Court backs state decision for forced removal of Bedouin


May 14, 2015
Sarah Benton


The Bedouin village of Umm al-Hiran, scheduled for evacuation of Bedouin Palestinians and replacement by Jewish residents. Photo from batterseabugle, no credit.

Umm al-Hiran, the Bedouin village which the Israeli state and court has ruled should be evacuated of its Bedouin residents and replaced by Jews. Photo from Palestine Briefing, no credit.

Supreme Court allows state to replace Bedouin village with Jewish one
Court rules that Umm al-Hiran in the northern Negev is built on state land, paving way for construction of Jewish community of Hiran.

By Shirly Seidler, Ha’retz
May 06, 2015

Israel’s Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected a petition by residents of the unrecognized Bedouin village of Umm al-Hiran against their removal and the demolition of the community – in order to construct a new town for Jewish residents in its place. The court ruled the land belongs to the state and the Bedouins have no legal rights to it.

“The state is the owner of the lands in dispute, which were registered in its name in the framework of the arrangement process; the residents have acquired no rights to the land but have settled them [without any authorization], which the state cancelled legally. In such a situation, there is no justification for intervention in the rulings of the previous courts,” wrote Supreme Court Justice Elyakim Rubinstein in the majority opinion.

Rubinstein ruled that the appeal should be rejected for two reasons:

First, because the petition was an indirect attack against the decisions of the government’s establishment of the new community of Hiran, to be built on the state-owned land – a challenge that should have been raised in other forums. Second, the judges ruled the government’s actions did not in any way violate the petitioners’ legal rights – and even if such rights were harmed, it was a “proportionate harm.”

The Supreme Court decision concerns only the evacuation orders. The Kiryat Gat Magistrate’s Court is scheduled to hold a hearing at the end of this month about the demolition orders for the houses in Umm al-Hiran.

Residents fought cabinet decision

In November 2013, a number of families from the Abu Alkiyan clan, who live in the unrecognized community of Umm al-Hiran, filed a petition with the aid of Adalah – Legal Centre for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, to prevent the demolition of their homes and the evacuation of the residents – after the cabinet approved the creation of Hiran and the demolition of their unrecognized village.

The petitioners claimed they did not squat on the land, but were transferred to the area in the Yattir Forest in 1956 by direct order of the military administration of the time. But now, their lands lie within the master plan of the Be’er Sheva metropolitan area. The government has never denied that the residents were moved to Umm al-Hiran by state authorities. Umm al-Hiran is now home to about 700 people, say residents, but like other Bedouin villages that lack official recognition as local municipal communities, it lacks infrastructure and electricity.

The Abu Alkiyan clan now resides in two villages, Atir and Umm al-Hiran, located near Wadi Atir, close to Route 316 and east of the village of Houra. Until 1948, the clan lived on the land now used by Kibbutz Shoval. After the War of Independence, they travelled across the Negev looking for new land, but did not find any, because most of it was already claimed by other tribes. In 1956, it approached the military administration and was transferred to the Wadi Atir area. A classified military administration document dating from 1957 says the clan received 7,000 dunams of land near the wadi. It then split into two hamlets that shared the land. Unlike in many Bedouin communities, the houses in Atir and Umm al-Hiran are built of stone.

Decade of house demolitions

Over the past decade houses in the village were demolished a number of times, and residents were offered a compromise of moving to the nearby town of Hura, where they would be compensated with an 800-square meter plot of land. But the families who petitioned the court refused the offer, saying they will not be removed from their land a third time.

Rubinstein wrote about this claim: “This is not expulsion and not expropriation, but the proposed evacuation involves various proposals of moving, construction, compensation and the possibility of homes, whether in the town of Hura where most of the residents of the illegal villages involved will be moved, or in the community of Hiran, which is to be built.”

In conclusion, Rubinstein said the issue of the Bedouin lands is one of the most difficult and challenging the court has dealt with, and is filled with sensitive emotions and political disputes.

Justice Daphne Barak-Erez, who disagreed with parts of Rubinstein’s opinion, criticized the government’s actions:

The petitioners cannot receive the full support they asked for, but it is also not possible to reconcile oneself with the flaws in the authorities’ actions concerning the decision on the evacuation and compensation involved.

She said the authorities should reconsider the compensation offered, since the residents had lived there for 20 years and were not trespassing. In addition the state should consider offering them a plot to live in the new town to be built on the land, in addition to the previous proposals, she suggested.

