PALESTINIAN Arab and Bedouin residents in the Negev announced Sunday that they would be rallying against a legislative proposal to be put before the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, that would see the dismantling of ‘unrecognised’ villages and the forced displacement of residents.
The Al-Naqab Association for Land and Human Beings said all residents were being urged to join this Thursday’s protest, which includes a general strike, organised by the Higher Guidance Committee of the Arab Residents in the Negev.
Protestors are set to rally in front of government offices in Beersheba at 10am on Thursday, starting at the municipal market.
‘Joining this rally, the general strike and demonstration is everybody’s duty because it is about the future of Arabs in Negev. If the public do not act now, it will be too late,’ said Atiyeh al-Assam, the mayor of the regional council of ‘unrecognised’ Arab villages.
The proposal, known as the Prawer Plan, would see the forced displacement of thousands of Negev residents living in what Israel calls ‘unrecognised villages’ to predefined areas approved by the government and the razing of their homes.
The Prawer Plan was scheduled to go before the Knesset yesterday, but the hearing has been postponed until further notice, the Association of Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) said.
ACRI and Adalah, the legal centre for Arab minority rights in Israel, formally submitted their reservations to the Plan in April 2012.
At the time, ACRI attorney Rawia Aburabia described the proposal as ‘a farce.’
‘A democratic state cannot pass a law of discrimination, one that violates human rights and continues to harm a minority that has suffered from neglect and discrimination dating back to the founding of the State,’ a joint statement read.
In May, Israeli authorities demolished the al-Arakib village in the Negev for the 50th time, just days after an Israeli government committee approved a draft bill on the Arrangement of Bedouin Settlement in the Negev. The draft bill sets a framework to implement the evacuation of ‘unrecognised’ villages, most of which existed before the state of Israel.
More than half of the approximately 160,000 Negev Bedouins reside in ‘unrecognised’ villages. Israel does not recognise 35 of the 46 Bedouin towns and villages in the Negev.
Meanwhile a Palestinian Authority official said on Sunday that Israeli construction companies have been forging documents to transfer land to Israel for the construction of settlements in the northern West Bank district of Salfit.
Twenty five cases were discovered, of which five involved land in the Palestinian village of Marda in the Salfit district, said Mohammad Elias, who heads the Settlement and Wall file for the PA.
Speaking at a meeting held with lawyers from the Qarawat Bani Hassan village in the district, where some of the fraudulent ownership documents were also found, Elias said the PA was working with ‘all possible legal tools’ to continue uncovering similar deals.
‘The PA looks for possibilities to resist the Israeli company’s attempts to control and confiscate land,’ Elias said.
The discovery follows revelations last Thursday that a plan to build a new interchange between Jerusalem and the West Bank settlement of Maale Adumim was expected to be approved by an Israeli planning committee.
The Palestine Liberation Organisation has said that Israel’s settlement construction poses the main obstacles to peace talks, as the US attempts to revive long-stalled negotiations.
President Mahmud Abbas has repeatedly called off talks in the last years, citing Israel’s settlement expansion across the West Bank and East Jerusalem as the cause.
Last Tuesday, chief PLO negotiator Saeb Erekat told reporters that ‘halting settlement activities is an obligation, not a condition. We want two states on 1967 borders. The US position has always been two states on those borders with minor modifications.’
According to UN statistics, since 1967, Israel has established about 150 settlements (residential and others) in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, in addition to some 100 outposts erected by settlers without official authorisation.
Three new settlements were approved in 2012 by retroactively ‘authorising’ such outposts.
l New Palestinian prime minister Dr Rami al-Hamdallah, has expressed his gratitude to President Mahmud Abbas for the high level of confidence he had in him in forming the new government, as well as in his colleagues in the ministerial cabinet.
He said that the government’s first meeting will take place on the morning of Tuesday, 11 June, as usual.
Following Friday prayers, Al-Hamdallah thanked Dr Salam Fayyad, the former prime minister, and his colleagues in the former government for their efforts.
He said that in the upcoming period, the economy will be a priority of the new government.
Regarding President Abbas’s unlimited support for the new government, Al-Hamdallah said that ‘this support requires that we, as a government, exert more effort and work as one team to serve the Palestinian people in all spheres.’
Regarding the Gaza Strip and the future of the political situation, Al-Hamdallah said that his government will strive to bridge political points of view between Fatah and Hamas.
He said that in August there will be a breakthrough in the Palestinian domestic crises experienced in the Palestinian street and added that ‘the Gaza Strip is a cherished part (of Palestine), as well as East Jerusalem and the West Bank.’
Meanwhile, Hamdallah has appointed Dr Anwar Abu-Ayshah Minister of Culture following a wave of protests led by youngsters who have accused the new Palestinian premier of ‘marginalising’ the Hebron governorate.
On Saturday Abu-Ayshah confirmed the report, adding that he was on his way to the presidential compound to be sworn in.
Abu-Ayshah is a member of Hebron municipality and chairman of the Hebron-France Association for Cultural Exchange. He also teaches law at Al-Quds University and has earned his PhD from a French university.
A number of youths had held protests in Hebron on Saturday against Al-Hamdallah, called on him to step down, and criticised him for not including representatives from Hebron in the new government ‘even though it is the largest Palestinian governorate in terms of population and constitutes the backbone of the Palestinian national economy.’
Suhayb Zahidah, one of the protesters, said that his group is demanding that the prime minister ‘do justice’ to Hebron.
The protesters announced that more activities would be held on Sunday and stressed that these activities ‘will continue until the prime minister meets their demands.’
l A group of protesters came together in front of Israeli ambassador’s residence in the Turkish capital, Ankara last Friday, to mark the Arab-Israeli war in 1967 that resulted in the Israeli invasion of East Jerusalem, then a Jordanian territory.
The event, organised in Ankara and Istanbul by Turkish human rights association Mazlumder, saw the demonstrators wave Palestinian flags and chant slogans to protest at the Jewish state and voice their claim on the historic city of Jerusalem and the al-Aqsa mosque that it hosts, both venerated in Islamic tradition.
Similar protests were held during the day in two hundred venues around the world, said Ali Kacar, editor of Genc Birikim magazine, which supports the Palestinian cause.
Walid Zakariya Aqel, a Gazan war prisoner released in an Israeli-Palestinian prisoner exchange in 2011, read out a press statement.
He said: ‘We gathered today to give Israel a message: we Muslims are a single community.
‘We can never forget Masjid al-Aqsa, nor al-Quds (Jerusalem), nor Palestine.’
In the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the world stands against the oppressed and sides with the oppressor.
‘Al-Quds and al-Aqsa are part of our faith.’
Aqel, freed while being tried in Israel with 16 back-to-back life sentences, was one of eleven Palestinian prisoners who came to Turkey after the exchange. Aqel was granted Turkish citizenship in December last year.
The Arab-Israeli war on June 5-10, 1967, known also as the Six Day War, was fought between Israel and neighbouring Arab states Egypt, Jordan and Syria.
The war resulted in a decisive Israeli victory and changed the Middle Eastern political landscape, as Israel expanded its territory by capturing the Gaza Strip and Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan, and the Golan Heights from Syria.
