Israel destroys Negev Bedouin harvest with crop-dusters
Wednesday, 02-Apr-2003 6:50AM
   
Story from AFP
Copyright 2003 by Agence France-Presse (via ClariNet)
JERUSALEM, April 2 (AFP) - Israeli authorities on Wednesday destroyed the
harvest of a Bedouin tribe in the Negev desert with crop-dusting planes,
accusing the tribesmen of being squatters on state land, public radio said.
Planes sent by the Lands Authority sprayed chemicals on 600 hectares (1,400
acres) of land farmed by the Abu Kaff tribe of Bedouin, a semi-nomadic Arab
population that was herded off large tracts of the Negev after the Jewish
state was created in 1948.
The area sprayed was in the west of the Negev, which occupies the southern
third of Israel.
"This is a double criminal act: the Lands Authority acted withouit waiting
for a court order and used chemical products," said Bedouin deputy Taleb
al-Sanna on the radio.
An official Israeli spokesman said the Bedouin had been warned several
times not to ilegally cultivate the land.
The tribe has been accused by the authorities for several years of
squatting on public land.
Abu Kaff, where 3,500 tribes people of the same name live, is a scattered
gathering of corrugated iron shacks on the edge of the main road to the
Israeli desert city of Beersheva.
It is one of 36 unrecognised Bedouin villages in the Negev which the
authorities want to dismantle. Israel has instead built seven designated towns
in the area to accommodate the Bedouin, whose ancestral lands were designated
state property.
The Bedouin accuse Israeli of trying to move them off their homeland to
make way for Jewish farmers and villages.
Israel considers the villages built by Bedouin who have returned to their
lands from the recognised towns as illegal, but Bedouin criticise Israel in
turn for not investing in the infrastructure of the new communities, which suffer high unemployment and lack social services.
Around 140,000 Bedouin live in the Negev, while another 60,000 reside in
the north of the Jewish state.
On February 5, the authorities provoked howls of anger from the Bedouin
community when they destroyed a mosque that was built without planning
permission in Tel el-Maleh, an unrecognised village.
A district court later banned destruction of sites of worship.
The Israeli authorities have sprayed Bedouin crops at least twice before,
Bedouin official say, including once at the beginning of March.

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