UN human rights chief Navi Pillay on 25 July slammed Israeli plans to resettle up to 40,000 Bedouin and demolish 40 villages in the Negev region, urging the government to reconsider them.
“I am alarmed that this bill, which seeks to legitimise forcible displacement and dispossession of indigenous Bedouin communities in the Negev, is being pushed through the Knesset,” High Commissioner for Human Rights Pillay said in a statement. The so-called Prawer-Begin Bill calls for the relocation of 30,000-40,000 Bedouin, the demolition of about 40 villages and the confiscation of more than 700,000 dunums (70,000 hectares) of land in the Negev. The bill was approved by the Israeli government in January and by Parliament in a first reading in June, and two more votes on it are expected. “If this bill becomes law, it will accelerate the demolition of entire Bedouin communities, forcing them to give up their homes, denying them their rights to land ownership, and decimating their traditional cultural and social life in the name of development,” Pillay said.