rampant violence and crime in Arab towns. The general strike, which was called for by the local council and political forces in the town, was intended, in particular, to protest the recent killing of 32-year-old Tayseer Abu Ghanem. Abu Ghanem was killed by anonymous gunmen as he was along with friends on Friday night in a coffee shop in the town. Others, including a child, were also wounded in the attack. more

For a second time in two days, Israeli forces on Thursday morning tore down a protest tent camp which Palestinian popular resistance activists rebuilt in the E1 area. Bawwabat al-Quds (the Gate to Jerusalem) was first set up on Tuesday evening and Israeli forces destroyed it on Wednesday morning. Defiant resistance activists then rebuilt the main tent in the camp on Wednesday evening. Local sources told Ma'an Thursday that Israeli troops stormed the camp at 2 a.m. Thursday after all activists left and tore down the tent. The sources said that the Israelis confiscated the tent and all properties they found in the camp. The "Gate to Jerusalem" was set up in the Khilet al-Rahib area east of Abu Dis near the main Ramallah-Bethlehem road in protest against Israeli settler encroachment on Palestinian lands east of Jerusalem. The protesters were outraged at an Israeli plan revealed last year which called for the forced expulsion of tens of thousands of Palestinian Bedoui...

A Palestinian Bedouin man was killed late Sunday during the funeral for another man shot dead last week by Israeli forces in southern Israel. Sami Ibrahim Zayadna, 45, died after inhaling tear gas fired by Israeli police at mourners in the Bedouin city of Rahat. Over 40 other people were injured during the clashes, including Rahat mayor Talal al-Qureinawi and Raed Salah, head of the Islamic Movement. Twenty-two people were treated at Soroka hospital in Beersheba, with three sustaining serious injuries. The clashes began after Israeli police entered the cemetery as mourners were burying Sami al-Jaar, 22, who was shot dead last week while standing on the patio of his home during clashes between police and local youths in the neighborhood. Israeli police entered the funeral ceremony, despite an agreement with Rahat municipality to stay clear of the area, and fired plastic bullets and tear gas at mourners as Raed Salah was delivering a eulogy. "The funeral has become a battle f...

The rock band Pink Floyd has provided the theme song to High Hopes, a short new film on Israel’s discrimination against Palestinian Bedouins. Directed by Guy Davidi of Five Broken Cameras, the film focuses on the displaced Bedouin of villages around Jerusalem, detailing how in some cases, they have been forced to live in garbage dumps. High Hopes follows the success of Nowhere Left to Go, another film by the Jahalin Association, a group defending the rights of Bedouins from the Jahalin tribe. As one activist depicted at a protest against evictions says during High Hopes, “I am not crying for the Bedouins any more, I am crying for the people who have lost their humanity.” Meanwhile Israeli soldiers insist on their “right” to enforce “dozens of eviction orders” against Bedouins who were first made refugees in 1948. Both of the Jahalin Association’s films have Pink Floyd connections. High Hopes shares its title with the final track from the British band’s 1994 album The Division Bel...

Israeli forces raided a number of Bedouin communities east of Jerusalem on Thursday days after handing them demolition and evacuation orders, a local activist said. Popular committee spokesman Hani Halabiya told Ma'an that dozens of Israeli soldiers entered the Bedouin communities escorted by a bulldozer while an Israeli military plane circled above. He added that the bulldozer demolished the walls surrounding homes and land in the Khillet al-Qamar area in Abu Dis without warning. Halabiya warned that the demolitions in Khillet al-Qamar were part of Israel's larger plan to "displace" the 14,000 Bedouins living in nearly two dozen communities across the West Bank. more

Israel is planning to forcibly transfer thousands of Palestinian Bedouins from their West Bank communities into a designated township to free up land for settlement expansion. Local and international groups are urging world leaders to pressure Israel to stop this violation of Palestinian rights. The Israeli government publicized, last week, six plans to move Palestinian Bedouins out of their communities around Jericho, Ramallah, and Jerusalem. The plans include moving Bedouins out of the politically sensitive area referred to as the Jerusalem Periphery or “E1,” where Israel has long-intended to demolish 23 Bedouin villages in order to expand and link settlements. Settlement expansion in this area would cut the West Bank in two, further disrupting movement and social and economic ties between major Palestinian cities and limiting the little access Palestinians in the West Bank have to Jerusalem. All of the Palestinian Bedouin communities slated for transfer are located in Area C, the...

