Israel taps first-ever Bedouin ambassador to head Eritrea mission
Decision comes weeks after Ishmael Khaldi, who was also first-ever Bedouin diplomat, made headlines by accusing security guards in Jerusalem of kneeling on his neck.
By TOI staff
5 July 2020, 10:30 pm
The Foreign Ministry’s appointments committee on Sunday tapped Ishmael Khaldi to serve as ambassador to Eritrea in what will make him the first Bedouin to serve as an Israeli ambassador abroad.
Khaldi made history for the first time over a decade and a half ago when he became the first Bedouin Israeli to serve as a diplomat in the Foreign Ministry, and has since held several diplomatic posts in the US and elsewhere.
Khaldi was born in Khawaled, near Haifa and has become well known in pro-Israel circles for his diplomatic work defending the state as a Muslim. He served as deputy consul on the US West Coast and as acting consul in Miami, as well as in Israel’s London embassy on anti-BDS efforts.
His appointment was announced along with 10 others that will all be subject to the government’s approval.
Khaldi made headlines last month after he was roughed up by a group of security guards at Jerusalem’s Central Bus Station. The diplomat subsequently filed a police complaint, saying the officers had grabbed him and threw him to the ground after he took a selfie at the entrance to the building.
stop.
One of the guards said that Khaldi refused to show ID, though the diplomat denies this.
A police spokesperson confirmed that an investigation into the matter was ongoing.The Foreign Ministry spokesperson called the incident “embarrassing” and Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi similarly apologized.
Yisrael Beytenu chairman Avigdor Liberman lauded the appointment in a Sunday tweet, saying Khaldi had served as a trusted adviser when he was foreign minister. “He is known as an Israeli patriot who defends the state insistently all around the world.”
By Reuters
June 22, 2020, 8:55 a.m. ET
JORDAN VALLEY, West Bank — Amid the barren hills of the Jordan Valley, Palestinian artist Khadeeja Bisharat paints scenes of bulldozers and demolitions, a reflection of fears of what may happen to her isolated Bedouin community if Israel annexes land in the occupied West Bank.
Some 15,000 Palestinians live in tiny pastoral encampments scattered across the Jordan Valley. Israel has pledged to extend its sovereignty over the territory - some 30% of the West Bank - with cabinet-level discussion on the move set to begin July 1.
"This affects our psychological wellbeing, and the children's wellbeing ... Will they allow residents to stay? Will they demolish their houses?" Bisharat, 37, said from her Bedouin encampment in the northern Jordan Valley.
She says she has tried to express her fear and uncertainty through paintings, among them a watercolour depicting women gathered around a demolished home and a scene of a yellow bulldozer approaching a tin Bedouin shack.
"I try to convey a message of how the occupation impacts us, the violations we are subjected to," the mother-of-three said.
Israel captured the West Bank in a 1967 war. An Israeli military post, near the Jewish settlement of Hamra, looks down on Bisharat's community from a nearby hilltop.
She said she felt surrounded, far from areas under the control of the Palestinian Authority and exposed to Israeli demolition of farm shacks erected by her community.
Israel has cited a lack of proper permits, required in parts of the West Bank under complete Israeli military control, in issuing demolition orders.
Peace Now, an Israeli advocacy group that opposes Israel's settlement policy, says most Palestinian applications for building permission are rejected.
Bisharat's husband, Mahmoud, said their community would be defiant in the face of citation generator Israeli annexation."Even if it is imposed on us, we will resist with all the means we have."
(Writing by Rami Ayyub; Editing by Mike Collett-White)
28 May 2020 - The issue of violent displacement is key to a new research project involving Dr Brendan Ciarán Browne from the Discipline of Peace Studies, in Trinity’s School of Religion, which was recently awarded a research development grant worth approximately €500,000 from the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)-DFID Collaborative Humanitarian Protection Research Programme.
Palestinian Bedouin at risk of forced displacement: IHL vulnerabilities, ICC possibilities’, is a project which will focus on an area known as ‘E1’ in the West Bank. The planned expansion of the illegal Israeli settlement of Ma’ale Adumim located in the West Bank linking to Jerusalem will result in a “forcible transfer” of the Palestinian Bedouin residents who mostly inhabit the E1 area, says Dr Browne.
The local presence for the project is now more important than ever...
Speaking from his home in Belfast, in the North of Ireland, Dr Browne detailed the good news of the research funding in the midst of a global pandemic which brought him back from Palestine to Belfast, where his wife was needed as a respiratory doctor. The project, however, doesn’t officially start until September 1st, when he hopes everything will be able to progress as planned.
The local presence for the project is now more important than ever, with partners Al Quds University Human Rights Clinic and Co Investigator Dr Munir Nuseibah in Jerusalem. The other key partners in the project are Project Investigator, Dr Alice Panepinto of Queen’s University Belfast, and in Liverpool John Moores University, Dr Triestino Mariniello.
