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Israeli Tree Campaign "Judaizes" Expropriated Land
http://therealnews.com/jnf12202011Date Written: 2011-12-06 Publisher: Real News Network Year Published: 2011 Resource Type: Website Cx Number: CX24737 This article explores the role of the JNF (Jewish National Fund) in expropriating Palestinian land. Focusing on the Bedouin village of Al-Araqeeb, Lia Tarachansky interviews residents about their experiences. Abstract: Excerpt: LIA TARACHANSKY, TRNN: Al-Araqeeb is a Bedouin village in the Negev Desert in southern Israel. Since 2010 it’s been demolished more than 30 times, as the Jewish National Fund uprooted hundreds of the village’s trees and dozens of homes to begin planting its own forest. Aziz Sayah Alturi is the son of the sheikh of Al-Araqeeb. AZIZ SAYAH ALTURI, AL-ARAQEEB BEDOUIN VILLAGE (ENGLISH): This we make oils. This is our job. We had here 4,500 [incompr.] olive trees. It’s a good business. ALTURI (SUBTITLED TRANSL.): Everything you see here, this whole hill here, it was all trees. There was my house, here the house of Jum’a and others, beside him the house of Ismael, and the house of Sayah, and of Salim. If we were Jews, the government would have honored us for making the desert bloom. But we are Arabs. What can we do? TARACHANSKY: The Jewish National Fund, also known as the JNF, was founded in 1901 at the Fifth Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland. Its purpose was to purchase land for Jewish settlement and forest plantation in historic Palestine. However, by 1948, when the State of Israel was established, the JNF succeeded in purchasing only 6 percent of the land. Over the decades that followed, the territory under its control grew and its role evolved into actively expropriating land for exclusive Jewish use. Subject Headings |