Israeli former minister, Benny Begin, announced Thursday that the Prawer Plan, which aims to seize the Bedouin land and destroy 48 unrecognized villages in the Negev, will be scrapped. Begin, who worked on the bill with Ehud Prawer, head of policy planning in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office, said in a press conference that Israeli prime minister accepted his advice to delay bringing the Bill on the issue of the Bedouin in the Negev to a Knesset vote, The Times of Israel reported. The Prawer Plan called for Israel to officially recognize and register the vast majority of Bedouin villages throughout the south, and compensate the residents of 35 unrecognized villages — some 30,000 to 40,000 people — who are to be moved into towns built for them, the newspaper added. more

Phil Weiss talks to Hajj al-Ahmed, 61, in the Bedouin village of Umm al-Hiran in the Negev desert. Under Israel’s new plan for developing the Negev, this small village is to be removed and its people relocated to a reservation-like city. And a community of Jewish Israeli settlers is poised to take over the sheikh’s village. Weiss asks, “Has Israel made the desert bloom?” Hajj al-Ahmed responds: Israel has promised roads and water to his people for more than 40 years and never provided it, while giving ample services to Jews. more

Monday at dawn [September 30 2013] Israeli soldiers declared Khirbit Makhoul area, in the West Bank’s Northern Plains, a closed military zone. The Bedouin village was destroyed for the third time on September 19. Head of the Wadi Al-Maleh Village council, in the Jordan Valley, Aref Daraghma, stated that the soldiers declared the village a closed military zone after surrounding it. He told the Palestinian News & Info Agency (WAFA) that dozens of soldiers were deployed around the devastated village in an attempt to prevent residents, international activists, and journalists from reaching it. Ongoing Displacement Israel does not recognize dozens of small villages, Bedouin tribes, in the Northern Plains areas of the West Bank, and near occupied East Jerusalem, as well as near Hebron and other areas. With no services, no recognition from the occupation, those villages have been repeatedly demolished, and removed, and the residents are frequently displaced due to Israel’s ongoing ...

NEGEV (Ma’an) – Hundreds of Palestinian residents of Israel rallied Thursday afternoon against Israel’s Prawer Plan which could displace thousands of Bedouin residents of the Negev from their land. The protestors gathered near al-Arakib village where Israeli forces have demolished tents and tin-roofed houses more than 50 times. A Ma’an reporter in the Negev said Israeli police deployed heavily in the area trying to prevent demonstrators from reaching the main road. Protestors chanted slogans against “the racist plan” as they waved Palestinian flags. The reporter added that hundreds of displaced Bedouins started to return to their villages early Thursday morning. Former Arab member of Knesset Talab al-Sani said Israeli police behaved in a provocative way and prevented demonstrators from accessing the village. Solidarity activists, locals and internationals, have helped residents of al-Arakib rebuild their tents and movable houses every time Israeli forces demolished the v...

We call on international solidarity activists to organize demonstrations on 1 August in their own cities, and to spread awareness of the biggest impending ethnic cleansing campaign against Palestinians by Israel since 1948 through writing petitions, sharing information on the Naqab and Prawer Plan, or by any other show of activism. On Monday, July 15, thousands of Palestinians protested in their cities, towns and at busy street junctions against the Prawer Plan, in a day that was designated as the national day of rage, or Anger Strike. From Bir Sabe to Jerusalem, West Bank to the Galilee, Haifa to Gaza, Palestinians demonstrated against the Prawer Plan which passed its first reading in the Knesset last month. The Plan aims to * confiscate 800,000 dunums of land in the Naqab desert * expel over 50,000 Palestinian Bedouins * demolish 35 unrecognized villages * confine 30% of Palestinian Bedouins in the Naqab to 1% of the land Stay updated on Twitter and Facebook through the...

