Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Arab-Israeli Knesset Members Call Bedouin Resettlement Plan ‘Ethnic Cleansing’

In a letter to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, Arab-Israeli members of the Knesset called the plan to resettle Bedouin in the Negev an “ethnic cleansing” and said it violates international law.

The letter was delivered to Kerry on Thursday, during the U.S. official’s visit to the region to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah.

The letter, signed by United Arab List – Ta’al Party lawmakers Ahmed Tibi, Ibrahim Sarsour, Masoud Gnaim and Taleb Abu Arar, a Bedouin who lives in the Negev, also said that some of the Bedouin villages had existed “since before the founding of Israel, but Israeli governments have refused to recognize the settlements and have neglected them.”

The Bill on the Arrangement of Bedouin Settlement in the Negev would compensate Bedouin for land claims and relocate 30,000 Bedouin to recognized communities in the Negev. It passed its first reading in the Knesset in June by a vote of 43-40. The bill is expected to come up for its second and third readings during the current winter session of the Knesset.

Also known as the Prawer Bill or the Prawer-Begin outline because of the work on the bill by former lawmaker Benny Begin, the legislation also would enable the recognition of unrecognized Bedouin villages, but only within certain designated areas that include plans for infrastructure. Other unrecognized villages would be razed.

About 800 opponents of the plan demonstrated outside the Beersheba Magistrate’s Court Thursday. They also called for the release of over a dozen protesters arrested last Saturday during a demonstration against the plan.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism. 

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.