VI. Home Demolitions

The Ministry of Justice letter also stated, “As of today there are 45,000 illegal buildings in the Bedouin diaspora [unrecognized villages], there are 2,000 pending legal procedures against buildings and 700 valid demolition orders - 15 of them administrative.”

However, the ministry did not provide Human Rights Watch with information on levels of illegal building and number of actual demolitions in other communities in Israel requested in order to provide a comparative assessment.

Transparent and comparative official data is needed for public debate and accountability, especially to help determine whether state authorities have carried out demolitions in a discriminatory fashion or in a way that violates Israel’s obligations under international human rights treaties.

However, Human Rights Watch was able to obtain several sets of government statistics—some sent to journalists or to members of the Knesset in answer to parliamentary questions and shared with Human Rights Watch, and in one case an internal Ministry of Interior database, obtained by an Israeli NGO, of outstanding judicial demolition orders in all regions of Israel as of January 2005. In the unpublished ministry database that Human Rights Watch reviewed, all 242 outstanding judicial demolition orders in January 2005 in the Southern region were against structures of Bedouin residents, even though Bedouin make up only 25 percent of the Negev population.¹⁴⁶

NGOs keep their own lists of demolitions based on news reports, field visits to the scene of the demolition, and reports from the communities. The Regional Council for Unrecognized Villages in the Negev tallied 227 home demolitions in 2007, up from 96 in 2006 and 15 in 2005.¹⁴⁷ The Association for Civil Rights in Israel reported 224 home demolitions in 2007.

Atwa Abu Frieh works with the Regional Council of Unrecognized Villages in the Negev, and confirms the trend visible in the RCUV statistics. "In all villages house demolitions are increasing," he told Human Rights Watch.

In villages that have received government recognition [the newly recognized villages], we believe they increase demolitions outside the blue line [official boundaries] to get people to move inside. In the unrecognized villages they increase demolitions  to push people to move to recognized locations.¹⁴⁸

Another dramatic change in recent years is the fact that planning authorities have started issuing mass warnings or demolition orders against entire neighborhoods or even entire villages, thus paving the way for further mass demolition operations. Banna Shoughry-Badarne, a lawyer with the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, said:

They go in with hundreds of cops and 20 or 40 demolition orders and put them on all the houses of a neighborhood or a village. These [judicial demolition] orders are open-ended, so you never know if and when the demolition will happen. You don’t see the exponential increase in demolitions now, but you will see a huge increase in the coming years if all the orders are implemented.¹⁴⁹

During its research Human Rights Watch discovered several villages with these mass warnings or demolition orders, including the following:

1. Al-Sira, near the Nevatim air base. In June 2006 planning authorities distributed six warnings. On September 7, planning authorities distributed six judicial demolition orders for the houses that previously received warnings and warnings for all the other structures in the village. In July 2007 authorities distributed demolition orders to all the homes that previously had warnings. The villagers have been living on this land for generations. As already mentioned in Chapter III, while the authorities claim that the land was officially confiscated for building the air base in 1980, Bedouin villagers claim that the government never approached them over the past 26 years to inform them of the expropriation. Village head Khalil al-Amour showed Human Rights Watch a sales deed proving his great grandfather bought his plot of land in 1921 from another Bedouin.

2. Um al-Hieran/Atir, near the Yatir forest. In April 2004, the state filed 27 lawsuits to evacuate and expel the approximately 1,500 residents of these sister villages. In September 2006, the Beer Sheva Magistrate’s Court issued approximately 40 judicialdemolition orders against almost all the houses in Um al-Hieran, affecting most of the approximately 300 people living in the village. In June 2007, the ILA demolished 25 homes, even though the villagers’ lawyers had obtained court orders to stay some of those demolitions on procedural grounds.  

The government had moved the residents from their land in the western Negev around today’s Kibbutz Shoval to this location in 1956. The government has earmarked the land of Um al-Hieran for the construction of a larger Jewish settlement, Hiran, according to a report the ILA submitted to the prime minister detailing initiatives for the establishment of 68 new settlements throughout Israel.¹⁵⁰ The ILA has never informed the villagers about these plans. In a letter to Human Rights Watch, the Ministry of Justice did not attempt to explain the government’s need for the land or future plans, but merely said, “The State invested close to 10 million NIS in developing Quarter 9 in the town of Hura. In this Quarter there are 380 available land plots. The Bedouin Administration had offered and is offering permanent housing solution in the framework of this quarter.”

3. Wadi al-Ne’am, next to Ramat Hovav and the central electric plant for the Southern region. Wadi al-Ne’am is the largest unrecognized village, with approximately 5,000 residents. The government has presented many Wadi al-Ne’am neighborhoods with mass warnings and judicial demolition orders. Residents have been in this location since the 1950s when the government moved them there. Due to their proximity to the toxic waste from Ramat Hovav, the villagers are willing to move to a new location as long as they can continue their agricultural and herding way of life. So far the government has offered them only overcrowded neighborhoods in the government-planned townships, a new neighborhood that would still fall too close to the toxic fumes of Ramat Hovav, or a non-existent neighborhood in one of the newly recognized villages.

