On February 20, the Israeli Supreme Court dismissed an appeal by residents of the unrecognized Bedouin village of Umm El-Hiran in the Naqab (Negev), which holds 500 residents, demanding minimum access to drinking water. Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel filed the appeal on behalf of the village’s 500 residents.

The residents of the village Umm El-Hiran arrived in 1956 when they were forced to move there by an Israeli military commander. Today, fifty-eight years later, they get their drinking water from a water tank provided by the Israeli Water Authority. That Authority decided to locate the tank eight kilometers away from the village. Alternately, the residents can purchase drinking water from a private family that lives four kilometers away. Disputes between some villagers and that family make this latter option more complicated. More importantly, the family charges a higher price for water than the Water Authority.

Although the state is responsible for providing drinking water directly and equally to all its citizens, the village residents must get the water themselves at a lengthy distance or rely on the graces of a private family and pay more than all other citizens. Meanwhile, the nearby Jewish community of “Amos,” which consists of only one family, is connected to water infrastructure that reaches directly to their home with proper facilities. This is true for the other thirty or more individual Jewish settlements in the Naqab.

The Supreme Court’s decision in February ended an eight-year legal struggle in different Israeli courts. This situation did not come about as a result of lack of natural resources. It was born, rather, of an intentional governmental policy that kept the villagers of Umm El-Hiran, as well as another 90,000 other Bedouins living on their ancestral lands in thirty-four unrecognized villages, unconnected to water sources to this day. The policy is intended to pressure and coerce the Bedouin residents to leave their land by denying them services. The purpose of this evacuation policy is designed to enable the establishment of new Jewish towns on the same land, to create industrial zones under the jurisdiction of Jewish towns, and lastly for the purpose of forestation!

This court decision follows a previous Israeli Supreme Court ruling in June 2006, which dealt with the villagers’ demand to connect their houses to drinking water infrastructure. In a precedent ruling, the court held that access to water is part of the constitutional right to a minimum standard of living, anchored in the constitutional right to dignity. However, it ruled that citizens living in those unrecognized villages are not entitled to a direct connection to drinking water in their homes. The court basically accepted the state’s argument that these villages are not recognized by the state, and thus the villagers are trespassers. As such, they are not entitled to any of these services, no matter how basic and essential, including water, electricity, education and health, etc.

The state also declared in court that if it connects the unrecognized villages to water it will “encourage the continuing phenomenon of the unrecognized villages.” By denying permanent water sources it can create an “incentive for the Bedouins to move to villages established by the state itself.” This is further evidence that the state is using the water issue to pressure villagers to evacuate their land. The court confirmed that the purpose of this policy is adequate and reasonable.

However, the court added that the villagers are entitled to minimum access to water, as an essential resource, without defining “minimum access.” The only exception for which the court allowed direct water connection to the residents’ houses was for “special humanitarian considerations.” After reviewing the case of Umm El-Hiran, the court concluded it is not clear that the water tank eight kilometers away meets the criteria of “minimum access.” It ruled that their case should go back to the Water Authority for re-examination. Adalah appealed on behalf of the villagers to the Water Authority to reconsider providing “minimum access” to water closer to the village; the Authority dismissed the request. Adalah’s next appeal, to the Water Tribunal, was dismissed as well.

As a result, the case reached the Supreme Court again. This latest action resulted in the most recent court decision, which once again justified the government’s policy of “encouraging” the villagers to move from their lands while declaring again that the current circumstances sufficiently meet the “minimum access” to water criteria.

With this ruling, the court established that the rule of law does not apply to Bedouin citizens of Israel. In upholding the state’s argument that denying the water could pressure Bedouin citizens to move from their land and that the villagers are entitled to “minimum access” to water rather than “equal access” like other citizens, the Israeli court basically justified the refusal to connect citizens to drinking water as a tool for punishing all Bedouin who remain on their land. This ruling goes hand-in-hand with the fact that Israeli authorities intentionally resist recognizing Bedouin land ownership rights.

The resulting situation is intolerable for a country that claims to be a democracy, but it is tolerable for a country that defines itself only as a “Jewish state.” The court refused to acknowledge that this group of its citizens is entitled to “equal” access to water, sticking instead with “minimum access.” That places Bedouin citizens on a lower level than other Israeli citizens in terms of constitutional rights. 

Thus the justice system officially refrained from declaring them equal to other citizens. Finally, providing an exception for direct connection to drinking water based on “special humanitarian considerations” moves the discourse of Bedouin rights from a constitutional and human rights issue into the framework of humanitarian rights. Humanitarian legal frameworks are applied in situations of occupation, such as Israel’s occupation of the West Bank. In effect, Israel’s occupation mentality is being legally applied inside the Green Line, and places Bedouin citizens under the authority of an occupying power.

[This piece originally posted by +972 Magazine]