The New York Times · New York, New York · 11 April 1979

CP-1979-029

As Israel’s Military Turns to Negev, Treatment of Bedouins Sets Off an Outcry

By JONATHAN KANDELL

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Transcribed from the clipping

LAGIYA, Israel, April 10 — With the signing of the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty, the vast redeployment of military installations from Sinai to the Negev is about to begin and has spurred fears about Israel’s treatment of its Bedouin population.

During the last decade, well before a Sinai withdrawal was imaginable, the Israeli Government had already undertaken efforts to relocate the 35,000 Negev Bedouins to a half-dozen “townships” to facilitate the development of the desert’s agricultural and industrial potential.

But the situation has acquired a new urgency because of the $4 billion program to build up military installations in the Negev in the next three years.

In the last week, the simmering conflict with the Bedouins exploded with an attempt by Israeli police forces to bulldoze a large Bedouin family off their property in this small agricultural community about 10 miles north of Beersheba.

The incident brought a rebuke against the Government by the Supreme Court, which ordered the Israeli authorities to remove all equipment from the area and show cause by the end of the month why farm lands belonging to the Bedouins had been expropriated for the construction of a township.

The court ruling has annoyed military officials because it threatens to delay the transfer of installations from Sinai. And the Israeli opposition, centered on the Labor Party, has called an urgent session of Parliament to demand an explanation from Prime Minister Menachem Begin and his Government.

The “Lagiya affair” began last Wednesday morning when Salah Abu Karen, a 32-year-old Bedouin farmer, two of his brothers and an uncle were summoned at 7:30 A.M. to the police headquarters in the nearby town of Arad.

While the Bedouin men were at the police station, other Israeli policemen and Government workers arrived on their property and, without a court order or other legal permit, began to clear a 100-yard swath of fence and land to make way for a road. When the Bedouin women tried to drive away the bulldozers with stones, the police beat them.

The next day, the police and bulldozers were back, and the women were beaten again when they tried to interfere. “We asked the police if they could show us any documents telling us to move,” said Salah Abu Karen, standing on the bulldozed land slicing in front of his wheat fields like an ugly brown scar. “They told us we were too small to ask such questions.

We’re citizens of Israel and it doesn’t mean a thing to them?”

How this transcription was made

Read from the scan by a machine looking at the image of the page, not by optical character recognition and not by a person.

Context added by this archive

Date check: the masthead reads THE NEW YORK TIMES, WEDNESDAY, APRIL 11, 1979 — matches date and pub; page slug at right reads L+ A3

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