| Publication |
2014.
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| Summary/Abstract |
On November 10th, 2013, the Israeli cabinet voted in a special session to authorize the demolition and removal of Umm al-Hiran, an "unauthorized," Palestinian Bedouin village in the Negev Desert, and to build in its place a new community for national Jews to be named Hiran, which had been planned and approved in early 2002. The stated reason for this demolition and forceful eviction is the lack of permits for the existing settlement, with Umm al-Hiran being one of a number of Palestinian Bedouin communities that were settled without permits and are currently subject to intense Israeli plans for removal. Umm al-Hiran itself was set-up in early 1956 by the Palestinian Abu-Alkian tribe after they had been forced to move from their ancestral tribal lands near Kibbutz Shoval in the Northern Negev.
A more critical development related to this event is the Israeli Parliament's passing of the first reading of the Prawer law. If the plan wins final approval, as it appears it will, it would cause the forceful displacement of 40,000-70,000 Arab Bedouins from the Negev, the confiscation of 800,000 dunams of Arab land, the razing to the ground of 36 or more Arab villages, and the dispossession of another generation of Palestinians. According to Adallah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, the "underlying premise of the draft bill is that there is no Bedouin land ownership," effectively negating the "population's right to property and historic affinity to the land." At the heart of this matter is the ongoing contestation of Palestinian land rights, with the Israeli government using its authority to define these policies to favor the Jewish population over the Arab. Thus, this bill, like others before it, "promotes the principle of segregation along the lines of ethnic affiliation and labeling."
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