Adalah trains Arab lawyers to fight home demolitions in the Naqab

23/06/2013

In June 2013, Adalah held a two-session training course for 20 Arab lawyers in the Naqab (Negev) to legally challenge home demolitions and other issues related to land and planning. The training aimed to equip practicing lawyers with further legal knowledge and strategies to confront judicial and administrative home demolition orders before Israeli courts.

In the first session Urban Planner Nili Baruch from partner NGO Bimkom – Planners for Human Rights lectured on “master plans” and the "Master Plan for Metropolitan Beer el-Sabe (Beer Sheva) [MPMBS]." Baruch covered the expected effects and implications of the MPMBS for Arab municipalities and Arab Bedouin residents living in the Naqab. Attorney Emil Nahas then lectured on administrative demolition orders, and how to confront them.

In the second session, Attorney Nahas lectured on planning and building laws and demolition orders against unlicensed buildings. Adalah Attorney Suhad Bishara gave a talk on judicial demolition orders.

The legal training comes in the wake of a significant increase in the rate of demolitions in the Naqab, the rising threat of demolition against hundreds of houses and tens of villages, and the potential forced displacement of tens of thousands of Arab Bedouin from their homes under the Prawer Plan.

This training is the third in a series of Adalah professional legal trainings for Arab lawyers in the Naqab. The previous training held in 2012 focused on the legal representation of detainees, including the process of arrest and interrogation; it targeted lawyers willing to volunteer in the future to represent those arrested during political protests and demonstrations. The first training held in 2011 covered land settlement law in the Naqab.