Bedouin strike over home demolitions


January 20, 2017
Sarah Benton

This posting has these items:
1) Times of Israel: Israeli Arabs call strike over Bedouin home demolitions, the best hope for non-violent protest;
2) Haaretz: Deadly Clash With Police Could Set Off Explosion in Israel’s Arab Community, Amos Harel warns of the growing violence;
3) Times of Israel: Press puts the ‘um’ in Umm al-Hiran, Joshua Davidovich’s review of the press coverage with especial derision for Israel Hayom;
4) +972: Palestinian MK injured ahead of home demolitions: ‘The police are liars’;


Bedouin women react to the destruction of houses on January 18, 2017, in the unrecognized Bedouin village of Umm al-Hiran in the Negev desert. Photo by Menahem Kahana/AFP

Israeli Arabs call strike over Bedouin home demolitions

Joint List MK says minority community cannot have ‘normal life’ when homes are being razed; larger protest planned for next week in Jerusalem

By Tamar Pileggi, Times of Israel
January 18, 2017

An influential Arab advocacy group called for a nationwide general strike on Thursday to protest the home demolitions in the Bedouin village of Umm al-Hiran on Wednesday.

Joint (Arab) List MK Aida Touma-Sliman said the Arab Higher Committee declared the day-long strike during an emergency meeting in the Negev village Wednesday afternoon.

The decision followed a day of intense clashes and spiking tensions over the demolitions and an alleged car-ramming in which a resident of the town ran his car into policeman Erez Levi, killing him.

The driver, Yaqoub Mousa Abu al-Qia’an, was killed by police fire, with a video appearing to show officers firing at him before his car accelerated into Levi.

“We decided that tomorrow will be a strike day, and will also be a day that we raise a black flags in our homes and in our businesses,” Touma-Sliman told the Times of Israel.

“There is no normal life when our homes are being demolished,” she said.

Arab businesses and municipalities will close across the country, but children will go to school for three hours to learn about the demolitions, Touma-Sliman said.

She said Arab Israelis were planning a larger protest in Jerusalem next week, with large convoys from Arab cities and towns from across Israel convening in front of the Knesset Monday morning.

Earlier on Wednesday, the home demolitions in Umm al-Hiran were disrupted when a car driven by Abu al-Qia’an, a local schoolteacher, slammed into police, killing an officer and moderately wounding another.

The predawn incident took place amid protests at the site as police were carrying out demolitions of several illegally built homes in the unrecognized Bedouin village [viz, no planning permission].

Israeli officials were quick to call the incident a terror attack and pointed to evidence that Abu al-Qia’an had Islamist ties.

Videos from the scene did not definitively resolve questions over whether Abu al-Qia’an was in control of the vehicle when he ran into Levi.

Local residents and activists insisted that Abu al-Qia’an was shot by police before the ramming and was not in control of the vehicle when it hit the officers.

Drone footage of the incident released later in the day appeared to show at least one policeman opening fire on the vehicle before it accelerates into a group of police officers.

Joint List head MK Ayman Odeh, who was lightly wounded in the clashes, said police and the government were responsible for the morning of deadly violence.

He said some 100 police officers “attacked the residents of Umm al-Hiran. They just fell on them, they hit me and shot at me with brutality.”

Odeh says he was hit by a sponge-tipped bullet, while police reportedly maintain that he was hit by a rock thrown by a protester.

Israel’s Arab minority has long maintained that state-sponsored discrimination makes it impossible for them to obtain planning permission to expand their communities. The result is that many families resort to building homes without permission, leaving them liable to demolition.


The National Unit for enforcing planning and construction laws demolish illegal buildings in Qalansawe, January 10, 2017

There has been a string of demolitions of Arab homes in northern and central Israel, most recently in the town of Qalansawe in central Israel.

After 11 illegal structures were demolished last week, the Joint List branded the demolitions “an unprecedented crime and a declaration of war against the residents of Qalansawe and the Arab public.”


MKs from the Joint List join locals to view the building demolitions in Qalansawe, January 10, 2017. Photo courtesy of Joint Arab List

The Knesset faction further claimed the demolitions came in response to the impending evacuation of the illegal West Bank outpost of Amona, and to divert attention from the ongoing police investigations into alleged misdeeds by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“There is no doubt that the home demolitions in the Arab community are due to the theft of land in Amona,” the Joint List statement said, “and because of the crisis of the prime minister and the right wing. As the investigation [into Netanyahu] grows so the number of demolitions grows.”


