Adalah & NCF: Israel’s replies to UN body deny Bedouin indigeneity in Naqab, ignore discriminatory effects of policies

Adalah and the Negev Coexistence Forum (NCF) submitted a report on 13 September 2019 in response to Israel’s replies to the List of Issues put forward by the UN Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights.

[CLICK HERE to read the joint report]

The committee is scheduled to review Israel’s compliance with the International Convention on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) on 2-3 October 2019 in Geneva (Israel ratified the treaty in 1991). Adalah and NCF will attend the session.

The NGOs’ report focused on Israel’s responses to questions raised by the committee relating to suspected breaches of the ICESCR towards Arab Bedouin citizens of Israel living in the Naqab/Negev. The NGOs also submitted a joint report in January 2019 to the committee ahead of its list of issues to Israel.

In its new report, Adalah and NCF raised a list of critiques of the state’s replies, including:

• The absence of disaggregated data provided by the state to accurately show the proportion of persons living below the poverty line, which would have shown Bedouin citizens in the Naqab disproportionately represented;
• No assessment of how the Jewish-Nation-State Law would impact non-Jewish citizens like the Bedouin, despite the fact the law is designed to consolidate Jewish primacy in the state and exacerbate existing housing segregation, which particularly affects the Naqab/Negev;
• Denying Bedouin claims of indigeneity without any basis of serious analysis or prevailing scholarship on the matter, and evading the discriminatory motives behind its denial of Bedouin traditional and ancestral lands;
• Failure to address the fact that the implementation of the second Five-Year Socio-economic Development Plan for the Negev is conditioned on the demolition of thousands of Bedouin homes and structures;
• Evading the fact that, instead of ensuring meaningful participation of Bedouin citizens in planning and development policies, state authorities enter negotiations with unrecognized villages only to discuss the terms of their forced displacement, and that any discussions in recognized villages regarding building and services have resulted in little to no progress on the ground;
• The state’s admission that the provision of public transportation to unrecognized villages is preconditioned on the existence of necessary infrastructure – basic services which it refuses to provide because of their unrecognized status;
• Failure to address the discriminatory impact of the practices of the World Zionist Organization (WZO), Jewish Nation Fund (JNF), and Jewish Agency of Israel, which operate as quasi-governmental agencies;

CLICK HERE to read the joint Adalah-NCF report

CLICK HERE to read Adalah Attorney Myssana Morany's presentation at NGOs briefing to CESCR review of Israel, United Nations Headquarters – Geneva, 30 September 2019

CLICK HERE for Adalah and NCF reply to the UN CESCR List of Issues for Israel, September 2019

CLICK HERE for Adalah and NCF report to the UN CESCR, January 2019

CLICK HERE for State of Israel’s reply to the List of Issues, August 2019

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