Sectarian tensions on the rise in Nazareth By Jonathan Cook

A mayoral election held last month in Nazareth, the effective capital of Israel’s large Palestinian minority, has sent shockwaves through the city.

Ramez Jeraisi, the incumbent for the Communist-backed Democratic Front, was heavily defeated, ending the party’s near 40 years of continuous rule.

The result, however, marked more than a change of mayor. Despite efforts by the two candidates to focus on local policy, ugly undercurrents of sectarianism swirled around the campaign.

The defeated long-time mayor is Christian, while the winner, Ali Salam, Jeraisi’s deputy for many years before running as an independent, is Muslim.

Social media quickly became a battleground. Some of Salam’s supporters accused the Democratic Front under Jeraisi of becoming little more than a protector of Christian privilege, while Salam’s detractors accused him of riding a wave of Islamic chauvinism.

The fault lines in Nazareth are even more complex than for much of the rest of the Palestinian minority, which comprises a fifth of Israel’s population. Although the city has the largest concentration of Christians in Israel and serves thousands more in surrounding villages, it also has a two-thirds Muslim majority.

The rise in sectarian sentiment, most local analysts agree, can be understood only in the context of a wider political climate being fomented by the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

In recent months, the Israeli right have unveiled plans to create for the first time separate Christian and Muslim national identities, bestowing different rights on each group. Even more controversially, Netanyahu has personally backed a campaign to encourage Christians, but not Muslims, to serve in the Israeli army.

“Israel is making a renewed effort to fragment Palestinian society,” said Haneen Zoubi, a Palestinian member of the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, who ran for the post of Nazareth mayor in the first, inconclusive election in October.

“It understands that our Palestinian identity has strengthened over the past decade and is doing everything it can to weaken us as a community.”

Netanyahu has trumpeted an early success, claiming that the number of Christians volunteering to join the military, though still small, is rapidly rising.

According to Zoubi, Netanyahu is using the issue of army service as a way to quietly implement the policy of his far-right foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, whose campaign slogan “No citizenship without loyalty” suggested that the minority’s citizenship should be conditional.

“Netanyahu is effectively creating a loyalty test – serving in the army – that is required only of Christians. The implication is that Muslims are, by definition, disloyal,” Zoubi said.

Some 80% of the Palestinian minority in Israel are Muslim, compared to just 10% who are Christian, with a similar proportion Druze.

Druze leaders were persuaded to agree to a draft of their community in the state’s early years. But both Muslim and Christian leaders have adamantly opposed conscription, arguing that they should not be expected to oppress their Palestinian kin in the occupied territories.

The current tensions in Nazareth, said Mohammed Zeidan, director of the local Human Rights Association, have their origin in events in the late 1990s, when the Israeli government backed plans to build a large mosque next to the city’s landmark church, the Basilica of the Annunciation.

Zeidan said it was no coincidence that government meddling, then as now, was presided over by Netanyahu. In his first term as prime minister, Netanyahu appointed two ministerial committees that approved the mosque plan, culminating in street fights between Christians and Muslims.

On this occasion, however, most Christian and Muslim leaders have hurried to try to extinguish the sectarian flames.

Riah Abu el-Assal, the former Anglican bishop of Jerusalem and a resident of Nazareth, said: “The government thinks it can set Christians and Muslims against each other but this time it won’t work.” He and several other prominent Christians backed Salam’s campaign for mayor.

Confounding his critics, Salam has sought to reassure Christians. One of his first measures last month was to declare as a citywide holiday for Annunciation Day – marked on March 25 by local Christians as the anniversary of the angel Gabriel’s supposed announcement to Mary that she was carrying the son of God.

Salam has also accepted a proposal from Abu el-Assal to rename a neighbourhood the “Virgin Mary Quarter”.

However, Nadim Nashef, director of Baladna, a Palestinian youth movement in Israel, feared that these moves would also serve to fuel religious differences. “We desperately need leaders who can rise above this kind of sectarian politics,” he said.

In late February the Knesset passed the first law that explicitly distinguishes between the rights of Christian Palestinians and their Muslim compatriots in Israel. It provides Christians with separate representation in the national employment advisory council.

