Saed Karzoun

Bedouin Palestinian displacement: The slow and painful catastrophe

Written by: Nader Dagher

Jabal Al-Baba Bedouin community in East Jerusalem

Hamzeh Hamadeen is one of more than 10,000 Bedouin students in West Bank who have to reach far and away schools for their education, of whom 100 Bedouin students in Sateh Al-Bahar (Sea Level) Bedoiun community, residing in east Jerusalem periphery, travel daily to a school in Anata village or Aqbat Jabr Refugee Camp school near Jericho, to pursue their elementary education, due to lack of school within their community.

Israel not only controls, and yet bans development of communities in area C (that makes %60 of West Bank), but demolishes any structure Bedouins may build to support their communities, such as schools, health clinics, and other public facilities.

The 30,000 Bedouin and herders of west Bank (183 communities) in west Bank’s Area C are under a full and direct Israeli control. 7,000 of whom 60% are children, living in 46 residential areas, are at acute risk of forcible transfer by the Israeli occupation forces. Most of these communities are in the Jordan valley and the Jerusalem Periphery.

Hamzeh Hamadeen

Hamzeh is among other children who produced plays and films to express the threats these communities live under, he says, adding that films aim to show how children travel to far and away urban schools. They also, aim to show how Bedouin daily lives and traditions look like.

“We are banned from building schools and kindergarten for our children”, says Jamal Hamadeen. He adds “this land is planned to be a Jewish settlement, they want to displace the Bedouin communities so the area become part of the greater Jerusalem chain of settlements, and resilience in our land makes it harder for them to do so”.

According to Bill Vansfeld, the researcher at Human Rights Watch, Israel had demolished schools in Area C 16 times since 2010 for what the Israeli Civil Administration (department in the Israeli Army that controls West Bank) call “illegal buildings”. At the same time, HRW say Israel does not give building permits to the Bedouin Palestinian communities.

Such displacement of Bedouin communities to urbanized townships would threaten their culture and livelihoods that developed through hundreds of years. Bedouins live mainly on herding, and like to live in open areas, within certain zone for each extended family, which will be not be available to them in a village or city.

Israeli government is planning to displace Bedouins and grab the land for settlements’ expansion

There is a plan Israeli Civil Administration had prepared for a centralized Bedouin Village in Area C of the West Bank.

About 150 Bedouin families were displaced in several waves between 1997 and 2007 to a centralized village called Al-Jabal. These people lost their income and their social fabric and traditions were severely damaged, which left them “with no available social or sustainable economic assets with which to satisfactorily rebuild their lives in the new environment” according to a study conducted by UNRWA and BIMKOM on the impact of that transfer. Fifteen years after the transfers began, residents of the village are today still struggling to maintain the fundamental elements of their traditional social order and of their pastoral livelihoods.

This forced displacement is not allowed under the International Humanitarian Law (IHL), it also causes a disruption of livelihoods, the entrenchment of poverty and increased aid dependency. The humanitarian community has faced a range of difficulties in providing aid in Area C, including the demolition and confiscation of assistance by the Israeli authorities.

“we have reached out to the International Court of Justice” says Atallah Mazar’ah from the Jabal Ab-Baba (Pop’s Mountain) Bedouin community. He added “The Israelis demolished 60 houses here, and the kindergarten alone was demolished 4 times. They want to kick us out, so they can expand settlements.”

On the east side of the Jabal Al-Baba community, a huge settlement called Ma’ali Adomim is part of the chain of settlements waiting to be connected, in order to make a geographically connected zone east of Jerusalem. The Settlement zoning separates West Bank’s north and south area. It also controls the last passage between the two parts of West Bank, which is according to a number of UN resolutions and large body of international community makes the future Palestinian state.

Not the first displacement

Most of the Bedouin population in the Jordan Valley are originally from Negev desert. They were displaced gradually from their original homeland by the Israeli occupation forces between 1951 and 1967, and now, the Israeli military administration of West Bank (called the civil administration) is trying to force them to leave their refuge again for the benefit of Israeli settlements or Israeli military.

Bedouin communities are banned from planning and development

These communities are deprived from developing their own adequate housing, infrastructure and public facilities such as schools and medical clinics or to form local councils. After the Israeli occupation rejects 98% of the building permit applications, it uses “Structures built without permits to issue demolition orders, creating uncertainty and threat, to these communities, and encouraging people to leave, which leads to a slow but painful displacement for the lack of other choices.