In 2012, the National Planning and Building Council approved the master plan for Hiran, the latest in a series of decisions on the matter by the state. Despite being approved, work on the town was delayed following the appeal by the Bedouin residents. Hiran is slated for 2,400 housing units, and the Bedouin can also choose to live there if they want, attorney Moshe Golan, representing the government, told the court in one of the hearings. But he noted the Bedouin residents would not receive the same 800-square meter plot in Hiran they would receive elsewhere, since the plots in Hiran were much smaller. The core group of families slated to move to Hiran are national religious Jews, who are to be joined by secular residents moving to the site from the nearby community of Meitar, along with others.

Salim Abu Alkian of Umm al-Hiran, who led the residents in the court petition, told Haaretz he was disappointed by the decision. “The decision was very disappointing, but we knew beforehand that is what would happen.” He accused the entire Israeli establishment, government and courts of racism.

Residents plan to stay put

Abu Alkian said the residents will go on refusing to be moved to nearby Hura: “I will continue to fight since I am not a criminal, and this is my home.” He said they were considering turning to an international court to protest.

Adalah said that even though the Supreme Court noted in its decision that the residents are living in the area with permission of the state and at its instruction, the “court makes do with the technical authority of the state to act as it pleases with the land on which Umm al-Hiran and Atir sit. In doing so, the court gave legitimacy to the erasing of an entire village off the face of the earth and the expulsion of its residents, while ignoring the entire human, political, social and historical perspective.”

Adalah said that together with the the residents, human rights organizations and Arab community representatives, it would in the coming days examine legal and public tactics



View of Hura by Romayan.

It’s 1948 again for Bedouin tribe

The Abu Alkian were expelled in 1948 from their Negev lands, which went to Kibbutz Shoval. A few years later they built Umm al-Hiran, which is now slated to become a new Jewish town named Hiran.

By Oudeh Basharat, Ha’aretz
May 11, 2015

I have no doubt that the minister of Zionist history is tearing his hair out right now. The frustration over the ruling of the Supreme Court with regard to expelling the residents of the Bedouin village of Umm al-Hiran to establish a Jewish town called Hiran is driving him out of his mind. Honourable justices, what’s going on here? To evacuate 1,000 Bedouin, you are destroying the Zionist narrative about what happened here in 1948?

How can you accuse the residents of being trespassers? They have lived for 60 years in the location the state allotted to them. How can you argue once again that the expulsion is taking place during a war, and roll your eyes and say that in war there are inevitably refugees? How can you blame the Arab leaders for supposedly calling on the village residents to leave until they destroy the Zionist entity, and how can it be said that the residents of Umm al-Hiran didn’t want Jews near them, so they deserve to be evacuated? After all, the village residents are willing to live with the Jews.

Even before the new government is sworn in, the spirit of Naftali Bennett prevails. This time we aren’t apologizing. This time we aren’t trying to find various and sundry reasons for carrying out the expulsion. No more military or environmental constraints or any other excuses. We’re simply uprooting an Arab to plant a Jew.

So whom should we thank? Our justices who removed the mask. This ruling was the greatest gift to the Palestinian narrative. The justices simply prove that the claim that thousands of Palestinians ostensibly “wandered” across the borders in 1948 without the Zionists having any hand in it is totally baseless.

Members of the Abu Alkian tribe were expelled from their lands in 1948 and the lands were annexed to Kibbutz Shoval. After a few years of wandering, the state allocated them some land, and that’s where the village of Umm al-Hiran was built. In the ensuing years, children were born, parents were buried, a history emerged and memories flourished.

In this case, a senior lawyer told me, the evacuation of the village is like a death sentence, which must be decided upon unanimously. As we know, one of the three justices held an opposing opinion, and as we know, you don’t execute someone in the case of reasonable doubt. Now the ball is in the court of Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein. He must insist the demolition orders not be carried out, because the black stain that will result from the demolition of the village will never be removed.

In Israel there are embraces on the left and on the right. Only the Arabs are ineligible for hugging. Habayit Hayehudi conditioned its joining the coalition on the revival of the Prawer plan to permanently resettle the Bedouin, which does not constitute ethnic cleansing, God forbid, but merely creates a single large ethnic prison.

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court justices’ bulldozers are already paving MK Ayelet Shaked’s way to the Justice Ministry. All this has been taking place via a slew of High Court rulings, each of which raises an eyebrow more than the next, starting from the admissions committee law, through the Nakba law and the anti-boycott law, to the evacuation of Umm al-Hiran. Shaked will find, to her dismay, that there isn’t much left to do to realize her vision. After all, on the highway the High Court is paving for the extreme right, it doesn’t pay to try to pass.

So here, then, is the response of the Jewish nation, through its judges, to the humanitarian address delivered in the Knesset by Joint Arab List chairman MK Ayman Odeh. Odeh brought a gospel of equal citizenship for all, and the nation-state of Jews is fighting it. Soon we might have a judge who will condemn Odeh’s message as one that, as the Passover Haggadah states, “is poised to wipe us out.”

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