- Title: Desert tree planting sows discord within Israel's coalition
- Date: 12th January 2022
- Summary: SAWE AL-ATRASH, ISRAEL (JANUARY 12, 2022) (REUTERS) BEDOUIN CHANTING SLOGANS IN FRONT OF ISRAELI SECURITY FORCES VARIOUS OF SECURITY FORCES TREATING WOUNDED PROTESTER SECURITY FORCES MORE OF PROTESTERS CHANTING ISRAELI FORCES RUNNING ISRAELI FORCES ARRESTING WOMAN BULLDOZERS AT WORK ON LAND (SOUNDBITE) RESIDENT OF AL-ATRASH, SULIMAN AL-ATRASH, SAYING: "We used to plant thi
- Embargoed: 26th January 2022 15:13
- Keywords: Bedouins Israel clashes coalition crisis trees
- Location: SAWE AL-ATRASH, ISRAEL
- City: SAWE AL-ATRASH, ISRAEL
- Country: Israel
- Topics: Conflicts/War/Peace,Middle East
- Reuters ID: LVA001FTXJNT3
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text:Government-sponsored tree planting in an Israeli desert has set off violent protests by Bedouin Arabs who see the forestation as discriminatory encroachment by the state, sowing discord within Prime Minister Naftali Bennett's ethnically mixed coalition.
Coming days before the Jewish arbor festival of Tu Bishvat, the drive to turn the sandy expanses of the southern Negev green hails back to Israel's founding pioneer narratives.
But the nomadic Bedouin claim private ownership over the nationalised land being zoned and accuse Israeli courts of enabling expropriations as part of a campaign of disenfranchisement that has kept many of their community in off-the-grid brieze-block encampments.
The bulldozers rolled this year despite an appeal by Mansour Abbas, a Bennett coalition partner from Israel's Arab minority, for a deferral "while we work on a decent plan that would grant Bedouin citizens honourable lives and livelihoods".
"A tree is not more important than a person," he tweeted.
"We used to plant this land, since 1948, even before the creating of the state (of Israel) we have been planting it and living from it, last year we planted it and the tractors came and uprooted everything," said Suliman al-Atrash, resident of Sawe al-Atrash.
At the Negev village of Sawe al-Atrash, Bedouin scuffled with riot police on Wednesday (January 12) after a night in which authorities said protesters blocked roads, stoned motorists and forced a train to halt by piling rocks on its tracks.
Abbas's United Arab List (UAL) party was boycotting parliamentary votes, a coalition spokesman said. If sustained, that could deny Bennett his razor-thin majority and bolster the Jewish-nationalist opposition.
Asked how far UAL was willing to go, party lawmaker Iman Khatib Yassin said: "All the way."
"We came into this partnership hoping to find partners who understand that Arab citizens of the country have a basic right and deserve basic rights on their lands," she told Kan radio, while stopping short of any threat to quit the coalition.
Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, a centrist, urged a halt to the contested forestation. Despite successive governments' pledges of equitable Negev investment, "the Bedouin problem has been forsaken", he said in a statement.
The religious-rightist Bennett did not comment. His ideologically kindred housing minister, Zev Elkin, saw no need to heed such calls. The planting "is a professional, fundamental process needed for land conservation," Elkin told 103 FM radio.
(Production: Ammar Awwad, Sinan Abu Mazer, Rinat Harash, Nuha Sharaf) - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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