Adalah and Bimkom Appeal Against Displacement Camp Plan Laying Groundwork for Mass Forced Transfer of Bedouin Citizens in the Naqab
On 9 May 2025, Adalah – The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel – and Bimkom –Planning and Human Rights – submitted an appeal to the National Planning Committee challenging a far-reaching plan to create “temporary housing” compounds across the Naqab (Negev). The appeal, filed on behalf of the Regional Council for the Unrecognized Villages (RCUV), local committees, and residents from 19 different Bedouin villages, most of them unrecognized, follows the Southern District Planning and Building Committee’s 17 March 2025 decision to approve the plan and reject a formal objection submitted by the groups.
Click here to read the appeal [in Hebrew]
The plan, advanced by the Israeli government's Bedouin Authority, spans over around 182,000 dunams (approx. 44,973 acres) and authorizes the construction of an unspecified number of mobile housing units (estimated at about 5,000 according to the Bedouin Authority) for residents forcibly removed from unrecognized villages, as well as those in recognized villages living without adequate infrastructure or housing. These structures are temporary, lack proper infrastructure and services, and fall far below adequate living standards. The plan offers only temporary building permits, limited to five years, and provides no pathway toward permanent housing or durable solutions.
This current initiative revives and expands on two 2019 proposals for displacement camps that were shelved following strong public opposition. The plan allows for the issuance of temporary housing permits in order to facilitate the transfer of residents—whether voluntary, coerced, or forced. It also circumvents existing planning and building restrictions by making use of “temporary” structures, and provides for the displacement of Bedouin residents on the pretext of a range of “urgent” infrastructure projects, such as the construction of highways, power lines, and railways.
In its decision to reject the objection, the District Committee fully embraced the plan’s core logic, describing it as a “solution” for residents living “illegally and without proper infrastructure.” It added only a weak clause requiring case-by-case permit approval at the district level.
In their appeal, the organizations raised several central arguments:
● The government’s decades-long refusal to recognize Bedouin villages or to develop proper planning in the recognized ones created the current crisis. Rather than remedy this failure, it now seeks to establish displacement zones for the Bedouin and to impose temporary, inadequate infrastructure.
● The plan gravely violates the rights to adequate housing, dignity, equality, and non-discrimination.
● It undermines development efforts in recognized Bedouin towns by turning them into holding areas for displaced residents from unrecognized villages.
● It sets a dangerous legal and planning precedent that normalizes forced transfer to “temporary” inadequate housing.
● The plan deepens Israel’s two-tiered planning regime: while Jewish Israeli citizens benefit from permanent, well-serviced communities and participatory planning processes, Bedouin citizens are subjected to temporary, coercive, and unregulated housing schemes imposed without consent or consultation
This initiative is the latest phase in a broader, long-standing state policy aimed at displacing Bedouin citizens from their ancestral lands. For further background, see the Forced Displacement Map created by Adalah, Bimkom, and the RCUV:
https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/bbfbf46fb07144a68b1f62280e967a98#ref-n-3IDIIX
Relevant Documents:
● Objection filed by Adalah and Bimkom on behalf of 19 unrecognized villages
For more about the 2019 plans:
● Position Paper: The Illegality of Israel’s Plan to Transfer Palestinian Bedouin Citizens into Displacement Camps
● Israel launches plan to force its own Bedouin citizens into refugee displacement camps