“It's not about European - Westerners parachuting in to do research projects with vulnerable communities. It's very much about empowering the local community to take a lead in that”, says Dr Browne of the partnership with Al Quds University Human Rights Clinic, where he also spent a year teaching in 2015.
Watershed Moment
“The Palestinian Bedouin community are a nomadic community who have a long history of being subject to forcible and violent displacement as a result of ongoing settler colonial polices of the Israeli state”, says Dr Browne, adding that they are “a marginalised group”, that have experienced “the brunt of a lot of Israeli policies that has forced them off their land.”
In terms of the urgency of the project now, Dr Browne says the International Criminal Court (ICC) is at “an important juncture” when it comes to considering the situation in Palestine, and this is where the testimonies he, and the project team, gather, can have a real impact.
...forcible displacement of a civilian population... falls under this category of a war crime.
Encompassing a mix of international legal scholars and local community organisations, Dr Browne says that it is hoped that the testimonies recounting the everyday life of this community that is under threat, can be used and presented as evidence.
“Recently, the ICC has focused on the situation in Palestine and to assess whether or not war crimes were happening in the region. One of the core issues at the heart of this project is forcible transfer and forcible displacement of a civilian population which falls under this category of a war crime.”
The other important aspect of the project, explains Dr Browne, is the capacity-building element. He says, “it’s also about helping support rights awareness campaigns by linking international legal scholars with local partners and the Palestinian Bedouin communities living in E1, and doing what we can as outsiders to foster greater global awareness of their rights as citizens living in that space.” This part of the project will be led by Al Quds University Human Rights Clinic, says Dr Browne, adding that this type of collaboration at a local level is essential for the success of the project.
Violent Displacement
Violent displacement is a theme that runs deep through Dr Browne’s research, not least because of a family history of internal displacement, when his father and his family were ‘burnt out’ of their house during the Northern Ireland Troubles.
This is also the subject of his forthcoming book Burnt Out: Refugees, Displacement and the Northern Ireland Conflict, co-authored with Dr Niall Gilmartin (Ulster University), and was recently the focus of the art exhibition 'Burn/t Out' at Artcetera in Belfast in 2019.
With a legal background and a specialisation in human rights, his family history in the civil rights movement in Northern Ireland was formative in drawing connections between the experiences here and the “grave injustices” happening in Palestine, where he spent time between 2009 and 2012, and again for a year in 2015, and of which he says his research has been “consumed” by ever since.
...the civil rights movement in Northern Ireland was formative in drawing connections between the experiences here and the “grave injustices” happening in Palestine...
t was a job offer from Trinity College Dublin that brought him back to Ireland from Palestine in 2015, for the position of Assistant Professor of Conflict Resolution, and where he now co-teaches the MPhil in Conflict Resolution and Reconciliation from the Trinity Belfast campus. Dr Browne says “the Masters programme is an attractive option for people who want to come to a place where there is a period of conflict transition. We’ve got a unique set of circumstances in Belfast, and we focus very much on the experiential aspect of learning.”
Palestinian Bedouin at risk of forced displacement: IHL vulnerabilities, ICC possibilities is a two-year project which will facilitate desk-based research, fieldwork and community-based activities (including human rights workshops and advocacy capacity building for Bedouin women, teens and children).
Dr Brendan Ciaran Browne is an assistant professor with Trinity’s School of Religion. He is an interdisciplinary scholar with an LL.B, LL.M (Law & Human Rights) and PhD in Sociology, all from Queen's University Belfast. Dr Browne has previously held positions at Queen's University Belfast, and Al Quds (Bard) University, Palestine, where he taught Transitional Justice and the Laws of Armed Conflict. Dr Browne's research interests are situated around political conflict, the impact of post-conflict reconstruction on children and young people, commemorating conflict, transitional justice, violent displacement in conflict, conflict and resilience in Palestine, and conducting research in conflict zones. His research is focused on Northern Ireland and Palestine where he spends time travelling regularly to conduct fieldwork.
Activists, scholars and journalists call on the ICC to rule now to the matter of jurisdiction to prosecute war crimes.
By Angela Godfrey-Goldstein - May 28, 2020
Last December ICC Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda, issued a statement following her preliminary examination of the situation of Palestine: she requested the ICC judges to rule on the court’s jurisdiction over Palestine, to confirm her analysis. Bensouda said she had reviewed adequate evidence to suggest war crimes had been committed by Israel against Palestinians (and in Gaza by Hamas).
After reviewing submissions to the ICC for the judges to consider, she opined in a 60-page document: “The Prosecution has carefully considered the observations of the participants and remains of the view that the court has jurisdiction over the Occupied Palestinian Territory.” Amongst those submissions were observations on behalf of Palestinian victims, the Jahalin Bedouin refugees of Al Khan al Ahmar.
