Cabinet Approves Begin Recommendations to Discriminatory Prawer Plan
Photo: The village of Al-Araqib in the Negev/Naqab has been demolished over 45 times since July 2010 to make way for forests. Photo courtesy of ActiveStills.
Yesterday, 27 January 2013, the Israeli government approved recommendations and minor amendments to the Prawer Plan, as set forth in a report submitted to the Cabinet by Minister Benny Begin. However, the Begin report, which was meant to have incorporated public grievances, changes little of the Prawer Plan policy to dispossess and displace up to 70,000 Arab Bedouin citizens of Israel living in the unrecognized villages in the Naqab (Negev) in order to pave way for the construction of new Jewish towns, nature reserves, and military zones.
Adalah’s Naqab Office Director, Dr. Thabet Abu Ras, described the Begin amendments as “window-dressing by manipulating numbers and statistics, without making any actual changes to the plan’s objectives or to the discriminatory and racist treatment of the Bedouin it entails.”
“From the beginning, the Prawer Plan has been developed and approved hastily and behind closed doors,” Dr. Abu Ras continued, “without consulting or even informing representatives of the Arab Bedouin community. Yesterday, the discussion of the amendments took place in the middle of a cabinet meeting on complex regional issues such as recent events in Egypt and Iran, in order to create the impression that Arab land in the Naqab is an issue of national security that must be resolved quickly, rather than a civil issue between the state and its citizens.”
Dr. Abu Ras echoed the concluding observations of the United Nations Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) issued in March 2012 and the European Parliament in a resolution passed in July 2012 calling on the Israeli government to cancel the Prawer Plan. He further urged Israel to “initiate a dialogue with the Arab and Bedouin people. The Naqab is large enough to accommodate development for all its citizens without having recourse to land confiscation or home demolitions, and while acknowledging of the historical rights of the Bedouin to their land.”
TIMELINE OF THE PRAWER PLAN:
September 2011: The Israeli government approved the Prawer Plan
3 January 2012: The draft Prawer Plan Law - the implementing arm of the Plan - was proposed to the Cabinet
January 2012: Minister Benny Begin was appointed to engage in public consultation with the community regarding the approved Prawer Plan
1 April 2012: Public hearing period ends, Adalah and ACRI submit objection
27 January 2013: Government approves Minister Begin’s recommendations to the Prawer Plan and amendments to the Prawer Plan Law
See: Minister Benny Begin's Recommendations to the Prawer Plan, and ACRI and Adalah's Objection to the Prawer Plan (English)
See also: Haaretz, “Bedouin slam Israel’s land offer as ‘back-room deal’” | “A rushed decision on Bedouin communities will have dire results”
