I visited Um El Hiran on June 27, 2007, three days after dozens of homes in the village had been destroyed. I was traveling on a New Israel Fund Study Tour and visiting an unrecognized Bedouin village and also some Bedouin towns had been on the agenda for months. The recent events at Um El Hiran warranted a slight change in plans so that we could see the aftermath of the home demolitions conducted a few days before.
Um El Hiran is an unrecognized village, which means that the village receives no government services: no electricity, running water, garbage service, paved roads. Children walk several kilometers to the main road for a school bus, a difficult trek in the winter mud. The village is home to about 300 residents, all members of one extended family.
When we approached the site, the first thing I noticed was the JNF Hiran Forest sign and the edge of a typical grove of pine trees behind the sign. Very close to the edge of the grove was a large jumble of crumbled and rusted corrugated tin. This heap was obviously the remains of a home, not a very sturdy one but one that had sheltered a large family. This juxtaposition immediately raised questions for me. Had the Bedouin village grown to the outskirts of the forest? Had JNF started planting the trees before or after the Bedouin constructed their homes in this area?
I later learned that in August 2001, the Israel Land Authority released a plan for the establishment of new communities in the Negev. One of these communities, Hiran, is to be located at the site of Um El Hiran. The government approved the establishment of Hiran in 2002, and in 2004 the state submitted a court order claiming that residents of Al Hiran should be evacuated as they are using state lands without permission. I couldn’t find out how the Hiran Forest fits into the plans for the town of Hiran.
As the bus crept a bit further, a large tent came into view. This tent was similar to other Bedouin protest tents I have visited on previous trips, except that it was covered with banners in Hebrew protesting the demolition. Inside, about 50 men and boys were seated in plastic chairs arranged in a large circle. Unlike on my other visits to Bedouin villages, we were not invited in and were not offered food or drinks. I later learned that this uncharacteristic lack of hospitality to us as guests was because the head of the Northern Islamic Movement (the more radical of Israel’s two Islamic movements) was visiting the village and was talking to the men in the tent. The Northern Islamic Movement had provided two open-sided tents to the village, one for men and one for women and children. These tents provided essential shade on a day when the thermostat was supposed to climb past 40 degrees C (100 degrees F).
Leaving the bus, we walked up a slight incline which gave us a view of several demolished homes. The village’s sheik left the tent to join us and tell us about the demolitions. Through an interpreter, he told us that three days before, after negotiations for voluntary evacuation reached a stalemate, the Israel Land Authority went into the shacks and packed everything into storage units and then bulldozed 28 shacks. The people were told that they must pay daily storage charges and also arrange for transportation of their belongings in order to get their possessions back. This is a drastic departure from previous practice, where the bulldozers would show up and residents would be given a certain amount of time to remove their belongings before homes were demolished.
The village sheik explained that his people have a right to stay where they are because, he claimed, the government gave them this land. This particular group of Bedouin was previously evicted in 1956 from the fields around Kibbutz Shoval. They claim that at that time the government told them to settle on the land they now occupy. Of course at that time the group was much smaller. As the population has grown, the number of houses has grown and the village has spread out. All the houses that were demolished seemed to be very close to the Hiran Forest. I could not find out if encroachment on the forest played a part in the dispute.
When we were there, about 80 or more structures in the village remained standing. Some of them were houses and some were shelters for goats. During our visit, a group of men was working energetically to put up new tin shacks. The supplies for these replacement shacks had been donated by the Northern Islamic Movement. Towards the end of our visit, all the men left the tent and walked over to the construction site to show their benefactor the partially completed result of his organization’s generosity. The sheik excused himself to join the group. Clearly, the villagers were very grateful to the Northern Islamic Movement for coming to their aid at this time.
Before leaving us, the sheik explained that the Israeli government wants to move the people into Horah, a newly-constructed nearby Bedouin village. The people in Hiran say they want to stay where they are. One of many obstacles to moving the people is that they are from a different tribe than the tribes of the people in Horah.
We later visited Horah, a new, clean, modern Bedouin town with stucco and stone single family homes. These houses did not seem to have out-buildings for housing goats and sheep. We met the mayor, a Bedouin man with a Ph.D. in chemistry, in a beautiful new community library located next to the new community sports and recreation facility. The services available in this town were clearly vastly superior to anything available in Um El Hiran. However, beautiful new buildings, running water and electricity are not the only factors determining the quality of life in a community.
The mayor of Horah explained that the community is full of conflict because it is made up of 3 main Bedouin tribes and 24 minor sub-tribes. There is a lot of “gang” violence in the brand new schools and on the streets. Unemployment is high, too.
In moving from Um El Hiran to Horah, the people would not just be giving up their rusty tin shacks for new stucco homes with plumbing and electricity and close proximity to schools. Most of them would be giving up their livelihood as goat herders for unemployment. They would be trading the homogeneity of their one-family village for the conflicts of a multi-tribe town as well.
Judith R. Gelman is chair of Policy and Advocacy for Ameinu, the US affiliate of the World Labor Zionist Movement. She also serves on the International Council of New Israel Fund.
