The Beer Sheva offices of the Arab-Jewish Centre for Equality, Empowerment and Cooperation (AJEEC), were gutted by fire over the weekend, just hours before a big rally in Jerusalem against the Israeli government’s plan to “resettle” tens of Arab-Bedouin in the Negev. The offices were closed at the time and no one was hurt. The current suspicion is arson, as there had been an attempt to torch the offices just a week before and the same masked assailant was reportedly captured on cameras on both occasions.

 AJEEC, the flagship project of the the largest project of the Negev Institute for Strategies of Peace and Development NISDEP works extensively in Bedouin communities. It has drawn negative attention from Israeli right-wingers, who oppose its advocacy for Bedouin rights. “Whoever carried out this criminal deed obviously objects to the process of empowerment of the population, the building of Arab-Jewish partnership and the Arab Bedouin population’s realization of rights in the Negev,” AJEEC director Amal E-Sana Alh’jooj said in a press release. “The values represented by the Center are the basis of any sane and developed society.”

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