Harriet Sherwood refers to future Israeli cities in the Negev as “Jewish settlements”

Harriet Sherwood’s Guardian report on Dec. 1, ‘Israel’s plan to forcibly resettle Negev Bedouins prompts global protests‘, focuses on objections to the so-called Prawer-Begin plan to resettle some of the Israeli Bedouin population in the Negev from unplanned encampments to planned communities.  

(Under the plan, out of about 210,000 total Israeli Bedouin, roughly 30,000 will move, most only a few kilometers from their current homes, and will be compensated for their land.  Another 60,000 will have their homes legalized and developed under the initiative, per the graphic below.)

MFA graphic

However, even more interesting than Sherwood’s disproportionate focus on an extremely small number of protesters in Israel (and a few cities abroad), is the extremely telling words she uses to describe the new planned Israeli towns which will replace the existing encampments.  

Sherwood writes the following:

Under the Prawer Plan, the residents of “unrecognised” villages will be moved into seven overcrowded and impoverished towns. Meanwhile, new Jewish settlements are planned for the region.

First, as with all Israeli cities, citizens of all faiths will be permitted to live in all new communities built in the Negev, and it is therefore inaccurate to describe them as “Jewish”.

Even more noteworthy, however, is her use of the word “settlements” to characterize these future towns.  These new cities, such as Hiran (currently a cluster of Bedouin encampments in what’s called Umm al-Hiran, 30 km from Beer Sheva), will be established in the Israeli Negev – that is, within the state’s boundaries as they were envisioned even under the UN Partition Plan of 1947, and as the boundaries were established under the 1949 armistice agreement.

Here’s a map of the area:

Black arrow in upper right points to 1949 Armistice Lines – above which is the West Bank/Judea & Samaria. The Green arrow points to approximate location of Hiran.

Previously it seemed that the Guardian’s unofficial policy was to merely refer to Israeli communities in the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) as “settlements”.  

However, the term “settlement” seems to have now taken on a more expansive definition: any place within the state (even within its ‘recognized’ 1949 boundaries) previously free of Jews but where Jews are now permitted to live.

source

------------

15 police injured in rallies over Bedouin resettlement plan

Israeli PM condemns violence, vows to advance plan; Liberman: Dispute is over Jewish land; police says protest was ‘attempt to start a war’

Forty people were arrested and 15 police officers were injured Saturday during clashes that broke out between police and protesters at a demonstration in the Negev against the controversial Prawer Plan aimed at resettling the large majority of the Bedouin population living in the area.

Protesters threw stones at the security forces deployed to the organized demonstration, which attracted over 1,500 people. Police responded with stun grenades and water cannons to disperse the protest.

Saturday was marked as an International Day of Rage against the plan with protests also taking place in Haifa, Jerusalem, the northern Triangle area and in the West Bank in places near Ramallah and Hebron. Protests were also held in European cities.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned the violence Saturday evening, saying a “vocal and violent minority” was trying “to deny a better future to a large and broad population.”

“We have – and will have – no tolerance for those who break the law,” said the prime minister, vowing to advance the plan for “a better future for all residents of the Negev.”

The police commander of the Southern District, Yoram Halevy, said that the protest at Hura junction in the Negev was “an attempt to start a war.”

Halevy said the protesters threw stones and Molotov cocktails at police and set trash cans alight as police attempted to disperse them.

Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman criticized the protesters and leaders of the Bedouin community, framing the events in the context of a land dispute.

“We are fighting for the national lands of the Jewish people and there are those who intentionally try to steal them and take over them by force. We must reexamine this plan and consider a comprehensive plan that would cancel any benefits the Bedouin were supposed to receive. If there is no acceptance of the plan [on their part], there will be no benefits,” he charged in statement posted to Facebook on Saturday.

MK Miri Regev (Likud), who heads the Knesset Interior Committee, said the Bedouin were lending a hand to the “incitement against the state and its delegitimization,” adding that “the current situation in the Negev cannot continue.”

The Bill on the Arrangement of Bedouin Settlement in the Negev, also known as the Prawer-Begin Plan, was drawn up by former Likud minister and Knesset member Benny Begin and approved by the Cabinet in January.

It calls for Israel to officially recognize and register the vast majority of Bedouin settlements throughout the South, and compensate the residents of 35 unrecognized villages — some 30,000 to 40,000 people — who are to be moved off state-owned land into towns built for them.

The Israeli government says the plan will give the Bedouin the services and economic opportunities they currently lack. But where the government sees investment, Bedouin and human rights typically activists see a land grab tinged with anti-Arab racism. In other words they see a chance to cause trouble and as per usual blame Israel.

In January, Netanyahu said the plan was aimed at ending the 65-year-long reality wherein the state lost control of land settled by semi-nomadic Bedouin tribes. It would also “put an end to the spread of illegal building by Negev Bedouin and lead to better integration of the Bedouin into Israeli society,” he said.

Times of Israel