"Powerless"
Bedouin Village
Still Seeking Health Care
By Am Johal
01 March, 2005
Countercurrents.org
Israel's
Negev desert is facing a public health crisis. After much public pressure,
in June 2004, the Ministry of Health revealed the findings of its epidemiological
study - there are 65% higher rates of cancer and mortality for those
living within a 20km radius of the Ramat Hovav Industrial Zone. Some
350,000 people live within this danger zone, including the residents
of Beer Sheva. The Bedouin village of Wadi el Na'am is located 500m
from Ramat Hovav - which encompasses 19 hazardous agro and petro-chemical
factories, and a toxic waste incinerator. The site has ironically won
state awards for environmental stewardship for four years in a row.
In all the paradoxes of Israel, this one defies expectations. A few
years ago, even the IDF vacated the Manos military camp, 2 km to the
north ofthe factories after soldiers became ill, and complained about
a fierce stench from the site.
In addition to the
Ramat Hovav industrial zone, the unrecognized Bedouin village of Wadi
el Na'am is surrounded by an IDF munitions factory and military fire
zone, the Efrat Oil Terminal - an oil-storage site, the Israel Electric
Company and Makorot - the national water carrier site. Although the
public amenities companies are located inside the village, the government
does not recognize this village, or the other 70,000 Bedouin living
in Unrecognized Villages in the Negev. These Israeli citizens live underneath
high voltage pylons, but have no electricity. The villagers live next
to the water carrier, but have no water in their homes.
Health problems
which are persistent in Wadi el Na'am include high rates of cancer,
asthma in children under 6, eye infections and miscarriages. Livestock
have also been killed off by infection. Wadi el Na'am in one of 38 Bedouin
villages which do not have access to medical care in their villages.
Lack of public transportation, socio-economic conditions and other forms
of state discrimination further marginalizes the Bedouin community.
The Bedouin villages also lack access roads, sewage, welfare, and educational
facilities, whereby further exacerbating health problems.
There are three
principal risk factors related to the nearby Ramat Hovav chemical site.
First, evaporation pools have been created to store toxic waste and
extend over an area of 3,250 acres. The local industrial council (an
independent municipality without any residents, which in essence gives
license to the polluters to monitor their own pollution levels) has
spent $10 million to construct a biological plant for treatment of waste
in 2000, but it has yet to become operational due to technological problems.
Secondly, the emission from the factories, particularly Bromine Compounds
Ltd. and Makhteshim Group emit hazardous and highly toxic chemicals
and carcinogens. Thirdly, two plants, Government Company for Environmental
Services and Akosol Ltd - store toxic waste on-site. All of this has
grave health implications for the two adjacent Bedouin villages of Wadi
Al-Nam which has 4,500 residents and and Wadi Almshash with 850 residents.
On the rolling plains
of the Negev desert, there are, modern incarnations of former Prime
Minister David Ben-Gurion's vision of "making the desert bloom"
- new Jewish settlements are being established under Prime Minister
Ariel Sharon's Negev Development Plan which will include the transfer
of 38 Bedouin villages despite the opposition of Arab and Jewish groups
into government planned townships.
These neighborhoods
replete with full infrastructure were all approved by the Knesset with
consent from the Bedouin Authority, a quasi-governing body falling under
the Israeli Land Administration. In other words, the Bedouin are being
displaced and pauperized, as the Negev is being cleared for expansion
by Jewish settlers from Gaza among other areas in the country. Millions
are being invested toward this unsustainable plan to develop the Negev.
In April of 2003,
Bustan L'Shalom, which means 'grove' in both Hebrew and Arabic, a grassroots
human rights and environmental sustainability organization and its Director
Devorah Brous, led the pioneering effort to build the Medwed Project,
the construction of a straw-bale, solar-powered medical clinic in Wadi
el Na'am. Without formal construction approval from the ILA, the Bedouin
Authority or from regional health authorities who had failed to act
in providing basic health care services - despite their High Court mandate
to do so, Bustan built a solid partnership with the villagers and proceeded
to build the clinic with the hope that health services could be provided
by an HMO or by volunteer health professionals. Since the village is
unrecognized, it was built without a permit and like all infrastructure
in these villages, it is subject todemolition at any time.
The medical clinic
was built over 6 days in a work camp with the aid of over 500 volunteers
who also took part in lectures about land rights, human rights, development,
and Bedouin culture. The clinic is stocked with solar panels donated
from 6 companies in the U.S. to help power the clinic - there is no
other option for electricity.
The Ministry of
Health, and the General Health Fund (the HMO with the most members from
the village) is "unwilling to expose their doctors to the health
hazards from the plant" among a host of other reasons does not
provide health services in the village. Others disagree with that assessment
and claim that the Authorities are using the denial of health and other
basic services to push the villagers to move to Townships like Segev
Shalom, the neighboring Planned Township. And so, the Medwed Medical
Clinic, hand-built by volunteers only last year, sits empty apart from
occasional community lectures about human rights and eco-building. It
remains a pariah among state authorities for its technically illegal
act of constructive dissent - the building of a medical clinic in the
face of a health and environmental catastrophe for an indigenous community
clearly facing state discrimination.
The problem of the
unrecognized villages has become increasingly aggravated since 1965
when the government approved the Planning and Construction Law as well
as an outline plan in which hundreds of Bedouin villages and localities
were deliberately ignored and considered not to exist. The lands were
classified as agricultural land, rendering all buildings erected as
illegal.
The government has
also passed the "Removal of Intruders Law" which effectively
streamlines the effort of state agencies to expel Bedouin from their
lands and accelerate the existing practise of home demolitions and land
confiscations in the Negev. In the view of many Bedouin leaders, the
government's own Bedouin Authority is a chief culprit in discriminatory
decision-making since its inception in 1987
Almost 38 % of the
governmental funds for the Arab Bedouin communities in the Negev will
be allocated to implement land confiscation policies of the government
especially in the unrecognized villages in 2004. Nearly 200 homes have
been demolished and 30,000 dunams of crops were sprayed and destroyed
in the Negev since 2002.
Orly Almy, the Project
Coordinator for Physicians for Human Rights, says that, "The state
has obligations under the International Covenant on Economic, Social
and Cultural Rights to implement the right to medical care as an essential
function of the right to health." Some 40% of the Bedouin population
does not have health insurance.
The Bedouin have
increasingly attempted to influence the Israeli government, the Bedouin
Authority and the legal system through a variety of methods. They have
also increasingly sought the aid of international authorities to help
recognize their unique status within Israel.
Legal proceedings
and government lobbying carried out on behalf of the Bedouin community
and the Regional Council of Unrecognized Villages through the use of
organizations like the Association of Civil Rights in Israel, the Mossawa
Center and Adalah have been minimally successful in gaining access to
health care and other services. Governmental institutions seem to be
very much in the process of carrying out the Negev Development Plan
at the direct expense of the Bedouin minority in the unrecognized villages.
The broader question
of how the Gaza withdrawal will effect the Bedouin settlements in the
Negev has yet to be fully examined.