“Don’t Make Us Refugees—Again!”

By Maxine Kaufinan Nunn

The Israeli government has already forced the Jahalin-Salamat bedouin tribe to pull up stakes twice. The first time was around 1950, when they were ousted from their home in Tel Arad (site of the present city of Arad) and found their way to a spot on the Jordanian border south of Hebron. A few years later they were "encouraged" by the Israeli army to cross the border into the West Bank, then under Jordanian administration, and finally settled in their present location, at the edge of the Judean desert between Jerusalem and Jericho.

Now the Jahalin once again are threatened with expulsion. Visiting their tents, and the shelters they have built from wood planks and sheets of iron near the ruins of an archeological site, one can easily imagine how this place must have looked when they first arrived. That was before the modern high-rise apartments of the settlement city of Ma'aleh Adumim came to dominate the horizon to the north and west.

As with the establishment of the Jewish city of Karmiel, close to the unrecognized bedouin village of Ramya in the western Galilee (see Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, Dec. '92/Jan. '93), the establishment of Ma'aleh Adumim at first had a positive effect on the tribe's members. It provided them construction jobs.

Accommodating More Settlers

Those days have passed, however, and, as in the case of Karmiel, the city of Ma'aleh Adumim is expanding to accommodate more Jewish settlers. So the Palestinian bedouin of Jahalin, like the Palestinian villagers of Ramya, have been told by the Israeli government that they must leave. The Jahalin case is complicated by Israeli government priorities in changing the political map of the West Bank. Israel is working feverishly to create continuity of Jewish habitation from so-called metropolitan Jerusalem to an expanding Ma'aleh Adumim in order to cut the Jericho enclave off from the rest of the West Bank. The Jahalin, living literally on Ma'aleh Adumim's doorstep, are the first in line for displacement, though not the last.

The threat is not new. Four years ago the tribe's mukhtar and some other family heads were approached by representatives of the civil administration and pressured into signing a commitment to vacate the land on demand when the city needed it. By August 1993 the threat had become much more immediate, as the bulldozers inched closer to the encampment. That month, members of two major Jahalin families who neither recognize the authority of the mukhtar nor agree with his commitment to vacate began a legal battle against the anticipated expulsion. Their lawyer obtained a verbal offer from an official of the Israeli civil (i.e., military) administration for an alternative site with water, electricity and other basic necessities. However, when the lawyer tried to get a written contract, including an Israeli government commitment that the bulldozers would not begin work at the encampment until the people had moved to their new location, the Israeli official who had made the offer mysteriously became impossible to find.

By late October, the bulldozers had reached the periphery of the encampment, gradually biting off more and more of the tribe's grazing land in the process of building the roads and retaining walls of a new Ma'aleh Adumim neighborhood.

The work of the bulldozers was accompanied by blasting which sent rocks flying onto tents and through the roofs of tin huts. Some 20 families "voluntarily" moved to a rocky site about a mile away.

On Oct. 27, a petition was filed for an injunction to stop the work. The injunction was granted, but was withdrawn two weeks later on a technicality. Work began again.

At that point some Israeli grassroots activists heard about the plight of the Jahalin and visited the encampment. When they asked what they could do to help, they were told, "Bring more people."

Thus was born the Action Committee for the Jahalin Tribe, a small group consisting of roughly equal numbers of Jahalin and Jerusalem residents, as well as people from the neighboring Palestinian town of AlAzariyeh. A public campaign on behalf of the Jahalin was launched. The first activity was a protest vigil late in November, followed a week later by a demonstration attended by some 150 persons.

The mayor of Al-Azariyeh addressed the demonstrators, along with Bedouin rights activist Nuri Al-Ugbi, Shlomo Elbaz of a Sephardi Jewish peace group, East for Peace, and Mohammad Al-Hirsh, speaking on behalf of the Jahalin. A number of Knesset members then expressed support or contacted the relevant ministers to state their position on this issue.

Meanwhile the legal struggle continued. A High Court appeal against eviction would be costly, and the Jahalin turned to the Society of St. Yves, a human rights resource and legal aid center. On Dec. 6, St. Yves filed a petition asking for an urgent hearing to stop the work and enable the Jahalin to remain in their long-time home or, if that should prove impossible, to guarantee an alternative acceptable to them, with provision for adequate housing, including basic infrastructure.

A hearing was finally scheduled—a month later. Meanwhile the government made another offer of an alternative site, this time in writing. A number of points, notably the fact that the site, beside the Jerusalem municipal garbage dump, is a rock-strewn hillside which the state refuses to make habitable by clearing the land, prompted attorney Lynda Brayer, senior member of the St. Yves legal team, to reject the offer on behalf of the tribe.

The Jahalin themselves have expressed reservations about the site because, although purportedly "state land," it was in fact expropriated from Palestinians in the village of Abu Dis, who still claim it. The offer, which came from the state attorney's office, also was accompanied by an implicit threat. Since there no longer was an injunction stopping work, the Jahalin were told that if they didn't accept the offer, bulldozers could be sent into the encampment "even tomorrow."

The Action Committee accordingly set up an emergency response network, ready to send supporters and journalists to the spot, should the government's threat of forcible removal be carried out. The network has in fact been called in once—the day the bulldozers buried an outlying shack, complete with its contents, under a section of new road. That day the bulldozers stopped work three hours early. AlHirsh thinks the influx of witnesses made the operators uncomfortable with what they were doing.

On Dec. 29, a solidarity visit was organized to the Jahalin encampment, in hopes of rallying public opinion and swaying government policy. The visitors—Israelis, Palestinians, and others—saw the inroads of the bulldozers, including a one-room shack through whose roof a boulder the height of a two-year-old child had been flung in the course of road-blasting.

Palestinian negotiator Faisal Husseini met with representatives of the tribe. He told them they were right to reject the state offer. Israel has promised not to "thicken" settlements during the interim period, and their eviction to make room for Ma'aleh Adumim's expansion is in clear violation of this guarantee. Bedouin rights activist Nuri Al-Ugbi also is supportive of the "rejectionist" stance, citing international law (the Hague Convention) that views the occupier as a trustee for the inhabitants of occupied territory, and required to act for their benefit.

Others have urged the Jahalin to accept what has been offered, arguing that they are not likely to get anything better. Their lawyers are guided by the principle that adequate housing is everyone's right by international law, and that if the government can build apartments for Jewish settlers in Ma'aleh Adumim, the least it can do for the Jahalin is to give them the space they need and an adequate infrastructure.

The Jan. 11 hearing resulted in a one week work stoppage while negotiations were conducted regarding an alternative site proposed by the Jahalin themselves—one they are sure is not on land confiscated from other Palestinians. On Jan. 13 the writer visited this site with a lawyer from St. Yves and an Israeli town-planner preparing to give expert testimony on the Jahalin's behalf.

This location is far more suitable for their needs than anything they have been offered. A1120 remaining families are firm in their resolve never to agree to leave voluntarily to make way for settlers. But they know that they are unlikely to win their legal battle. They hope that if they are forced to move, this time it will be to a place where they can remain permanently, with title to the land. They do not want to be refugees yet again.