"Powerless" Bedouin Village Still Seeking Health Care

Israel’s Negev desert is facing a public health

crisis. After much public pressure, in June 2004, the

Ministry of Health revealed the findings of its

epidemiological study - there are 65% higher rates of

cancer and mortality for those living within a 20km

radius of the Ramat Hovav Industrial Zone. Some

350,000 people live within this danger zone, including

the residents of Beer Sheva. The Bedouin village of

Wadi el Na’am is located 500m from Ramat Hovav - which

encompasses 19 hazardous agro and petro-chemical

factories, and a toxic waste incinerator. The site has

ironically won state awards for environmental

stewardship for four years in a row. In all the

paradoxes of Israel, this one defies expectations. A

few years ago, even the IDF

vacated the Manos military camp, 2 km to the north of

the factories after soldiers became ill, and

complained about a fierce stench from the site.

In addition to the Ramat Hovav industrial zone, the

unrecognized Bedouin village of Wadi el Na’am is

surrounded by an IDF munitions factory and military

fire zone, the Efrat Oil Terminal - an oil-storage

site, the Israel Electric Company and Makorot - the

national water carrier site. Although the public

amenities companies are located inside the village,

the government does not recognize this village, or the

other 70,000 Bedouin living in Unrecognized Villages

in the Negev. These Israeli citizens live underneath

high voltage pylons, but have no electricity. The

villagers live next to the water carrier, but have no

water in their homes.

Health problems which are persistent in Wadi el Na’am

include high rates of cancer, asthma in children under

6, eye infections and miscarriages. Livestock have

also been

killed off by infection. Wadi el Na’am in one of 38

Bedouin villages which do not have access to medical

care in their villages. Lack of public

transportation,

socio-economic conditions and other forms of state

discrimination further marginalizes the Bedouin

community. The Bedouin villages also lack access

roads, sewage, welfare,

and educational facilities, whereby further

exacerbating health problems.

There are three principal risk factors related to the

nearby Ramat Hovav chemical site. First, evaporation

pools have been created to store toxic waste and

extend over an area of 3,250 acres. The local

industrial council (an independent municipality

without any residents, which in essence gives license

to the polluters to monitor their own pollution

levels) has spent $10 million to construct

a biological plant for treatment of waste in 2000, but

it has yet to become operational due to technological

problems. Secondly, the emission from the factories,

particularly Bromine Compounds Ltd. and Makhteshim

Group emit hazardous and highly toxic chemicals and

carcinogens. Thirdly, two plants, Government Company

for Environmental Services and Akosol Ltd - store

toxic waste on-site. All of this has grave health

implications for the two adjacent Bedouin villages of

Wadi Al-Nam which has 4,500 residents and and Wadi

Almshash with 850 residents.

On the rolling plains of the Negev desert, there are

modern incarnations of former Prime Minister David

Ben-Gurion’s vision of "making the desert bloom" - new

Jewish settlements are being established under Prime

Minister Ariel Sharon’s Negev Development Plan which

will include the transfer of 38 Bedouin villages

despite the opposition of Arab and Jewish groups into

government planned townships.

These neighborhoods replete with full infrastructure

were all

approved by the Knesset with consent from the Bedouin

Authority, a quasi-governing body falling under the

Israeli Land Administration. In other words, the

Bedouin are being displaced and pauperized, as the

Negev is being cleared for expansion by Jewish

settlers from Gaza among other areas in the country.

Millions are being invested toward this unsustainable

plan to develop the Negev.

In April of 2003, Bustan L’Shalom, which means ’grove’

in both Hebrew and Arabic, a grassroots human rights

and environmental sustainability organization and its

Director Devorah Brous, led the pioneering effort to

build the

Medwed Project, the construction of a straw-bale,

solar-powered medical clinic in Wadi el Na’am.

Without formal construction approval from the ILA, the

Bedouin Authority or from regional health authorities

who had failed to act in providing basic health care

services - despite their High Court mandate to do so,

Bustan built a solid partnership with the villagers

and proceeded to build the clinic with the hope that

health services could be provided by an HMO or by

volunteer health professionals. Since the village is

unrecognized, it was built without a permit and like

all infrastructure in these villages, it is subject to

demolition at any time.

The medical clinic was built over 6 days in a work

camp with the aid of over 500 volunteers who also took

part in lectures about land rights, human rights,

development,

and Bedouin culture. The clinic is stocked with solar

panels donated from 6 companies in the U.S. to help

power the clinic - there is no other option for

electricity.

The Ministry of Health, and the General Health Fund

(the HMO with the most members from the village) is

“unwilling to expose their

doctors to the health hazards from the plant” among a

host of other reasons does not

provide health services in the village. Others

disagree with that assessment and claim that the

Authorities are using the denial of health and

other basic services to push the villagers to move to

Townships like

Segev Shalom, the neighboring Planned Township. And

so, the Medwed

Medical Clinic, hand-built by volunteers only last

year, sits empty apart from occasional community

lectures about human rights and eco-building. It

remains a pariah

among state authorities for its technically illegal

act

of constructive dissent - the building of a medical

clinic in the face of a health and environmental

catastrophe for an indigenous community clearly facing

state discrimination.

The problem of the unrecognized villages has become

increasingly aggravated since 1965 when the government

approved the Planning and Construction Law as well as

an outline plan in which hundreds of Bedouin villages

and localities were deliberately ignored and

considered not to exist. The lands were classified as

agricultural land, rendering all buildings erected as

illegal.

The government has also passed the "Removal of

Intruders Law" which effectively streamlines

the effort of state agencies to expel Bedouin from

their lands and accelerate the existing

practise of home demolitions and land confiscations in

the Negev. In the view of many Bedouin leaders, the

government’s own Bedouin Authority is a chief culprit

in discriminatory decision-making since its inception

in 1987.

Almost 38 % of the governmental funds for the Arab

Bedouin communities in the Negev will be allocated to

implement land confiscation policies of the government

especially in the unrecognized villages in 2004.

Nearly 200 homes have been demolished and 30,000

dunams of crops were sprayed and destroyed in the

Negev since 2002.

Orly Almy, the Project Coordinator for Physicians for

Human Rights, says that, "The state has obligations

under the International Covenant on Economic, Social

and Cultural Rights to implement the right to medical

care as an essential function of the right to health."

Some 40% of the Bedouin population does not have

health insurance.

The Bedouin have increasingly attempted to influence

the Israeli government, the Bedouin Authority and the

legal system through a variety of methods. They have

also increasingly sought the aid of international

authorities to help recognize their unique status

within Israel.

Legal proceedings and government lobbying carried out

on behalf of the Bedouin community and the Regional

Council of Unrecognized Villages through the use of

organizations like the Association of Civil Rights in

Israel, the Mossawa Center and Adalah have been

minimally successful in gaining access to health care

and other services. Governmental institutions seem to

be very much in the process of carrying out the Negev

Development Plan at the direct expense of the Bedouin

minority in the unrecognized villages.

The broader question of how the Gaza withdrawal will

effect the Bedouin settlements in the Negev has yet to

be fully examined.