Although a minor measure in itself, the law is seen by its authors as a prelude to much more significant legislation separating the two religious communities.

Yariv Levin, who drafted the law and is a leading member of Netanyahu’s Likud party, has said the next bill will create an official Christian “nationality”, separate from the traditional Arab one Israel has ascribed to both religious groups.

Levin has made no secret of his motives. In a recent interview, he said the new law was meant to “connect us [the Jewish majority] and the Christians”, adding: “They’re our natural allies, a counterweight to the Muslims who want to destroy the country from within.”

Nashef said the Israeli right wing had seen a chance, in the wake of the regional turmoil created by the Arab Spring, to exploit Christian fears of their vulnerability as a religious minority.

Such fears have persuaded a small number of Christians that they would be better off throwing in their lot with the Jewish majority, said Basel Ghattas, a Palestinian Christian Knesset member.

Netanyahu has been emboldened in his efforts to recruit Christians to the military since winning backing from a prominent Nazareth priest.

Jibril Nadaf, from the Greek Orthodox community, the largest Christian denomination in Israel, has become spiritual leader to a newly established Forum for Christian Recruitment, led by a handful of Christian families that have a tradition of volunteering for the military.

Shadi Halul, a lieutenant in the Israeli paratrooper reserves and spokesman for the forum, said: “We are part of Israel and it is important that we keep our country strong, especially when our brothers are being persecuted and slaughtered only a short distance away [in Syria].”

Halul added that Christian leaders in Israel had lived too long in fear of Muslims. It was time for Christians to “live freely, rediscover our identity and history, and be able to a teach Aramaic”, the ancient language of the region, in a school system separate from Muslims.

The forum has found allies in Im Tirtzu, a Jewish youth organisation that was recently described by a district court judge as having “fascistic” elements.

Im Tirtzu has been reticent to divulge its funding sources. But investigations by the Israeli media reveal that in the past it has received substantial sums from a Christian Zionist organisation in the United States, as well as from a close political ally of Netanyahu’s.

Azmi Hakim, the outgoing head of Nazareth’s Orthodox Council, the political leadership of the Greek Orthodox community, said that Nadaf and his movement did not represent a meaningful trend. He noted that only “a few dozen” attended a demonstration last month outside the European Union embassy in Tel Aviv appealing for European intervention in the region to help Christians.

“The government wants to build up this group to make them look important,” he said. “The danger is that we as a community believe the spin and relations between Christians and Muslims deteriorate as a result.”

Ghattas wrote to the Pope in February urging him to help end what he called Israel’s “divide-and-conquer policy” during his scheduled visit to Israel next month.

He said: “Israel wants to use army service to undermine the unity of our community and create strife.”

Such fears were heightened by a special Christmas message from Netanyahu in which, according to some observers, he appeared to favour the formation of a Christian militia. He said the forum would “grant protection to supporters of enlistment and to the conscripts themselves from threats and violence directed at them.”

Netanyahu added that anyone acting against the enlistment drive would be “severely judged”.

Hakim said he had been called in for an interrogation by the Shin Bet, Israel’s intelligence service, after publicly criticising Nadaf. Hakim is due in court in May after Nadaf launched legal proceedings against him for defamation and harassment. Hakim said he and the council were each facing demands for $170,000 damages.

Haneen Zoubi, the Knesset member, ascribed Jeraisi’s defeat to a failure by the Democratic Front to modernise Nazareth over the past 20 years. “It was easier for some in the party to run a negative campaign and spread scare stories. Now with Ali Salam as mayor, there is a chance to demonstrate that those fears are illusionary.” More

 

© 2014

Bedouin rise up against Israel eviction plan

Rahat, Israel - Those passing by Al Araqib may call it a shanty town, but to Sheikh Siah Altori it is a home he says he is prepared to die for.

After a reported 62 separate demolitions by state authorities, the remains of the Bedouin community, off the road from Rahat to Be'er Sheva, consists of several portable buildings, and a clutch of shacks and animal pens clinging to a hillside in the north of Israel's Negev Desert.

