ILA and JNF should stop plan to build forest on ruins of Bedouin village

On 5 August 2009, Adalah sent an urgent letter to the Director of the Israel Land Administration (ILA) and Jewish National Fund (JNF) officials in the south of Israel demanding that they immediately halt plans to plant a forest in land belonging to the Abu Mdeghem family from the Al-Touri tribe in the Naqab (Negev).

Adalah stated in the letter that it had recently received complaints from members of the Abu Mdeghem family that the JNF was making attempts to forest land estimated at around 1,200 dunams around the village of Al-Araqib located north of Beer el-Sabe (Beer Sheva). The land in question is currently in ownership registration processes and the issue of its ownership has yet to be legally resolved.

As there has been no official registration of the ownership of the majority of land in the Naqab, in the early 1970s the Israeli authorities began to allow citizens of Israel in the Naqab to submit land registration applications for land in accordance with the Land Settlement Law – 1969. Arab citizens of Israel living in the Naqab submitted applications for hundreds of thousands of dunams of land. The authorities have not examined the applications since the 1970s, and the land has been designated as “settlement land.” Members of the Abu Mdeghem family filed land registration applications for land in Al-Araqib, but their application, like all the others, has not been considered.

In the letter, Adalah Attorney Suhad Bishara argued that foresting “settlement land” imposes facts on the ground, and will torpedo the process of resolving land disputes, and will deny members of the Abu Mdeghem family their constitutional right to property and to benefit from their land ownership.

Adalah emphasized that the Land Settlement Law clearly and explicitly prohibits any transfer of ownership of land subject to settlement, and that the issue of the ownership of the land in question has yet to be resolved. Foresting land in Al-Araqib is tantamount to the illegal transfer of its ownership to the JNF. Foresting the land is also contrary to the Israeli Forest Law, which proscribes the foresting of private land.