Negev Coexistence Forum for Civil Equality - Dukium
Our History
In 1997, a group of concerned Arab and Jewish residents of the Negev (the southern desert region of Israel) established the Negev Coexistence Forum for Civil Equality to provide a framework for Jewish-Arab collaborative efforts in the struggle for civil equality and the advancement of mutual tolerance and coexistence.
The Forum is unique in being the only Arab-Jewish organization established in the Negev that remains focused solely on the specific problems confronting the Negev.
Our Mission
The Forum considers that theState of Israel fails to full its responsibility to respect, protect and fulfill its human rights obligations without discrimination towards its Arab-Bedouin citizens in the Naqab-Negev. As a result the Forum has set out as one of its goals to advance the civil rights and equality for all those living Negev.
Our Philosophy
The Forum's activities and projects are based on the principle of Arab-Jewish cooperation and among our members are leaders of the Negev Arab community and academics.As a joint Jewish-Arab group we maintain a balance and equal partnership in the bodies of the organization as well as in the decision-making processes.
Our Volunteers
The Forum is a community-based organization and volunteers are at our heart. We are composed of 30 corevolunteer activists, both Arabs and Jews, who dedicate time and effort on a weekly basis to help achieve our mission. In addition, there are also around two hundred people who participate every couple of months in select activities and about a thousand who are continuously updated on issues of interest to the Forum and our activities.
Volunteers take responsibility for a project, issue or activity reflecting of their areas of interest and expertise such as the website, international advocacy, conferences, participating inthe Recognition Forum, solidarity visits with victims of house demolitions, editing and distributing our newsletter, translating materials, advocacy and public relations, organizing cultural events, and more. Due to budget limitations and few paid staff, our efforts have been successful this year to increase the number of volunteers and the extent of their involvement and responsibilities.
Who We Are
The main body of the organization is the
Forum Secretariat which is elected every yearly. Current members are as follows:
- Musa Abu Ghanem: Lecturer and educator at Achva College; school principal; activist in various social domains, especially education; co-founder of the Negev Coexistence Forum for Civil Equality.
- Prof. Avner Ben-Amos: Historian of education andlectures at the School of Education, Tel-Aviv University.
- Rachel Naparstek: Artist, peace and social activist.
- S'aid a-Sana: Director of the Bedouin Mobile Health Unit for the past 25 years and active among the Arab Negev population.
- Rodaina Abu-Freiha: Teacher, educator, peace and social activist.
- Khalil Alamour: Member of the Alsira village committee, former member of the RCUV-Regional Council of Unrecognized Villages in the Negev, educator and active member of Bedouin rights in the Negev.
- Yaacov Manor: ??? A peace activist, founder of The Committee Against House Demolition, Recognition Forum, Coalition of Organizations for Peace, The Water Coalition and Olive Picking Coalition???.
Members of the
Control Committee are as follows:
- Udah Abu-Freiha: Civil engineer and surveyor.
- Nira Marcus: Educator and teacher at Kaye College in Beer-Sheva.
Haya Noach, the current Director of the Forum, was born and grew up in the Negev-Naqab andbecame intensely involved in these issues after learning that her Bedouin neighbours were forced to relocate. Haya holds a Masters degree in Geography from BenGurion University of the Negev and is active in her local community to heightenawareness about the plight of Arab-Bedouins. She is the amongst the initiators of theRecognition Forum (a coalition of NGOs fighting for recognition of Bedouin villagesin the Negev-Naqab), the Social Coalition Against Unemployment and Privatization,and a is co-founder and long-time Director of the Forum.
