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8/26/10 7:4l Araqib Journal - A Test of Wills Over a Patch of Desert - NYTimes.com

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Rina Castelnuovo for The New York Times

After the bulldozers leave, many

Bedouins put up their tents or shacks

again.

AL ARAQIB JOURNAL

A Test of Wills Over a Patch of Desert

Rina Castelnuovo for The New York Times

Bedouins in Al Araqib, Israel, are locked in a land dispute with Israeli authorities, who have repeatedly razed their homes.

By ISABEL KERSHNERPublished: August 25, 2010

AL ARAQIB, Israel The two women crouched on the floor of a

tent in this windblown Bedouin encampment in the Negev Desert,

hurriedly preparing the evening meal as dusk approached.

They had been fasting since sunrise in

observance of the Muslim holy month

of Ramadan. Now they were cooking

furiously, spicing okra in tomato

sauce and stuffing hollowed-out

zucchini, against a backdrop of piles

of rubble, the remains of their homesrecently demolished by the Israeli

authorities.

For years, the women Naifa and Aali, the wives of the

village elder, Sheik Sayah Abu Mudegem al-Tori and

about 300 other residents of Al Araqib, many of them

children, lived in relative obscurity on these beige slopes,

situated between the Bedouin town of Rahat and the

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2/5



The New York Times

southern Israeli city of Beersheba.

Then the bulldozers arrived at dawn on July 27,

accompanied by more than 1,000 armed police officers

carrying out a court order. They tore down about 40

unlicensed concrete-block homes, shacks and other

structures and uprooted hundreds of trees.

Within hours, the villagers and volunteers put up flimsy

tents and a few shacks, for shelter from

the scorching sun and to stake the

Bedouins claim to the land. In a test of

wills, the Israelis have already been

back to destroy the structures three

more times.

The tug of war has suddenly turned Al

Araqib into a symbol of a much larger

land dispute between the Bedouins and

the Israeli authorities that has been

simmering since the foundation of the

State ofIsrael in 1948.

With Gods help, we will stay on our

land, said Sheik Sayah, wearing a

tweed jacket over his cotton thobe, a

white headdress and aviator

sunglasses.

Anyone who thinks of throwing us out will first have to throw the dead out of the

cemetery, he said, referring to the old Tori tribe graveyard next door to the

encampment. The sheik was living in the cemetery because the courts had ordered him

to stay away from Al Araqib for two weeks.

Sheik Sayah is well aware of the Israeli court rulings stating that his people are

trespassers on what the authorities claim as state land. But, he argues, there was

negligence in the case.

The contest over this small patch of desert reflects a clash of cultures, of modern and

traditional lifestyles and laws of ownership and increasingly, for many Bedouin, of

loyalties and faith.

Part of Israels Arab minority, the southern Bedouin, who now number more than

170,000 and make up a quarter of the population of the Negev, established good

relations with the young Israeli state. Unlike most Arab and Muslim citizens of Israel,

many have volunteered to serve in the Israeli military.

But none of that has eased the tensions over the land in the Negev. The area lies in

Israel proper, not in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, which the Palestinians want as part

of a separate state.

Originally nomads, the Negev Bedouin had settled into a largely sedentary lifestyle by

the time the Israeli state was founded. Israel did not recognize their land claims, and

about a third to half the Bedouin of the Negev now live in dozens of unrecognized

villages, mostly filled with shanties like those in Al Araqib, without basic services like

running water or electricity.

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3/5



The villagers of Al Araqib say that after Israelis took over the area in the 1948 war with

Arab states, the Israelis told them that they needed to use their territory for military

training and asked them to leave temporarily.

The villagers moved a short distance away, to a valley just beyond the boundary of their

village, they said. Graves in the cemetery suggest that the Tori tribe has been living in

the area since the 19th century.

In the early 1950s the state declared the area of the village to be state land, giving title to

the Israel Land Administration. The residents say they were never officially notified.

They describe various attempts to move back, and they insist that even when they lived

elsewhere some moved to the government-established Bedouin town of Rahat they

continued to farm and graze their herds on their ancestral land.

Then in the late 1990s, the villagers built homes in Al Araqib when it became clear that

the Jewish National Fund was about to plant a forest there.

Ortal Tzabar, the spokeswoman for the Israel Land Administration, contends that there

is no question about the ownership. The villagers, Ms. Tzabar said, have lost repeatedly

in the Israeli courts, including the Supreme Court, and have no right to build anything in

Al Araqib.

Some of the villagers are now pursuing cases in the Beersheba district court to prove

their original ownership.

Prof. Oren Yiftachel, a member of the geography department at Ben-Gurion University of

the Negev, has appeared as an expert witness in another Bedouin land case. He said that

the Bedouin had traditional documents of purchase showing that the Toris bought land

here from the Ukbi tribe in 1907 and 1926.

In pure legal terms, the state has a point, said Professor Yiftachel, an advocate for

Bedouin rights. But it is a very technical point, brushing aside tradition and the legal

occupation of the land until the 1950s.

Government officials say that they cannot provide services to every far-flung group of

shacks and tents. They add that housing solutions for the people of Al Araqib lie in

Rahat, one of seven government-established towns where the state has encouraged the

Bedouin to relocate.

Some villagers have houses there. But the towns have become centers of poverty and

hopelessness, with high unemployment and a population alienated from its roots.

They took our freedom, our culture, our life, said Khalil al-Amour, a Bedouin high

school teacher from a nearby unrecognized village, Al Sira, which is also scheduled for

demolition. They put us within four walls with a washing machine and a microwave and

said, Now you are civilized.

We want to progress, Mr. Amour continued, but not in the way the state wants.

The villagers may have satellite television and cellphones, but they also want to farm and

raise their livestock, and to sleep under the stars.

The destruction of Al Araqib has brought together a strange coalition of supporters,

including left-wing Jewish activists from the Negev and politicians and volunteers from

the southern branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel, a social and political


4/5



A version of this article appeared in print on August 26, 2010, on page

A6 of the New York edition.

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organization that also has religious aims.

As the sheiks wives ate with the other women and children in their tent one recent

evening, the Bedouin men were at the cemetery, breaking their fast with local leaders of

the Islamic Movement.

Early the next morning, the police came and pulled down the tents for the fourth time,

the villagers said.

Amos Oz, the celebrated Israeli author who lives in the Negev town of Arad, also cameby. The state, he said, was treating the Bedouin like stepchildren.

The next night, another feast was held at the cemetery, attended by several Arab and

leftist dignitaries, senior Muslim and Christian clergymen from Jerusalem and activists

from Rabbis for Human Rights and other coexistence advocacy groups.

And on Saturday, Jewish and Arab poets from around Israel gathered for a joint reading

in Al Araqib in solidarity with the villagers battle against the authorities.

When a neighbor is in trouble, Mr. Oz said of his visit, I come to express my sympathy

and see what can be done.

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