Beersheba sports facility denies entry to Bedouin

Undercover TV crew catches clerk saying club’s locals-only policy is meant to keep out Arabs

A private sports facility in the southern city of Beersheba has been denying entry to local Bedouin Arabs, an undercover television investigation reported.

On Tuesday, the facility, “Country Beersheba,” denied entry to three young Arab men, one of whom was 32-year-old Taher Marisat, an Israeli Arab who has lived in Beersheba for the past 11 years.

According to Marisat, who worked in the past as a facilitator of Arab-Jewish dialogue at the combined Arab-Jewish kibbutz Givat Haviva, he was denied entry on the pretext that he and his friends were not “locals.” Marisat’s identity papers, which he hadn’t updated, did not reflect the fact that he was indeed a local.

“We just wanted to go to the pool. The clerk said [we couldn’t] because they did not allow anyone who was not a Beersheba resident into the facility,” Marisat told Maariv on Wednesday. “But I personally know people who had gotten in, even on that very day (Tuesday), who were not Beersheba residents. I suggested to the clerk that we ask a few random people in the facility if they were residents, and she declined.”

Marisat called Channel 10’s morning television talk show, which decided to send an undercover investigator. The investigator, who is Jewish, told the clerk at the entrance to the sports club that he was not a Beersheba resident, and asked if that was a problem.

The clerk replied that it was not. The residency requirement was instituted “for the Bedouin population,” the clerk said.

“It hurts that we still see such prejudice toward Arabs in Israeli society,” Marisat said. “Unfortunately, racism toward Israeli Arabs has increased in recent years.”

In a response, Country Beersheba denied it had a policy to exclude local Bedouin. The facility “has clear rules for entry. Any resident of Beersheba and nearby towns, without regard to sector or ethnicity, may purchase an annual subscription,” the facility’s management said in a statement.

The statement expressed regret that the investigator was let in. “Permitting entry to a guest who was not a local resident was a violation of our rules. All reception clerks will undergo a refresher course on our regulations in the coming days.”