Fighting for Their Share:
IRAC’s newest project addresses Bedouin rights
By Rebecca Cariati, IRAC Overseas Relations
November Monthly 2005
The Reform Movement in Israel knows all too well what it means to fight for recognition. Today, half of the Bedouin population in Israel’s Negev Desert lives in unrecognized villages or towns. These 70,000 Bedouins lack access to potable water in their homes and their youth suffer from lack of educational resources normally provided by the State of Israel to recognized municipalities.
IRAC’s Civic Equality Resource Allocation Monitoring Project (RAMP) is launching a new initiative on behalf of the Beduoin community in the Negev. Made possible by a $10,000 donation from Rabbi Brian Lurie of San Francisco, California; IRAC will be working with Bedouin grassroots organizations. “RAMP seeks to assist the Bedouin community of the Negev to fight for their equal rights through legal means,” says Einat Hurvitz, Israel Religious Action Center attorney. (In addition, IRAC recently received a $39,000 grant from Ms. Edith Everett for a similar project with the Druze community in Israel).
While half of the Negev’s Bedouin population live in recognized towns and cities, the other half suffers from being invisible to the State. “Bedouin living in these unrecognized villages lack the legal status of a municipality,” says Hurvitz. Therefore, they are excluded from government resource allocation programs.
In order to combat this injustice,IRAC’s Bedouin RAMP is partnering with two grassroots organizations; AJEEC: Arab-Jewish Center for Equality, Empowerment and Cooperation, devoted to Jews and Arabs working hand-in-hand toward sustainable human development, societal transformation and the reduction and resolution of tension and conflictprimarily within the Negev Arab-Bedouin community; and with the Regional Council of Unrecognized Arab Bedouin Villages in the Negev.
Through meetings with leaders of both organizations, IRAC discovered that the two primary needs in the unrecognized Bedouin villages are access to potable water in homes and access to social services provided by the State to recognized municipalities. Despite the fact that the issue of potable water has previously been ruled on by Israel’s Supreme Court, it has remained problematic.
According to a decision by the Israel Supreme Court, the National Water Company was supposed to provide a water connection for every 10 Bedouin families in unrecognized Bedouin villages. However, due to a series of bureaucratic hurdles erected against the Bedouin community, the connections have not been installed and the problem of access to potable water has remained unresolved.
IRAC’s Bedouin RAMP has begun working on this issue on behalf of 10 Bedouin families living in an unrecognized village. These families requested to have a potable water connection installed in their homes over two years ago. IRAC is currently waiting to receive all the updated documents about this case from the families in order to aid them in obtaining a water connection.
Hurvitz says, “The problems in this community come from two sources. Firstly, state practices toward the Bedouin community discriminate against them in receiving state funds for all the social services and infrastructure, and secondly, even when the Supreme Court steps in and rules that the Bedouin villages should receive certain services, these rulings are not upheld by the Israeli government.”
A second issue Bedouin RAMP plans to tackle concerns a government program that aspires to provide a computer to every Israeli child. The Israeli government sees computer technology as an invaluable educational and practical resource. Therefore, this program aims to expose and train children and their families in basic computer literacy. The program funds not only the training but also the acquisition of computers for families who cannot afford to buy one themselves. When the Regional Council of Unrecognized Arab Bedouin Villages in the Negev requested funding from the Prime Ministers’ Office for this program, they were told that their towns and cities are ineligible.
On September 26th, 2005 Hurvitz sent a letter to the Prime Minister’s Office claiming that although these Bedouin towns and cities are not recognized by the government (which is a larger political issue not easily resolved), for all practical purposes, The Regional Council of Unrecognized Arab Bedouin Villages in the Negev serves as the municipality of the unrecognized villages. The Regional Council is the elected leadership of these communities and is willing to be acccountable for all the technical and financial issues relevant to the project. Hurvitz refutes the government’s reasoning that these communities do not have adequate infrastructure for proper implementation of the project by pointing out that the only substantive difference between the Regional Council of Arab Bedouin Unrecognized Villages in the Negev and recognized municipalities is their different bureaucratic status.
“This struggle strongly resembles the Reform Movement’s fight to sit on Municipal Religious Councils throughout Israel,” Hurvitz reflects. She explains that the struggle of the Reform and Conservative movements to be included in the religious Councils was a struggle for recognition and inclusion by state institutions, something that the unrecognized Bedouin villages are attempting to gain today.
As one of IRAC’s newest initatives, Hurvitz is hopeful that this project will positively impact both the Bedouin community and the greater Israeli society.