Portions of the village's lands have been designated to be planted with a state-sponsored forest. Al Araqib is one of the Bedouin communities known as an "unrecognised village", which receive no state services such as electricity, water or sanitation. As many as 200,000 Bedouin live in the Negev, an area comprising 60 percent of Israel's territory. Under a government proposal known as the Prawer-Begin Plan, $340m has been allocated for land and monetary compensation to move up to 40,000 of the Bedouin into state-sponsored townships.

On Saturday, thousands of demonstrators gathered in more than 30 cilties - in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories as well as in other countries - to protest the Prawer-Begin Plan.

At Hura, a town in the northern Negev, more than 500 protesters gathered peacefully until youth began throwing stones and police used water cannon, horses and stun grenades to disperse the demonstration. Clashes continued throughout the night as the highway from Be'er Sheva to the Dead Sea was blocked with burning barricades and scores of young people throwing stones and Molotov cocktails.

Earlier, Bedouin were joined by busloads of supporters to voice opposition to the Begin-Prawer Plan. While the Israeli government maintains that the policy will ensure its Bedouin population receive access to basic services and economic opportunities, critics see the plan as an attempt to displace and threaten an indigenous way of life.

Refusing to leave

Although many people have left Al Araqib over the years due to the demolitions, those remaining are adamant on staying.

Sheikh Siah, along with family and supporters, has maintained the protest tent since his release from prison on Thursday. He was arrested after rebuilding his tent following its demolition on November 20, and was released on condition that he would not return to Al Araqib.

"My grandfather was born in Al Araqib, my father was born there and I was born there - and so were my children," the now-elderly sheikh said from his protest tent outside the Rahat police station. "I am staying in Al Araqib - alive or dead. It is better to live with dignity than to leave. We are Arabs, Palestinians, Bedouins and Israeli citizens. If the State of Israel likes it or not, we are going to stay."

I don't believe this government gives justice.

- Sheikh Siah, Bedouin activist

A court will rule on his case in early December and if unsuccessful, Sheikh Siah said he would pursue other legal actions. "I believe in the justice of the courts - if not in Israel than in international courts - but I don't believe this government gives justice," he said."We need a normal village at Al Araqib and to have agricultural opportunities."

In July, Navi Pillay, the United Nations Commissioner for Human Rights, expressed concern that the Prawer-Begin plan might threaten Bedouin culture. "If this bill becomes law, it will accelerate the demolition of entire Bedouin communities, forcing them to give up their homes, denying them their rights to land ownership, and decimating their traditional cultural and social life in the name of development," she said at the time.

Amos Gvirtz, one of the many Jewish Israelis supporting the Bedouin at Hura's demonstration, described the plans as "racist" and said the majority of Israelis did not understand the issues facing the Negev's Bedouins. "It's like a wall we have to break through," he said."A lot of people don't even know about the Bedouins' issues.Removing people from their villages is removing their human rights and we are legalising the theft of their land."

Khalil Alamour, a Bedouin from Al Sira, whose community is subject to demolition orders, said he hoped his village would receive official state recognition. "We want recognition and to stay in our village in order to maintain our culture, lifestyle and the link with our land," he said."Seven generations of our family have lived in the same place since the Ottoman times, and it is only the Israeli government that is narrowing the space we have."

One the protest organisers, Amir Abokweder, said he was proud at the mobilisation of supporters across Israel, the West Bank and Gaza Strip. "It gives a sense of justification to receive this support and confidence for us to continue the struggle to halt the process," he said.

Abokweder, from the unrecognised village of Al Zarnoug, added that violent acts at the demonstration was a result of people feeling disenfranchised. "People behaved in this way because they feel like nobody is listening to them," he said.

Gradual recognition?

Ami Tesler, deputy head of the Headquarters of the Economic and Community Development of the Negev Bedouin, the Israeli government office responsible for implementing the Prawer-Begin Plan, said in one month the government would present a map recognising 17 of the unrecognised villages and reveal the sites for at least 10 new villages.

The new villages will be planned with the Bedouin and will have places for sheep and access to agriculture but with roads, electricity and water.

- Ami Tesler, Headquarters of the Economic and Community Development of the Negev Bedouin

"What we are trying to do - as quickly as possible - is build two or three successful villages to be a model for success," he said. "The new villages will be planned with the Bedouin and will have places for sheep and access to agriculture but with roads, electricity and water."