Israeli policemen clash with a Bedouin man following a protest against home demolitions in the Bedouin village of Umm al-Hiran, January 18, 2017. Photo by Ahmad Gharabli/AFP

The demolitions in Qalansawe and Umm al-Hiran followed Netanyahu’s instructions in December to Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan to step up enforcement measures against illegal construction among Israeli Arabs.

The prime minister’s call to crack down on illegal construction followed the planned demolition of Amona, an illegal West Bank outpost that had been slated to be evacuated on December 25, but after a court-approved extension must now be cleared by February 8.

In a Facebook video in Hebrew addressed to Amona’s residents, Netanyahu vowed that home demolitions “must be egalitarian. The same law that necessitates the evacuation of Amona, necessitates the evacuation of illegal construction elsewhere in our country,” he said.

Netanyahu emphasized he would enforce laws on illegal construction “in the Negev, in Wadi Ara, in the Galilee, in the center – all over the country.” He was apparently primarily referring to Israel’s Arabs and Bedouin, in whose communities construction laws aren’t consistently enforced.




Ayman Odeh, leader of the Joint List, is injured at Umm-al-Hiran. Photo on January 18, 2017 by Keren Manor/Activestills

Deadly Clash With Police Could Set Off Explosion in Israel’s Arab Community

Police need to snuff out growing tensions, rather than fan the flames of rage over demolition of Arab homes.

By Amos Harel, Haaretz premium
January 18, 2017

The deadly incident in the Negev, in which a Bedouin civilian and a policeman were killed, is a flash point in the relationship between the State of Israel and the Bedouin living in Israel’s south.

A police operation to raze illegally built homes in the village of Umm al-Hiran went wrong and descended into violence. During the conflict, the police say, one of the residents ran over a policeman, and was shot and killed by other police. The chairman of the Joint List, Knesset member Ayman Odeh, was shot with a rubber bullet, which just fanned the fires.

The Bedouin claim that the driver was shot for no reason, but that argument sounds specious, because the fact is that a policeman was run over and killed. However, the police’s version is still to be substantiated. Mere months ago, what had been described as a vehicle-ramming terror attack in the East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Shoafat, turned out to be a misunderstanding in which the driver was shot and killed by police.

Of course, the police’s description of the event could be absolutely accurate. But for now, a whiff of bluster is evident in the haste with which the police spokesman’s office issued a categorical statement about the incident (one, by the way that employs exclamation marks, an unusual touch for an official announcement to the press). The Israeli army spokespeople have learned to be more careful in publicizing conclusions, at least regarding some of the incidents in the territories.

One can’t help but recall that when a wave of fires erupted last month Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan, senior police officers and firefighters announced that many of the dozens of blazes had been set deliberately for nationalistic reasons. They may have been right, but as of now, not a single indictment has been filed and the last Arab Israeli arrested for alleged arson was freed this week.

Yet surprisingly, the police hastened to connect the Bedouin driver involved in this morning’s incident with ISIS. They claim the driver was an ISIS activist, but the announcement that they’re checking his ties with the Islamic organization looks a little premature.

After a truck driver ploughed into a crowd in Jerusalem last week, killing four Israeli soldiers, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman claimed that the terrorist was an ISIS activist. Yet not a shred of evidence supporting that contention has come forth.

The Shin Bet security service is indeed worried about rising identification with ISIS among the Bedouin in the south. A year ago, a group of Bedouin teachers was arrested and accused of fostering ties with ISIS. But again, the logical leap from membership in some Islamic organization to activity for ISIS requires proof, that has yet to be presented.


Settlers from Amona and Ofra come together to protest against the ordered evacuation of Amona, October 2016. None of their illegal houses has been demolished.

The demolition of homes in Umm al-Hiran came just one week after a widely publicized mission to raze illegally built homes in the Arab town of Kalansua in central Israel. In late December, the whole nation was virtually paralyzed by the crisis over evicting the settlers from Amona. Meanwhile not a single home in Amona has been demolished, even though efforts to legislate a way out of the problem have proved unsuccessful. But Netanyahu and Erdan lost no time leveraging their enforcement of the law against Arabs.

The impression is that what is driving aggressive enforcement in Israeli Arab towns within the Green Line is the Amona crisis and public expectation of strong moves against terrorism after attacks like the one in Jerusalem last week.

Even if the state exhausted the legal options before evicting Bedouin from Umm al-Hiran, even if it had to take action, the question is how to go about a mission like that, and what message to give the policemen and the Bedouin community.