4. Al Sirr, next to the Beer Sheva prison. The government presented most of al-Sirr’s homes with warnings in March 2006. The government has offered the same kind of unsatisfactory solutions to this village as to Wadi al-Ne’am (see above). In its July 23, 2007 letter to Human Rights Watch, the Ministry of Justice did not detail any need for the village land. On November 1, 2007 the authorities demolished five homes in the village.

5. Al Qrein, southeast of Hura. In the 1950s the government moved the villagers to this spot. The residents of the village have requested that if they must be moved again they be moved as a community to another location. This request has not been answered and in March 2007 the authorities placed judicial demolition orders on all the houses of the village. 
   
   The people of this village have built a daycare and an open community space to alleviate the hardships created out lack of services, which is the result of the government's policy of non-recognition.

6. Tarabin al-Sane’, next to Omer. The Omer municipality has expanded onto the land of the Tarabin, and rather than allow the Tarabin to be residents of the expanded Omer, municipal authorities are trying to evict them to an alternative site, where the government has created a new village for the Tarabin. Some of the Tarabin claim that the government negotiated their move to the new village with members of the Tarabin tribe who do not represent them. In addition, some of the Tarabin who have moved to the new village claim that the authorities did not provide adequate compensation or many necessary amenities to allow for an adequate standard of living in the new village and have urged the rest of the Tarabin not to move under these conditions (see Chapter VII for more details on the problems of the new Tarabin village.) Omer planning officials handed out 75 judicial demolition orders to all the remaining homes in the unrecognized Tarabin village in March 2007.

In none of these locations have government officials given the residents any information on the future use of the land or the public interest necessitating these mass evictions. Human Rights Watch questioned government officials on the need for the land in our letter dated May 11, 2007. In its July 23 response, the Ministry of Justice provided a justification in only one of the above cases, stating, in the case of al-Sira, “that it shall be indicated that the land in the area of the airbase and its surroundings is necessary for the expansion of the airbase and other military needs.” This is the same reason that the government has previously asserted, but there is little to demonstrate that there is an actual necessity. On the contrary, the head of al-Sira’s village council, Khalil al-Amour, noted, “We spoke to the current Nevatim air base commander and the previous one. They told us that the military does not need this land.”¹⁵¹

Official statements also reflect the increase in enforcement activities. In a Knesset committee debate on home demolitions in November 2006, the head of the Ministry of Interior for the Southern Region, Dudu Cohen, said, “There is a government decision allowing the ministries and the ILA to increase the enforcement of the Planning and Building law. Recently the government has finished its preparation. All we are seeing now is the result of the state’s completion of the preparation stage, following the decision to enforce the law. There is nothing new here."¹⁵²

Justifications

Israeli authorities give a variety of reasons for demolishing Bedouin homes in the Negev. These reasons include: that the home was built without securing the proper permit, on land that is not zoned for residential use, in an area that does not have an approved master plan, or where the building violates the specifications of that plan. As discussed previously, the Bedouin of the unrecognized villages live in a legal limbo whereby it is in fact impossible for them to meet the conditions of the Building and Planning Law and thus to comply with the law in building homes or other structures.

Judicial demolition orders spell out the state’s legal argument for demolishing homes in order to uphold “public order”:

The purpose of a demolition order … is to maintain civil order and prevent the nuisance caused to the public by the very existence of an illegal structure…. Public interest may lie, among other reasons, in the fact that in not carrying out the demolition the perpetrator is rewarded; in preventing the chaos caused by illegal construction; and in the concern that not issuing a demolition order may be interpreted as granting permission de facto, a situation which has no place in a proper state of law.¹⁵³

The order goes on to say:

Therefore, as long as such a structure remains standing without permission, there is no relevance as to when it was established, and the proper course of action against the violation in such an instance of construction without permit, where the owners are unknown, is to request a demolition order without conviction, as the plaintiff has done in this event.¹⁵⁴

Finally, this order acknowledges obliquely that, at least in the case at hand, Bedouin claim ownership of the land they are being accused of illegally building upon:

In this matter, the plaintiff claims that the structure has been built on lands undergoing a settlement process according to the settlement ordinance and that ownership hasn’t yet been established.¹⁵⁵

The “settlement process” refers to the process established by the Land Rights Settlement Ordinance [New Version] - 1969, which (as explained in Chapter III, above) entitled Bedouin in the 1970s to register their claim to Negev land. Many Bedouin live in ancestral villages, established before the founding of Israel in 1948, over which they officially registered an ownership claim in the 1970s, yet whose presence Israeli planning authorities have stubbornly refused to acknowledge in master plans, rendering every home in these villages illegal. The same authorities who refused to include these villages in the planning process (a grossly negligent omission), or provide any adequate residential alternative to their inhabitants, prosecute the village home owners in court, claiming that their very presence is a “public nuisance” of such magnitude that the only appropriate remedy is to render an entire family homeless.

