“The Reality in the Negev is One of Expulsion and Ethnic Cleansing,” said Wednesday, December 18, Hadash MK Youssef Atawneh during a debate at the Committee on Young Israelis in the Knesset. The committee, chaired by MK Naama Lazimi (Labor), convened for a debate on the topic of “Effects of enforcement policy in the planning and building field on young people and young families belonging to Arab community in Israel.”
Cops against MK Youssef Atawneh during the demolition of a house in Umm Batin at the Negev, August 8, 2024 (Photo: Zo Haderekh)
MK Lazimi said, “Arab and Druze society in Israel number more than 20% of the state’s population and are an inseparable part of Israeli society. The outline plans in Arab and Druze localities have not been updated for many years, and this prevents them from receiving building permits and building houses legally. The direct result is that many young people choose to refrain from starting or expanding a family, and couples who manage to start a family encounter economic difficulties due to the heavy fines imposed for illegal construction, which can reach hundreds of thousands of shekels per family.”
According to Lazimi, “This reality makes life difficult for the young men and women of these populations and causes severe discrimination against them [relative to] the rest of Israeli society. The enactment of the ‘Kaminitz law’ and increasing enforcement in Arab and Druze localities only worsened this situation. This is severe discrimination, which makes things even more difficult for the young men and women from these groups.”
MK Atawneh warned that most of the Arab local authorities did not have authorized outline plans, and for this reason most of their residents have no option to build a house legally. “The reality today in the Negev is one of expulsion and ethnic cleansing—just as is being done now in Jabalya [in the Gaza Strip], and the clearest illustration of this is the expulsion of Umm al-Hiran,” he said.
Farhan Abu-Riash, an Arab-Bedouin activist from the Negev, stated that the current policy harmed the young population, which is most vulnerable and at the start of its life, and said that the lack of planning of construction led to despair and hopelessness. He called to expand the jurisdiction area of the Arab-Bedouin localities, to freeze the Kaminitz law and to formulate a plan that would provide a construction solution for the young Bedouins.
The Negev Coexistence Forum for Civil Equality stated that a record number of 2,007 demolitions of structures had been recorded in Bedouin localities in the Negev in the first six months of 2024. The representative said that on the assumption that the trend does not change, a significant increase can be expected in the number of demolitions by the end of 2024, which is projected to reach over 4,000 demolitions—a 22% increase relative to 2023.
Related: https://maki.org.il/en/?p=32247
