Israel wipes village off map

This morning in the Naqab (Negev) in southern Israel, the entire village of Tawil was bulldozed by the government.  The rationale given was that the village was "unrecognized" and therefore is not permitted to exist.  The real reason was that the village was comprised of Palestinian Arab Bedouin, and therefore Israel does not want it to exist.  The homes and livelihoods destroyed so simply and callously were certainly very real and recognized by their now homeless owners.

Israel claims to not "recognize" dozens of Bedouin villages in the Naqab and elsewhere (even though many existed before Israel itself), thereby absolving it of the responsibility to provide the villages with public services such as water, and permitting Israel to destroy said villages at its leisure.  Maan News reports plans to demolish 42,000 homes built in these "unrecognized" areas.

Such activity by Israel is reminiscent of the Nakba, when in 1947-1949, Zionist then Israeli forces systematically destroyed and/or depopulated more than 450 Palestinian villages, creating at least 750,000 refugees.

And like the Nakba, Israel has plans to "develop" the Naqab once it is cleansed of the Palestinians - a plan endorsed by George Bush in his 2004 letter to Ariel Sharon.  "Negev 2015" includes plans to build new housing communities and farms for Jews only, at a cost of $4 billion.  It goes without saying that there is nothing in these plans that will benefit the Bedouin inhabitants of the area, if there are any left.

For more info on "unrecognized" villages and plight of Palestinians in Israel, visit the Association of Forty and Adalah.

Comments

[History Teacher UK]

This is scarily reminiscent of the tactics of Nazi Germany in the Eastern European lands that they occupied until 1945.
I guess no-one can ever accuse the Israelis of not learning from their history...

[Muhammad]

This is so Fucking Evil.. it pisses me off! It's no longer killing innocent civilians, that isnt enough any more.. they need to wipe out villages.

It's Insane.

[tbonnet]

I am not saying what they are doing is right, just remember that most arabs dont even acknowledge that there is something as israeli state\faith and those that do want them wiped off the face of the earth. Look at the story from both sides.Live and let live

[scott]

What is the other side of the story to a state destroying an entire village because its inhabitants are the wrong kind of human?

Your comment is problematic not just for that reason. What is the Israeli faith? If you mean Judaism (which is not synonymous with Israel), then you're wrong in that Arabs - both Muslim and Christian - respect Judaism and don't deny its existence. Of course anti-Semitism does exist and is abhorrent.

If you mean that Arabs have a problem with the configuration of Israel as an apartheid state - then I reply anyone concerned with justice should have a problem with it. I see your email address is from South Africa. If this critiqued apartheid South Africa's policies, would you have reminded me how wrong it is that Africans hated apartheid and that I needed to listen to the white settlers side of the story?

[Eurosabra]

Negev 2015 needs to be reconfigured as an equitable development plan, once again this is a case of Israel giving with one hand and taking away with the other. BGU/University of the Negev in Be'er Sheva trains Bedouin as medical doctors and then the state fails to provide clinics for the unrecognized villages. Soroka Medical Center provides equal care to all, and then Israeli demographers mouth off about the Arab conquest occurring through the "delivery rooms of Soroka Medical Center." Israeli policy is not evil as much as profoundly schizophrenic.

One question is whether the state has the right to urbanize solely via central planning in a resource-poor environment. Given the under-development of the Negev, does justice require the provision of services to each and every locality whose inhabitants refuse to participate in the master development plan? I agree that plowing housing is manifestly unjust, however, announcing that the government oasis is available to all comers and that Negev development is an opt-in process which will leave traditional communities by the wayside if they so desire is not so manifestly unjust. To a certain extent it is the Bedouin using their poverty and a claim of primacy on the land to bend the state to their will, and you can ask the residents of 'Ayn Hawd, Biram, and Ikrit how well THAT has worked for them, i.e. not very, for fifty years now.