jews planting trees to ethnically-cleanse Palestine of Palestinians

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Far-Right Israelis aren't Planting trees in the Negev for 'forestation,' but to ethnically Cleanse Palestinians
https://www.juancole.com/2022/01/israelis-forestation-palestinians.html

After mass protests by Arab residents and threats by Arab parliamentarians, the Israeli occupation government decided on Wednesday to suspend the major Jewish National Fund (JNF) project of planting trees in the Negev. The JNF is a quasi-governmental body which oversees thirteen per cent of the land in Israel to be used by Jews exclusively. It started its planting project on Sunday; worth NIS150m ($48m) it is intended to afforest large swathes of the land in the Negev under the supervision of the Israel Land Authority.

The Israeli government claims that this is state-owned land even though it includes many Arab villages, which the government has never recognised and so they remain disconnected from public services such as the water and sewage networks, the electricity grid and telecommunications access. However, left-wing Israelis claim that it is land at the heart of a dispute between the government and local Arab residents. Local Palestinians know that it is their land on which they have lived for centuries.

Planting trees and turning the desert into a green area and farmland is something good that everyone should be happy about. So why do the local Palestinian Arabs object?

From the 1940s onwards, the Zionists occupied Palestine and expelled the local population in huge numbers, replacing them with Jewish immigrants who assumed "ownership" of the Palestinian land and homes. Some Palestinians resisted the violent ethnic cleansing; some moved to nearby areas; some fled to areas that had not been occupied in 1948; and some fled the country altogether.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5u-2V9AMxtI

Ever since, the occupation state has been treating the Jewish immigrants as genuine citizens, while the original inhabitants who managed to stay in their homes in the land occupied since 1948 are "unrecognised" residents or, at best, second-class citizens. They are referred to as Arab Israelis.

At that time, the JNF carried out forestation projects over large areas of the occupied land, including on the ruins of the deserted Palestinian villages in order to change the facts on the ground and turn Palestine into Israel. My neighbour Mustafa Abul Qumsan, 86, was expelled from his village in 1948, when he was 12 years old. "Years after the occupation," he told me, "I went to visit my village. I did not find our homes. I found a forest."

The Palestinian Arab residents of Israel know through experience that forestation projects are used to cover the evidence of the ethnic cleansing of the local Palestinians. Regardless of any economic or environmental reasons for forestation in the Negev, therefore, the main purpose is to reinforce Israel's grip on the occupied land ahead of the potential expansion of the local Palestinian Arab population in the area.

Israel has been trying since 1948 to expel the local population from areas across occupied Palestine, especially the Negev. In some areas, they remove them by force or demolish their homes. The "unrecognised" village of Al Araqib, for example, has been demolished by the Israelis more than 150 times since 2011, and rebuilt by its residents on every occasion.

To persuade the Arabs to leave their villages — and give ethnic cleansing a glossy veneer — Israel has on several occasions proposed that they should move to urbanised areas with high rise blocks where they can enjoy public services. All such proposals have been rejected, because the local people know that they are a ruse to uproot them from their own land. This is contested by Israeli officials, of course.

"There's no expulsion," Alon Tal MK told the Times of Israel. "These are national lands; we have a right to protect them for all citizens, and one way to do that is by planting trees." He has overseen forestation at the JNF for more than a decade. "The Israel Land Authority wants to hold land, which is their job. Bedouins [Palestinians in the Negev] are squatters, and one way to make them stop doing that is by planting trees." The Knesset member's words expose the real intention behind the forestation plan of the Israeli government and the JNF.

The Palestinians in the Negev lived peacefully on their land for centuries before the Israeli occupation. Their presence alone signified ownership; they neither needed nor had (in most cases) documentation to prove this. The occupation state, however, demands to see such proof of ownership. It has imposed many oppressive laws intended to strip the Palestinians of their ownership rights, and knows full well that most in the Negev have no title deeds or similar documents.

Since the 1970s, dozens of Palestinian Arabs have gone to court in an effort to prove their ownership of their land. They have either lost their cases or the courts have delayed the process. In the meantime, the occupation authorities have been speeding up the theft of the land by destroying the unrecognised villages, making the living conditions even worse, blocking the building of new homes and carrying out forestation and urbanisation projects.

"Today, there are about 125,000 acres of contested land," explained Hanna Noach, who co-directs the left-wing Negev Coexistence Forum. "Bedouins are summoned to court and asked to prove their ownership, but other than oral tradition, they often have nothing to show."

The ideological aspect of this old-new land grab is obvious. Far-right extremist Itamar Ben Gvir is a parliamentarian and head of the Otzma Yehudit party, which is openly anti-Arab. Forestation is a tool for Israel's ethnic cleansing of Palestine, not an objective in itself.

"Today, the order of the hour is to reach the Negev and take part in the important mitzvah [commandment] of struggling for the Land of Israel," he was quoted as saying by the Jerusalem Post. He added that he has spoken with a religious-Zionist authority, Rabbi Dov Lior, the former chief rabbi of Hebron and Kiryat Arba, "Who ruled that it was permissible to plant trees for the struggle for the Land of Israel, and called on all Knesset members to come to the Negev to make the desert bloom."

According to Israeli Communications Minister Yoaz Hendel, writing on Facebook: "There are many areas in the country where, when you do not cultivate the land, you lose it... On the eve of Tu Bishvat [a Jewish holiday celebrated as an ecological awareness day], agriculture should be recognised and planting is the solution everywhere, and so it will be done this year as well."