Mohamed Abu Solb was one of several people Human Rights Watch interviewed who had served in the Israel Defense Forces. “The men of Abu Solb served in the army—I was in the army as were my father and all my brothers.”¹⁵⁶

Jadwa Abu Sbeit told Human Rights Watch:

We are very loyal citizens, and look how they treat us. Our sons serve in the army and police. The Bedouin are the soldiers in the country who guard the borders—north and south—if there were no Bedouin soldiers in the army then the borders would not be secured. When Jewish soldiers finish their mandatory service the government enables them to study and get good jobs. When our sons finish the army they demolish their houses.¹⁵⁷

How Demolitions Are Carried Out

Warnings

In most cases, the first stage in the demolition process is when a supervisor appointed by the building and planning authorities posts a warning on a structure, notifying the owner (who is never named in the warning) that he or she has violated some article of the Building and Planning Law. The warning states that the building has been built in violation of the law and that the owner should demolish the building that was built illegally or appear before the planning authorities, within a period up to 30 days from the time the warning was issued, to provide documentation that they have built legally. If the person does not comply with the warning, the authorities can take further action such as issuing an administrative demolition order or going to court for a judicial demolition order (the distinction between the two types of order is explained below).

Every Planning and Building Commission, local as well as regional and national, has a statutory right to enforce building codes. Human Rights Watch studied copies of several warnings, including one issued by the Local Commission for Planning and Building of Omer¹⁵⁸ (see translated Warning in Appendix C.) In the warnings we studied, those responsible failed to fill out much of the form or did so sloppily. For example, in the Omer-issued warning, officials filled out none of the identifying lines, including the owner’s name, the building targeted, or its location. In the section indicating what building violations were committed under the 1965 Planning and Building Law, officials often check multiple violations, such as building without a permit/in violation of a permit/plan, and using lands without a permit/in violation of a permit/plan. According to the warnings, the authorities require the unnamed owner to stop all work, return the land to the status quo ante, and appear before the supervisor by the date listed. In the Omer-issued warning, the supervisor’s name is not printed and a scrawled signature makes it impossible to determine who signed the warning.

The village of Tarabin al-Sane’ was first established in 1956, after Israeli military officials forcibly moved the Bedouin residents there from their ancestral village. The village thus existed before the nearby town of Omer was founded, in 1975.¹⁵⁹ By demanding that the residents “return the land to the status quo ante,” the warning seems to suggest that the entire village can rewind over 50 years, from the time the Tarabin were moved to the area by the state and established their village there. It totally disregards the community’s long ties to the land, and the fact that for decades, until Omer’s desire to expand, they lived there with no interference from the authorities.

When planning officials come to hand out warnings, a large number of police often accompany them. Many Bedouin told Human Rights Watch about police and officials entering their homes or the open areas just in front of their homes and the terrified reaction of their families. In many of the cases Human Rights Watch investigated, the authorities had handed out mass warnings.

Residents of al-Sirr said they received mass warnings in March 2006. “Every single physical structure in the village got a warning,” said Ibrahim al-Gradi. “They came from the beginning of the village to the end—even the animal pens. Not just recently built structures but even those built before 1948. They came just before the [March 2006] elections and promised they’d come back afterwards with demolition orders.”¹⁶⁰

An unrecognized village of al-Sirr. © 2006 Lucy Mair/Human Rights Watch

Nasim Jirjawi, from the unrecognized village of Wadi al-Ne’am told Human Rights Watch that planning officials and police came in 2005 to deliver warnings to a large number of families:

They came inApril, and they distributed warnings for more than 70 families. They came in the morning around 8:30 or 9, with massive forces, and they distributed warnings to all the families of our neighborhood—placing them on the wall and in the entrances. There were regular police, special forces, border police and many others. We had no idea they were coming until we saw the massive forces starting to arrive. They aggressively entered the area without permission or warrants. There were kids and women inside the houses, and the kids were very scared. They violated the privacy of our homes in a very aggressive manner, and people were not prepared for it at all. Some people panicked. I have three kids, the youngest is only three. When they came to put a warning on our house, the kids were terrified. There were hundreds of police surrounding the house.¹⁶¹

A Tarabin al-Sane’ resident described the day that authorities delivered warnings there:

The forces started gathering at 6 a.m. in Omer. There were hundreds of police, special units, army, and border police. They surrounded the entire village, and there were helicopters overhead, as well as vehicles, jeeps, horses, and water cannons. They sealed the area off and began taping the warnings on houses. They had about 70 orders, and they didn’t give one to every house. I think they targeted the homes of leaders in the community to try and pressure them, or maybe they picked the areas of the village where they [Omer residents] want to develop new housing plots.¹⁶²

Another resident of Tarabin al-Sane’ told how the officers entered their homes during the delivery of the warnings:

About 30 police officers from one of the special units surrounded my house. They were heavily armed with weapons and with teargas, and they were really frightening. Then a representative of Omer and a number of officers entered the house. Some took photos. No one else was allowed in. They took measurements with a laser device…. I believe they entered illegally. They never showed any order saying they could enter and search. When I asked to see an order they said, “Don’t speak. Just let us do our work.”¹⁶³

The same resident talked about the impact of the large forces on his children:

The kids were really affected by the incident. They have to leave the house around 6:30 a.m. to catch the school bus to [the recognized township of] Tel Sheva. They went to the gate and came back talking about lots of police and horses. They were really scared, and they refused to go back out there and catch the bus to school.¹⁶⁴

In some cases the authorities cordoned off the area when they came to hand out warnings. Adalah’s lawyer Morad al-Sane’ tried to go to Tarabin al-Sane’ on the day that mass warnings were handed out, but he was blocked from entering the area:

We went to Tarabin at 8:30 or 9. A police patrol was blocking the entrance and preventing anyone from entering. They said they had an order from the police commander to block entry, and I asked to see it. I told them I thought they were lying about the order, and that made them really crazy. I told them, “You are exploiting the fact that people don’t ask to see the orders because they don’t know the law.” I told them we were going to walk through the blockade and enter, and they screamed at me and said, “OK, we’ll call the commander to bring the order and he’ll be here in 10 minutes, so stay here.”¹⁶⁵

When the police commander arrived he admitted to al-Sane’ that he had no order and eventually said that al-Sane’, as a lawyer, could enter, but not the other NGO and community members with him. Al-Sane’ refused, continued to argue, and threatened to complain to the Police Investigation Division.

He let us just stay there arguing and negotiating with him until he knew that the police had finished what they needed to do in the village and finally let us in after all the warnings had been handed out. At least one-and-a-half hours had passed—it was around 10 or 10:30 then.¹⁶⁶

Some residents talked about the shock of receiving warnings, in many cases after having lived for decades in their current locations without any interference from the government. Ibrahim al Grady of al-Sirr told Human Rights Watch, “Our family has been living here for 50-60 years, and it’s really hard to deal with this sudden order to just get up and leave. The collective memory of 60 years is here. We can’t just pack it up overnight.”¹⁶⁷

Others told Human Rights Watch that after receiving warnings they did approach the authorities to find out why they were being targeted en masse and what they were supposed to do once they were evicted from their homes. None of them received information on the intended use of their land and, while authorities often told them in general terms that they should move to one of the government-planned townships, they were not given immediate, concrete living alternatives.

On September 7, 2006, planning officials distributed six judicial demolition orders and warnings to the rest of the 45 houses in the unrecognized village of al-Sira. When representatives of the approximately 300 residents of al-Sira approached the authorities, they found there were no alternatives for them:

We went to the offices of the inspector of building and construction at the Ministry of Interior and asked them what to do. They said they didn’t know, that they were under pressure from the government, which wanted to move military bases to the area. They sent us to the Bedouin Development Authority [a division of the ILA], which they said was responsible for finding a solution. When we got to the BDA it didn’t have any solutions either – more illusions than solutions. They always say maybe. Maybe you’ll get a neighborhood when [the township of] Rahat expands; maybe you can go to the [newly planned] township of Marit which does not even exist yet. We are invisible people to them, so perhaps we can live in invisible houses.¹⁶⁸

Since that time the rest of the villagers, those who previously just had warnings, have also received judicial demolition orders. In its July 23, 2007 letter to Human Rights Watch, the Ministry of Justice said, “[T]hese residents are offered to move to one of the quarters in the new town of Makhol [official name of Marit] and/or to one of the other permanent towns.”

Orders and Demolitions

If an owner does not comply with a warning to demolish his or her home, the authorities may then issue a demolition order against the structure. Under the Planning and Building Law, there are several ways for authorities to lay the groundwork for demolishing structures that allegedly violate building regulations.

Administrative demolition orders

Under Article 238a, planning authorities can hand out demolition notices to structures that are in the process of being built or were finished within the past 30 days. These “administrative orders” (tzav minhali) do not require judicial oversight and can be issued by the planning commission in the jurisdiction where the building lies. The orders are valid for only 30 days from the date of issue and allow the authorities to demolish the building after 24 hours from the time the building inspectors affix the order to the building, if the building has been built without a permit, or after 72 hours in all other circumstances. This leaves home owners with little time to prepare for the imminent demolition or to appeal the order to the judicial authorities.

Human Rights Watch studied administrative demolition orders in three unrecognized villages, including one that the Ministry of Interior issued against homes in Twayil Abu Jarwal on December 20, 2006 (see translated order in Appendix D) The order was written only in Hebrew, not Arabic, and the type of language used was almost incomprehensible to a native Hebrew speaker whom Human Rights Watch consulted.¹⁶⁹ While the order does mention the right to appeal, it stipulates explicitly that “the court will not cancel or delay an Administrative Order unless it is proved that the construction for which the order was issued had been done legally.”¹⁷⁰ Since no Bedouin were able to build homes legally in the unrecognized villages, the order basically precludes any possibility for judicial remedy and provides a powerful disincentive against Bedouin appeals.

