Al Naqab faces a catastrophe

The Palestinian Arabs of Al Naqab (in southern Israel) are being uprooted from their ancestral homes to make room for Jewish colonisers in order to attain a “Jewish purity in the land of Israel”. These Arabs, an extension of the Arabs of Sinai who used to be known in ancient times as the Midianites, have been living in their ancestral land for thousands of years. In fact, Prophet Moses [PBUH] married the daughter of the high priest of these Arabs.

Speaking of ethnic ‘Jewish purity’, it has to be ‘Semitic and related to Abraham’, which is not the case with the Khazars who became Ashkenazi Jews after quitting the worship of the phallic symbol in the eighth century. Now brothers in the Law of Moses, i.e. the Arabs of Al Naqab, are being declared impure by the children of the Khazars because they “pollute” the purity of the “Jewish state”.

After the 19th parliamentary elections in January, in which the Likud and Israel Beituna parties failed to exclusively form a government, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had to act in fear of the new coalition that might hinder his ethnic cleansing plan pertaining to the Arabs of Al Naqab. He pushed the outgoing government to introduce the Prawer Plan to the Knesset for a second reading.

This ethnic cleansing plan includes the annexation of 800 thousand hectares in the area of Al Naqab where 45 Palestinian villages are located, housing more than 100,000 Arabs. The colonists’ plan, prepared by Benny Begin, minister without portfolio, calls upon the Israeli government to transfer all the Arabs from their ancestral land.

The 45 Palestinian Arab villages that have to be demolished will be replaced by 11 residential centers for Jews with the latest infrastructure that money can buy. Only seven villages in less than 100,000 hectares have been assigned for the uprooted Palestinians and 800,000 hectares of their land are being offered for free to the Khazars of Europe, who historically never were in Palestine in biblical times.

Talab Al Sane’i, a former Arab Knesset member, said the plan that has been introduced for a second reading to obtain final approval is indeed the “beginning of a new Palestinian catastrophe affecting the Arabs of Al Naqab”. He considered the plan as it pertains to the ‘Green Line’, a scheme designated to dispossess the Palestinians in 1948 areas whose land was occupied 65 years ago, as a continuation of the ethnic cleansing taking place in Al Naqab. The catastrophe that befell the Palestinians in 1948 is repeating itself in Al Naqab in 2013.

The Palestinians are again being forcefully displaced from their area of land which covers the western and southern parts of Al Naqab.

The Israeli plan, once fully enacted, will extend ‘legality’ to the government to uproot the Palestinians by force and replace them with Jewish colonisers in a blatant ethnic cleansing operation violating the United Nations Charter and human rights conventions endorsed by all nations including Israel. Indeed, the Prawer Plan is designated to create new demographical facts on the geography of historical Palestine aimed to create a Jewish majority in preparation to completely Judaise all of Palestine from the ‘River of Jordan to the Mediterranean Sea’ a colonial scheme that stands in the heart of the Zionist agenda.

Colonies and annexation of Palestinian land have always been justified by the Israeli occupation as ‘security measures’ to ‘safeguard’ the national security of Israel. Israeli security agencies consider the Palestinians of Al Naqab as the natural extension of the Arabs of Sinai who could be linked with the Arab Palestinians of Gaza.

Building a concentration camp to house the Arabs in seven villages surrounded by 250,000 Jewish colonists in addition to bases filled with military and security personnel is the Israeli solution in this case. It is to be remembered that ethnic cleansing, a racist system, and colonies in the Occupied Territories are ‘legal’ in Israeli policies, which led to an apartheid state by virtue of its own discriminatory actions enacted by its own parliament.

A recent article by Israeli professor Yirmiyahu Bronwier published by Maariv, said “it is expected to establish residential settlements [colonies] to house 250,000 Jews in Al Naqab when [Ariel] Sharon had a plan for one million”.

An editorial in Haaretz published in May described developments in Al Naqab as a “very stubborn conflict being managed by various Israeli governments in which part of the history of this area is being rendered to oblivion to free them from responsibility of ethnic cleansing which created the case of Palestinian refugees”.

The new Palestinian catastrophe taking place in Al Naqab has to be confronted. World silence in the face of this heinous colonial transfer will encourage a forced ethnic cleansing in the Occupied Territories. It is the Palestinians of Al Naqab who are being targeted today, and the rest of Palestinians in historical Palestine (as well as all people of conscience) should be on guard and be fully aware of possible similar Israeli schemes seeking to fulfil the Zionist agenda of making historical Palestine free of and pure from non-Jewish presence!

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