Bedouin Palestinian families, along with Israeli human rights groups, have urged the country’s Supreme Court to halt the construction of “dangerous” phosphate mine in the Naqab (Negev) desert.
Legal rights center Adalah, a number of Bedouin residents, the Regional Council of Unrecognized Villages of Negev, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, Bimkom – Planners for Planning Rights, and Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, jointly filed the petition against the project.
What will 2019 bring to the Negev Bedouin
A new rail line will force 1,400-Bedouin to move
A new phosphate mine will force at least 10,000 Bedouin to move
Israeli IMI is relocating a testing facility to the Negev will force 1,200 Bedouin to move pic.twitter.com/kz1LifoMcR
— A'ishah?? (@Aishaah____) January 31, 2019
According to Adalah, the Sde Barir phosphate mine project “was approved on the basis of an environmental impact assessment survey that ignored the existence of the area’s 15,000 Bedouin residents, including those who live in Al-Fura’a.”
Adalah stated:
“Construction of the mine will result in the immediate evacuation of thousands of Bedouin residents – citizens of Israel – and the exposure of thousands more to serious health hazards.”
>10,000 Bedouins in Israel's Negev living on land slated to become a phosphate mine will likely be forced to relocate https://t.co/ciw0aJldB7
— Doug Main (@Douglas_Main) February 22, 2018
The context for the mine project is a number of plans being pursued by Israeli authorities “to forcibly transfer 36,000 Arab Bedouin citizens” in order to “expand military training areas and implement what it called ‘economic development’ projects”.
A hearing on the petition will be held at the Supreme Court tomorrow.
(MEMO, PC, Social Media)
