The ‘car ramming’ incident in Umm al-Hiran should be investigated. This is the only way to find out exactly what happened before declaring that it was a premeditated attempt to ram into the police. There is too much evidence that the police and government irresponsibility to conclusively determine the results of the investigation and suggest the incident was an ISIS attack. After all the investigation hasn’t even began.
This will not bring comfort to Erez Levy, the late policeman’s family. But Erez Levy was sent into a battlefield in a war which the Israeli state has declared on its citizens. This particular battlefield was not in the occupied territories. Nor was it on enemy land. It happened here, in the Negev, where the concept of a shared society should have come true. Officer Erez Levy and citizen Moussa Abu al-Qian paid with their lives for this war.
Instead of a symbol of shared society, Umm al-Hiran has come to represent one of the most striking injustices in Israel’s history. The government’s insistence to establish the Jewish settlement of Hiran on the land of the Bedouin village Um al-Hiran is a rare case of overt racism which is impossible to obfuscate or excuse. What else can you call the demolition of a settlement of citizens of one race in order to build a settlement for citizens of another? And all that within the sovereign borders of a democratic state? Umm al-Hiran is one of the most shameful stains on Israel’s history. And the fact that ministers, journalists, media and political activists defend and justify the injustice is a moral stain that we will find difficult to explain in the future.
The Negev has room for everyone. Bedouins are about 30% of the Negev’s residents and inhabit less than 3% of its land. Do we need to remind people that these are Israeli citizens? So it’s racism when government officials say that Umm al-Hiran took over land and when the Housing Minister says the Negev should be returned to Jewish hands. Not to say anything about the public crackdown on MK Ayman Odeh, while he was lying wounded in a hospital. It’s evil.
We need to create a different future for the Negev. This is not only our moral duty, but also a good civil and political policy.
What happened yesterday in Umm al-Hiran is the exact opposite. I don’t want to believe that our leadership is so cynical and cruel that it would escalate the situation in the Negev in order to divert attention from the Prime Minister’s corruption investigations or the political crisis with the right and the settlers. To prove to us that this isn’t the case, the government must go in the exact opposite direction: stop house demolitions, return to dialogue with its citizens and make a sustainable plan for the Negev. Before it’s too late.
This is a statement by Meretz MK Tamar Zandberg, translated from the Hebrew by Maya Haber:
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