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Ha'aretz, March 21, 1999
Providing refuge - but only for Jews
By Gideon Levy
An old expression that calls up unpleasant
memories returned this weekend: The ministers of
defense and the interior asked the High Court of
Justice to immediately deport the hundreds of
members of the Al Azazma Bedouin tribe who crossed
the border from Egypt into the Negev last week, on
the grounds that they are "infiltrators." If the
infiltrators are not deported, the cabinet
ministers said, Israel's sovereignty would be
harmed. If they are deported, say the petitioners
against the deportation, the lives of the Bedouin
will be in danger. With this, in a single moment,
we have returned to the time of Israel's border
wars, between the 1948 War of Independence and the
Sinai Campaign of 1956, a period in which Israel
prohibited anyone who attempted to return to their
homes or their fields from doing so.
"Infiltrators" was no less threatening a term than
the present-day "terrorists." It was a very cruel
war. One must read the book about it by historian
Benny Morris in order to understand it. Peasants
who tried to return to their fields to harvest
their crops were shot without mercy. Among the
victims of the war were more than a few Bedouin,
including members of the same tribe, the Al
Azazma, who last week crossed the border
illegally. Not only were infiltrators deported
then, but also thousands of Israeli-born Bedouin
who did not leave in 1948. There is no lack of
evidence of this: The head of the United Nations
observer force at the time, General William
Reilly, described the deportation of 4,000 Al
Azazma on Sept. 2, 1950. Nine days later there was
another mass deportation. In his book, the
legendary hero Meir Har-Zion described the
deportation of other Bedouin by Unit 101, and even
asked whether the action was justified; two of
Morris's books, "Israel's Border Wars" and "The
Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem,
1947-1949," include a great deal more evidence of
the "cleansing" of Bedouin from the Negev.
According to Foreign Ministry reports from the
period, Israel deported a total of about 17,000
Bedouin to the Sinai and the West Bank. True mass
deportation, if not ethnic cleansing or transfer.
After the great Palestinian deportation was
completed and 419 of their villages were wiped off
the face of the earth, Israel did not hesitate in
the 1950s to deport Bedouin, most of whom never
fought against the country.
But Israel's war against these native-born people
did not stop then. No other group in Israel has
been dispossessed of as much of its property as
the Bedouin, and at the same time no other Arab
group has remained as faithful to the state.
In the occupied territories, members of the
Jahalin and Dalin Bedouin tribes - who never
participated in the Intifida, incidentally - have
been forced off their lands only in order to allow
for the expansion of the already terrifying border
of the settlement of Ma'aleh Adumim. Their houses
are being demolished and their tents confiscated
by the Civil Administration, and they are being
concentrated on the edge of the garbage dump. That
is their place, according to Israel. For most of
them, this is the second time that Israel has
forced them from their homes.
Within Israel itself, the battles still continue
over lands in the Negev and the Galilee, battles
that almost always ends with the defeat of the
Bedouin. The Agriculture Ministry's "Green Patrol"
ranger unit sprays their fields, the Israel Lands
Administration forces them off their lands and the
state places them into backward towns where the
cultural and social life of their community falls
apart.
According to researcher Clinton Bailey, 96 percent
of the 80,000 Bedouin in the Negev no longer live
in their natural surroundings. Their children go
to schools with no electricity. In their
"unrecognized" villages, in the Negev as well as
the Galilee, there is no running water or
telephone lines. The individuals of the 25
families in the Al Azazma tribe are fighting a
rearguard legal battle over their expulsion from
the Negev land to which they were transferred in
1948.
Only two weeks ago, 400 other Bedouin were
forcibly evicted from the land on which they had
been living. Most of them live as refugees in
their own country, while their sons serve and are
killed in the army.
This cruel and difficult history must be kept in
mind during any discussion of the fate of the
refugees who crossed over from Egypt. The children
of those who were deported in the 50s are now
knocking at our doors. It is hard to know
precisely what brought them to us, and of course
it is also hard to ignore the fact that they
crossed the border illegally. But this is exactly
the right moment, from Israel's point of view, to
attempt to repair, in some way, the historical
injustice that was done and which continues to be
done to these nomads. One may assume that there is
some truth in their claims that they would be in
great danger if they were to return to Egypt,
especially after some of them denigrated Egypt in
interviews with the media.
IDF doctors report that many of them are weak and
exhausted. There are also more than a few infants
and old people among them. By any standards, they
are helpless refugees to whom Israel can and must
offer refuge. A symbolic and humanitarian gesture
like offering asylum to a few hundred Bedouin,
most of them born in this country, is something
that the country can and should allow itself to
do, even if the head of the Negev regional council
fears such a move. But Israel is a refuge for
Jews. Only for Jews
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