In May 2014, the Israeli government demolished the village of Al-Araqib for the 68th time in less than four years, and arrested 5 children between the ages of 8-14 in the village of Awejan for protesting against the planting of a forest on their land. And this while the Prawer Plan is frozen.
Through an inspiring and unprecedented community-led movement, the indigenous Palestinian Bedouin community in the Naqab (Negev) halted the government’s latest displacement plan last December. Yet while the implementing legislation of the Prawer Planremains stalled, the state continues to demolish homes, to deny its Bedouin citizens access to basic services, and toexecute a regional Metropolitan Plan that establishes “development†projects such as military complexes, forests, and new Jewish towns on top of existing, but unrecognized, Bedouin villages. How is this happening?
In the 66 years since the Nakba, and the expulsion of the vast majority of Palestinians from their homeland, successive Israeli government plans and practices have sought to realize a vision where the Jewish people control the maximum amount of land with the fewest Palestinians. Read an analysis of the Prawer Plan as a tool to legitimize this established and unjust vision.
