Daughters of the desert -- Rachel Cooke meets the Bedouin women who officially do not exist

[Bozita]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2008/nov/30/negev-bedouin-israeli-citizens-women

Daughters of the desert
A family stand in the Negev, amid the wreckage of their house. They are not Palestinians, but Israeli citizens with voting rights and husbands who have served in the army. So why did soldiers destroy their home? Rachel Cooke meets the Bedouin women who officially do not exist

Rachel Cooke
guardian.co.uk, Sunday November 30 2008 00.01 GMT
The Observer, Sunday November 30 2008
Article history


Bedouin villages in the area, is 'unrecognised' by an Israeli government that refuses to accept the land claims of the Negev Desert's indigenous peopleb

By the time I get to what remains of Nuf Al-Queda's house, its destruction is old news, both in the village of Al-Zarnouk, where the single-storey building had stood for more than 20 years, and far beyond: thanks to mobile telephones and the internet, hundreds of people have already seen images of its demolition by the Israeli Defense Forces on the morning of 30 October. But, five days on, the air is still heavy with cement dust and quiet despair. Nuf, who is 28 and has three children under the age of five, wears the bewildering smile of one so traumatised that she is more inclined to uncontrolled laughter than tears. She stares at the chalky pile of rubble that is her former home - spears of metal protrude from the cheap concrete like giant thorns - and wonders yet again if the gold that she received on her marriage lies somewhere beneath it. It would be good to find those necklaces and bangles because her life savings, a wad of shekels worth about £1,200, were nowhere to be found when her neighbours managed to drag the chest of drawers in which she kept it outside in the moments before the JCBs began their terrible work. Had the soldiers inside already been through it and taken what they wanted? This is her belief, though she has no proof of it, of course.

Nuf is a teacher. She was at school when the army arrived. They came at 9am - 50 soldiers, plus a handful of contractors, a group of Jewish settlers - and by 9.45am their task was complete. Though her neighbours tried to stop them, the soldiers were impassive, their faces 'like walls'. Ostensibly the reason they chose Nuf's house as opposed to any other in Al-Zarnouk was because she had recently renovated it, exchanging its asbestos roof for one made of corrugated iron; an inspector had ruled these changes 'illegal'.

But the truth is that her improvements had little to do with it. Al-Zarnouk, like 44 other Bedouin villages in the area, is 'unrecognised' by an Israeli government that refuses to accept the land claims of the Negev Desert's indigenous people. The Negev, says the government, is not the ancestral land of the Bedouin; it belongs to the Israeli state, and whether their roofs are made of iron or asbestos the Bedouin are merely squatters. The government would like Nuf and her neighbours to move into one of the seven townships it does recognise, towns built specially for them - and for as long as they refuse to do so, they will pay the price: no electricity, no water, the constant threat of demolition. If a place does not exist - and the government is so determined these villages do not exist, it has made sure that they are not signposted on Negev highways, nor marked on any map - how can they be connected to the national grid or the nearest reservoir? The destruction of Nuf's home, which involved the army first driving past dozens of ramshackle buildings just like it, is surely a warning as much as a punishment: this could happen to you, too. Isn't it time to move on?

more...

[Sarah Ibarruri]

1. That name caused me to do a double take: 'Nuf Al-Queda's house' nt

[scarletwoman]

2. Something so familiar about this... An indigenous people forced into specially set aside locations

by the invading and now dominant people. "Reservations" are what they're called here in the U.S. In South Africa these set aside areas were called "homelands".

Israel keeps upping its karmic debts. Some day these debts will come due.

sw