Former President Jimmy Carter speaks about Israel

 

Demolition in the desert: Israel destroys Bedouin village for 54th time

Israeli authorities destroyed the Bedouin village of Al-Araqib for the 54th time in the last three years on Thursday, as the country struggles to relocate Bedouins in the Negev desert to specially built towns.

Forces arrived at Al-Araqib carrying arms and batons as bulldozers tore down homes, resident Aziz al-Turi told Palistinain news agency Ma’an.

Another resident, Maher Abu Qreinat, said that homes and other structures were pulled down in the Negev village of Abu Qreinat on the same day.

The Israeli government approved the Prawer-Begin Bill in January, calling for the relocation 30,000-40,000 Bedouins and the demolition of about 40 villages which the Jewish state considers to be illegal.

The bill was approved by the country’s parliament, the Knesset, during its first reading in June. Two additional votes are expected to take place.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu previously said that the move would “put an end to the spread of illegal building by Negev Bedouin and lead to the better integration of the Bedouin into Israeli society.”

The Bedouins refuse to be relocated, saying they purchased their land in the Negev desert before the establishment of the state of Israel. However, they say the agreements were verbal ones – and there is no way to prove their ownership of the territory.

Amnesty International called on Israel to stop “demolitions of Arab Bedouin homes” after Israeli forces performed a previous raid on Al-Araqib in July.

"The Israeli government's Prawer-Begin plan would lead to the forced eviction of tens of thousands of Arab Bedouin citizens of Israel,” Philip Luther, director of Amnesty International's Middle East and North Africa Program, said. “The plan is inherently discriminatory, flies in the face of Israel's international obligations and cannot be accepted in any circumstances."

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay also slammed the bill in July, urging Israel to reconsider its plans to relocate the Bedouin to officially recognized towns such as Rahat, Khura, and Ksayfe.

"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," he said.

There are around 210,000 Bedouins in Israel, most of whom live in and around the Negev desert in the southern part of the country. More than half of them reside in unrecognized villages which lack basic infrastructure. Many Bedouins also live in extreme poverty.

The Israeli government said it would grant legal status “as much as possible” to the currently unrecognized Negev villages if they meet minimum population criteria – but those requirements were never revealed. 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

 

Are They Mad? Village Destruction? US Guilty of War Crimes

Broadwell Defended Petraeus’ Village Destruction Policy

Petraeus

WASHINGTON, Nov 15 2012 (IPS) - Paula Broadwell, whose affair with Gen. David Petraeus brought his career to a sudden end last week, had sought to help defend his decision in 2010 to allow village destruction in Afghanistan that not only violated his own previous guidance but the international laws of war.


The new Petraeus policy guidance allowed the destruction of villages in three districts of Kandahar province if the population did not tell U.S. forces where homemade bombs were hidden.But her efforts had the opposite effect.

In early January 2010, Broadwell went to visit the Combined Task Force I-320th in Kandahar to write a story justifying the decision to destroy the village of Tarok Kaloche and much of three other villages in its area of operations.

Ironically, it was Broadwell who introduced the complete razing of the village of Tarok Kalache in in Kandahar’s Arghandab Valley in October 2010 to the blogosphere. Dramatic photographs of the village before and after it was razed, which she had obtained from U.S. military sources, were published with her article in the military blog Best Defense Jan. 13, 2011.

The pictures and her article brought a highly critical response from blogger Joshua Foust, who is a specialist on Afghanistan.

Tarok Kalache was only one of many villages destroyed or nearly destroyed in an October 2010 offensive by U.S. forces in three districts of Kandahar Province, because the heavy concentrations of IEDs had made clearing the village by conventional forces too costly.

In the late summer and early fall, commanders in those districts had been ordered to clear the villages of Taliban presence, but they had taken heavy casualties from IEDs planted in and around the villages.

As commander of Combined Task Force I-320th, Lt. Col. David Flynn was responsible for several villages in the Arghandab valley, including Tarok Kalache.

Flynn told Spencer Ackerman of the Danger Room blog in early February 2011 that, once he felt he had the necessary intelligence on IEDs in Tarok Kalache, he had adopted a plan to destroy the village, first with mine clearing charges, which destroyed everything within a swath 100 yards long and wide enough for a tank, then with aerial bombing. More