2023-07-31 12:47:00
Ras Jrabah © Amnesty International.
“An Israeli court has given the green light to the Forced eviction of 500 Palestinian Bedouin people in the Negev/Naqab region, highlighting the enormous discrimination to which Palestinian citizens of Israel are subjected,” Amnesty International said today. In a judgment released on 27 July, the Beer’sheva Court declared that the residents of the town of Ras Jrabah should leave their homes and vacate the land where their families have lived for decades by March 2024. Furthermore, fined them 117,000 new shekels (approximately US$31,700) to cover court costs.
Los forced evictions they are part of the plans of the Israeli authorities to build a new neighborhood for the city of Dimona, whose population is mainly Israeli Jewish. Residents of Ras Jrabah will be rehoused in a nearby segregated and impoverished Bedouin village.
“This ruling shows how Israel’s highly discriminatory land and property laws are used to enforce apartheid against the Palestinian citizen population of Israel, who are systematically denied the same rights as the Jewish Israeli population. Thus begins the countdown for those living in Ras Jrabah, who have just a few months to pack up their lives and leave the only home they have ever known to make way for the sprawling Jewish-majority city of Dimona. It is yet another attempt by the Israeli authorities to reduce the Palestinian presence in the Negev/Naqab under the pretext of development,” said Heba Morayef, Amnesty International’s Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa.
“This ruling highlights the need to immediately dismantle the Israeli apartheid system. The international community must put pressure on the Israeli authorities to scrap these cruel plans and end their policy of forced eviction of the Palestinian population of the Negev/Naqab.”
Like many Palestinian Bedouin people from Israel’s southern Negev/Naqab region, the Ras Jrabah residents have lived in their village for generations, but the Israeli government refuses to recognize it. The Israel Land Authority alleges that their presence prevents the expansion of Dimona despite the fact that the residents have requested their integration into the new neighborhood, a request that the Israeli authorities have rejected.
As Adalah, the organization that legally represents the residents, points out, the Ras Jrabah eviction plans are part of a general policy of replacing the Palestinian Bedouin population per Jewish Israeli population in the Negev/Naqab.
Additional information
According to Adalah, the Negev Bedouin Settlement and Development Authority, the Israeli government body responsible for relocating the displaced Palestinian Bedouin population, has refused to consider the option of integrating Ras Khrabah into Dimona. The Bedouin Authority stated that it is only authorized to offer solutions in Bedouin towns, not Jewish Israeli ones, and that the only option is to relocate the population of Ras Jrabah to the neighboring Bedouin town of Qasr al Sir.
Ras Jrabah occupies almost 35 hectares of land belonging to the Al Hawashleh tribe and its residents have lived there since before the establishment of Dimona. Amnesty International’s 2022 report on the Israeli apartheid system exposes how the discriminatory zoning laws and zoning are designed to maximize land and resources for the Jewish Israeli population at the expense of the Palestinians.
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