Israel's intentions are very clear. It wants as much Palestinian land as possible, with as few Palestinians living on it as possible. That's what forestation is all about. Ecology and the environment have nothing to do with it. The Palestinians understand this; we all see it; but nobody does anything to stop it, leaving the local residents to face the Israeli occupation authorities on their own while the complicit international community sits and watches.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3beBzWidj5M

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Israeli General calls for a repeat of 1948 massacre against Palestinians in Negev
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20220118-israeli-general-calls-for-a-repeat-of-1948-massacre-against-palestinians-in-negev/

An Israeli General has urged for a repeat of the 1948 military massacre that resulted in Israel's occupation of the Naqab Desert, also known as the Negev, and the forceful expulsion of tens of thousands of Palestinian residents.

Major General Yom-Tov Samiah, who served as commander of the Southern Zone in the Israeli Army during the Second Intifada, wrote on Twitter: "Operation 'Yoav' will soon return to liberate the Negev. Luckily General Shaike Gavish, who led the operation at the time is alive. He will pass on some lessons."

Operation Yoav was one of the two large-scale operations launched by the army in October 1948, which opened a road to the Negev.

Nearly 120,000 Palestinians, including the elderly, women and children resided in the area; however, following Israel's massacre, only 30,000 Palestinians were left.

"If we continue at this rate of loss of control we will have to retake the Negev and Galilee. Civil war is on the doorstep," added Major General Yom-Tov Samiah.

Many Negev Bedouin, Arab residents who have Israeli citizenship, live in unrecognised townships scattered across the southern desert.

Hundreds of local Arabs demonstrated in the Negev in recent days in protest of the confiscation of their lands by the Jewish National Fund, an organisation that collects money from Jews around the world to seize Palestinian property.

The police used sound bombs, rubber bullets and tear gas to disperse people, causing several injuries, according to the statement.

Arab citizens in the Negev region are estimated at around 300,000, living on 5 per cent of their land, 95 per cent of which they say has been confiscated by Israel since 1948.


Israel is trying to steal more Palestinian land in the Negev – Cartoon [Sabaaneh/Middle East Monitor]




The battle for the Negev as part of the State of Israel
Encouraging veterans and young soldiers to settle in the Negev will greatly help the weak housing market, and at the same time will greatly strengthen the Negev - which can give a future to the young generation of the State of Israel

Roni Mizrahi, President of the Chamber of Contractors and the owners of the Mizrahi Group and his sons
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20220118-israeli-general-calls-for-a-repeat-of-1948-massacre-against-palestinians-in-negev/
https://www.israelhayom.co.il/business/real-estate/article/7135227

The idea of ​​giving every discharged soldier a dunam for construction in the Negev was often raised by me at conferences, articles and various articles, long before politicians raised him. This idea was born from the concept of the Jewish National Fund that was practiced during the British Mandate, as the mythological poem "Dunam here, dunam there, Regev after Regev ...".

This concept of the JNF has historically proven itself as "drawing the borders of the State of Israel", whether it was plantations and forests that "marked territory", or whether it was a real settlement, the one that created the borders of 1949 which included the entire Galilee and Negev. Although the United Nations Resolution of November 29, 1947 granted significant parts, both from the Galilee and the Negev, to the Palestinian state.

Today, the future borders of the State of Israel are being tested in a difficult way. Beyond the long-term decision on what the final borders in Judea and Samaria will look like, such that it will probably stand on its own two feet at one time or another, there is an equally serious problem, which is the fixation of the entire Negev as part of the long-term state of Israel.

It is no coincidence that David Ben-Gurion, the founding father of the State of Israel, saw the Negev as the "rock of the future" of the state. It is no coincidence that he and his wife Paula decided in 1953 to settle in Sde Boker, somewhere at the end of the world, and engage in, among other things, shearing sheep's hair. It is no coincidence that he said the immortal sentence: "If we do not conquer the desert, the desert will conquer us."

The Negev, for the record, from Kiryat Gat in the north to Eilat in the south, covers approximately 13 million dunams, approximately 60 percent of the State of Israel. About 600,000 Jews and about 300,000 Bedouin live in this huge area. I will emphasize, for the record, that the majority of the Bedouin are loyal Israeli citizens, and even some of them serve in the IDF, some in elite units.

But the problem hangs in the balance. What will happen in the long run to this vast strategic area, whose intrinsic value to the State of Israel is invaluable? Will most of it be left completely empty and used mainly for IDF and Air Force bases, and in contrast - for countless tents and illegal settlements of the Bedouin diaspora?

I believe the idea is good, true and even applicable. It is no secret that the vast majority of discharged soldiers lack any means of purchasing an apartment in the area of ​​demand in the center of the country, and in general. It is also no secret that the dream of every young family is to reach a "villa with a garden". And the misconception, in my opinion, as if it were a delusional idea and almost no discharged soldier would want to wander with his family somewhere in the desert, reminds me of those black-eyed people, back in the 1930s, who did not believe settlement in the Galilee, from Beit Alfa to Nahalal, from Hanita to Kfar Giladi. hold on. And she held and how. She created the country lines along the way, which was finally established in 1948.

I believe that this idea will take shape, will greatly help the weak housing market, and at the same time will greatly strengthen the Negev, both quantitatively and qualitatively. It will also bring a future to the younger generation of the State of Israel, including more jobs, more flourishing community life, more quality and healthy living in one of the finest ecological environments in the world, more desert tourism and most importantly - will leave the entire Negev an integral part of Israel.

To complete the idea, factories and businesses have to be given free plots in the Negev and the Galilee, and they will only pay for the development of the land! Factories and businesses will be established that will also receive a tax exemption for ten years, and so will there be jobs in the Negev and the Galilee for the new young settlers. Possible vision have we already said?