With the European Union’s recent decision to stop subsidies to any Israeli projects in the occupied West Bank, a lot of media attention has once again been focused on Israeli settlements there. What has attracted much less international attention is an Israeli plan to force tens of thousands of Palestinian Bedouins out of their homes in the southern Naqab (Negev) region, land that most countries recognize as part of present-day Israel. This video report from The Real News Network provides essential background, noting that some 200,000 Bedouins live in the Naqab, about half of them in so-called “unrecognized villages” that have existed since before the Israeli state was founded. more

BEERSHEBA, Israel (AFP) -- Israeli police said they detained 15 Bedouin as hundreds of the tribesmen and women marched Monday in the city of Beersheba to protest a government plan to resettle them. The Higher Arab Monitoring Committee, which represents Arab communities in Israel, had called for a day of "angry strikes" including demonstrations in 15 cities to denounce the plan. Police spokeswoman Luba Samri said about 800 people took part in the main demonstration in Beersheba, while Arab Israeli MP Jamal Zahalka said more than 1,000 attended. "We called for a peaceful protest in which more than 1,000 people took part but the police used force. They tried to beat a girl with clubs but when I tried to protect her they beat me up as well," Zahalka told AFP. more

Seventy prominent Canadian writers, including Michael Ondaatje (The English Patient), Yann Martel (Life of Pi), Lorna Crozier, and Lisa Moore (Open), wrote an open letter to Canadian and Israeli officials urging Israel to cease its plans to evict Palestinians in the South Hebron Hills, and to reject the Begin-Prawer Plan that would forcibly relocate 20,000-70,000 Bedouins from their homes in the Negev. Israel has designated the land of the South Hebron Hills as a military firing zone, and says that the native Palestinians must be evicted because the area will be an unsafe and unsuitable place to inhabit. International law, however, dictates that Israel’s annexation of land in the West Bank is illegal, and Canadian writer Yann Martel asked “if you’re going to have a firing zone, why don’t you have it on your own land, not in occupied land?” According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OCHAOPT), Israel has...

By Rosa Andersson and Amina Simonsson (International Solidarity Movement) The Jordan valley is a fertile are ideal for agricultural production. When Israel took control of the West Bank, it immediately took hold of water resources and began to target Palestinian communities and empty them from the Jordan Valley. The villages left are isolated from each other not only by distance but by Israeli checkpoints, closed military zones, and other restrictions on movement. The Israeli military performs military training in proximity to many communities, putting them at constant risk. The illegal occupation of water resources has made water access an urgent problem. The United Nations declares water a basic human right. The World Health Organization has declared that each individual need access to 100 litres of water per day, but Palestinians use on average between 50 to 70 litres per day. Many Palestinians in the Jordan Valley however, receive as little as 10-20 litres per day. This is a figur...

A stench of rubbish wafts over the Palestinian town of As Sawahira from the al-Abdali dump. The vast tip sprawls over an excavated hillside on the outskirts of the town and receives a constant stream of trucks carrying waste from nearby Jerusalem. Israeli authorities are proposing to relocate 2,300 Bedouins from the surrounding hills to this site as part of their push to resolve "the Bedouin problem". Simultaneously, plans are proceeding through the Israeli parliament this month to move a further 90,000 Bedouin from their ancestral land in the Negev desert in Israel's south to government-planned townships. The Israeli administration argues that a move to purpose-built communities will lift the indigenous population from unacceptable depths of poverty. Across Israeli-controlled territory, Bedouin communities argue that their culture, along with centuries-old ties to land, is being swept aside to make way for Jewish expansion. Around 250 Bedouins from the Jahalin group alre...

Nowhere Left to Go: The Jahalin Bedouin, a new short documentary, can now be watched in its entirety on YouTube. In the film, Jahalin Bedouin community members explain how the Israeli government plans to forcibly displace them yet again — the community was originally displaced to the periphery of Jerusalem from their historic lands in the Naqab (Negev) desert during the 1948 ethnic cleansing of Palestine. The film, a project of the Jahalin Association, is narrated by celebrated author and human rights activist Alice Walker. The Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters contributes a performance of “We Shall Overcome” to the soundtrack, with instrumental music by The Dubliners and South Sinai Bedouin musicians. more

Ha’aretz has reported today that a steering committee in Israel’s Prime Minister’s Office has approved “a five-year economic development plan for Israeli Bedouin”. This is another step along the road to the implementation of the Prawer recommendations, which are presented as a “development plan” for the “improvement of living conditions” for all citizens of the Negev – but with the mass expulsion of the Bedouin Palestinian citizens at the heart of the proposal. The exact number of ‘unrecognised villages’ to be destroyed is unclear. While a commonly cited estimate for the anticipated number of displaced is 30,000, an advisor to Shimon Peres told US officials in 2005 that the “development of the Negev” would mean “relocation of some 65,000 Bedouin living in unrecognized villages” (which, taking into account natural population growth, is roughly the total number of Bedouin citizens living in all unrecognized villages). The person that Netanyahu’s government has appointed as “chief of sta...