12 year old girl killed on Israel border

EL-ARISH, Egypt (AP) — A teenage Bedouin girl was fatally shot Thursday in the Sinai Peninsula near Egypt’s border with Israel, Egyptian officials said.

The girl, identified as 12-year-old Samah Nayyef Abu Garad, was hit in the head by a bullet, witnesses and an Egyptian security official said.

It was not clear who was to blame for the death, with Egyptian officials and a witness citing a stray bullet coming from across the border, and the Israeli military saying no shooting had occurred on their side.

“She was shot by a stray bullet from the other side of the border (Israel), due to the ongoing fighting today between the Palestinians and Israelis,” the Egyptian security official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media. He said he did not know whether the bullet was fired by Palestinian militants or Israeli forces.

The Israeli military, however, said there was no exchange of fire between Israelis and Palestinians in that area on Thursday.

The victim’s cousin, Moussa Abu Freh, said he saw Abu Garad collapse after she was hit in front of her home in the Bedouin village of Umm Ammad.

“She fell off her feet after she was shot in the head; she was in the house’s courtyard that faces the border’s side,” said Abu Freh. He said the family house stands some 300 yards from the border with Israel, and about 400 yards from the Israeli border point of Kerem Shalom, close to the Gaza Strip.

Imad Kharboush, head of the emergency unit at el-Arish hospital, said Abu Garad was brought in critical condition to the hospital and died a few minutes later of brain damage.

In early January, an Egyptian Bedouin man fell dead from a bullet while standing in front of his house at el-Dahniya village, just 300 yards from the Israeli border. Witnesses at the time had said he was shot by Israeli border guards

The Negev « Pardon My Paradox

The Negev « Pardon My Paradox

The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions has a summary of the situation in the Negev:

The Negev is the final frontier inside Israel, the last tract of largely undeveloped land in the state. Israel has virtually completed the dismemberment of Palestinian lands in the center and north of the country, and now is consolidating the ‘Jewish redemption’ of the southern desert.

These Bedouin lands are coveted by the Jewish National Fund (JNF) which has published plans to move large numbers of Jews to the Negev. To make way for new JNF communities, the ‘unrecognized’ villages of A-Tir, Um Al-Hiran, and Twail Abu Jarwal were destroyed during 2007 in military-style operations involving large forces of police and soldiers, displacing hundreds of families. The Interior ministry has also sent airborne crop dusters to poison the Bedouin fields with broad-spectrum herbicides. The feared Green Patrol, a paramilitary unit of the Ministry of Agriculture, conducts these operations.

There are over 150,000 Bedouin in the Negev desert, with well-established territorial rights dating back to the Ottoman Era. However immediately after the founding of the state in 1948, the government began to confiscate land and move the Bedouin to ever decreasing areas, while allocating state resources for the development of new Jewish-only towns and agricultural settlements. Although the Bedouin were eventually granted citizenship of Israel, they were under military rule until 1966. Through legislation and various legal mechanisms the state has decreed the Bedouin to be squatters on their own land and thus the courts support the demolition of homes and expulsion of the inhabitants. The JNF, through its ‘Blueprint Negev’ plan, intends to create 25 new towns in the Negev over the coming years, bringing 250,000 new Jewish residents to the region according to its web site. The JNF is also planting forests on Bedouin land, such as the Ambassador Forest on the lands of the Elokbi Tribe north of Be’er Sheva.

[…] Bedouin in ‘unrecognized’ villages receive no government services, are subject to a separate body of law and regulation, have their land confiscated for Jewish settlement, and are generally relegated to the margins of existence.

The Bedouin have a long and proud tradition as a people. During the first decades of the state, they gave allegiance to Israel, sent their sons to the army and expected the respect they deserve. They received none. Instead the state has continued its mission to serve only the interests of Jewish citizens, and as a result few Bedouin serve in the IDF today. The cost might be high. Bedouin leaders have warned that the anger simmering under the surface may erupt, and Israel may face a Bedouin uprising, an Intifada within the state that could destroy what little is left of Jewish democracy. Perhaps it’s time for the State of Israel to become a democracy for the benefit of all its citizens, before it’s too late.