Economic development is the major focus of the policy, according to Tesler. "The goal of all of it is to bring the Bedouin, in 20-30 years from now, to a better future," he said."Education is the most important part of it and will enable them to find work and live a modern life."

He recognised that mistakes had been made in the past when planning Bedouin villages, but he expressed confidence that the new plan would balance the needs of the communities and the state. "If they are large concentrations we realise we can't move them, so we will make them normal villages," he added."The idea is to give fair compensation in land and money."

Following Saturday's protests, which included additional clashes in Haifa and Jerusalem, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a statement saying the government would not tolerate such disturbances.

"Attempts by a loud and violent minority to deny a better future to a large and broad population are grave," the statement read. "We will continue to advance the law for a better future for all residents of the Negev."

 

When I look at the Prawer Plan, I see another Nakba’

+972 speaks with Suhad Bishara, of Adalah – The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, about the challenges of fighting for Palestinian rights in Israel and deciding when not to take legal action in Israeli courts – if doing so would undermine the Palestinian narrative

Bedouin woman looks over remains of her home

When looking at Israel’s Prawer-Begin Plan to evict tens of thousands of Bedouin in order to free land for Jewish development, attorney Suhad Bishara sees a second Nakba coming.

Bishara, 42, is Adalah’s acting executive director and the organization’s director of land and planning rights. Originally from Tarshiha, a village in the northern Galilee near the Lebanese border, Bishara has lived in Haifa since she graduated with a bachelors of law from Hebrew University, and has worked with Adalah since receiving a masters of law from New York University in 2001.

These days, she and Adalah are focusing their efforts on stopping the Prawer-Begin Plan. Sitting down with +972 in her Haifa office last week, Bishara discussed the intricacies of running a Palestinian human rights organization in Israel, and how in each case she must weigh how taking it to court might inadvertently undermine Palestinian rights.

This interview is one in a series of profiles on difference makers in the Israeli and Palestinian human rights community (edited for length). Click here to read parts one and two.

Are the land and planning rights of Arabs in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories more or less protected today compared to 2001 when you joined Adalah?

Generally speaking, they’re less protected. On one level, the Supreme Court has set precedents that disallow land restitution for Palestinian citizens of Israel whose lands were confiscated in the 1950s and 1960s, and were not used for the public purposes of the confiscation. There are also laws that restrict the right of restitution, restrict planning and development rights of Arab communities and procedures that limit the accessibility of land distributed by the state to its Palestinian citizens. Also, there’s master planning, which restricts the development of Palestinian towns and villages on a large-scale, and the massive attempts to displace tens of thousands of Palestinians in the northern Naqab (Negev).

(Click here for +972′s full coverage of the Prawer-Begin Plan)

In regards to land rights, what case concerns you most right now?

It’s basically the Prawer-Begin bill, which the Knesset is trying to enact in the next few months. It aims to evict dozens of Palestinian Bedouin villages in the Naqab, which has about 70,000 citizens, in order to “free” the land for the development of Israeli state interests, either to bring Jewish citizens to the area or develop it for industry or the army. More

 

Israel's indigenous invaders

Israel justifies the immanent relocation of thousands of Palestinian Bedouin by characterizing them as invaders.

Bedouins 'Invader' Camp

On June 24th the "Prawer Plan for the Arrangement of Bedouin-Palestinian Settlement in the Negev" passed its first reading in the Israeli parliament. If implemented, the Plan will constitute "the largest single act of forced displacement of Arab citizens of Israel since the 1950s", expelling an estimated forty thousand Palestinian Bedouin from their current dwellings.

The Plan’s ultimate objective is to Judaize the Israeli Negev. In order to do this, however, seventy thousand (out of 200,000) Bedouin who currently live in villages classified as ‘unrecognised’ by the Israeli government must be moved.The government already forbids them from connecting to the electricity grid or the water and sewage systems.

Construction regulations are also harshly enforced, and in 2011 alone about a thousand Bedouin homes and animal pens - usually referred to by the government as mere "structures" - were demolished. There are no paved roads, and signposts from main roads to the villages are removed by government authorities. The villages are not shown on maps, since as a matter of official geography, the places inhabited by these second-class citizens of Israel do not exist.

