Israeli rights groups ask court to stop razing of Bedouin villages

Several Israeli human rights organizations petitioned the High Court on Tuesday to prevent the demolition of five Bedouin villages.

The petition is spearheaded by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) and is aimed at averting the construction of agricultural settlements in the area of Mevo'ot Arad, in the Negev.

These Jewish settlements, seven of them, will be built after the existing Bedouin villages, which are home to hundreds of families, are razed.

Some of these villages, unrecognized by the Israeli government, have been there before the state's inception, The Jerusalem Post reported.

"Take this budget and invest it in Arad, Dimona, Yeruham. Instead, they're trying to privatize open space. It would include destroying houses, which is an environmental injustice and also unfair to the Bedouins," a local Arad resident and geographic researcher at Ben-Gurion University told the daily.

The petition was filed to note that building new settlements in the area will damage the environment and that it is three times more expensive to build a housing unit in a new town than in an existing one. ACRI based their petition on a 2009 report done by the Ministry of Environmental Protection.

"A country that is committed to equality among its citizens cannot decide to remove Bedouin communities in order to establish new communities for Jewish residents," said an ACRI representative.

Last year, a government plan to relocate 13 Bedouin villages in the Negev, all of which are deemed illegal by the state, triggered the ire of Israel's Bedouin community and human rights organizations.

According to the plan, over 30,000 Bedouins will be relocated to recognized settlements, including Rahat, Khura and Ksayfe.

(2012-08-15/globaltimes)