When missiles fall across Israel, millions of Israelis make their way to nearby bomb shelters. But because successive Israeli governments have refused to recognize Bedouin villages, and continued—year after year—to deprive them of basic services, including access to adequate shelter, too many of these citizens have nowhere to turn for safety when the sirens sound. In a recent survey, NIF grantees Injaz, a professional development center for Arab local government, and the pro-equality center Sikkuy-Aufoq found that 41% of Palestinian-Israeli citizens have no access—whatsoever—to a shelter.
It is this stark disparity in how the state relates to its citizens is clear in Palestinian citizens who live in urban areas like Nazareth and Sakhnin, it is even starker in the Negev, where tens of thousands of Bedouin citizens of Israel live in unrecognized villages, and are are even more fully exposed to injury or death from missile fire.
On a webinar that NIF held earlier this week, Huda Abu Obaid, who runs the longtime NIF grantee Negev Coexistence Forum, explained that when a siren sounds, people in these communities simply stay where they are; they have nowhere to go.
It’s the government’s job to provide basic infrastructure that will keep its citizens secure, and our partners are pushing them every day to take responsibility for building proper shelters in Arab cities, unrecognized villages, and other underserved communities. We know that when those in power fail to do their job, NIF and its partners step in, and insist that no one be left behind. Grassroots groups like Standing Together have already raised money to buy and install new shelters in Bedouin communities, on top of those they installed last June.
In addition, NIFC partner Bimkom: Planners for Planning Rights is pressing the government to extend alerts, shelters, and critical resources to communities long denied them.
NIF, together with our partners like the Arab-Jewish Center for Empowerment, Equality, and Cooperation – Negev Institute for Strategies of Peace and Economic Development (AJEEC-NISPED), the Regional Council for Unrecognized Villages (RCUV), and others have activated an emergency response center in the Negev. The center—which also operated during the last war with Iran, after October 7, and during the pandemic—serves roughly 130,000 residents across 39 villages. It coordinates real-time information, provides mental health support in Arabic, and maps urgent needs on the ground.
NIFC, the global NIF community, and our partners are investing in both the short and long term needs of vulnerable communities, working towards a better future in which everyone is safe.