This transformation of the indigenous into an invader or a "Palestinian settler"... is key to understanding not only the Prawer Plan, but also the very logic of the State of Israel

The government has, for years, argued that because these people live in small villages scattered across a relatively large area, it cannot provide them with basic services and therefore its objective has been to concentrate them in a few townships.

Consequently, in 2009 Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu appointed his planning policy chief, Ehud Prawer, to liberate the "Jewish land". Prawer’s main task was to relocate these seventy thousand Bedouin who have refused to sign over their property rights to the State and have continued living in their "unrecognised villages".

The logic informing the plan is actually best expressed inThere is a Solution, a 2010 report published by a settler NGO called Regavim (The National Land Protection Trust), which has been working in conjunction with several government agencies. The report maintains that the Negev’s Bedouin inhabitants "rob" the Jewish people "of the Land of Israel…ever so quietly, without the roar of battle and clamour of war."

"On this battlefield", the organisation continues, cement mixers have replaced tanks, ploughs replace cannons and innocent-looking civilians replace uniformed soldiers.... Acre after acre, house after house, buying, squatting, illegally cultivating the soil that is not theirs, sometimes with guile, other times with violence, with huge sums of money and firmly backed by anti-Zionist organisations in Israel and abroad - Israel is losing its hold on the Jewish people’s lands.

Regavim further maintainsthat Israel has until now "offered the Bedouins ‘carrots’ - but never a ‘stick’", claiming that through their "criminal activity" these Beduin are colonizing the land and thus threatening to "put an end to the Jewish future of the Southern region".

Citing Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion’s famous declaration that "The Negev is the test of the nation in Israel", Regavim offers a four stage solution to counter this threat, which includes curbing "illegal Bedouin construction", preparing the population for removal, evacuatingall the "illegal populations", and then transferring them to legal settlements.

Finally, the government must prepare for "the day after" and not allow "matters to return to their original state"."Original state" refers to the existing situation, which in Regavim’s view is characterised by the invasion of Jewish space by Palestinian "illegal populations". According to this narrative, space is, by definition, Jewish and therefore non-Jewish presence is a form of contamination - and the stake of Ben-Gurion’s test.

This is precisely the reasoning behind Prawer’s stick and the way the Palestinian Bedouin have been depicted and treated in the public sphere for years. Responding to a petition submitted to the High Court of Justice against the evacuation of Bedouin villages near the southern town of Arad, the town’sdeputy mayor told journaliststhat the claims of the "insolent invaders" are "disingenuous".

Bedouins accuse Israel of planning new town

Numerous articles have used the term invader when describing Bedouin activity in southern Israel, while a popularnews website notesthat the Bedouin have begun invading the country’s central region. Even in aHa’aretz opinion piece, which supported the High Court of Justice’s rulingagainst the government practice of spraying poison on "illegal Bedouin agricultural fields", the author refers to the Bedouin population using the term invader.

This transformation of the indigenous into an invader or a "Palestinian settler" - to borrow thephrase recently used by Deputy Defense Minister Danny Danon- is key to understanding not only the Prawer Plan, but also the very logic of the State of Israel. In a context in which Palestinianshave been systematically alienated and elided from history and geography, the constitution of the Palestinian native as an illegal subject or foreign invader serves as the condition of possibility for "Judiazing" the land. More

 

Israel's ethnic cleansing of the Naqab underscores meaning of 'Jewish State'

Recent figures estimate the Arab population in the Naqab to be just over 200,000. Their fate has been no less tragic than the rest of the Palestinian people. Faced with an unrelenting campaign of ethnic cleansing and Judaisation, their struggle today is to exercise the universal human right to own and live on their land.

Araqeeb village

However, Israel's incumbent government, like its predecessors, is prepared to do whatever it takes to deny this right to a section of its population. A few days ago, Tel Aviv issued an order for the demolition of the only mosque in al Fir'ah village. Built in 1985, it has since been used daily by locals. Yet, after 28 years, the Israelis have suddenly discovered that the mosque was built without the proper license.

