En this morning in January 2022, the wind from the Negev desert, in southern Israel, rose, accompanying the hundred or so Bedouins gathered to proclaim their anger. For decades, this minority, one of the most marginalized in the country, has denounced the violent seizure of its ancestral lands by the Israeli state. At the roots of this uprising, a project – now aborted – of planting trees, led by the Jewish National Fund (JNF), a private organization which manages the majority of forests in Israel. « They arrived one morning at the village of Sa'wa, and began to plant trees in the middle of the houses, to establish a forest there. It was insane », remembers Mr. Khalil Al-Amour, lawyer and activist for the rights of Bedouin villages in the Negev. Mr. Itamar Ben Gvir, now far-right Minister of National Security, went there in person to support the initiative and plant trees on the outskirts of the village.
« This afforestation project is a cancer that they want to inject into our bodies », exclaimed Mr. Attia Al-Asam, president of the Regional Council of Unrecognized Villages of the Negev (RCUV). Violently repressed by the Israeli police, these demonstrations are part of a long struggle against the policy of eviction of Palestinian Bedouin populations and the grabbing of their land, which the Israeli state justifies in the name of the fight against desertification. « Every time a Bedouin family is evicted from their land, they come to plant trees the next day », specifies Mr. Al-Amour.
A few kilometers from Sa'wa, the Bedouin village “ not recognized » by Israel Umm Al-Hiran has also been threatened with dismantling since 2003, when the Israeli National Planning and Building Council approved the creation of a Jewish colony on the same location. On the outskirts of this town of barely seven hundred inhabitants lie the hills of Yatir, the largest planted forest in Israel, named after « a city (…)
Full item size: 2 501 mots.
This article is reserved for subscribers
High schools, libraries, administrations, businesses,
access the online database of all articles in the Diplomatic world from 1954 to the present. Find this specific offer.
