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Using the Bedouin to Attack Israel

(Commentary) Jonathan S. Tobin - An Israeli government plan seeks to help the Bedouin, the poorest segment of the country's population, who have lived as nomads for generations. A government commission has called for relocating some 30,000 of them just 3-5 km. down the road from their current place of residence to new towns where they can receive government services that are impossible to deliver to people roaming the countryside or living in small, scattered shantytowns. The notion that the Bedouin are having their land stolen or being turned into homeless refugees is bunk. To assert that all of the desert must be considered an open range across which the Bedouin must be allowed to roam without taking into consideration the rights or the needs of other Israeli citizens or the wellbeing of the Bedouin themselves is a position rooted neither in law nor good public policy. Israel's critics are using the Bedouin as yet another club with which to beat Israel.
2013-12-04 00:00:00
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