Jahalin Solidarity, the non-profit which I co-direct, works to prevent forcible displacement of Bedouins. Such war crimes, including demolitions or denial of services that create a coercive environment, and the settler-colonial regime in Area C, are grave breaches of the Fourth Geneva Convention, to which Israel is a signatory. We, therefore, mounted a social media campaign; our online petition calls on the ICC judges to rule swiftly in favor of international law, to uphold the court’s right to rule on issues of war crimes and thereby protect the Bedouin victims from forcible displacement, absent any alternative protection.
Our petition currently has 4300 signatories; it launches with a short filmlet, “A Girl’s Right,” directed by Emmy award-winner and Oscar nominee (for “Five Broken Cameras”) Guy Davidi. The soundtrack, “Thursday Afternoon,” was donated by Brian Eno – following a pattern for previous Jahalin Solidarity productions – “Nowhere Left to Go” having had Roger Waters’ permission to use his recording of “We Shall Overcome;” and “High Hopes” receiving permission from Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour and his wife Polly Samson to use “High Hopes.”
Petition signatories include long-term activists such as Luisa Morgantini (former VP of the European Parliament), Simone Susskind, Prof. Avi Shlaim, journalist John Pilger, actors Noah Lepawsky and Miriam Margolyes, Israeli peace activist Dr. Udi Adiv, musicians Leon Rosselson and Dror Feiler, designer Bella Freud, artists Jane Frere and Sarah Beddington, filmmaker Lia Tarachansky and law professors Iain Scobbie and Frank Romano. Partners (listed at the petition site) include Jewish Voice for Peace, Palestine Solidarity Campaign, The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions-UK (ICAHD-UK), BRICUP (British Committee for the Universities of Palestine) and other European civil society solidarity groups.
As talk of annexation seems of its nature to be pushing that envelope into what many of us Israelis consider a suicidal lemming leap over the cliff, even an expression of a panicky Samson Syndrome being acted out by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to pull down the Third Temple that is Israel on all our heads, as his corruption trial commences, it seems that only the ICC can save Palestine. And Israel. Because apartheid will then become official, and Israeli democracy (already questionable as it applies to minority citizens inside Israel such as the Bedouin) a discriminatory political system when serving citizens or those under its rule, such as the 300,000 Palestinians in Area C.
Friends of Palestine and of Israel are encouraged to support our initiative and sign the petition, so that civil society may also have its voice heard as to the ICC – and not just the voices of American and Israeli politicians who regularly attack, politicize or threaten that court, its integrity and its independence.
https://www.btselem.org/video/2009/12/video-testimony-bedouins-maale-edomim
Summary, May 2020
Since April 2019, the Israel Police has been engaged in a campaign of abuse and collective punishment against the neighborhood of al-‘Esawiyah in East Jerusalem. The operation continues, despite social distancing restrictions announced by the government, putting local residents in danger.
One of the poorest neighborhoods in Jerusalem, al-‘Esawiyah lies on the eastern slopes of the Mount Scopus ridge, hemmed in by an array of Israeli institutions, Jewish neighborhoods, military bases and roads built on its land. The neighborhood is estimated to have 22,000 residents, and its population density is 3.5 times the average population density in Jerusalem.
This report covers various aspects of Israel’s policy that have together created the harsh living conditions in the neighborhood. While this abusive policy is employed in other Palestinian neighborhoods in East Jerusalem, Al-’Esawiyah is a particularly glaring example:
1 Land grab: Since occupying the West Bank in 1967, Israel has taken over more than 90% of al-’Esawiyah’s land using expropriation, declaration of “state land” and military seizure. Some of this land was annexed shortly after the occupation. In 1945, al-‘Esawiyah land spanned some 10,000 dunams – from the Mount Scopus ridge to the area of Khan al-Ahmar in the east. Today, residents have access to less than 1,000 dunams, locked in by Israeli institutes and neighborhoods – the Hebrew University, Hadassah Mount Scopus Medical Center, the neighborhoods of French Hill and Tzameret Habira, military and police bases and roads. Most of this area is densely built, and there are hardly any land reserves for construction.
Of all the Palestinian neighborhoods in East Jerusalem that Israel has eaten away at since occupying the West Bank, nowhere have the authorities benefited more from the land grab than in al-‘Esawiyah. The landgrab, always for the needs of the Jewish public, has robbed al-’Esawiyah’s residents any chance of benefitting from their land, and it is one of the key factors for their poverty.
2. A no-planning policy: Ever since al-‘Esawiyah was annexed to the municipal borders of Jerusalem, the Israeli authorities have gone to considerable lengths to prevent any construction or development in the neighborhood.
For instance, they have avoided drawing up an adequate outline plan for al-‘Esawiyah and blocked an independent plan drawn up by the residents in collaboration with Israeli NGO Bimkom – Planners for Planning Rights. The current outline plan, approved only in 1991, 24 years after al-’Esawiyah was annexed to the Jerusalem municipal boundaries, did not allow significant construction in the first place and appears to be mostly meant to limit building and development possibilities in the neighborhood.
