Israel: End Systematic Bias Against Bedouin

Stop Demolishing Homes, Remedy Discriminatory Land Allocation

(Jerusalem, March 31, 2008) � Israel should declare an immediate moratorium on demolitions of Bedouin homes and create an independent commission to investigate pervasive land and housing discrimination against its Bedouin citizens in the Negev, Human Rights Watch said in a new report released today.

Human Rights Watch based its findings on interviews conducted in 13 unrecognized Bedouin villages and three government-planned Bedouin townships in the Negev. It interviewed dozens of Bedouin residents, as well as activists, community organizations, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), academics, and lawyers in Israel. Human Rights Watch submitted a detailed letter to the government in 2007 with preliminary findings and questions, and incorporated relevant information from the Ministry of Justice�s response into the report.

�Israeli policies have put the Bedouin in a lose-lose situation,� said Joe Stork, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. �The state has forced them off the land they claimed as their own and into illegal shanty towns, cut off from basic necessities like water and electricity.�

Israel has demolished thousands of Negev Bedouin homes since the 1970s, and hundreds in 2007 alone. Authorities say that 45,000 existing Bedouin homes in approximately 39 �unrecognized� villages were built illegally and thus potential targets for demolition. Israeli officials contend that they are simply enforcing zoning and building codes. But Human Rights Watch found that officials systematically demolish Bedouin homes while often overlooking or retroactively legalizing unlawful construction by Jewish citizens.

While the Bedouin suffer an acute need for adequate housing and for new (or recognized) residential communities, the state instead is developing new homes and communities for Jewish citizens even though some of the more than 100 existing Jewish communities in the Negev sit half-empty. In theory, any citizen can apply to live in these Negev communities, but in practice selection committees screen applicants and accept people based on undefined notions of �suitability� that systematically exclude Bedouin.

�Israel is willing and able to build new Negev towns for Jewish Israelis seeking a rural way of life, but not for the people who have lived and worked this land for generations,� Stork said. �This is grossly unfair.�

Israeli officials insist that Bedouin can relocate to seven existing government-planned townships or a handful of newly recognized villages. Human Rights Watch found that the government-planned townships constitute seven of the eight poorest communities in Israel and are ill-equipped to handle any influx of residents. Most Bedouin reject the idea of relocating to the townships, with their deplorable infrastructure, high crime rates, scarce job opportunities, and insufficient land for traditional livelihoods such as herding and grazing. In addition, the state requires Bedouin who move to the townships to renounce their ancestral land claims � unthinkable for most Bedouin who have claims to land passed down from parent to child over generations.

The state controls 93 percent of the land in Israel, and a government agency, the Israel Land Administration (ILA), manages and allocates this land. No Israeli law requires the ILA to ensure fair and just distribution of land. Almost half its governing body are members of the Jewish National Fund, which has an explicit mandate to develop land for Jewish use only. Today, the Bedouin community comprises 25 percent of the population of the northern Negev, but controls less than 2 percent of the land there.

Authorities have allocated large tracts of land and public funds for family ranches or farms. The state connects these farms to national electric and water grids despite the fact that some lack proper planning permits and retroactively legalizes them rather than demolish them.