We have written extensively about the so-called Prawer-Begin Plan to redevelop Bedouin communities in the Negev desert.
(added) The Plan never was official Israeli policy. It simply was a bill advancing through the Knesset but never fully approved and never law.
The Plan would have included relocating about 15% of the Bedouin population who live in illegal and often dilapidated shanty towns. The Plan was the subject of a highly organized misinformation campaign terming it “ethnic cleansing” even though no Bedouin were being moved out of the Negev, but rather, to new communities to be built nearby.
Grossly inflated numbers were part of the pressure campaign all along.
https://twitter.com/Yair_Rosenberg/status/411163484580110336
https://twitter.com/Yair_Rosenberg/status/411164874257883138
My position was that reasonable people could differ on whether it was a good plan, but the demonization campaign was typical for how anything Israeli, even an attempt to improve living conditions for the Bedouin, gets turned into a propaganda campaign to delegitimize Israel.
Whether on the merits or due to the pressure, Israel is abandoning the plan, via Israel National News:
Former minister Benny Begin announced, Thursday afternoon, the end of attempts in the Knesset to advance the Prawer Plan for regulating Bedouin building in the Negev. Addressing reporters in Tel Aviv, Begin said, “Since the bill went to the Knesset, all sorts of parties with interests banded together while exploiting the plight of the Bedouin in the Negev to achieve political capital.”
While Yisrael Beytenu and Jewish Home were cited, earlier this week, for joining together in efforts to torpedo the plan, Member of Knesset Dov Khenin of the predominantly-Arab Hadash party said there was an effort across party lines to show that there was a more just and more practical alternative.
(Featured image: Israeli Bedouin city of Rahat, credit Wikimedia Commons, user Romayan)
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Comments
With reporting like that you would think that Israel was a sustaining member of the RNC.
They must have read my post.
Nomadic peoples are like herding cats. At any time they will break out of houses & start wandering around the desert or steppes or plains or in my locality the beach.
Now the Israel-haters have license to bitch about Israeli discrimination against Bedouins who are forced to live in substandard housing because they are Muslims whilst Israeli Jews live in nice homes.
Israel needs to stop being so sensitive to the blather from the global press and other assorted anti-Israel organizations cuz Israel is damned is she doesn’t and damned if she does.