Obviously, the absence of a proper outline plan has not made the real need for housing disappear. Left with no choice, many residents build homes without permits. This sentences them to a life of uncertainty, under constant threat of demolition or of fines amounting to hundreds of thousands of shekels (The exchange rate at the time of writing was 3.5 NIS per 1 USD).
More than half of the apartments in the neighborhood, upwards of 2,000, were built without a permit. The municipality uses this reality, of its own creation, as an excuse not to build public institutions or develop and maintain infrastructure. It has even found a way to profit off this situation by imposing fines for illegal building, adding millions of shekels to its coffers over the years.
3. The campaign of abuse and collective punishment:
For more than a year now, the Israel Police has engaged in a violent campaign in al-’Esawiyah. Special Patrol Unit and Border Police forces regularly enter the neighborhood for no reason, without any prior occurrence that could justify police presence, much less the presence of aggressive paramilitary forces on such a large scale. Special Patrol Unit and Border police officers, armed from head to toe enter the neighborhood with vans, jeeps and drones and intentionally create arbitrary instances of violent “friction” that disrupt routine and make daily life extremely difficult in the neighborhood.
Among other things, they randomly close off main streets, creating long traffic jams; use loudspeakers on patrol cars and police vehicles late at night; provoke residents by aiming weapons at them; conduct degrading inspections and search cars and bags (including children’s schoolbags); verbally goad residents; order shops to shut down for no apparent reason, without showing a warrant; use dogs to search shops; raid homes and search them without a warrant; and falsely arrest minors (sometimes in the middle of the night), in severe violation of their rights. Initially, regular police officers also patrolled the neighborhood, took up positions at exit points and ticketed drivers, business owners and passers-by for negligible infractions.
Just as the police expected, these violent provocations elicited reactions from local residents, the “disturbances of the peace” the police uses to retroactively justify the entire operation. These reactions include throwing stones, hurling Molotov cocktails and setting off firecrackers.
The Special Patrol Unit and Border Police officers fire tear-gas canisters, stun grenades and black sponge rounds at residents and beat them. According to the community leadership, from the beginning of the operation through January 2020, some 300 neighborhood residents have been injured as a result of the violent police activity. The police has also falsely arrested several neighborhood leaders.
The ongoing, violent police operation in al-‘Esawiyah throws into relief what Israel has already made clear regarding the Palestinian neighborhoods of East Jerusalem: as occupier, it sees the people who live there as no more than subjects who can be treated as it wishes. Israel’s policy regarding these neighborhoods is driven by its goal to take over as much land as possible and expand its control as far as it can – utterly ignoring the harsh consequences for residents, which include extreme poverty, unbearably crowded living conditions and planning chaos.
Since annexing East Jerusalem, Israel has viewed the Palestinians who live there as an unwanted addition. The policy it implements in these neighborhoods – which is particularly blatant in al-‘Esawiyah – is aimed at incessantly pressuring the residents. In the short term, this is meant to oppress Palestinians in the city, control them and keep them poor, underprivileged and in a state of constant anxiety. Given Israel’s declared intention to ensure a Jewish demographic supremacy in Jerusalem, the long-term goal of this cruel policy appears to be to drive Palestinians to breaking point, so that they “choose” to desert their homes and leave the city.
This conduct clearly demonstrates the demographic considerations that guide Israel’s actions: preferring Jewish citizens over unwanted Palestinian residents. Accordingly, the Israeli authorities incessantly harass the entire Palestinian population of Jerusalem, including the blatant example reviewed in this report: the 22,000 people who live in al-‘Esawiyah.
This abuse, which is the result of an ongoing policy led by all Israeli governments since 1967, lays bare Israel’s priorities in the only part of the West Bank it has – as yet – taken the trouble to formally annex: no equality, no rights, and not even reasonable municipal services. Instead, state authorities use their power in the annexed territory to cement the superiority of one group over another.
Mirna Abdulaal May 23, 2020
At 7 AM every morning, based in the coastal town of Nuweiba, Seham ElSaeed and her family climb the mountains to feed their herds of goats. The air is clean, the skies are clear, and there is no more work, schools, or tourism: their only income comes from their natural environment.
As cities around the world are in lockdown due to the COVID-19 global pandemic, certain communities, like the Bedouin in Egypt’s Sinai, are locked out from the world. On the top of the mountains, there is no curfew to pin them down – no lockdown or stable internet connection to keep them constantly hung up or bothered by updated news on the novel virus.
Before the first case that was confirmed in April, North Sinai was Egypt’s only governorate with no COVID-19 cases. Globally, bigger cities have been the epicentre of the virus, yet this does not mean that rural communities are completely immune from it. In fact, experts warn that these communities might suffer even more in the long term, as not only are resources for the sick are fewer, but also because these communities tend to be more close-knit and depend more on family labour for income.
