By manipulating law and geography Israel is dispossessing the Bedouins of their historic lands.
"When will the state understand that we are here to stay? These are our lands for hundreds of years; everybody knew this—the Ottomans, the British and the Israelis. These lands are our soul, our life, our identity. Even if they demolish Araqib 100 more times, we shall return". (Sayach Altouri, Shaikh of 'Araqib, January 4, 2018).
These words were spoken at a special event convened in the small village of ’Araqib following the release of the shaikh from a short period of custody for "trespassing" on his ancestors land. It also followed the 124th demolition of their village by the authorities, and the reconstruction of its modest homes by the Bedouin residents.
’Araqib is but one of many flashpoints in the protracted conflict over land in the Negev, where dozens of indigenous Bedouin communities, numbering 110,000 people, are still living in localities that are not recognized or planned, with their residents subject to more than 1,000 house demolitions per year (that’s four times the number of demolitions that occur in the occupied West Bank). The indigenous communities, who have lived in the area for hundreds of years, are denied basic services such as water, electricity, roads or schools.
The Negev Region (Naqab in Arabic) is a relatively under-studied dimension of the Jewish-Palestinian conflict over land. In previous decades the conflict has erupted between the Israeli settler state and local Palestinians in the Galilee, the occupied and colonized West Bank, Gaza, and Jerusalem. During the last decade, however, some of the conflict has shifted to the Negev, as Israel renews its attempts to evict the Bedouins while constructing new Jewish settlements.
To facilitate the eviction of Bedouins from their traditional lands, Israel has offered them assistance and incentive to relocate into several existing towns, planned according to modern standards. Yet many Bedouins prefer to remain in their villages and thus refuse to leave their lands while the state persists in its denial of the right of their localities to exist.
Why this denial? The state argues that the Bedouins are trespassing on state land. Or, in the recent words of Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman, the Bedouins are “robbing our lands.”
In Emptied Lands: A Legal Geography of Bedouin Rights in the Negev, we argue otherwise: these lands never belonged to the state, and many of the Bedouin claims stand on firm historical and legal grounds. There is abundant evidence attesting to the recognition of Bedouin land ownership extending well back into the British and Ottoman eras, both in terms of customary law and formal land registration.
Today, the state is blatantly ignoring the legal, farming, and settlement history of the Negev. It claims that the Bedouins had an opportunity to register their lands in 1858, when the Ottoman Land Code was enacted, or in 1921, as required under British Mandatory legislation, but failed to do so. Hence, the state argues, unregistered land should be classified as “dead,” that is, empty, distant, uninhabited, uncultivated, unpossessed land, and thus belongs to the state. Although the Bedouins continue to occupy and cultivate these lands, as they have for generations, their lack of registration makes them legally “empty” and the Bedouins trespassers. For the lack of registration, the state seems to suggest that the Bedouins have only themselves to blame.
The state dispossessed the Bedouins retroactively using a doctrine similar to the notorious terra nullius concept utilized by Europeans.
Beyond the basic injustice of punishing grandchildren for their grandparents’ (non)actions, we also found through archival work that the Ottoman and British—who themselves enacted the “dead land” legislation—drew very different conclusions. The Ottomans recognized indigenous ownership and even purchased from the Bedouin lands to build modern Beersheba, the largest city in the Negev. The British began during the 1920s a different process of registering land ownership that was based on the state’s own initiative, and used new legislation that made the “dead land” ordinance superfluous.
However, the British Mandate came to an end in 1948 before the land registration process had reached the Negev. As a result, the British did not appropriate even a single grain of Bedouin sand on the basis of its classification as “dead land” and repeatedly told the Zionists that the land belonged to the Bedouins "from time immemorial."
The process of land dispossession in the Negev is supported legally by the state’s devising what we term “the Dead Negev Doctrine,” a doctrine drawn up during the mid-1970s by a Justice Ministry team led by attorney Plia Albeck. (Albeck later became known for her key part in legally facilitating illegal Jewish land control and colonization in the West Bank, working closely with Israeli Prime Ministers Menachem Begin and Ariel Sharon.) Against the historical and geographical evidence we gather in the book, the Dead Negev Doctrine states that until the British Mandate era, the Bedouins were nomadic with no permanent localities or agriculture, so the land in the area was effectively “dead.” On this basis, the state claimed that the lack of registration in 1921 rendered the land “dead” forever, regardless of the period of its cultivation or occupation.
In other words, the state dispossessed the Bedouins retroactively using a doctrine similar to the notorious terra nullius concept utilized by Europeans to take control over land in Africa, South and North America, and Australia. Owing to the Bedouins’ political and legal weakness, the Dead Negev Doctrine was not effectively challenged until the present time, enabling the creation of powerful legal precedents for dispossessing the Bedouins. These precedents are difficult to overcome in the Israeli legal system, which lacks a constitution and heavily relies on precedents—surmounting these precedents is made all the more difficult by the political bias of the judiciary, which has favored Israeli land appropriations since 1948 until the present.
By systematically manipulating Ottoman and British land laws, Israeli authorities have trampled over the region's history and indigenous culture in order to dispossess the Bedouins. Clear evidence of centuries of Bedouin Arab settlement and agriculture (taxed and recognized by previous regimes) abounds—as does evidence for an active and effective indigenous land system that was respected and recognized by previous rulers. The widespread practice of Jewish purchase of Bedouin lands during the British era, for instance, demonstrates without doubt the acceptance of Bedouin land ownership in the region, which is now denied by Israel.
As the centuries-old inhabitants of the region, Bedouins are indigenous communities and as such ought to be protected under the developing international law on indigenous rights. To stanch the tide of Bedouin land dispossession, just and equal legal and planning alternatives for the Negev must be put forward. Specifically, what is needed (and what we offer in Emptied Lands) are proposals that de-colonize relations and are based on the recognition of the indigenous past and future in the region. This approach has the potential to transform the region from conflict to reconciliation and from poverty to prosperity for all residents, including those like Sayach Altouri, quoted at the outset of this piece, who should be able to live safely on his ancestor's lands in ’Araqib.
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