Negev Coexistence Forum for Civil Equality
פורום דו-קיום בנגב לשוויון אזרחי
منتدى التعايش السلمي في النقب من أجل المساواة المدنية

Update from Negev Coexistence Forum

18.05.2012

• British Ambassador learns about NCF, visits Al Arakib
• NCF statement at UN Forum on indigenous issues
• NCF Report Racism

British Ambassador learns about NCF, visits Al Arakib

The British Ambassador to Israel, Matthew Gould, spent time with NCF Secretariat members Khalil Al-Amour and Avner Ben-Amos, and NCF Executive Director Haia Noach, on May 16. The NCF team helped Ambassador Gould learn more about the issues affecting the Negev, and about NCF’s ongoing and dedicated work with local communities.

NCF also helped organize a meeting between Gould and the residents of the unrecognized Bedouin village of Al Arakib.

“For a village to be destroyed 37 times, and rebuilt 38 times, says a lot about the determination of the authorities, but even more about your determination,” Gould told Al Arakib leader Sheikh Sayyah Al-Touri, during their meeting in the village.

“I haven’t heard of a village being demolished 37 times anywhere else in the world,” Sheikh Al-Touri explained. “Every week, I get a new indictment filed against me, and I’m accused of invading the land,” he added, before showing the Ambassador the Ottoman era deeds his family holds to the land upon which they were sitting.

 

 

Dr. Awad Abu Freih, head of the Al Arakib village committee, said: “Israel made us illegal people. We are non-violent people. We just watched them demolish our homes.” Bedouin lawyer Shacdeh Ibn Bari also spoke: “The problem is not the court. The problems are the laws,” he said. “It’s about how to stop this factory, this way of producing, every day, new laws against the Arabs in Israel.”

The residents of Al Arakib are still living under the threat of JNF forestation, which can happen at any time. JNF bulldozers were seen preparing Al Arakib lands for planting trees as recently as May 7. If you can, please join the morning shifts in the village and protest against the JNF-KKL works in Al-Arakib!

Contact in the village: Aziz: 050-781-4906 | Transportation from Be’er Sheva: Michal 050-939-1299 | Tel Aviv: Ya’acov 050-573-3276 | Jerusalem: Moriel 054-315-7781

 

NCF Statement at UN Forum on Indigenous Issues

This week, Mansour Nsasra read a statement on behalf of the Negev Coexistence Forum (NCF) during the 11th Session of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous issues in New York. Nsasra’s statement focused on Israel’s intensified efforts to displace the indigenous Bedouin from their ancestral land, and in particular, to the government’s recently passed Prawer-Amidror Plan, which would displace 30,000 Bedouin citizens from their homes and villages throughout the Negev.

Nsasra explained how the Prawer-Amidror Plan violates the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, including most notably Article 10, which states that, “indigenous peoples shall not be forcibly removed from their lands or territories” and that “no relocation shall take place without the free, prior and informed consent of the indigenous peoples concerned.”

He urged the Panel and the international community at large to intervene in order to prevent the Israeli government from implementing the Prawer-Amidror Plan, which will only further dispossess the Bedouin of the Negev, undermine the delicate social fabric of the area and inflame Arab-Jewish relations.

Nsasra also met with James Anaya, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, on Thursday, May 17, to further discuss the situation of Bedouin displacement in the Negev.

To read the full statement, click here.

 

NCF Racism Report

For the third consecutive year, NCF has published a report dealing with structural discrimination against Arabs living in the Negev on the occasion of the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.

In light of government claims that moving the Bedouin population to permanent towns will benefit them and enable them to enjoy a higher level of services, this year’s report, titled “Availability and Accessibility of Government, Commercial, Public and Health Services in Arab Villages and Structural Discrimination Against Arab Employees in Government Offices in the Negev,” focused upon services that are being offered in Bedouin towns.

“The reality that exists in the recognized towns, as presented in the State Comptroller’s report, proves that the policy of urbanization was not implemented for purposes of development, providing better services, or modernization, but rather by a desire to increase control over the Bedouin population and to ensure that reserves of land in the Negev would remain free for the purpose of future Jewish settlement,” the report states.

To read the full report, click here.