If the police present persuasive evidence, soon, that the driver’s intent had indeed been to kill, and if police act reasonably to snuff out the tensions, the fire could be extinguished before it spreads to other Bedouin towns and throughout Israeli Arab society. The Israeli Arab Knesset members also bear responsibility for restoring the quiet, a responsibility that some of them seem reluctant to assume.

Still, there is no question that gasoline has just been poured onto tensions that had been simmering for a long time.

The problems of Arab society in Israel certainly don’t begin or end with tensions with the government, or police. Israeli Arabs talk about rampant crime in their towns, an absence of administrative enforcement, and a flood of illegal guns.

But alongside the violent demonstrations and clashes, note the following fact too: Since January 1, 2016, the day Nashat Milhem murdered three Israelis in Tel Aviv, 23 Israelis have been killed in terror attacks. More than 12 were killed by terrorists bearing Israeli identity cards, some of them Israeli Arabs, others residents of East Jerusalem. This is a worrying development and the Shin Bet knows that too.



Rahat, the biggest of the seven purpose-built townships to which Bedouin are being moved on Israeli government orders. The others are Tel as-Sabi (Tel Sheva) (established in 1969), Shaqib al-Salam (Segev Shalom) in 1979, Ar’arat an-Naqab (Ar’ara BaNegev) and Kuseife in 1982, Lakiya in 1985 and Hura in 1989.

Press puts the ‘um’ in Umm al-Hiran

With everything disputed about what went down in the Bedouin village and why, the only thing clear is that anyone who claims to have all the answers, like the police or Israel Hayom, is probably wrong

By Joshua Davidovich, Times of Israel
January 19, 2017

There’s a saying in Hebrew: What you see from here you don’t see from there. The advent of such an idiom seems natural in a region where actual conflicts so often give way to never-ending wars of words, competing versions of history and reality. We might all be groping at the same elephant, but we see different realities.

The idea seems relevant given that Wednesday morning’s two predawn deaths – a policeman run over, the driver, accused of being a terrorist, shot and killed — as homes in a Bedouin village were demolished are under dispute, as is the question of what kind of projectile sent Israel’s top Arab lawmaker to a hospital. Only the sepia-toned helicopter footage of the suspected car-ramming attack and angry accusations from interested parties are there to guide Israeli news consumers’ way.

And that’s just in the main news story of the day, to say nothing of other affairs simmering in the background – like the criminal investigations into Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President-elect Donald Trump’s plan to move the embassy to Jerusalem, seemingly reiterated in an “interview” to Israel Hayom.

Yedioth Ahronoth’s front page headline, “The running-over and the protest,” gives a taste of what little is not under dispute. Inside, the paper tries to walk a tightrope between the various claims being made, though it seems to do so by swinging wildly between sides.

In one column, Nahum Barnea compares claims that the driver was tied to the Islamic State to claims made by top officials — which have yet to be proven — that the fires that ravaged Israel over a month ago were set by nationalistically motivated Arabs, and describes the sense of utter dismay in Umm al-Hiran following everything that went down.

“[Locals] had trouble saying what was more enraging – the death of Yakoub Abu al Qia’an, their relative who was shot to death as he drove his car toward the police, the claim that the police published widely in the media that the dead man was an Islamic State supporter, the destruction of their homes, or their lack of ability to do anything to stop any of it,” he writes.

Yet in the same paper, columnist Ben-Dror Yemini hurls insults at activists and others who tried to stop the demolitions, accusing them of brainwashing Umm al-Hiran residents into crying racism instead of taking the sweet deal to move off their land and into a nearby city.

“The minority of the minority is those who are in the centre of the violence that broke out again yesterday. This minority felt it had great backing. This happened because activists from radical leftist groups, most of all of them in the style of the New Israel Fund, together with activists from Balad and the Islamic Movement, with much financial help from Europe, turned the battle against Israel into a battle against ‘racist’ Israel,” he writes, sounding like a neo-McCarthyite. “This is the infamous red-green coalition, or radical leftists and Islamists, who meddle in any possible arrangement for the Negev Bedouin.”

Haaretz’s front page packs much of the meat of the matter into the headline “Cop and civilian killed during clashes in Bedouin town. Police: It was an attack; the footage raises questions.” [The English headline now reads New Video Raises Questions About Alleged Car-ramming Attack by Bedouin]

Video aside, the paper’s Amos Harel joins Barnea in casting doubts on the police’s claims that Abu al-Qia’an had ties to the Islamic State terror group, pointing to the bluster over the fires and a similar claim made about the Jerusalem truck attacker.

But he still seems to give the police the benefit of the doubt, and predicts they can keep violence from boiling over if only they would back up their claims.

