The Thorns of Desert Blooming

By Najwa Sa'd

On October 28, between 500 and 1,000 Israeli soldiers sealed off all roads to Laqueeya, a small bedouin town in Israel, and uprooted nearly 2,000 olive trees. Olive harvesting was to have begun in a few days, but now Laqueeya residents must grapple with both the psychological loss stemming from the savaging of their cash crop and the very real possibility that the village will go hungry because of the loss. Speaking to Al-Fajr newspaper, one resident vowed to replant a new olive tree for each one uprooted. "We fight this injustice to the end," he said.

The confrontation, with bedouin Arabs defending their groves and the Israeli soldiers uprooting them, defies stereotyping. To understand it, journalists must see for themselves, and to see it they must travel southwest from Jerusalem.

The paved road winds between the terraced hillsides, through the vineyards of Hebron, and past the orthodox Jewish settlements which now encircle this old Arab town. Gradually, the vegetation becomes more sparse, olive trees and cacti cluster here and there, and—where Israel provides water—lush trees thrive in newly-forested areas.

Following the Wadi El-Khelil south toward Beersheba, a starkly beautiful panorama greets the eye. At a crossing, seemingly nowhere, the taxi stops. Anyone en route to the nearby Arab village must get off here. The sun is high and strong on the October afternoon and we stand impatiently on an unsheltered, dusty corner—waiting until a rickety van approaches. Shouting, waving, heart welcomes, and a ride to the village is secured.

The paved road ends abruptly after a short drive from the main highway, although we have not yet reached the Arab bedouin village of Laqueeya. The chassis jolts as the driver downshifts for added traction over the trackless rubble. We climb to the top of the hill. The village sits looking out across the Negev desert.

The population of Laqueeya is about 5,000. The people are of the Sana'a, Al-Nassasra, and Al-Asad bedouin tribes, each with centuries of history of settled agriculture in the semi-arid region around Beersheba. Known for their staunch Palestinian nationalism, Laqueeya residents have been banished from the village five times since 1952. Yet they return with a patriotic fervor that defies their living conditions. They erected a memorial to the victims of Sabra and Shatila which stands, vandalized by Israeli soldiers. Israeli authorities have caused the bedouin of Laqueeya to endure family separations and the loss of critical livestock and other property. Their standard of living is comparable to that of camp-dwelling Palestinian refugees. Yet, these bedouin will not be uprooted from their ancestral homes. They live like refugees, though Israel says they are citizens.

Israel does not recognize Laqueeya as a permanent site. Therefore, the village lacks running water, electricity, proper schools, and health-care facilities. Residents haul their own water from often-contaminated cisterns and wells. They pay for several generators which, with quite a din, supply light for a few hours each night. The school takes students only up until the sixth grade and health care is provided by a government nurse at a shack-like clinic a few mornings a week. How ironic this must seem to a man from water-poor Laqueeya who works at nearby Ben-Gurion University on Saturdays. There, the government provides water for an Olympic-sized swimming pool and an impressive, modern building for a veterinary hospital.

Today, the residents of Laqueeya—Arab citizens of the state of Israel—are actively resisting the Israeli government's most recent relocation plan. Each family lives in fear that its corrugated iron hut will be demolished. Most are committed to keeping these ramshackle dwellings rather than moving to an Israel-administered township.

Launched in 1967, the township plan to relocate 70,000 Negev bedouin into five townships has succeeded in moving only one-third of the people from their traditional agricultural villages. Each Palestinian family that moves agrees to purchase one dunum of land from the Israeli government. Then, each is expected independently to finance and build a house, and pay taxes to an Israeli-appointed municipality for water and electricity.

Since no one living in a township can own livestock, Israel is positioning these shepherds and farmers to join the new bedroom communities which supply cheap labor to the burgeoning settlements and small industries of the country. A Laqueeya leader sums up: "The purpose of these townships is to strip us of our land and kill our independent economic life."

Laqueeya residents live off their few remaining livestock and part-time employment in nearby settlements, often share-cropping land which once was theirs. Before Israel banished the tribe for the first time in 1952, farmers regularly harvested crops of olives, wheat, and barley. After being allowed to return to their homes in 1975, some of Laqueeya's farmers replanted the olive trees Israeli authorities had uprooted. Laqueeya residents had had great hopes for their small olive orchards until the Israeli authorities uprooted them again on October 28.

Since Israel does not recognize Laqueeya, the Israeli Land Administration (ILA) defensively viewed the trees as an attempt to prove ownership of the land, and sought to eliminate them. For several years the ILA had sought a court order allowing them to obliterate the olive trees.

Since the 1967 occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, economic factors have compelled increasing numbers of Palestinians to become day laborers, working within Israel at discriminatory rates. The Laqueeya Palestinians, however, live inside Israel's 1948 borders and are full-fledged citizens of Israel.

As part of Israel's plan to control the bedouin population throughout the Negev, however, the Ministry of Interior's special military Green Patrol has confiscated much of the Arab land and property inside the 1948 borders. This includes livestock, land, fruit, and olive trees—the sustainers of bedouin life.

Because Israel maintains a construction ban in the village, Laqueeya was the scene of the largest demonstration in the history of the Negev last spring. One thousand Palestinians and Israelis joined ranks to oppose the destruction of a house in the village. Marchers carried a cloth banner reading in English, Arabic, and Hebrew: "We demand to live in dignity in our own agricultural villages, on our own land." Since the ban includes garages, when a village doctor who commutes to Beersheba every day built a garage off his house, Israeli soldiers promptly razed it to the ground.

However, there is a hardy spirit in Laqueeya. In the sparse classroom of the elementary school, the latest lesson on Palestinian culture is on a bulletin board: A child's drawing of a Laqueeya family sitting proudly under the branches of its olive trees.

At lunch with a Laqueeya family, our hostess talked about her life. "God is generous," she said. "I have 10 children and I hope to have 12...God willing." I asked her husband, a day laborer on an Israeli settlement, how he could afford to feed two more children. "We don't need to live like kings," he said, "but we must have children for Palestine."

Najwa Sa'd, a Washington, DC-based Palestinian-American writer, lived in the occupied territories from April to October, 1986. She has produced a slide show on Gaza and the Negev.