Elsewhere in the Naqab, the Bedouin village of Araqeeb was demolished for the 50th time on Thursday 9th May. Every time the bulldozers complete their fiendish work, the defiant residents pick up the pieces and rebuild their modest homes. Their story is symbolic of the Palestinian people – indomitable. Other villages under constant threat with similar measures are Arab Al Naeem, Taweel Abu Jarool and Um Ateer.

UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, called on Israel to withdraw the Prawer plan; "which would legalize the ongoing policy of home demolitions and forced displacement of the indigenous Bedouin communities."

The Naqab stretches over an area of 12 million dunums (1 dunum = 1,000m), approximately one-third of the total area of historic Palestine. Since 1948, Israel has resorted to every trick in the book in order to seize control of this land. It tried a combination of hard and soft power, all to no avail. Neither force nor the denial of basic services such as water, electricity, health care and education has worked.

In September 2011, the government approved the plan drawn up by the former Deputy Chair of the National Security Council, Ehud Prawer; now named after him. This was after 18 different drafts were presented. Since its approval it was amended twice by the Netanyahu government. There are, at present, calls for a third amendment to further reduce the area of land that should remain with locals.

In March 2012 the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, called on Israel to withdraw the Prawer plan; "which would legalize the ongoing policy of home demolitions and forced displacement of the indigenous Bedouin communities."

Later that same year, the European Parliament adopted a similar resolution condemning Israel's home demolitions in the Naqab. It called for the recognition of Bedouin villages and demanded the withdrawal of the government's Prawer plan.

"We condemn the ongoing house demolitions and lack of due process suffered by the Bedouin in the Negev-Naqab. The Israeli government's Prawer Plan should be withdrawn as it would further institutionalise discrimination against these communities."

While the current policies are consistent with the long-standing Israeli strategy of 'more land less people', it does have an equally important military dimension. The Naqab has always been and will continue to be strategically important for the Israelis because of its proximity to Egypt. In strict military terms Israelis regard it as the first line of defence for the southern front. For the Palestinian people, it is one of the last strongholds of resistance against annihilation.

However much the Prawer plan and its attendant policies may promise social housing, compensation and financial grants, they do not disguise Israel's real aim, which is to seize the land, displace the Bedouin population and supplant them with Jewish settlers.

By pursuing this toxic policy of ethnic cleansing in the Naqab, Israel has unwittingly exposed what it really means by a 'Jewish State' – a state where non-Jews will remain 'unrecognized' without legal rights. Already denounced as 'racist' by the UN, it would only generate support for the threatened Bedouins. The continuation of this travesty makes it all the more imperative to reject any call for the recognition of Israel as a 'Jewish' state. That would be a blueprint to 'transfer' and complete the final chapter of the Palestinian Nakba. More

 

‘Prawer Plan’ to uproot Bedouins shows folly of the phrase ‘democratic Israel’

Peter Beinart’s pro-settlement boycott article in the New York Times has rightly been critiqued from the left for ignoring the fact that “Israel is only a ‘genuine democracy’ for its Jewish citizens,” as Adam Horowitz put it. A close look at the Israeli government’s Prawer Plan, which calls for the forced relocation of tens of thousands of citizens of Israel, further shows why the notion of a “democratic Israel” is a farce.

Beinart’s NYT Op-Ed constantly mentions “democratic Israel,” or variations on the phrase, to distinguish between the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and “Israel proper.” But how do the Bedouin citizens of Israel targeted for forced relocation fit into this “democratic Israel”? The answer is they don’t.

The Prawer Plan, recently okayed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office, calls for the uprooting of 30,000 Bedouin citizens living in the Negev. The Israeli government wants to move these citizens to “recognized” communities set up by the state. Part of the plan is to build new, Jewish-only settlements on the formerly Bedouin land, where generations of Bedouins have been living, longer than the State of Israel has existed. The Bedouin communities are not happy with the plan, but the Israeli government is offering them money and support for infrastructure to convince them to move.

It sounds like a typical story in the occupied West Bank (minus the incentives to move), but this is happening on the Israeli side of the ever-fading Green Line. And the people Israel wants to uproot are citizens. More