Engagements
Oral Answers to Questions — Prime Minister
11:30 am

Avril Wooster
Posted on 15 Jan 2012 11:25 am (Report this annotation)

Israeli-built townships
Rahat, the largest Bedouin city in the Negev
Private home in Segev ShalomIn 1963, Moshe Dayan told Haaretz: "We should transform the Bedouin into an urban proletariat - in industry, services, construction, and agriculture. 88% of the Israeli population are not farmers, let the Bedouin be like them. Indeed, this will be a radical move which means that the Bedouin would not live on his land with his herds, but would become an urban person who comes home in the afternoon and puts his slippers on. His children will get used to a father who wears pants, without a dagger, and who does not pick out their nits in public. They will go to school, their hair combed and parted. This will be a revolution, but it can be achieved in two generations. Without coercion but with governmental direction ... this phenomenon of the Bedouins will disappear."[30] Between 1968 and 1989 the state established urban townships for housing of deported Bedouin tribes and promised Bedouin services in exchange for the renunciation of their ancestral land.[31] Within a few years, half of the Bedouin population moved into the seven townships built for them by the Israeli government. The largest Bedouin locality in Israel is the city of Rahat. Other towns include Ar'arat an-Naqab (Ar'ara BaNegev), Bir Hadaj, Hura, Kuseife, Lakiya, Shaqib al-Salam (Segev Shalom) and Tel as-Sabi (Tel Sheva).[32]

In the 1970s and 1980s, grazing restrictions and limited access to water, electricity, roads, education and health care, led tens of thousands of Bedouin citizens of Israel to resettle in seven legal towns constructed by the government.[33]

According to Ben Gurion University's Negev Center for Regional Development, the towns were built without an urban policy framework, lacking business districts or industrial zones;[34] as Harvey Lithwick of the Negev Center for Regional Development explains: "... the major failure was a lack of an economic rationale for the towns... "[35] According to Lithwick, and Ismael and Kathleen Abu Saad of Ben Gurion University, the towns quickly became among the most deprived towns in Israel, severely lacking in services such as public transport and banks.[6] The urban townships were plagued by endemic joblessness and resulting cycles of crime and drug trafficking.[34]

According to an article published in 2000, over 25% of Bedouin men in the townships were unemployed.[9]According to a State Comptroller report from 2002, the townships were built with minimal investment, and infrastructure in the seven townships had not improved much in the span of three decades. In 2002, most homes were not connected to the sewage system, the water supply was erratic and the roads were not adequate.[36]

In 2008, a railway station opened near the largest Bedouin town in the Negev, Rahat (Lehavim-Rahat Railway Station), a noticeable improvement to the transportation situation.

[edit] Unrecognized VillagesThose Bedouin who resisted sedentarization and urban life remained in their old villages. They live in 39-45 villages which are not recognized by the Israeli government and are thus ineligible for municipal services such as connection to the electrical grid, water mains or trash-pickup.[37] According to the Israel Land Authority, in 2007 40% of the Bedouin lived in unrecognized villages,[38] although the Regional Council of Unrecognized Villages (RCUV) refer to Bedouin in unrecognized villages as half the Negev Bedouin population.[39] The RCUV figures include the five villages which remain unrecognized despite incorporation into the Abu Basma Regional Council.

Many remain in unrecognized villages in the hope of retaining their traditions and customs; these are rural villages, some of which pre-date Israel.[23] However in 1984, the courts ruled that the Negev Bedouin had no land ownership claims, effectively illegalizing their existing settlements.[3] The Israeli government defines these rural Bedouin villages as "dispersals" while the international community refers to them as "unrecognized villages". Few of the Bedouin in unrecognized villages have seen the urban townships as a desirable form of settlement.[40][41] Extreme unemployment has afflicted unrecognized villages as well, breeding extreme crime levels. Since sources of income such as grazing has been severely restricted, and the Bedouin rarely receive permits to engage in self-subsistence agriculture,[42]

Many of the Bedouin villages were created in the 1950s when the Israeli army resettled Bedouin from the Sinai desert. These villages do not directly appear on commercial Israeli maps, and lack basic services like water, electricity and schools. Building permanent structures and farming is prohibited although many do, risking fines and home demolition.[23] The Israeli government frequently demolishes homes and sprays toxic pesticides onto crops[43] in the unrecognized villages. Some Bedouin homes were demolished to make way for the establishment of a Jewish town.[44]

Today, several unrecognized villages are in the process of 'recognition.' They have been incorporated into the Abu Basma Regional Council, but most remain without water, electricity and garbage services. Five of the towns incorporated into the council remain unrecognized. The process is mired in urban planning difficulties and land ownership problems.[45]

Due to the lack of municipal waste services and trash pickup, backyard burning has been adopted on a large scale, impacted badly on public health and the environment.[46]

[edit] HealthcareThe Bedouin benefited from the introduction of modern health care in the region.[16] According to the World Zionist Organization, although in the 1980s, as compared with 90% of the Jewish population, only 50% of the Bedouin population was covered by Israel's General Sick Fund, the situation improved after the 1996 National Health Insurance Law incorporated another 30% of Negev Bedouin into the Sick Fund.[47]

The Bedouin infant mortality rate is still the highest in Israel, and one of the highest in the developed world. In 2010, the mortality rate of Bedouin babies rose to 13.6 per 1,000, compared to 4.1 per 1,000 in Jewish communities in the south. According to the Israeli Ministry of Health, 43 percent of deaths among infants up to a year old result from hereditary conditions and/or birth defects. Other reasons cited for the higher infant mortality rates are poverty, lack of education and proper nourishment of mothers, lack of access to preventive medical care and unwillingness to undergo recommended tests. In 2011, funding for this purpose was tripled. [48]

60% of Bedouin men smoke. Among the Bedouin, as of 2003,7.3% of females and 9.9% of males have diabetes.[49] Between 1998 and 2002, Bedouin towns and villages had among the highest per-capita hospitalization rates. Rahat and Tel Sheva ranked highest.[50] However, the rate of reported new cancer incidents in Bedouin localities is very low, with Rahat having the 3rd-lowest rate in Israel at 141.9 cases per 100,000, compared to 422.1 cases in Haifa.[50]

The Centre for Women's Health Studies and Promotion notes that in the unrecognised Bedouin villages in the Negev, very few health care facilities are available; ambulances do not serve the villages and 38 villages have no medical services.[51] According to the Israeli NGO Physicians for Human Rights (PHR-Israel) the number of doctors is a third of the norm.[52]

In urban townships, access to water is also an issue: an article from the World Zionist Organization Hagshama Department explains that water allocation to Bedouin towns is 25-50% of that to Jewish towns.[47] Since the State has not built water infrastructure in the unrecognized villages, residents must buy water and store it in large tanks where fungi, bacteria and rust develop very quickly in the plastic containers or metal tanks under conditions of extreme heat; this has led to numerous infections and skin diseases.[52]