Forced Judaisation of Al Naqab area

Every once in a while, the Arab press reports, shyly and rather with shame, news of the ongoing Judaisation of Al Naqab desert and the displacement of its Arab Bedouin inhabitants from their villages and habitats established long before the Hebrew tribes migrated to Palestine from Egypt. From among the Arab Midianites of Al Naqab which forms an extension of Sinai, Prophet Moses took a wife, the daughter of the high priest Jethro who hosted the Hebrews during the exodus from Egypt for 40 years, according to the Torah.

These same brothers-in-law of Prophet Moses are being driven out of Al Naqab to make room for the greatest expansion in the Zionist State. The Judaisation of occupied Jerusalem, the occupied West Bank of River Jordan (including Al Aghwar area) and upper Galilee is going on unabated. Yet, the Judaisation of Al Naqab is vital for the survival of the apartheid and racist identity which is being fortified to replace the secular Israeli State. It is meant to create a vast industrial, agricultural and tourist base that can accommodate hundreds of thousands of new Jewish immigrants in the future who would be coming from all corners of the world. Al Naqab represents a huge reservoir which would allow the apartheid Zionist state to breathe and prosper bringing extreme misery to the indigenous Palestinian Arab inhabitants who have been living in Al Naqab for thousands of years.

In Al Naqab, nearly 200,000 Palestinian Arabs live in 15 towns and around 100,000 others live in villages Israeli authorities claim as being ‘illegal’. Next to them, around 386,000 Jews occupy 136 towns and agricultural villages. The Palestinian village of Al Araqeeb spearheaded a confrontation against the Judaisation process where, more than 22 times, Arab Bedouin homes were destroyed by Israeli troops under the pretext of being “illegally built”, leaving their owners, women and children homeless. Yet, the Palestinian village inhabitants rebuild their dwellings after each Israeli operation, thus setting an example for other Palestinian villages to stiffen their resistance to the Judaisation designs that involves destruction of Arab homes with the aim of making room for ‘God’s chosen people’ coming from abroad.

The Zionist apartheid state is treating the Arabs of Al Naqab as ‘dust’ that needs to be wiped off, but the desert dust has long been rooted in their well-endured norm of life. The Israeli writer Yaniv Tshour says: “The first committee set by Ben Gurion to resolve the problem of Al Naqab immediately after the establishment of the state of Israel suggested that the Bedouins of Al Naqab be turned into Jews. This foolish thought was completely ignored by the Bedouins which is still remembered by the shaikhs of the Arabs of Naqab to this day who are certain of their historic roots in the Naqab desert. All the files of this conflict are collecting dust and they are used to dust in their daily life, but the state treats them as human dust. It is a situation in human history which lacks registered deeds, but there are deeper rights than mere deeds.” And so, these Arabs are fighting to overcome the ‘dusting’ process of the Judaisation policy that is bent on driving them out of their villages and towns whose legality has been established by history books and the Torah as well.

The Israeli ‘Wine Road’ plan is being established to connect single family farms confiscated from Al Naqab Muslim “Palestinian Israeli” Bedouins and granted to Israeli Jewish farmers. The Knesset earlier approved confiscation of Arab land to establish 100 Jewish farms allocating 80 dunums (80,000 sq metres) for each Jewish farmer. The decision was enacted to protect these farmers against any attempt by the Palestinian Arabs of Al Naqab, the real owners of the land, to sue them. In other words the Knesset has legalised theft in their state, barely governed by law. Indeed, Al Naqab desert is being prepared to receive 250,000 new Jewish immigrants, but the Palestinian Arabs are refusing to leave their lands and have rejected an Israeli ‘offer’ of 200,000 dunums only extended to them. They have so far filed more than 3,000 complaints in courts covering more than 780 dunums of land which are legally theirs.

It is worth noting that Al Naqab represents 50 per cent of historical Palestine and the scheme is to squeeze its Arab inhabitants as three groupings into Dimona, Arad and Bir Al Sabe’ constituting seven villages only, instead of 70 of which 45 are considered to be illegal by Israel. In this regard, the Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronot wrote about resolving the issues with the Palestinian Arabs of Al Naqab, but found that they would never accept the government’s offer which-according to the paper “means withdrawing their filed complaints in Israeli courts, thus, legalising the confiscation of their land by the Israeli state”. Nevertheless, Israeli authorities are steadily implanting new colonies and farms in the heart of Al Naqab surrounding Arab villages and communities in the area. Moreover, large tracts of lands in Al Naqab have been earmarked for manoeuvres and military training. The speedy Judaisation of Al Naqab and occupied Jerusalem in particular, and indeed the whole occupied Palestinian West Bank and upper Galilee is a strategic plan aimed to evict all non- Jews from the Zionist state, no longer a secular one.

But the village of Al Araqeeb remains adamant on resisting Israeli plans and seeks to prevent a further migration reminiscent of the mass displacement of Palestinians imposed by Israeli military power in 1948. “Never again” is the current Palestinian slogan!

Professor As’ad Abdul Rahman is the Chairman of the Palestinian Encyclopaedia.