“The first case was not from within the Bedouin community. If we had just one case of COVID-19, we would all be infected,” Seham tells Egyptian Streets, “because as a community we love gatherings, it is part of who we are. This Ramadan we only had five iftars (meals) at home, and the rest were with other people in our community.”
But the virus is not just a health challenge; it is also a unique economic challenge for many communities that survive on a day-to-day basis, which accounts for the majority of the Bedouins in Sinai whose main source of income comes from tourism.
The economic challenge: locked out from opportunities
In the 1990s, following major terrorist attacks on iconic touristic attractions in Upper Egypt, such as Luxor, the economic development of the Sinai and its transformation into a hub for touristic activity came to be prioritized by the Egyptian state. In 1994, the Ministry of Planning drew up a national plan entitled ‘The National Project for the Development of Sinai’ which centred on tourism as a priority sector in the development of the area. Agriculture and transport were also included, as exemplified by Al-Salam Canal that transports Nile water into North Sinai.
The prioritisation of tourism in development in the early years led to nearly over 90 percent of the population in the area living off of tourism money, according to Heba Aziz in ‘Employment in a Bedouin Community: The Case of the Town of Dahab in South Sinai.
Nevertheless, current efforts to put integrated sustainability at the heart of developmental projects should not be overlooked, which target the development of communities through diversifying their sources of income and increasing agricultural activity. In May 2020, Minister of Planning Hala El Said stated that developing the Sinai is considered a ‘top priority,’ dedicating a total of EGP 3.68 billion for developmental projects.
“Today tourism has gone to zero. That’s completely unprecedented.”
Since the measures that were imposed by the government in March to help contain the virus, work has nearly become obsolete for many Bedouins. Trips were cancelled and tourism camps have closed. Hikes and safaris have also stopped. “Today tourism has gone to zero. That’s completely unprecedented. We’ve never seen it before,” says Ben Hoffler, co-founder of ‘Sinai Trail’, Egypt’s first long-distance hiking trail and the leading Bedouin run hiking trail in the Middle East.
The Sinai Trail was officially recognised by Egypt’s Ministry of Tourism in 2018, and its sister project the Red Sea Mountain Trail in Hurghada was ranked as TIME’s world’s greatest places for 2019.
Despite operating during the worst lows in Egyptian tourism, coming out of the turbulent political events in 2011 and 2013 and opening in 2015 during the insurgency in North Sinai, the COVID-19 crisis is producing bigger questions on what looms ahead.
“Trying to anticipate what will happen in the future is harder now. We don’t how the pandemic will affect global travel,” Hoffler notes.
“We expect domestic tourism will be the first kind to return then regional and international tourism, but the Sinai Trail won’t necessarily open straight away: we’ll weigh up the pros and cons carefully before any decision as the stakes are high.”
Notwithstanding the uncertainties, the “Sinai Trail will always be here,” Hoffler says.
“As a path, it’s not something that will die. Sinai Trail has grown strong in the adversity it has faced in the last years and this is a good preparation for everything it faces now. At the core of the Sinai Trail is an indefatigable spirit that will see it through.”
“This is probably the biggest economic crisis we have ever faced.”
For families, economic repercussions are bound to intensify even more in the upcoming period, bringing new crises such as food insecurity which usually hits marginalised communities more severely. Those who relied on tourism for income are now resorting to older ways of life, such as fishing, farming and goat herding, bringing little income to sustain the family.
“No one is paying Ramadan zakat (obligatory charity) now because of this crisis. It is impossible. Today I could only pay for the necessary food items. With tourism money, I could buy items up to 50 EGP, but now the maximum I would go for is 20 EGP,” Seham notes. “This is probably the biggest economic crisis we have ever faced.”
To mitigate the negative economic impacts, the government introduced monetary compensation (500 EGP) for informal workers registered at the database of the Ministry of Manpower. “Some people here already received their monetary compensation, while others have registered and are still waiting to receive them.”
Digital learning and online job opportunities are also harder to access for young and ambitious individuals like Seham, who received a scholarship five years ago to study political science at a private university in Cairo.
“I am personally quite frustrated, because I want to be able to go to Cairo and find a job, but I can’t. Everything stopped for me. I also cannot work online because the connection is not as stable, and the whole culture of online learning or online work is not really known here, we don’t use the internet for work at all,” she says.
A return to traditional ways of life – rather than a new normal – is now the case for these Bedouin communities.
“There is no curfew on the mountains. Children are running and playing around all afternoon, and since the COVID-19 crisis, I’ve met so many more people on the mountain. We are starting to gather more and create more memories,” Seham adds, “as a community, we are also supporting each other and helping one another, which is something that is deeply embedded in our culture.”
Yet it is likely that this crisis will see new patterns of employment also grow, as anthropologists have historically described the patterns of employment for Bedouins to be determined by their demographic changes.
“The Bedouin have always had a diverse economy: if one part of the economy declined another part was awakened to work,” Hoffler adds, “and this is what is happening to an extent now and what I think will happen increasingly as the pandemic goes on.”
