Bedouin residents of Ras Jrabah present concrete alternatives to Israel’s plan to erase their village and double the size of the Jewish city of Dimona

Tomorrow, 30 September 2024, Israeli planning authorities will hear objections, including an objection filed by Adalah and Bimkom on behalf of the residents of Ras Jrabah, to a master plan to expand the city of Dimona, a predominantly Jewish-Israeli city established in the early 1950s. This plan includes 10,000 housing units that will almost double the population and area of the city, which is also home to Israel’s nuclear power plant. Residents of the Bedouin village of Ras Jrabah in the Naqab (Negev), home to more than 500 residents, and on whose land Dimona was built, have filed objections to the plan, which serves as the basis for their forcible displacement, which the Be’er Sheva District Court ordered to be carried out by the end of 2024.

Additionally, on 18 September 2024, Adalah filed a motion to the Supreme Court to appeal the Be’er Sheva District Court’s ruling, dated 3 June 2024, approving eviction lawsuits filed against the people of Ras Jrabah by Israeli authorities. The residents of Ras Jrabah, who have lived on their ancestral land for generations, have consistently stated that they do not oppose the development of Dimona, but request that their village be integrated into the city, which has become central to their lives over the decades.

The people of Ras Jrabah have been fighting the state’s attempts to evict them since May 2019, when the Israel Land Authority (ILA) filed 10 eviction lawsuits against them. The ILA has since refused to negotiate any solution other than relocating the residents to a town designated for Bedouins only. Throughout this period, the residents were unable to object to the plan, as it was considered to be officially submitted only after the court's decision in June 2024. The Israeli planning authorities will need to address the alternatives presented by the residents in the objection for their incorporation into Dimona.

Viable Alternatives: Residents propose solutions that enable them to stay in their village and do not undermine expansion plan

On 14 September, Adalah and Bimkom - Planners for Planning Rights submitted an objection on behalf of 105 residents of Ras Jrabah and their families to the Southern Planning Committee against the plan to expand Dimona. 

Under the plan approximately new 10,000 housing units will be constructed in the city, and the reservation of 780 dunams of land for additional development. Other key features include a new entry route to the city, a train station, a central plaza, and a 600-dunam industrial zone (approximately 148 acres). Additionally, space has been set aside for a stadium, an arena, and a dedicated commercial areas. Around 4,870 dunams (approximately 1,203 acres) is earmarked to remain as open space.

In the objection, Adalah and Bimkom submitted a comprehensive alternative plan that outlines, for the first time, how the integration of Ras Jrabah into Dimona could be achieved. The organizations reference other cases in which Palestinian communities have been integrated into majority-Jewish towns in separate neighborhoods, highlighting this option as a viable alternative to displacement. The organizations presented four alternative locations identified through extensive consultations with the residents, with the aim of integrating Ras Jrabah into Dimona, while also preserving its original cultural and agricultural character. The objection emphasizes that, in light of the massive scale of the plan, “including the 90 families from Ras Jrabah within this plan neither obstructs it nor fundamentally alters it”.

The authorities’ refusal to date to consider this option further exposes the discriminatory and segregationist intention behind their efforts to displace the people of Ras Jrabah at any cost. As highlighted in the objection, the planning authorities had initially made the official submission of the plan contingent on considering the integration of Ras Jarabah into Dimona. Yet, despite this requirement and repeated requests from residents for a meeting with key officials in the ILA that went unanswered, the ILA waited until after the district court had handed down its decision and then refused the meeting, claiming that the ruling “speaks for itself.” Once again, they refused to consider any alternatives to forced displacement.

Racial Segregation; Both the planning process and the district court decision advance a segregationist agenda

On 18 September 2024, Adalah filed a motion requesting permission to appeal the district court’s decision of 3 June 2024 sanctioning the evacuation of Ras Jrabah to the Supreme Court.

    CLICK HERE to read more about the District Court decision and previous legal challenges

CLICK HERE to read the objection [Hebrew]

CLICK HERE to read the motion requesting permission to appeal to the Supreme Court [Hebrew]

In both the objection and the request to motion to the Supreme Court, Adalah argued that it was the state’s intention to evict Bedouin residents—members of an indigenous minority group—to make way for Jewish residents. Adalah contended that this policy constituted wrongful discrimination and a violation of the right to equality, emphasizing the unconstitutional nature of such separate and unequal treatment of citizens. 

In its submission to the Supreme Court, Adalah argued that the district court had erred by dismissing claims of segregation simply because there is no explicit ban on Bedouins purchasing land in the new neighborhood in Dimona. The court also incorrectly determined that the eviction lawsuits served a legitimate purpose. As stated in the motion, “The eviction aims to uproot the Bedouin residents, who have lived there for decades, to create a residential area for other citizens—Jewish or otherwise. This decision implicitly assumes that the applicants, because of their identity, cannot be part of Dimona,” and is therefore a clearly segregationist plan. Adalah emphasized that numerous provisions in international human rights conventions prohibit segregation and the forced displacement of populations, particularly indigenous peoples. 

Adalah thus demanded that the state incorporate the people of Ras Jrabah into the planning process for Dimona and urged the Supreme Court to intervene and cancel the eviction lawsuits.

The state employs procedural and legal processes to obscure genuine legal challenges

In its motion to appeal, Adalah highlighted how the state exploits procedural and legal loopholes to block residents from remaining on their ancestral land and undermine their ability to effectively contest the eviction lawsuits filed against them. Firstly, the ILA files eviction lawsuits, benefitting from regulations within the legal process that favor it as a state authority. In addition, the court’s decision in this case gives the ILA broad discretion in decision-making, without requiring it to adhere to relevant principles of administrative and constitutional law, including the obligation of state authorities to act in accordance with the principles of legality, fairness, and reasonableness. At the same time, the state has asserted that it lacks the authority to incorporate Ras Jarabah into Dimona, using this claim as a pretext to limit its proposals  to offering relocation to a Bedouin town—an approach that clearly enforces segregation between Palestinian Bedouin and Jewish Israeli citizens of Israel.

In the planning process, the ILA operates as if it were a private developer that has no obligation to the people of Ras Jrabah, while also holding a seat on the District Planning Committee, which is responsible for critical decisions concerning planning on state land. This dual role, as Adalah argued, gives the ILA the power to control planning decisions, including decisions over who gets evicted from their homes, without sufficient oversight in either the planning or judicial processes. These overlapping roles create a situation in which legal challenges to evacuation orders are almost impossible. For example, the district court ruled that discussions on incorporating residents of Ras Jrabah into Dimona should take place during the planning process. However, after the ruling, the authorities refused to consider this option prior to submitting the plan, with the ILA relying on the court’s decision to uphold the eviction lawsuits. The resulting  situation is one in which there is no regular legal process in which the residents of Ras Jrabah are given an opportunity to effectively challenge the state’s plan to forcibly displace them and practice segregation on their ancestral land.