Jag har tidigare skrivit om hur Expressen anklagat Israel för “etnisk rensning” när man rev en by. HonestReporting har skrivit om andra påstådda fall av “etnisk rensning”.
It had all the elements that the foreign press in Israel could have hoped for – a mass eviction accompanied by the destruction of homes, a large Israeli police presence, the potential for confrontation and, even better, the fact that those being evicted belong to the Arab minority within Israel.
So it was that CNN, BBC, AFP and the LA Times saw fit to cover the demolition of an unauthorized Bedouin settlement in the Negev region. Indeed, irrespective of the rights or wrongs of the issue, such scenes are never pleasant and involve some level of human suffering. The foreign media, however, based on the quotes of non-governmental organizations, managed to portray a complex story in very black and white terms.
Writing in The Guardian’s Comment is Free, notorious anti-Zionist academic Neve Gordon, not even bothering to address the wider context of the demolition, even went as far as to state that he
suddenly understood how far the state is ready to go to accomplish its objective of Judaising the Negev region; what I witnessed was, after all, an act of ethnic cleansing.
HonestReporting citerar Jerusalem Post
In the statement, the ILA [Israel Lands Authority] said that residents first “invaded” the area in 1998, were soon evicted, and returned a year later.
The ILA said residents had been asked to rent the land for agricultural purposes for NIS 2 per dunam (0.1 hectare), but “they refused to pay and continued to infiltrate the land year after year.”
After an eviction notice was issued in 2003, the residents filed a petition that made its way to the High Court of Justice.
While the petition was being heard, the residents “continued to infiltrate and squat on state-owned land, and in fact expanded their infiltration through constructing illegal and unproved buildings, crudely trampling on the law,” the ILA said.
In 2007, the Beersheba Magistrates’s Court dismissed residents’ request for a delay in implementation of the eviction orders and ruled that residents were “infiltrators repeatedly seizing state land after being evicted.”
There are tens of thousands of illegal structures in Beduin communities in the country, and several thousand more are built each year; far more than the number the state manages to demolish. Many of these settlements lack basic services, with residents living “off the grid” and not paying municipal taxes.
Den beduinska byn är alltså illegal, de som bor där vägrar betala hyra och fortsätter bygga ut. När Israel river byggnaderna blir de anklagade för etnisk rensning av svensk liberal press.
Vidare om den etniska rensningen:
- Israel is currently building 13 new villages or towns for the Negev Bedouin.
- The government of Israel has allocated more than NIS1 billion for the benefit of this population.
- The State of Israel is offering far-reaching benefits to Bedouin who leave the dispersion and move into permanent villages.
Är detta samma ärende som Expressen tidigare skrev om?