Al-Araqib

A Bedouin activist has filed an appeal to Israel’s highest court in an attempt to make the state recognize his land rights.

Because of the efforts by Palestine solidarity activists to expose the colonization project of the Jewish National Fund, 2012 could perhaps be the organization’s last year holding charity status in the UK.

Jillian Kestler-D’Amours talks to The Electronic Intifada about her new film focusing on the Bedouin village of al-Araqib and the women, men and children who resist displacement by the Israeli government and the Jewish National Fund.

While attention is focused on the Palestinian Authority’s UN recognition initiative, Israel is quietly taking hugely significant steps to transfer 30,000 Palestinian Bedouin in the Naqab (Negev) desert from their ancestral lands.

Unemployment and poverty rates among the Negev Bedouin in unrecognized villages are the highest in Israel.

A new Israeli proposal that would forcibly transfer more than 40,000 Bedouin citizens into government-planned townships in the Negev (Naqab) desert has raised the ire of Bedouin communities and their supporters, who say that the plan is both discriminatory and ignores the Bedouins’ historic connection to the land.

The British prime minister has stepped down from his position as honorary patron of the Jewish National Fund (JNF). The move comes as pressure on the JNF steps up in Britain, and is being hailed by activists as a big victory in the boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign.