The Israeli citizenship of the Negev Bedouin makes no difference to the bulldozers. As part of the one million Palestinians inside the Jewish state, the Bedouin risk the same home demolition policy that is devastating the lives of West Bankers and Gazans. While the situation for Palestinians gets increasingly worse in the 1967 occupied Palestinian territories, so does the situation for lesser-known sectors of the Arab population suffering from Israeli discrimination.

Former British businessman Nick Pretzlik made four visits to Palestine in the past year, and he doesn’t fit into your “student on year out” stereotype of an activist. According to his wife, Ursula, he describes himself as “a semi-retired business man [sic] and freelance journalist and [sic] who is so dismayed at the poor coverage of Palestine in the mainstream media that he has made several visits to the country to send back reports of what he finds.” Ursula, a child psychologist and university lecturer, is right behind her husband’s decision to travel, despite the dangers. She feverishly distributes his writing from her computer in the UK.

At the end of September, the Israeli newspaper Ma’ariv reported that a recent government plan has been made to increase demolition of homes of Palestinian citizens in Israel.

In a meeting of the Ministerial Committee for the Non-Jewish Sector which convened two weeks ago, the Prime Minister said that: ‘we are losing the land that we are not settling.’ Sharon even hit his hand on the desk and demanded that the ministers increase the momentum [to halt] the illegal building in the Arab sector.

Following this, two cabinet ministers decided to establish a bureau that is to implement home demolitions of so-called “illegal” buildings in the Arab sector.

...major sources in the government also mentioned that ‘every new building which will be built in the Arab sector will immediately be demolished, and then hundreds of buildings will also be demolished which were built on state land illegally [sic]. - Ma’ariv, September 29, 2003

The Bedouin of the Negev will be in the frontline to suffer from this increase. In previous visits, Nick had been in the West Bank and Gaza, but this time he also traveled to witness the brutal discrimination against the Bedouin of the Negev. Here follows his account of the destruction of homes and lives under the Naqab sun:

Fares stood with his family looking at the rubble of their home.

The first hint Fares Abu Mohamed and his wife had of the catastrophe about to befall them was the sudden roar of the massive bulldozer. That was at 9 o’clock this morning and their baby was still asleep in his cot. They were given 10 minutes to collect a few items and told to vacate the black tent and corrugated zinc shack that served as their makeshift home.

Fifteen minutes later Fares stood with his pregnant wife, his young son, his two sisters and his mother looking at the rubble of their home. Many of the family’s possessions were destroyed. There was no time to save the baby food, and the police and soldiers even refused Fares a few extra minutes to salvage his wife’s jewellery - her only personal possession. Instead, the soldiers yelled at him “Go to the West Bank!”

Of course the irony is that had Fares and his family already been in the West Bank, there would have been nothing unusual about the dawn demolition of their house. It happens there all the time. But Fares does not live in the West Bank. He lives in Wadi Al-Naim in Israel’s northern Negev and, like all Negev Bedouins, Fares and his family are Israeli citizens. They pay taxes and vote in national elections. Many Bedouins even serve in the Israeli Army.

So how can it be that Israeli citizens can have their home demolished by the authorities? Is such a thing possible? Unfortunately, the answer is yes. What makes it worse is that house demolitions are a regular occurrence. The explanation for them is simple: Fares and his fellow Bedouins are not Jews. They are Arabs, and thus, as Shmuel Rifman, chairperson of the Ramat HaNegev Regional Council, said on the occasion of Israel’s 55th Independence Day, “[The Israelis] came to this country to establish a Jewish state in the land of Israel. Ben Gurion did not intend to establish a Bedouin state.” He was echoing Moshe Dayan’s well-known statement of July 1963 that “[Israelis] must turn Bedouin into urban laborers. The Bedouin will no longer live on a land with his flocks, but will become an urbanite who comes home in the evening and puts on his slippers. The reality that is known as the Bedouin will disappear.” Dayan’s intention was to hand over Bedouin lands to Jewish settlers.

For the Bedouin of Israel, democracy is a myth, as it is for the rest of Israel’s non-Jewish population.

In 1965, two years after Moshe Dayan’s comments, the Building and Planning Law was passed in the Israeli Knesset, rendering Bedouin villages in the Negev, extant since Ottoman times, suddenly nonexistent, or - to use the official jargon - “unrecognized.” As a result, the 70,000 Bedouins like Fares and his family living on their traditional lands around Beer Sheva - and not yet herded into custom-built ghettos - are today seen as “illegal.” And they are likely to remain illegal. In spite of the brutal tactics employed by the police, the army and the so-called Green Patrol, which now include spraying crops with toxic chemicals - often dangerously close to schools and villages - the Bedouins remain steadfast. Fares’ house will be rebuilt by the community. He will not be becoming an “urbanite.” Not yet, anyway.

What does this say about Israeli democracy? Democracy is more than simply paying taxes and having the vote. It requires the state to ensure that every citizen enjoys equal rights and access to justice - something Arab citizens of Israel clearly do not enjoy. Until early 2002, out of 3,000 Bedouin cases brought before Israeli courts, not one had been decided in favor of the Bedouins. Not one! For the Bedouin of Israel, democracy is a myth, as it is for the rest of the 20+ percent of Israel’s population that is not Jewish.

Nick Pretzlik is a British freelance writer and semi-retired businessman who frequently travels to the Middle East and other Muslim countries. Pretzlik has been a strong supporter of Palestinian rights since the beginning of the first Intifada in 1987. You can reach him at upretzlik@yahoo.co.uk

Isabelle Humphries is conducting PhD research at St. Mary’s College, University of Surrey, on the situation for Palestinian refugees living inside the 1948 borders. She has worked for three years with Palestinian NGOs, and as a freelance writer, on both sides of the 1967 border. You can reach her at innazareth@yahoo.co.uk

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