Background
Before 1948, it is estimated that 65,000 to 90,000 Bedouins lived in the Negev area (Falah 1989). The main source of livelihood for this semi-nomadic population was cattle, herds, rain-fed agriculture, and commerce (Yiftachel 2004; Meir 1997). During Israel’s War of Independence in 1948, 80 to 85 per cent of the Naqab Bedouins population became refugees. Like other indigenous peoples, the Naqab-Negev Bedouins underwent forced relocation – the 11,000 that remained inside Israel’s borders were moved in the 1950s and 60s from their ancestral lands into a restricted zone called the Siyag (closure), located in the northeastern Negev and known for its low agricultural fertility (Hamdan 2005; Yiftachel 2004). This area constituted only 10 percent of the Bedouins land prior to 1948 (Abu Sa’ad 2004). Joining the six tribes already residing in this area were twelve additional tribes from various areas of the Negev. Because no permanent buildings (stone or concrete) were permitted by the authorities in the Siyag, most residents were forced to erect shacks and tents.
The Negev Bedouins, like the rest of the Arabs remaining within Israel’s borders, lived under military rule until 1966. During this time, Bedouin life was dramatically transformed: “From controllers of the desert region, they became fringe dwellers of a growing, modernizing Beer-Sheva city region” (Yiftachel 2004, p. 12). With less space for agriculture and grazing, their source of livelihood was disrupted. In addition, because of restrictions imposed by the military government, they were not permitted to compete with the Jewish labor market of the new Israeli State. During these 18 years, the processes of dislocation, subsequent sedentarization and partial modernization worked to destroy the indigenous Bedouins culture and way of life. In fact, this was the Israeli policy:
"We should transform the Bedouins into an urban proletariat… Indeed, this will be a radical move which means that the Bedouin would not live on his land with his herds, but would become an urban person… His children would be accustomed to a father who wears trousers, does not carry a Shabaria [the traditional Bedouin knife] and does not search for vermin in public. This would be a revolution, but it may be fixed within two generations. Without coercion but with governmental direction… this phenomenon of the Bedouins will disappear". (Moshe Dayan, Ha’aretz interview, 31 July 1963).
Today, the Negev Bedouins number approximately 190,000 people. This population can be divided into two groups, based on their living arrangements. Approximately 50 per cent of the Bedouins population lives in a large numbers of unrecognized villages. These villages do not appear on Israeli maps or governmental planning documents, have no road signs indicating their existence, and are denied basic services and infrastructure, including paved roads, water, garbage collection, electricity, and schools and the people living there have no municipality so they cannot participate local election and therefore the government does not allocate part of the budget it allocates to every other citizen in Israel. It is illegal to build permanent structures in these villages – those that do so risk heavy fines and home demolitions. A typical village consists of between 60 to 600 families – a population of between 500 and 5000 – living in tents and shacks (Regional Council for Unrecognized Villages Report 2003). Some of these villages existed before the establishment of the Israeli State, and others were created in accordance with Military Government’s orders in the 1950s and 60s. Many residents of these villages, who received permission from the State to live in certain areas during the 1950s, are now, more than 50 years later, receiving expulsion orders and seeing their homes demolished.
The other half of the Bedouin population is concentrated in eight government-planned townships set up since the 1960s in the Siyag area: Hura, Kseifa, Laquia, Arara, Rahat, Segev-Shalom and Tel-Sheva and the new township of Tarabin (southern ofRahat). While these townships were intended to create the conditions necessary to provide basic services to this population and are heavily subsidized, they were planned without giving any consideration to the traditional Bedouin way of life. Consequently, the forced urbanization of this population has been disastrous: unemployment is high, and the Bedouins townships rank among the country’s ten poorest municipalities. In short, “the planned towns evolved quickly into pockets of deprivation, unemployment, dependency, crime and social tensions” (Yiftachel 2004). The Bedouins no longer had the space to raise crops and livestock to support themselves which caused further economic distress. Additionally, the Bedouin townships lack the infrastructure that similar Jewish settlements in the Negev have: except for the largest city, Rahat, these towns lack sources of employment, public transportation, banks, post offices, public libraries, and places of entertainment (Abu-Sa’ad 2004).
