The Two-State Solution is an unknown destiny. But, what about Bedouins in E1 area?

    Throughout many years of the prolonged negotiation between both the Israeli and Palestinian sides over many issues to establish an internationally recognized Palestinian State which has proven fruitless. The equation that finally came out of this failure as the Israeli official attitude indicates that there is no security without settlement and no settlement without security in the depth of the Palestinian Territories.

Based on this approach as clarified in the map, the Israeli government shortly aftermath of the War of 1967 that led to annexing Jerusalem entirely by the Israeli forces, came up with the “Greater Jerusalem” venture to be its permanent capital. Accordingly, the surrounding areas located outside the city boundaries shall have acceded to its municipal jurisdiction. Many dimensions prompted Israelis to implement this plan, like a security need which is a strategy that implies a reality whose parameters came into being many years later specifically after the Oslo Peace Accords. It’s proven to be an expansive and comprehensive plan that aims at thwarting the dream of the Two-State Solution by dividing the Palestinian Territories –the area is supposed to be a Palestinian State- up into two parts that reflect the political dimension.

Tracing this issue back, we find out that Israelis have been incrementally carrying out this plan from different directions to create an Israeli urban continuity around Jerusalem by expanding the illegal settlements. From the east, the plan aims to link Maale Adumim Block with the Mount of Scopus which widely penetrates the 1967 borders leading out to the Dead Sea and the Jordanian border. To implement this phase, E1 area located within the geographic vicinity of this block along the Jerusalem-Jericho road causes discontinuity between the settlement and Jerusalem because of its non-Jewish inhabitants, so that it must be totally confiscated. Therefore, this plan shapes a clear landscape that the “Greater Jerusalem” venture tends to confiscate as many dunams as possible within the depth of the Palestinian Territories.  

In this regard, Nadav Shragai addressed, “Israeli avoidance of creating settlement continuity between the Jerusalem area and the Maale Adumim area will inevitably give rise to another competing Palestinian continuity running north.” This area constitutes a strategic depth to make a defensible stronghold to overcome potential futuristic threats against the Israeli borders or the security interests in general.

In this context, this project won’t be carried out on the ground without leaving humanitarian consequences as the residents of E1 will be wiped out of their residential land according to this colonial plan which claims that the existence of the non-Jewish residents will be a demographic threat to the safety of this project in the foreseeable future. Thus, they are deemed to be deported by applying different measures either forcefully evacuating them or narrowing the path of life-lines through practicing oppressive policies that crackdown on the human activities at the residential shacks.

Currently, there are about 40 Bedouin families reside this area whose lifestyle is based on nomadic activities. They were originally displaced from the Negev Desert in the 1950s to resettle in E1 to end up encountering the same destiny now. For instance,  the Bedouin community of Arab Al-Jahalin has been demolished many times where the residents are left homeless. The iron dwellings don’t guarantee a permanent residency since those residents living along the Israeli highway aren’t recognized as legal dwellers according to the Israeli law that considers them refugees who fled their homes in the Negev Desert. Consequently, the Israeli authorities claim that those residents don’t have documented land claims over the area where they live. Furthermore, they illegally expand their shacks without a prior request from the Israeli civil administration office which is the only authorized aspect to issue permits to reside those people in the adjacent area of Ma’ali Adumim Settlement.   

Since the beginning of 2017, many structures have been demolished, and in a verdict, the Israeli high court decided that those people’s presence is illegal and suggested that they must be relocated to another area. The first proposal is to resettle them in Al-Ezariya village, but, there are no sufficient places to assimilate them. Moreover, Bedouins have a special lifestyle based on nomadic practices where they could graze their cattle which makes it very difficult for them to integrate into urbanized residential areas.

It’s worth mentioning the area where they reside is very marginalized lacks many basic needs like education and medical care. They depend on herding and earning incomes from their livestock because the development process is strictly watched out by the Israeli forces to prevent it; however, only international humanitarian organizations provide them with aid, like the solar energy panels had been donated to them but recently were confiscated.    

A further consequence of this project, it’ll be the main hurdle that divides the West Bank up into two parts where the geographical continuity among the Palestinian urban areas will be completely faded away. As a result, the dream of the Two-State Solution won’t take place according to what’s agreed upon in the Oslo Accords of 1993 which puts Israel into the cycle of international condemnation.

Taking a look insightfully at the international law, we find out that there is an international denouncement against the Israeli practices in the E1 area, and it considers it as a stark violation of the international law especially the Geneva Convention that prohibits the occupier from displacing the occupied residents or seizing their properties.

The bottom line is, the Israeli practices in the E1 area and the annexation plan as a whole leave us with two probing questions, how will the Israeli government come up with a solution to put an end to an imminent humanitarian disaster as a result of deporting about 1000 individuals of Bedouin community there? How will it encounter the status quo when the annexation plan totally comes into play which will deny more than 2 million people in the Palestinian Territories the right of freedom of movement from the south to the north and vice versa?

We leave these questions that pointedly give a realistic interpretation about the human rights situation and the main reason of instability in the Palestinian Territories to the International Community that considers the Israeli measures illegal to decide on.


Nasser Al-Qadi