“Bedouin tribes are close knit social units and everybody is sticking together too, helping each other through these times.”
The social challenge: building bridges
The COVID-19 pandemic is also a social problem that challenges the way we understand and prioritise certain values in life. As social beings, we are discovering new modes of interaction and ways of living that were never considered to be the norm or the reality a few months ago.
Solidarity, cooperation, and collaboration are now more significant than ever. New forms of international assistance are being considered for developing countries that are at risk of collapse, and collaboration rather than competition is now being revived among local businesses in Egypt and elsewhere.
These values, which are also embedded in traditional Bedouin culture, are critical to ensure that fairer and inclusive societies will emerge after this crisis. Leaders must now explore new ways to engage with these communities, and answer the question: how can we continue engaging with vulnerable communities in a post-COVID-19 world?
Abeer Seikaly, a Jordanian-Palestinian architect and interdisciplinary creative thinker with Bedouin roots, is introducing new and innovative ways for the world to centralise communities at the heart of every process of development. Her work can be summarised as a journey of exploration on how nature, tradition and technology are all inter-linked, and how we can reuse existing cultural and traditional elements in the contemporary world.
“I think the important thing behind this whole crisis is the idea of locality; local identity, local resources, and local tourism. It’s forcing us to rethink about what tourism is today, and how we can reinvent tourism in order to benefit these communities,” Seikaly tells Egyptian Streets.
Finding ways to benefit communities has been the main driver in all of her work, starting from her innovative tent for refugees in 2013 that helped address the idea of ‘dignified shelter’ to meet their needs. Yet gradually, this project evolved and changed her understandings of home and traditional practices, and how ‘primitive’ ways of building homes can in fact be more than ever necessary today.
“Over time, I realized that it is not a product that I am developing, it is a social technology; a cultural practice where the community is at the centre of it,” Seikaly notes, “and that’s how architecture was like in the past, it wasn’t people building their environment to create profit and impose structures on people, but they co-created these spaces and built things together invisibly in order to fulfil their needs.”
“…it wasn’t people building their environment to create profit and impose structures on people, but they co-created these spaces in order to fulfil their needs.”
Working with Bedouin women in Jordan in her fascinating project ‘Meeting Points’, Seikaly looked at how demographic changes and impacts of tourism affected social roles, pushing women to abandon their tent-craftsmanship as men began to engage with the new emergent economy.
Failing to integrate these communities in tourism-led economic development, women-held knowledge of “adaptive environmental tent-craftsmanship”, which were tents that were made to adapt environmentally to the harsh climate of the Jordanian Badia, ceased to exist. In the face of modernity and tourism, traditional forms of knowledge and the central role of communities were being held back.
Seikaly’s work focuses on putting back the spotlight on these women and making their work more visible, exploring what can be done to integrate it with the technological tools that have evolved in the 21st century.
“I am trying to think of ways to use technological tools such as virtual and augmented reality to allow the community to participate in making these homes, provide them with an opportunity to learn about what already exists, and communicate aspects of cultural heritage.”
“I find that there is a return back to this notion that at the core of it all, the basics of survival…where you can be self-sustainable in every sense, is now a necessity and a luxury, not something that is primitive,”
Essentially, her work counters the idea that communal and traditional practices are in fact primitive, particularly during the times of COVID-19. Instead, they can evolve, grow and even adapt with the contemporary world.
“I find that there is a return back to this notion that at the core of it all, the basics of survival, which includes having skills where you can make, plant and build things, where you can be self-sustainable in every sense, is now a necessity and a luxury, not something that is primitive,” she says.
Recently in April, as the area remains to be a hotbed for ISIS terrorists, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi kicked off more developmental projects in Sinai amid the pandemic, describing it as “national security, which cannot be measured by money”.
It included the Al-Mahsama Irrigation Drain water treatment plant, which is expected to provide more than 12,500 direct jobs and 150,000 indirect jobs for communities in the area and achieve sustainable development of the Sinai Peninsula.
Solving economic challenges must also be met with solving social challenges, and finding creative means to engage with the communities while reconsidering the understanding of development.
“They are people that don’t fight nature, they work with it,” Seikaly adds, “I think the challenge will be how we – as urban settlers – will be able to transform our own urban values into something that is more sustainable. It is not what we build, but how we are building.”
Eliza Egret10th May 2020
63 Jewish people, including comedian and writer Alexei Sayle, have lodged a formal complaint against a charity. They argue that the Jewish National Fund UK (JNF UK) has funded activities that violate international humanitarian laws, including the 2014 military assault on Gaza. The signatories state that the charity misleads the public in its fundraising material and breaches fundraising codes.
