- JERUSALEM (AFP) - Israeli
authorities on Wednesday destroyed the harvest of a Bedouin tribe in the
Negev desert with crop-dusting planes, accusing the tribesmen of being
squatters on state land, public radio said.
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- Planes sent by the Lands Authority sprayed chemicals
on 600 hectares (1,400 acres) of land farmed by the Abu Kaff tribe of Bedouin,
a semi-nomadic Arab population that was herded off large tracts of the
Negev after the Jewish state was created in 1948.
-
- The area sprayed was in the west of the Negev, which
occupies the southern third of Israel.
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- "This is a double criminal act: the Lands Authority
acted withouit waiting for a court order and used chemical products,"
said Bedouin deputy Taleb al-Sanna on the radio.
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- An official Israeli spokesman said the Bedouin had been
warned several times not to ilegally cultivate the land.
-
- The tribe has been accused by the authorities for several
years of squatting on public land.
-
- Abu Kaff, where 3,500 tribes people of the same name
live, is a scattered gathering of corrugated iron shacks on the edge of
the main road to the Israeli desert city of Beersheva.
-
- It is one of 36 unrecognised Bedouin villages in the
Negev which the authorities want to dismantle. Israel has instead built
seven designated towns in the area to accommodate the Bedouin, whose ancestral
lands were designated state property.
-
- The Bedouin accuse Israeli of trying to move them off
their homeland to make way for Jewish farmers and villages.
-
- Israel considers the villages built by Bedouin who have
returned to their lands from the recognised towns as illegal, but Bedouin
criticise Israel in turn for not investing in the infrastructure of the
new communities, which suffer high unemployment and lack social services.
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- Around 140,000 Bedouin live in the Negev, while another
60,000 reside in the north of the Jewish state.
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- On February 5, the authorities provoked howls of anger
from the Bedouin community when they destroyed a mosque that was built
without planning permission in Tel el-Maleh, an unrecognised village.
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- A district court later banned destruction of sites of
worship.
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- The Israeli authorities have sprayed Bedouin crops at
least twice before, Bedouin official say, including once at the beginning
of March.
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