Attempts to divert attention from Israeli ethnic cleansing ignore tragic reality

Mazen Masri

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The great irony of the recent IsraelFest at UofT was that while the Arab Students' Collective was coming under attack for Israeli Apartheid Week, Zionist groups on campus ended their week of strictly cultural activities by erecting a Bedouin tent. The tent was run by non-Bedouins, pretending to be Palestinian Bedouin, happy to be Israeli citizens, enjoying the "rights and liberties" granted by the enlightened Israeli democracy. IsraelFest, however, failed to show the whole picture, let alone a true one.

Most Bedouins were expelled in 1947-'48 when Zionist militias systematically expelled 750,000 of the one million native Palestinians inhabiting the land, which was declared the independent state of Israel, all of whom became refugees in neighbouring lands. The Bedouins, like all of the Palestinians who remained and were colonized in '48 and given Israeli citizenship, suffered from extreme and institutionalized discrimination that amounted to de facto apartheid until '67.

Israeli government policies against the Bedouins were particularly harsh. Because of their lifestyle and the fact that they inhabited and communally owned vast tracts of land for hundreds of years, they were the greatest victims of the Zionist axiom of expropriating the maximum amount of land with the minimum number of Arabs.

The best example to show the suffering of the Bedouins is the case of the Al-Jahaleen tribe that was forced to leave its lands in the Naqab (Negev in Hebrew - the southern desert region home to most Palestinian Bedouins) in '48 and settle in an area to the southeast of Jerusalem. This tribe was expelled again in the mid-'90s when the lands they inhabited were confiscated for the sake of expanding the Jewish-only settlement of Ma'ale Adomeem - a settlement that is illegal under international law.

In order to achieve the Zionist goals, Israel implemented various policies to limit the areas in which Bedouins could live. For example, many of the areas in the Naqab were declared "Fire Zones", Israeli military training camps. Such areas are off-limits to non-soldiers. Bedouins dwelling in that area were forced to leave their lands and resettle in nearby lands.

Another policy used by the Israeli government was refusing to recognize some of the Palestinian villages still inhabited by the indigenous people after 1948. These villages, established long before the creation of Israel, never gained recognition as "legal" villages. From an Israeli perspective these villages do not exist. By not having the status of a village, these villages are deprived of the most basic utilities: Water, electricity, sanitation, healthcare and education.

Israeli policy-makers did not think that this was enough, and thus they embarked on a campaign for the demolition of the houses built in these villages. A typical example of this kind of persecution of the Bedouins is the case of the unrecognized village of Arab Al-Na'eem: The inhabitants have been denied basic utilities by Israeli authorities who are responsible for the demolition of many of these inhabitants' homes. You will never find this village on an Israeli map, nor will you find any sign on the roads that lead to it. According to the Israeli version of democracy, this village has no right to exist, nor does it exist. Although the Arab village, according to the state, was not fit for recognition, the state thought that the construction of Jewish-only towns in the surrounding area is a good idea. As such it initiated the construction of the towns Yuvaleem and Ash-har.

At the same time IsraelFest organizers were showing the Bedouin tent in Toronto, Israeli bulldozers destroyed the similar Bedouin tents and structures that the Bedouins dwelled in at Beer Haddaaj in the Naqab, forcefully evicting 100 residents. In a nearby place earlier this month, Israeli police and the Israeli Land Administration destroyed about 1,000 acres of cultivated land. Title to these lands belongs to the Bedouin tribes of Al-Akabi and Al- Touri.

From its treatment of the Bedouins who actually inhabit the tents replicated in the culmination of IsraelFest, it is clear that Israel has decided that it is time to finish the work it began in 1948 and complete the ethnic cleansing of the indigenous people. No wonder IsraelFest wants to keep it cultural, since showing the whole picture would inevitably show Israel as a brutal and racist state.