Michael Kalmanovitz is one of the signatories. He is part of the International Jewish anti-Zionist Network UK, an organisation which co-founded a campaign called Stop The JNF. He told The Canary:
The Jewish National Fund (JNF), founded in1901, is now key to Israeli apartheid. Through the Israel Land Authority, the JNF controls93%of state land exclusively for persons of “Jewish nationality“, “in perpetuity“, in other words, permanently excluding Palestinian people from land that has been either bought under false pretences or stolen from them.
Planting trees to cover ethnic cleansing
JNF UK claims to be “Britain’s oldest Israel charity“, and “every penny raised by JNF UK is sent to a project in Israel.” The charity gives people an “exciting opportunity” to plants trees in Israel to mark special occasions, such as births. This is ironic given the JNF actively plants forests over the remains of ethnically cleansed Palestinian villages.
Kalmanovitz said:
Th JNF’s forests and parks, including the British Park, have been planted and built on the ruins of hundreds of destroyed and depopulated Palestinian villages, in an attempt to (literally) cover up all traces of the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. Notoriously, in 1967 after the ‘six-day war‘ the JNF boasted, “the JNF tractor follows in the wake of the army tank”.
Forcibly displacing Bedouin communities
JNF UK’s current focus is to pour money into projects in the “impoverished” Negev region, which makes up 60% of Israel’s land. The JNF’s Blueprint Negev has a goal of relocating 500,000 people to the region.
In their complaint to the Fundraising Regulator, the 63 Jewish campaigners argue that:
JNF UK’s involvement in the Negev is political and aimed at forcibly displacing its Bedouin population, one of the most neglected and poorest communities in the region.
The Negev’s Bedouin population has inhabited the region for thousands of years. But when the Zionist state of Israel was established in 1948, most Bedouin people were forced off their land, and many became refugees in Jordan, the Sinai, Gaza, and the West Bank.
Despite JNF UK’s claim that the Negev is now “largely unpopulated“, there are currently around 230,000 Palestinian Bedouin people living in the region. Around 150,000 of this population live in 37 villages which aren’t recognised by the Israeli state. Residents have few rights and aren’t even provided with sewage systems, electricity, or water. The Israeli state continually attempts to displace people by demolishing their homes.
The Negev community of al-Araqib was first displaced in 1951. Residents returned to their land in 1998, fearing that the JNF was going to plant a forest over the land and erase the community off the map for good. The residents continue to remain steadfast. Their village has been destroyed by the Israeli state 176 times. Each time, the villagers rebuild.
Complicity in war crimes
JNF UK also funds Derech Eretz, an organisation which provides pre and military preparation programmes to young Israeli people in the Negev, ensuring that they will “excel in the military”. Derech Eretz also provides duty support and mentorship for their graduates serving in the military, as well as post-military programmes.
Furthermore, JNF UK’s 2015 accounts reveal that the charity spent £114,000 on the 2014 “Gaza war effort.”. This is the same “war effort” in which Israel committed war crimes.
The signatories of the complaint comment that the:
Charity Commission apparently considers contributing to the Israeli army’s actions in Gaza, to come within the framework of a charitable act that serves the public good. We make this point on the assumption that the JNF UK’s annual accounts have been audited by the Charity Commission as part of its regulatory responsibility.
“Apartheid is not a charity”
The signatories are requesting that the Fundraising Regulator investigates JNF UK. Kalmanovitz stated:
Activists are campaigning in a number of countries to de-register the JNF as a charity: apartheid is not a charity.
The Canary contacted both JNF UK and the Fundraising Regulator for comment. JNF did not reply at the time of writing, the Fundraising Regulator said: “We are unable to comment on individual cases while they are open.”
Featured image via B’TSelem/Wikimedia Commons
Palestinians in small villages of Area C don’t receive the services they need to combat the coronavirus from either Israel or the Palestinian Authority
May 04, 2020 8:50 AM
There are places in the West Bank where even washing your hands with clean water, the most basic rule to try stop the spread of the coronavirus, is virtually impossible.
The village of Zanuta, which is located south of Hebron and like all villages in Area C of the West Bank is under Israeli control, is not connected to a clean water source. Its residents use rainwater collected with cisterns. “Should I rinse my hands with this water?” asks Adel Atil, a village resident. “There are more germs here than in any epidemic,” he notes.
The Civil Administration, the body of the Israeli army responsible for civilian management of areas of the West Bank under Israeli control, says the village is not connected to the water system since its houses were built illegally. The High Court of Justice forbade the state from demolishing Zanuta, asking it to consider legalizing the buildings retroactively. Palestinian residents of these areas often complain it is virtually impossible to get building permits, making it inevitable to build illegally.
The village is but one instance of the difficulties facing small villages in Area C during the coronavirus crisis. The area is under Israeli control, according to the Oslo Accords, but health services are supposed to be the Palestinian Authority’s responsibility.
According to the human rights organization Bimkom, there are 180 shepherd communities in the area, numbering 35,000 people. The villages have under-developed infrastructure due to repeated demolitions by Israel and the absence of construction plans. They encountered the coronavirus crisis already under conditions of poverty and high unemployment.
