Israel destroys Negev Bedouin harvest with
crop-dusters
Wednesday, 02-Apr-2003 6:50AM Story from AFP
Copyright 2003 by Agence France-Presse (via ClariNet)

http://www.prolog.net/webnews/wed/cv/Qisrael-bedouin.Rq3u_DA2.html

JERUSALEM, April 2 (AFP) - Israeli authorities on
Wednesday destroyed the harvest of a Bedouin tribe in
the Negev desert with crop-dusting planes, accusing
the tribesmen of being squatters on state land, public
radio said.

Planes sent by the Lands Authority sprayed chemicals
on 600 hectares (1,400 acres) of land farmed by the
Abu Kaff tribe of Bedouin, a semi-nomadic Arab
population that was herded off large tracts of the
Negev after the Jewish state was created in 1948.

The area sprayed was in the west of the Negev, which
occupies the southern third of Israel.

"This is a double criminal act: the Lands Authority
acted withouit waiting for a court order and used
chemical products," said Bedouin deputy Taleb al-Sanna
on the radio.

An official Israeli spokesman said the Bedouin had
been warned several times not to ilegally cultivate
the land.

The tribe has been accused by the authorities for
several years of squatting on public land.

Abu Kaff, where 3,500 tribes people of the same name
live, is a scattered gathering of corrugated iron
shacks on the edge of the main road to the Israeli
desert city of Beersheva.

It is one of 36 unrecognised Bedouin villages in the
Negev which the authorities want to dismantle. Israel
has instead built seven designated towns in the area
to accommodate the Bedouin, whose ancestral lands were
designated state property.

The Bedouin accuse Israeli of trying to move them off
their homeland to make way for Jewish farmers and
villages.

Israel considers the villages built by Bedouin who
have returned to their lands from the recognised towns
as illegal, but Bedouin criticise Israel in turn for
not investing in the infrastructure of the new
communities, which suffer high unemployment and lack
social services.

Around 140,000 Bedouin live in the Negev, while
another 60,000 reside in the north of the Jewish
state.

On February 5, the authorities provoked howls of anger
from the Bedouin community when they destroyed a
mosque that was built without planning permission in
Tel el-Maleh, an unrecognised village.

A district court later banned destruction of sites of
worship.

The Israeli authorities have sprayed Bedouin crops at
least twice before, Bedouin official say, including
once at the beginning of March.

ms/jh/m

Israel-Bedouin

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