Photo Credit: Yossi Zamir, Shatil Stock
At a time when the media is preoccupied by wars, regime changes, regional power plays, and Trump’s inauguration day, very few are focused on what is happening to the Negev Bedouin: mass home demolitions and displacement of citizens in their own country. At NIFC we are not looking away. We are working to support both short and long-term solutions to the structural discrimination Bedouin Arabs face. And in this moment, our work with this community is more important than ever. Civil society is all they have.
The story of the village of Wadi Al-Khalil, which was demolished by Israeli authorities in May, is instructive. Hundreds of police accompanied Real Estate Enforcement Division officers and their tractors as they leveled every residential building in the village. They demolished 47 buildings that 80 families called home. Some residents burned their own homes, preferring to destroy their property with their own hands rather than hand it to the state.
A week after the demolition, the New Israel Fund in Israel approved a $50,000 grant to support the 320 villagers. This grant, which provided residents with their basic needs, including tents and mattresses, put on display the serious consequences of the Israeli state’s refusal to recognize some 35 Bedouin villages in the Negev – where nearly half of the Bedouin population in Israel resides. The grant came out of NIF’s emergency pool, a set of funds available to help the organization respond to emergent crises on the ground.
Unrecognized villages, like Wadi Al-Khalil, do not appear on any official map, and are often not hooked up to Israel’s electric grid or water systems. What’s more, most buildings inside of them are considered illegal, which means that the state can demolish them and fine the builder. As of May 2020, the Center for Alternative Planning in Israel estimated that 15–20% of all homes built by Arabs in Israel are built without a permit.
Further investigations from +972 Magazine unearthed additional information. Authorities had claimed that the demolitions of Wadi Al-Khalil would clear the way for an extension of Route 6, Israel’s major north-south highway. But +972’s newsgathering suggests otherwise. Dafna Saporta works for current NIFC project partner Bimkom: Planners for Planning Rights, which works closely with unrecognized villages to develop zoning plans to submit to the government. She told +972 that the government has yet to finance this alleged construction on Route 6. “It’s not like the extension of Route 6 is being paved tomorrow,” she said. “It would have been possible to postpone and sit down with the residents (to continue negotiations), who have been there for decades.”
Another longtime NIF grantee, Itaach-Maaki, home to the Center for Bedouin Women Rights, provides counseling, legal assistance, and representation to dozens of Bedouin women every year. One of these women is Rasmia Abu Assa, a resident of Wadi Al-Khalil. She was still grieving for her nephew, Osama Abu Assa, who had been murdered by Hamas, when authorities demolished her home. She disclosed to Itaach-Maaki that the bulldozers looked “like another horror movie or scene from a battlefield.”
Finally, the Regional Council for Unrecognized Villages (RCUV), another NIF grantee, is advocating for a safe and agreed-upon location for rebuilding Wadi Al-Khalil. RCUV is a civil society organization — but it is also a democratically elected body. It is the only democratic representation for the unrecognized Bedouin villages. As such, it serves as an address for their political desires and practical needs. The body lobbies for services in unrecognized villages, including education, public transportation, water supply, healthcare, and democratic representation.
The needs of this community have been a particular focus for NIF as part of our response to the war. In the aftermath of October 7th, NIF and our partners provided water tanks, food, first-aid kits, and educational materials to residents of these unrecognized villages. Because “unpopulated” territory is de-prioritized by Israel’s defense systems when intercepting rockets fired at Israel, we compelled the state to recognize them as “populated” areas. As a result, the villagers have received more than 50 new bomb shelters and are protected from rocket fire.
As always, at NIFC, our goal is not just to make it through to tomorrow, and respond to every rights violation on its own, but to build a democratic space in which equal rights for all is the reality. We view the Negev as an opportunity to build a truly equal, just, and shared society.
The article has been updated. It was first published in May 2024.