Judicial demolition orders

If 30 days have passed since the building was completed, the planning authorities can appeal to the courts to enforce the building laws, either under article 205 of the Building and Planning law, which lawyer Banna Shoughry-Badarne of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel says the authorities use in most areas of Israel, or under article 212, which she says authorities reserve almost exclusively for inhabitants of the unrecognized Bedouin villages. Under article 205 the authorities can prosecute the building owner and in some cases may decide to destroy the illegal structure. Under article 212 of the law, known as “demolition without conviction,” the authorities claim that they cannot identify or locate the building owner, and thus the only way to enforce the law is to demolish the structure. Human Rights Watch asked government officials about this practice in our letter dated May 11, 2007. In its July 23 response the Ministry of Justice did not answer the question about whether article 212 is used against any non-Bedouin structures in Israel. They did write that “[a]n ex parte demolition order, according to Article 212 of the Planning and Building Law, 5725‑1965, is executed only as a final resort, when it is impossible to file an indictment against the owners in a usual manner (Articles 204 and 205) or when every other alternative was exhausted.” This assertion is disputed by NGOs, as discussed below.

According to a judicial demolition order from Um Mitnan (see Appendix E), the judge makes the following distinction between the two articles of the law:

While article 205 presents additional means for punishing the building offender, the point-of-departure in article 212 is that there is not and will not be a conviction in the matter of the structure’s construction, and that a demolition without conviction is not meant as a punitive measure against the building offender, but is done to remove an obstacle to others, to maintain civil order, and to prevent a nuisance to the public.¹⁷¹

According to the Building and Planning Regulations of 1982, which govern implementation of the Building and Planning Law, courts can grant demolition orders under Article 212 solely on the basis of a plaintiff’s request “if the court sees that it is impossible or impractical to summon forth to the hearing a person who may be damaged by the enactment of the order….”¹⁷²

Under article 212, officials obtain a judicial demolition order by filing a suit against “owner unknown.” Negev cases are always heard in the Beer Sheva Magistrate’s Court. The process is more time-consuming and costly for the state than just issuing an administrative order, but the court requires minimal evidence and officials simply assert that the land is not covered by an approved master plan, is not zoned for residential use, and the owner did not acquire a permit. These are conditions that apply by definition to all buildings in unrecognized villages. Lawyers told Human Rights Watch that they knew of no case in which the court had not issued a judicial demolition order when requested to do so by the authorities.¹⁷³

Lawyers from Adalah contend that the authorities have abused the provisions of article 212 to secure judicial demolition orders. In a January 2007 motion to the Beer Sheva Magistrate’s Court, Adalah charged that when authorities secured judicial demolition orders against “owners unknown” in the unrecognized village of Um al-Hieran, they were fully aware of the identity of all the inhabitants. In April 2004, the authorities had filed evacuation lawsuits against all residents of the village in which they had to clearly identify each one by name and identification number. Yet just the next year, when the planning authorities wanted to issue demolition orders against the same buildings, they claimed not to know the identity of the owners.¹⁷⁴

The judicial demolition orders give planning authorities authorization to demolish the home. The homeowner has no real due process rights in these judicial demolition cases. While the Bedouin can appeal the court’s decision, they have every incentive not to: in appealing such an order, the previously unidentified Bedouin will have to identify him/herself to the courts. In this case, the authorities can criminally prosecute him or her under Article 205 of the law for illegal building, and a conviction may entail a fine or even jail time. Many Bedouin are chiefly worried about having a criminal record, a fact that will prevent them from obtaining a civil service job such as teaching.

Several lawyers who have represented dozens of clients in home demolition cases told Human Rights Watch that, as far as they knew, no home demolition order in the unrecognized villages had ever been overturned, and the best case scenario was to get a postponement. According to lawyer Shafeek Abu Hani:

The home demolition is a criminal process—you have violated the law by building illegally, without a permit. When someone receives a home demolition order he has a limited time in which he can challenge it and try to overturn it in court. But then he is putting his name on the building, and it immediately becomes a criminal matter. And statistically you have a 100 percent chance of losing your case in court. When people come to me I advise them not to go to court and just let their house be demolished because honestly it will be less expensive for them that way. We had a donor who was prepared to fund us to go all the way to the High Court to challenge the legality of a home demolition. But then I decided not to follow through with this strategy because if we will lose such a case, which we undoubtedly would, then they can bulldoze the whole Naqab. It’s not that we are not courageous enough to take this step, but the risk appeared to be so high as to be idiotic.¹⁷⁵

Abu Hani went on to explain the vulnerability of the Bedouin in the legal system:

Unfortunately there are unscrupulous private lawyers who will take advantage of people’s desperation. They will take the case to court on the promise that they can do something about it. They charge $3,000-5,000 per case. They give improper legal advice. Then the lawyers go to court and ask for a postponement for 12 months so the owner can get a permit, but of course the owner can’t get a permit because there is no building plan for the area. So after 12 months the authorities can just come and demolish the house. These lawyers don’t explain that to the people. Hundreds of people have gone to court like this and lost.¹⁷⁶

Lawyer Banna Shoughry-Badarne confirmed the futility of challenging home demolition cases:

We can’t really achieve anything legally with the home demolitions, but we can tell people their rights and at least they don’t pay money for a court case if we know we can’t win. When legal work doesn’t help, we try to think of other spheres of action such as advocacy with the Knesset, media, etc. It’s very hard to get into the media and talk about issues from a human rights point of view—because the media, like the general public, thinks the Bedouin are trespassers, who purposefully build illegally. Our response is that the state has to plan for them, that it can’t discriminate in its planning and building processes, and that if this happens then the Bedouin won’t be forced to build “illegally.”¹⁷⁷

Suliman Abu ‘Bayid lives in an unrecognized neighborhood on the outskirts of the Bedouin township of Lakiya. The Abu ‘Bayid family is one of several families who bought options to plots of land from the government before Lakiya was even established but have yet to receive their plots, forcing many to build illegally on the outskirts of town (see Chapter VII, below). He told Human Rights Watch about a demolition order that his mother received in 1986:

We were building a home for her, and they came and gave the order. She went to the court to try and explain her situation to the judge, but he simply ordered her to pay 7,000 NIS and to demolish the home within six months. She didn’t destroy the house and until today nothing has happened, but the order could be implemented at any time. In addition, by not demolishing she violated the court verdict, and she could go to jail on criminal charges. She did pay the 7,000 NIS fine.¹⁷⁸

In March 2003, the regional court in Beer Sheva issued a demolition order for the mosque in the unrecognized village of Um al-Hieran.¹⁷⁹ Salim Abu Alqian told Human Rights Watch:

We appealed the order in court, and there was a trial two years ago. The court upheld the demolition order, and we got a 12,000 NIS fine. One of the elderly men in the community was the one who actually went to the court, so the criminal charges are against him and he received the fine. He has to pay it in installments of 500 NIS a month.¹⁸⁰

After receiving a judicial demolition order from a court, the planning authorities have to deliver it to the structure. In order to prove in any subsequent legal challenge that they actually delivered the order, they usually stick it on the structure and photograph it. They do not hand it to an individual, and they do not require a signature of receipt. Bedouin villagers and several lawyers told Human Rights Watch of instances where the orders had been place on hard to see areas of the house, fallen off, blown away, or been removed by children.¹⁸¹

In Um al-Hieran, one resident told Human Rights Watch that on February 6, 2006, the authorities delivered demolition orders to the whole village:

A guy came to deliver the orders and gave them all to Mohamed Ibrahim, a 90-year-old illiterate man. He just threw all the orders at Mohamed because his is the first house in the village. This is the second time we got eviction and demolition orders. The first time was in June 2003.¹⁸²

Many of those who received demolition orders spoke of their feelings of hopelessness and lack of alternatives. In the words of one man:

We don’t have any hope. We want to be able to develop and progress, like the rest of society. We don’t want to always be thrown backwards. I pay taxes. I didn’t occupy anyone’s house. I inherited this land from my father who inherited it from his father and his father and so on. We have papers from the Ottoman period such as tax documents showing that they recognized that this is our land. The [Israeli] authorities don’t offer us any solutions.¹⁸³

No Prior Warning of Demolition

Most victims of home demolitions said that they had received no specific warning in the days leading up to the actual demolition. The authorities had never indicated what day, month, or year they planned to implement the demolition orders. There are no available criteria to indicate which demolitions will occur first, or how much time will likely pass between the notice of a demolition order and its implementation. In some cases years have passed. It is unclear whether the authorities even intend to carry out all the demolition orders they issue, and many Bedouin activists believe the demolition orders are no more than a pressure tactic. There is no way for families to adequately prepare, and they live with constant fear of the unknown. This also prevents families from making further investments or improvements that may make their structures marginally more habitable or comfortable.

In the Ministry of Interior list that Human Rights Watch obtained for all outstanding judicial demolition orders as of January 2005, there are orders dating as far back as 1994. Officials gave the orders a ranking of A, B, or C, indicating the importance attached to implementing the order. It is difficult to ascertain what dictated the ranking, other than that it is not the date of issuance.

Many people told Human Rights Watch that the demolitions are carried out early in the morning—when bulldozers woke the family—or around 9-10 a.m., after most males and school-age children have left the village and only women, the elderly and very young children remain. One woman in Um Mitnan village, Fatima al-Ghanami, 60, described the day her home was demolished:

They came at 10 o’clock in the morning. They didn’t notify us the day before in order to let us prepare. They came at the house from behind, not from the front. They took everything out—all the furniture and utensils, all our belongings. The house had four rooms and a bathroom and it cost 70,000 NIS to build. We couldn’t do anything, we were totally helpless. Some of my sons were here, but they didn’t protest or resist because we all knew that no matter what we did they’d demolish the house anyway. We also had to pay for a bulldozer to come and remove the mess they left of the ruined home. That cost us 700 NIS right there. Afterwards my sons built me this temporary shack, but now it also has a demolition order.¹⁸⁴

She described not expecting the first demolition but now living in fear of a second one:

When I got the first demolition order for the old house I was sure they would never come. Now I know better. I know they’ll come and do it…. They might come tomorrow, they might come anytime. If they demolish this place I have nowhere to go and no money left. I have no idea what I’ll do.¹⁸⁵