“If the police present persuasive evidence, soon, that the driver’s intent had indeed been to kill, and if police act reasonably to snuff out the tensions, the fire could be extinguished before it spreads to other Bedouin towns and throughout Israeli Arab society. The Israeli Arab Knesset members also bear responsibility for restoring the quiet, a responsibility that some of them seem reluctant to assume,” he writes.

Haaretz’s Jack Khoury, though, notes that it may be too late for that. Homes have been razed and Israeli Arabs feel hopeless, losing what little faith they had in the government.

“This situation really worries the 1.5 million citizens determined to remain on their lands and in their homeland, both the parents who don’t want their children to take to the streets, and young people who aspire to integrate,” he counsels. “But it should be of no less concern to anyone who calls himself a democrat and a liberal, and who seeks to live a normal life in the State of Israel.”

Both papers at least give some semblance of entertaining both sides of the story. Not so Israel Hayom, which calls the incident a “terror attack on cops during the demolition of illegal homes in the Negev,” parrots the prime minister, gives no credence at all to claims that it may not have been a terror attack, and points to the video as proof that it was an attack, helpfully ignoring what clearly appears to be police firing before the car speeds into them.

A Trump never forgets

But the paper’s coverage of the incidents in Umm al-Hiran isn’t even the most ridiculous thing in its less than august pages on Thursday. That award goes to foreign editor Boaz Bismuth, whose slap-happy mug is plastered across the front page as he stands grinning next to a blurry Trump.


Trump and Boaz Bismuth as depicted in Israel Hayom, the free newspaper to which billionaire Sheldon Adelson donated at least $50 million in 2014.

Both are in formal attire and as the paper’s lead story explains (yes, lead story, trumping even Umm al-Hiran) Bismuth, whose propensity for putting his own picture in stories is well known, was allowed to exchange a few words with Trump during a gala in Washington for foreign envoys. Or in Israel Hayom’s telling: they conducted an interview.

His account of the encounter is so breathless as to leave one wondering how he had any oxygen to actually speak to the incoming US president.

The writer of these lines, a former envoy in an Arab country, was also given an amazing chance to speak again with Trump and remind him what he told me in one of the interviews he gave me, about the location of the US Embassy in Israel and recognizing Jerusalem as the capital,” he writes. “So I went up and asked him: ‘You haven’t forgotten your promise about the embassy in Jerusalem,’ I asked. ‘Of course I remember what I told you about Jerusalem. Of course I didn’t forget,’ Trump answered.

In case anyone is wondering, this is apparently what passes for non-fake news.

Bismuth isn’t the only one excited about Trump. On Yedioth’s op-ed page Elyakim Haetzni welcomes the new president on behalf of what he claims is a silent majority of supporters in Israel.

“This guy uses every opportunity to express warm and friendly ties toward Israel,” he writes. “He appointed as ambassador to Israel a Jew who is proud of his heritage and country, and made his son-in-law, a Torah-observant Jew and Israel lover, in charge of talks with Palestinians. After the Obama ice age, this is a breath of fresh air.”

Naif Agele stands with his children and nephews by the ruins of his brother’s house in an ‘unrecognised’ section of the township of Kuseife in the Negev desert. The house took one month to build and was demolished by government authorities in 10 minutes. Photo by Silvia Boarini/IPS



Palestinian MK injured ahead of home demolitions: ‘The police are liars’

Although all evidence points to wounds from sponge-tipped bullets, police claim Joint List head Ayman Odeh was hit by stones thrown by Bedouin protesters in Umm el-Hiran. If the police are proven wrong, it means they shot the leader of the third-largest party in Israel in the face without any justification. 

By Mairav Zonszein, +972
January 19, 2017

UPDATE: This post was updated with a photo of Ayman Odeh’s back showing his injury to be consistent with that of a wound from a sponge-tipped bullet, and that he is filing a complaint with the Department of Internal Police Investigations.


MK Ayman Odeh holding the sponge bullet he says was shot at him by Israeli forces in Umm el-Hiran. (Photo: Joint List)

 

 

The debate continues to rage over the killing of an Israeli police officer and a Bedouin man in Umm el-Hiran on Wednesday, when Israeli forces turned up to begin demolishing the Bedouin village in order for it to be replaced with a Jewish town. Police and much of the media have the incident down as a car-ramming attack, while residents and eyewitnesses say that police opened fire at the car before it sped up and hit officers — a version that appears to be supported by police aerial footage. But another contested event, involving the injuring of Joint List head and Knesset member Ayman Odeh, flew largely under the radar.

