Hundreds of Palestinians with Israeli citizenship rallied Thursday afternoon against to denounce Israel’s Prawer Plan, which could displace thousands of Bedouin residents of the Negev desert.
Protesters gathered in the village of 'Ar'ara in northern Occupied Palestine, and near the Negev village of al-Arakib, whose tents and tin-roofed houses have been demolished more than 50 times by Israeli forces.
A Ma’an news agency reporter in the Negev said Israeli police were heavily deployed in the area to try to prevent demonstrators from reaching the main road.
Protesters chanted slogans against “the racist plan” as they waved Palestinian flags.
At least two demonstrators were arrested by Israeli police during the rally in the Negev. According to activists, they were released on Friday morning.
A video posted on YouTube allegedly shows the arrest of two teenagers, identified by activists as Hisham A'mor and Khaled Nasasra.
At least ten protesters were arrested in a similar demonstration in 'Ar'ara.
Ma’an added that hundreds of displaced Bedouins had already begun returning to their villages early Thursday morning.
Former Palestinian member of Knesset Talab al-Sani said Israeli police behaved in a provocative way and prevented demonstrators from accessing the village.
Despite the repeated village demolitions, activists have helped residents of al-Arakib rebuild their tents and movable houses every time.
“The people of Israel suffered in the past by the Nazis, and today they are mirroring their suffering against Palestinian minorities causing them to suffer the same and even more,” lawyer and demonstrator Shihdeh Ben Berry told Ma’an, adding that the protest’s only goal was to thwart the Prawer Plan.
He noted that the Prawer Plan had not yet been approved, “and in case of approval, a group of Palestinian human rights supporters and legal experts will complain to the High Court of Justice.”
Israel’s Prawer Bill, which has passed a first reading at the Knesset, seeks to force tens of thousands of Arab Bedouin from their villages and into permanent outposts.
If passed, the displacement plan would also see Israel expropriate 850,000 dunums of Arab land, and lead to the destruction of at least 40 Bedouin villages not recognized by Israel.
UN human rights chief Navi Pillay slammed the bill last week, urging the Israeli government to reconsider its plans.
"If this bill becomes law, it will accelerate the demolition of entire Bedouin communities, forcing them to give up their homes, denying them their rights to land ownership, and decimating their traditional cultural and social life in the name of development," Pillay said.
There are about 260,000 Bedouin in Occupied Palestine, mostly living in and around the Negev in the arid south. More than half live in villages unrecognized by Israel
The Israeli government has said it would "as much as possible" grant legal status to Negev villages that are currently unrecognized by the authorities if they met a minimum population criteria. But those criteria have never been stated.
(Ma’an, AFP, Al-Akhbar)