Amid row, plan to resettle Bedouin gets initial Knesset okay

A thin majority in the Knesset approved a new plan to regulate settlement of Bedouin tribes in southern Israel Monday, following a stormy session that saw an Arab MK booted out of the chamber for pouring water on a draft of the bill.

43 MKs voted “yes” on the first reading of the plan, which would raze unrecognized Bedouin villages built on state land and move the residents to recognized towns, defeating the 40 MKs who voted against.

“It’s time to show national responsibility and pass the law to regulate the Bedouin settlements” in the Negev, former Knesset speaker Reuven Rivlin (Likud) said before the vote. Parliament must “show leadership” and find a solution to the ongoing conflict between the state and the Bedouins, based on former minister Benny Begin’s plan, “despite criticism from here and from there,” he stated.

During the Knesset session, Arab MKs stood on the podium and, one after the other, tore up the bill while calling it a racist suggestion. At one point, Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein ordered Ahmad Tibi (Ra’am-Ta’al) to be removed from the assembly, after Tibi, standing at the podium, poured a glass of water over the bill.

“I’m telling you in the name of all the Arab citizens, not only those living in the Negev — you’ve gone too far, both morally and politically,” Tibi said, slamming “all the hypocrites” who were ready to vote in favor of the bill.

Jamal Zahalke (Balad) said the bill was “not fair, not just, not moral, not human,” and called it “a declaration of war” against the country’s Arab population.

The “Bill on the Arrangement of Bedouin Settlement in the Negev” is based on the Begin Plan, drawn up by the former Likud minister and approved by the Cabinet in January. That plan called for the country to officially recognize and register the vast majority of the Bedouin settlements throughout the south of Israel and to compensate those whom the state plans to move off state-owned land.

Merav Michaeli (Labor) said the government didn’t understand that the Bedouins are citizens of Israel. Over the years, she said, the Bedouins were ignored. “Apparently [the state] hoped they’d vanish.” Now, Michaeli charged, there was an attempt to legally anchor discrimination.

Legislators from the nationalist Jewish Home party also opposed the bill. Ayelet Shaked said after the vote that the solution was far from ideal, adding the state had given the Bedouins in the Negev what the court had decided didn’t belong to them. “The state took a risk; it’s willing to give land and arrange the unrecognized settlements at a great loss.”