(3) a 2007 draft bill declaring that Jewish National Fund (JNF) land (about 13% of state lands) should only be for Jews; the bill passed its "preliminary reading" by 64 to 16. In actuality, the government owns about 80% of Israeli land, the JNF another 13%, and Jews and Arabs the rest. The Israel Land Administration (ILA) administers all government and JNF land, controls who gets access to it, and pretty much assures that Arabs can't buy Israeli land.
These and other measures reveal a disturbing pattern - state-sponsored racism against Israeli Palestinians. They're routinely victimized, punished for being Arabs, and denied equality, dignity, privacy, freedom of movement and everything afforded Jews. Their freedom of expression was also challenged after four Arab documents were published with clearly stated aims - to legislatively mandate equal citizenship rights for all Israelis (Jews, Muslims, Christians and others). Outrage was the response because Jews believe these demands threaten state sovereignty. So do officials like head of General Security Service (GSS), Yuval Diskin. He called Israeli Arabs a "strategic threat," and got Attorney General Menachem Mazuz to agree.
Palestinian citizens have no say and are disadvantaged in many ways. They're routinely denied equal access to public resources in all areas of life, and ACRI highlights the northern rehabilitation program budget as an example. Arab villages there are sorely lacking because of government neglect. Budgeted funds are inadequate, they're improperly used, Arabs in the north are marginalized, their needs go unaddressed, and 2008 promises to be worse with planned budget cuts.
It's worse still in the south for the Negev Bedouins who comprise half the area's 160,000 population. They live in villages called "unrecognized" because their inhabitants had to flee their homes during Israel's War of Independence, couldn't return when it ended, and are considered internal refugees and "trespassers" on Jewish land.
These villages were delegitimized by Israel's 1965 Planning and Construction Law that established a regulatory framework and national future development plan. It zoned land for residential, agriculture and industrial use, forbade unlicensed construction, banned it on agricultural land, and stipulated where Israeli Jews and Palestinians could live.
Existing communities are circumscribed on a map with blue lines around them. Areas inside can be developed. Those outside cannot. Great latitude is shown Jewish communities, so new ones are added. In contrast, Palestinian areas are severely constricted with no allowed room for expansion. Their land was reclassified as agricultural meaning no new construction is allowed. It means entire communities are "unrecognized" and all homes and buildings there are illegal, even the 95% of them built before the 1965 law passed. They're subject to demolition and their inhabitants displaced at Israel's discretion. It's so new land for Jews can be provided with Arab owners helpless to stop it.
As a result, no new Palestinian communities are allowed, and existing "unrecognized villages" are denied essential services like clean drinking water, electricity, roads, transport, sanitation, education, healthcare, postal service, telephone connections, refuse removal and more because under the Planning and Construction Law they're illegal. The toll on people is devastating:
-- clean water is unavailable almost everywhere unless people have access to well water;
-- the few available health services are inadequate;
-- many homes have no bathrooms, and no permits are allowed to build them;
-- only villages with private generators have electricity that's barely enough for lighting;
-- no village is connected to the main road network,
-- some villages are fenced in prohibiting their residents from access to their traditional lands; and
-- education is limited, achievement levels are low, and dropout rates high.
It's worse still when home demolitions are ordered. It may stipulate Palestinians must do it themselves or be fined for contempt of court and face up to a year in prison. They may also have to cover the cost when Israelis do it under a system of convoluted justice penalizing Palestinians twice over for being an Arab in a Jewish state.
In 2007, around 200 Bedouin homes were demolished, compared to much lower numbers in previous years: 23 in 2002, 63 in 2003, 15 in 2005 and 96 in 2006. Most of the homeless are "invisible," the media hardly covers them, Jews are largely uninformed, and planned Negev Judaization assures things will get worse. It's to be a "A Miracle in the Desert" with a clearly defined aim - to populate the area with a half million Jews in the next decade. Plans are for 25 new communities and 100,000 homes on cleared Bedouin land. Unless efforts coalesce to stop them, the human toll will be horrific.
I am a 72 year old, retired, progressive small businessman concerned about all the major national and world issues, committed to speak out and write about them.