Sarah Kishkher, also of Um Mitnam, said the authorities had indicated a time when they would demolish her home but then came at a different time:

A week ago they came to distribute demolition orders. Then three days later they came and said that they would come in two hours to carry out the demolitions. But in the end they came a different day.¹⁸⁶

In one case in which authorities demolished a small shop on the road into the village of Bir al-Mshash, the residents didn’t witness the demolition. “They did it while we were still sleeping. It was very early, around 5 a.m. When people started leaving the village later to go to work, they called us to tell us what had happened. No one saw it.”¹⁸⁷

Destruction of Belongings

In some cases the authorities brought workers with them to remove the belongings from the houses before demolishing them, according to some victims, but in other cases belongings were crushed in the demolition. Some victims said that the authorities confiscated their belongings. Sarah Kishkher said:

They were here and got inside—they broke all the cupboards and closets and didn’t leave us anything. Now we are living in a tent with no toilet and nothing for the kids. It’s terrible to live under these kind of conditions. We can’t even bathe the kids properly.¹⁸⁸

Her daughter Hamda Kishkher added:

The young kids were here with us, the older kids in school, the men outside the village for work—when the bulldozers and police came at 8:30 or 9 in the morning. They didn’t give any time to take our things out. They just demolished the homes on top of everything. We asked if we could remove the water tank with a solar heating panel from the roof of the house, but they didn’t let us, and it was destroyed.¹⁸⁹

Suliman Abu ‘Bayid, from the Regional Council of Unrecognized Villages of the Negev, said, “People invest everything in their homes and afterwards they can’t even afford to buy materials to build a tent, which also costs money. In this case the authorities smashed everything.”¹⁹⁰

On May 28, 2002, Israeli authorities demolished 52 homes in the unrecognized village of Al Araqib.¹⁹¹ Sheikh al-Turi told Human Rights Watch about the day of his home’s demolition:

They confiscated all the contents of the house—even coffee, the children’s medicine, etc. They loaded it all on trucks and took it way. They have special trucks with a forklift and they even took bales of hay—about 150 bales, expensive ones. The cupboards, kitchen equipment, clothes, water, food—they put everything on the back of these trucks and didn’t bring it back. One big bag of flour costs 200 NIS and there are two bags in a container. They threw the flour out on the ground and took the containers away. We asked why they did that, and they said they wanted the containers.¹⁹²

Demolitions Accompanied by Police Violence/Clashes

On November 15, 2005, planning officials and a large number of police entered the unrecognized village of Bir al-Mashash to distribute mass demolition orders. Villagers tried to block police from delivering warnings by using their bodies as physical barriers and in some cases throwing stones at the forces. The police fired into the air and used clubs against villagers, and in the end 12 villagers were hospitalized, including a pregnant woman who later miscarried. The police arrested 42 residents of the village.¹⁹³ In December 2005, Adalah filed complaints with the Police Investigation Division (PID) against border policemen for using excessive force and injuring 12 protesters. By the end of 2006, the PID had not responded.

Suliman Abu ‘Bayid, from RCUV, was there that day, recording the events on camera. He told Human Rights Watch:

The residents were trying to make a body barrier between the police forces and their homes. The police kept advancing until they reached them and then started beating them with batons. People started throwing stones in return. The police got inside the houses and broke things and even beat the women. I was taking photos from a spot between two homes and I found a woman on the ground bleeding. At one point I took a photo of someone who was being beaten by the police, and suddenly the police hit my camera with a stick. The police surrounded me and accused me of throwing stones earlier and then running away from them, which was ridiculous as I’d been photographing the whole time. Eight of them started beating me and every time a new policeman came around the corner he’d hit me too. I was beaten on the lips, head, back, legs. I couldn’t walk for a week. After they finished one of them told me I was arrested. ¹⁹⁴

Another woman was beaten badly on the head and suffered a concussion. She told Human Rights Watch how she found it hard to walk any distance or concentrate due to dizziness and headaches that she still suffered months later.

Salim Abu Alqian, from Um al-Hieran, described a similar incident at his village:

They came to demolish my father-in-law’s house on June 14, 2004, at 8 a.m. They brought 200 policemen, border police, and the brigadier of the southern district. I negotiated with them. I said you can demolish, but give us time. They gave us two hours, and in that time we went to Adalah and got an injunction for 48 hours. When the police saw the order they became really angry and violent. They started beating people and told people not to go into my father-in-law’s house. Some people went in anyway, including my sisters, and they beat them. There were clashes, and they arrested some people and evacuated others by ambulance. They arrested my son Rami.¹⁹⁵

Aliya al-Talalqah, 37, from Twayil Abu Jarwal, told Human Rights Watch how the authorities destroyed her home in September 2006. “The police came into the house and threw me on the ground. I was ripping at my hair and clothes and screaming. I was totally beside myself. The kids were terrified, hanging onto me and screaming.”¹⁹⁶

Self-demolition

Several people described how owners demolished their own homes. Shiekh Abu Sbeit, from Bir al-Mshash, told Human Rights Watch:

My brother was forced to demolish his house in 1993. The court decision was either a fine and jail or demolish the house himself. My brother had a beautiful house, and it was expensive to build. He had taken loans to build it, and then he had to demolish it. My brother served in the [Israeli] army his whole life and still lost his home.¹⁹⁷

The brother referred to in the above testimony in front of ruins of his house demolished in 1993. © 2006 Lucy Mair/Human Rights Watch

Sarah Kishkher, whose home in Um Mitnam was demolished (see above), said, “We were about to demolish the homes ourselves so that we could salvage as much as possible.” She explained:

My husband was already removing some of the metal that formed the top and sides of the house. The inspectors used to come every week to say they were going to demolish the house. We got tired of the threats, and that’s when we decided to do it ourselves.¹⁹⁸

A resident of the unrecognized village of Wadi al-Ne’am told Human Rights Watch:

When they came there were three houses they wanted to demolish. We said, we don’t want you to cause panic in the community so we’ll demolish them ourselves. They were waiting outside the village, and we demolished them ourselves, and then they came back to check. We didn’t leave anything showing except the foundation because you need special equipment to dig that out. The officer said it’s not enough and brought his bulldozer anyway and started digging out the foundations. They were very aggressive. I don’t think they came to do a demolition, since we did that ourselves, but rather to provoke us and to cause panic.¹⁹⁹

Mohamed Abu Solb told Human Rights Watch how he demolished his own shops, built on family land:

Three years after I built my first shop, they came and told me to demolish it. Just the sand I brought to level the land cost about 30,000 NIS for 1,850 tons. They issued a demolition order, and I demolished it myself in February 2003. They don’t come when you are building or have just finished—they wait until your business is up and running so you will suffer the worst financial impact. I had borrowed money from people, and I’m still paying off the loans today. The total amount of loss was 150,000 NIS.²⁰⁰

Above, Abu Solb’s destroyed shop; below, his new shop, also built without a permit. © 2006 Lucy Mair/Human Rights Watch

Impact of Home Demolitions

After a demolition families often live in makeshift shelters that do not protect them against the elements and that lack basic facilities. Many people do not have the money to rebuild or are afraid that rebuilding will invite future demolition. Human Rights Watch asked a group of women in Um Mitnan whether they would rebuild again after a demolition left several families homeless, some for the second or third time. One replied adamantly, “No, that’s it. We are not building again.” The family now lives in tents made from burlap sacks, plastic sheeting, and other materials they managed to salvage. Hamda Kishkher asked, “Even if they come again and demolish our tents, what do we care? How much worse could it be?”²⁰¹

Many feel cheated or incredulous. Sarah Kishkher asked, “Why would they demolish such basic structures? You can hardly call them homes. We didn’t even have electricity. It’s not that we built palaces, it’s just cement blocks on the sides and a tin roof.”²⁰²

The same group of women spoke about the physical and emotional impact of the demolition, including the struggle to keep the children’s food and milk from spoiling and the family’s meager belongings clean. Sarah Kishkher said:

We wake up with a thousand questions such as, “How are we going to store and prepare the food?” and “How are we going to keep the children and the place clean?” Nothing works properly in the tents. Everything used to be so clean and neat. We could keep the home organized—we had cupboards to fold the children’s clothes and keep them in. We could bathe the children whenever we wanted. Everything is in this sandy dirt. We can’t even keep food for the baby in the fridge. We have lost everything.²⁰³

Hamda Kishkher, five months pregnant, and with a nine-month-old son, described the discomfort of sleeping on the rocky ground and the lack of privacy. “In this small tent we have no space. We all have to lie packed closely together in this small space. If someone actually wants to get some sleep they go sleep in the car.”²⁰⁴

Fadia Kishkher spoke of health problems and her feeling of despair: “The last few days were really hard because of the strong rains at night. We found out that the tent leaks. I’m sick with ulcers. Sometimes I feel so bad that I can’t even take care of the children. Only the children keep me from killing myself.”²⁰⁵

“We were very sad when we came from school and saw that our house was gone,” said Saher Kishkher, age 11.²⁰⁶

Aliya al-Talalqah from Twayil Abu Jarwal said, “It took us five-six days after the demolition to make these tents. We slept outside on mats, like wild animals, with the sun in the day and the cold at night, with small children.”²⁰⁷

Fatima al-Ghranami, 60, talked about the loss of her home:

I was living in a nice brick house with a metal roof, and the bricks protected me from the heat and cold. Now I’m settling for this makeshift home because I’m afraid they’ll come to demolish it, too, and anyway I don’t have money to build another nice house. In the winter it’s extremely cold and in the summer it’s so hot, and this house doesn’t protect me from the elements. I have diabetes, and it is very hard to live under these conditions. But I have no alternative. I sold all my gold to build the other house. I lost all my savings when they demolished it. I don’t have anything left.²⁰⁸

In 2006, the Israeli NGO Physicians for Human Rights-Israel published findings on the emotional impact of home demolitions on children in the Negev. They said that the demolitions are a source of serious trauma for children, including the physical trauma of being without adequate housing during winter months and the emotional trauma of losing stability and security of shelter.²⁰⁹