Police claim that Odeh was hit by rocks thrown by the Bedouin residents he was with, and police spokesperson Micky Rosenfeld insisted to +972 that Odeh’s injuries were caused by stones. Yet Odeh and the people who were beside him all say he was shot by black sponge-tipped bullets. A report in the Ma’ariv newspaper on Thursday morning cited police as saying that Odeh’s injuries could not have been caused by these projectiles as they aren’t in possession of such weapons. But police use of black-sponged tipped bullets against Palestinian youth is widely documented — particularly in East Jerusalem, where they have resulted in at least one death. On the other hand, the injuries Odeh suffered were relatively minor, which is unusual for this kind of bullet, but it also depends on the exact distance and angle it was shot from, which is unclear.

There were no firsthand reports of any rocks being thrown when Odeh was allegedly attacked by police, and none of the injuries at the scene were reported as having been caused by stones. You can hear bullets being fired in the video shot by Activestills that was broadcast all over the Israeli media. There are photos of Odeh holding the bullet that he says hit him and plenty more of the bullets lying around at the scene. All the people I spoke with who were there deny that any stones were thrown at the time that Odeh was apparently shot. The only mention of stones at all in Israeli media reports are from the police account about Odeh specifically.

“There were no rocks. None. Zero. The police are liars,” Odeh told +972, adding that the police first sprayed his face with pepper spray and after that fired at him, hitting his head and his back. “Who sprayed me? Was that the protesters too?” Odeh said. “The security forces are hostile towards Arabs, that is what they are programmed to do. They are liars.”

The Soroka Medical Center report of his treatment does not determine what caused the injury and only states that the patient, Odeh, claims it was caused by bullets. This is standard, as hospital policies are to not get involved in the cause of injury. According to a few doctors I consulted there is no way, medically-speaking, for the physicians who treated Odeh to definitively differentiate between a wound from a stone and a wound from a bullet. The only way to start to uncover the cause of injury is to do a forensics exam. So for now, it’s the police’s word against that of Odeh and at least half a dozen witnesses.

UPDATE, Thursday 19th, 8:30PM: Ayman Odeh underwent a forensic exam today, as part of a complaint he is filing with the Department of Internal Police Investigations, accusing the police of aggravated assault and unlawful use of weapon. The findings of the exam are still not out, however Odeh provided +972 with this photo of the wound on his back, whose round shape and bruising is consistent with wounds from sponge-tipped bullets. The complaint is being filed by attorneys with Adalah and the Public Committee Against Torture.

Joint List MK Ayman Odeh’s back, showing round bruising that is consistent with an injury caused by a sponge-tipped bullet. (Joint List)

 

 

I don’t find the police version credible, to say the least, but I cannot disprove it at this time. However, the recent allegations by police, government and media of an “arson intifada” by Arab citizens following the fires in Haifa, despite there being no evidence or a single charge made, are a good reflection of their disingenuous conduct.

Either way, this is an incident of critical importance. If, as suspected, Odeh was in fact shot in the face and back by police, it means the head of Israel’s third-largest party was shot by his own police force for absolutely no reason. One of the videos from the scene shows Odeh talking with police and explaining that he is a Knesset member and is of course not armed.

When is the last time (if ever) that a Knesset member was shot by security forces? In 2006, rightwing Knesset members Effie Eitam and Aryeh Eldad were wounded by border police officers during the evacuation of Amona. But having a gun pointed at you is substantially different, and while Odeh is fighting for the rights of Palestinian citizens of Israel, Eitam and Eldad were fighting for the rights of illegal settlers in occupied territory.

The police shoot Palestinian youth in East Jerusalem with the same potentially-lethal black sponge-tipped bullets — and in the West Bank with rubber bullets — on a regular basis with impunity, but what could possibly be their excuse for shooting a public servant who posed no threat? They have to stick to the stone story, otherwise they’d have a lot more explaining to do.

With the driver, the police can at least claim there was the threat of a ramming attack. But with Odeh I don’t believe they have any excuse. Which is why the Israeli authorities and media are pushing hard the line that Odeh and other members of the Joint List are inciting the Arab public. They are victimizing and vilifying him.

Odeh told +972 that negotiations between the Bedouin residents of Umm el-Hiran and authorities to settle their relocation had reached a breakthrough Tuesday night and they were close to reaching an agreement, when things suddenly changed at midnight, and a decision was clearly made by someone in the government to scrap the agreement and instead go in full force to demolish the village. According to Odeh, “It was possible to prevent the spilling of blood…Prime Minister Netanyahu is responsible for the blood spilled.”

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