News briefing
Translated and edited by: Committee for Justice
Geneva: 5 June 2022
UN experts urged Israel on Friday to stop the eviction and demolition of a Bedouin village, which will lead to the forced displacement of hundreds of residents in an attempt to expand Jewish-only settlements.
“Thousands of Bedouin citizens of Israel living in the Naqab are facing threats of eviction to make way for more Jewish-only towns, military bases, and other major infrastructure projects that exclude the Bedouin people and their development interests,” the experts warned.
Forced displacement of the Bedouin
The experts were particularly concerned that nearly 500 Bedouin residents of Ras Jrabah, which is not recognized by the Israeli authorities, face an imminent threat of eviction, after the Israel Land Authority (ILA) filed 10 eviction cases against 127 residents of Ras Jrabah and their families in May 2019, as Israel seeks to expel the residents and push them into segregated, impoverished Bedouin-only towns in order to expand the Jewish city of Dimona.
“While the State calls the residents ‘trespassers’, in fact, members of the Bedouin minority have lived there for generations,” the experts stressed.
Calls for an immediate halt to evictions
The experts called on the Israeli authorities to immediately halt the evictions and home demolitions that could cause irreparable damage to the Bedouin’s traditional way of life, livelihood, cultural practices, and relationship to their lands.
The experts had previously raised the issue of forced evictions targeting the Bedouin minority in Israel and the demolition and destruction of their property, including calls to “refrain and desist from actively pursuing segregationist policies and practices, resulting in the violation of the right to adequate housing and the prohibition of discrimination”.
The experts also expressed their regret that the government of Israel has not yet responded to these communications and continues to deny the basic human rights of the Bedouin minority.