The vacuum left by Israel and the Palestinian Authority is now felt more than ever. “The situation is awful, no one in the village is working,” Daud Jahalin from Khan al-Ahmar, one of the villages, told Haaretz. The village came under the spotlight when Israel declared its intention to evacuate it in 2018.
"It’s worse now during Ramadan since we need more food, more clothes. We don’t have the money to go shopping in Jericho,” say residents.
When the Palestinian Authority imposed travel restrictions, small villages were cut off from urban centres in which they used to shop. The Authority now allows a limited amount of people to cross roadblocks in order to purchase essentials.
But food shortages aren’t the only problem. It’s the lack of money as well. Usually, residents of Khan al-Ahmar and other villages in Area C work in Israel or in settlements. Due to the closure imposed by Israel and the Palestinian Authority, most people don’t go to work or receive unemployment benefits. “No one is looking after us during this period” says Eid Abu Khamis, the head of the Khan al-Ahmar community. “Both Israel and the Authority look after their own people. They disinfect, provide alco-gel and food, but no one helps us,” he laments. Abu Khamis says no one explained to them how to contend with the virus.
In Abu Nuwar, a village east of Jerusalem, unemployment has skyrocketed and shortages are acute. Yunes Hamadin, a village resident, says that since the crisis started, they received goods only once from the social services department of the Palestinian Authority. They haven’t heard a thing from Israel. “No one asked us about the elderly or the sick people in the village, we’ve been left completely on our own,” he says.
In addition, Israel continues to demolish structures in Area C. According to the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the Palestinian Territories, there have been 23 demolitions of structures and infrastructure since early March. Last week, the Israeli army evicted a family of seven from a building near Jericho. The operation took place despite Israel’s pledges to the UN not to carry out demolitions or confiscations of illegally built inhabited structures in the West Bank until the crisis is over.
Recently, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, as well as NGOs Bimkom and Rabbis for Human Rights, sent a letter in which they demanded that the commander of the IDF Central Command and the Coordinator of Government Activity in the Territories, the Defence Ministry unit overseeing the Civil Administration, allow a hook-up of communities in Area C to the water system during this period, as well as permit the construction of temporary structures which could be used for quarantine purposes. Neither however happened.
According to Alon Cohen-Lifschitz from Bimkom, “Israeli authorities must change their policy of demolition and expulsion and allow these communities to survive and develop, while recognizing their existence and way of life.”
Ahead of Ramadan, Abu Khamis linked up with “Friends of the Jahalin,” a group of Israeli activists (some of them from the adjacent settlement of Kfar Adumim) in order to distribute food in communities in the area.
A day before the start of Ramadan, he went to the Jordan Valley in order to collect food from farmers there, later distributing it to local residents. Since then, he and some volunteers have been distributing basic food almost daily. “It’s very difficult,” says Daud. “But at least for now we’re getting some rice and vegetables, which helps get through Ramadan.”
COGAT provided a statement in response to this report. “We have been cooperating with the Palestinian Authority and the international community in recent months in order to help counter an outbreak of the virus in Judea and Samaria,” the statement read. “Palestinian health authorities were provided with thousands of test kits for the virus, as well as protective gear for medical teams and various disinfectants. Medical teams have received training, including doctors, nurses, lab technicians. This was provided by Israeli doctors to their Palestinian counterparts,” it concluded.
By Reuters
April 6, 2020, 6:03 a.m. ET
AL UBEIDIYA, West Bank — Bedouin herders in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, already isolated by virtue of their nomadic lifestyle, have become more cut off than ever from ordinary Palestinian life since the coronavirus outbreak began.
That isolation is a double-edged sword. They say their mobility makes them less vulnerable to catching the infection, but a territory-wide lockdown imposed to slow the spread of the disease means they are no longer able to sell their farm produce in local villages.
Some 30,000 Palestinians live in the pastoral encampments scattered across the West Bank, where sheep are herded along uninhabited hills and rocky valleys.
They have largely been spared the restrictions imposed in towns and villages, where 240 cases of COVID-19 and one fatality have been documented."
This is why the Bedouin lifestyle is better than the cities," said Salameh Safi, 75, a shepherd on a donkey tending his flock near Bethlehem and sporting a red-and-white keffiyeh to shield his eyes from the early spring sun.
But Mohammad Ishak, 53, a Bedouin near Jericho in the Jordan Valley, said he could no longer gain access to nearby communities to sell cheese and other sheep products.
"We will suffer losses because the farming sector has taken a hit," he said.
"We can’t reach Ramallah or any other city to sell," added Sulaiman al-Zaher, 65, another Bedouin near Jericho.
Ali Abed Rabbo, general director of preventive medicine at the Palestinian Health Ministry, told Reuters the herders' lifestyle might put them at an advantage in terms of not catching the virus - "but on condition none of them mixes with residents of the cities and the villages."
(Writing by Rami Ayyub; editing by