ISRAEL – GAZA – IRAN From Iranian missiles to Hamas, Amina and the Bedouins hidden victims of the war

The seven-year-old girl was the only serious injury in the attack launched by Tehran against Israel. She is currently in intensive care. The house and town were not covered by the “Iron Dome” defense system. Silence on the fate of the Bedouin hostages in the Strip. Land disputes and risk of demolition and disappearance for Negev communities.

Jerusalem () – A deafening anger runs through the Bedouin community in Israel, the only one that, in the face of the silence and indifference of the government and the international community itself, is paying the highest price for the war in Gaza and the tensions between the Jewish State and the Islamic Republic. The chronicle of recent days – and of recent months – is proof of this: a girl in intensive care, the only serious injury in the Iranian attack on the night of April 13 to 14 with drones and missiles that, otherwise, It is a source of tension more due to future events than due to the damage caused; and again, “forgotten” victims of October 7, when international news focused on the dead and the Israeli and foreign hostages in the hands of Hamas, while the fate of the members of the minority group seems to interest few. Not to mention the attacks and expropriations over an unresolved land issue.

In these hours, Amina al-Hasoni, 7 years old, clings to life in the intensive care unit of the Soroka hospital in Beersheba. She is the only person to have suffered serious injuries from the hundreds of Iranian missiles and drones that were mostly intercepted by the Israeli defense system and its allies. Little Ella belongs to the Bedouin community descended from Arab Muslim shepherds who live in the Negev, in many cases deprived of the rights that correspond to other citizens. Among them, the right to shelter, as his father Mohamed, 49 years old and with 14 children, lamented when interviewed by AFP: “We have no shelter” in case of attack, which is why he accuses the Government of abandoning them under a rain of rockets, the Islamic Republic's response to the assault on the embassy in Damascus on April 1.

Before the creation of Israel in 1948, the Negev Desert was home to some 92,000 Bedouins, but only 11,000 remained within Israel's borders following the 1948 Arab-Israeli War; many live in unrecognized villages, lacking planning and basic services such as running water, sewage and electricity. Very few have access to air raid or rocket shelters, although they have long requested them. The Hasoni family lives in one such community, scattered on a hillside in the village of al-Fur'ah, not far from the Nevatim military base, a likely Tehran target. When the warning sirens began to sound on the night of April 13, the girl's family felt trapped and with nowhere to go to safety, an easy target – as happened later – for the missiles.

“The State does nothing for us,” adds another resident, who asks to remain anonymous. Even on the occasion of the Hamas attack on October 7, which triggered the war in Gaza, the community complained of a total “lack of protection”, as few spoke of the 21 victims caused by rockets launched from the Strip or from the Militia assault. At the doors of the Soroka hospital, where Amina is admitted, the president of the Bedouin Regional Council expressed collective anger: “We demand that our rights be respected,” said Jabbar Abu Caf. We want protection for our villages,” he added, and “act together with the government so that there are no more victims.” It is always the Bedouins who suffer,” he concluded, “whether the rockets come from the east or the west. We are the victims and nobody takes us into account.”

Another sensational, but largely anonymous, protest took place a few weeks ago outside the UN headquarters in New York: a Bedouin of Israeli origin harshly confronted the Palestinian ambassador to the UN, Riyad Mansour, over the fate of some members of his family in the hands of Hamas and about whom there is no news. Among them is a nephew of Ali Al-Ziyadna, who is sick with diabetes and needs medical attention. Addressing the Palestinian diplomat, Al-Ziyadana told him to speak to him “as a Muslim to a Muslim,” asking him why “Hamas has kidnapped my relatives? What crime have they committed? They have been in tunnels for months, for what? For what reasons?” ?They are Muslims like you and me. They gave back to the Thais. [en referencia al grupo de rehenes asiáticos liberados a finales de noviembre] without an agreement, but not to our children. “They left the Muslims starving in the tunnels, wounded and naked.”

Words that reveal the feeling of frustration and abandonment of the Bedouin community, which often has to fight to safeguard their lands, houses and villages, in the crosshairs of settlers and confiscations or expropriations by the State because they are considered illegal. . Since 2003, at least 11 communities have been retroactively recognized, but another 35 remain in limbo in the Negev area, according to the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (Acri). Like the village of Umm al-Hiran, initially included among those intended to be recognized but later canceled in 2004 by the Land Management Authority, which issued demolition orders for the houses there. Meanwhile, a new Jewish religious community, known as Dror, has been under construction on the outskirts of the town since 2016, threatening to accelerate the evacuation and demolition of Umm al-Hiran.

In times of war, one of the main problems affecting unrecognized Bedouin villages is that they are not covered by the Iron Dome system, which only intercepts rockets aimed at urban areas recorded on maps; does not activate when the launch is directed towards “open areas”. Furthermore, since the Hamas attack on October 7, most Bedouins have lost their jobs, as most worked on farms, in small factories in the area or as drivers, when many of the economic activities in the region are closed. frozen. Entire families have no source of income and most schools are closed, a factor that, in addition to schooling, leads to serious food problems. Before the war, more than 40,000 Bedouin children of low socioeconomic status had a hot meal in schools, the only one for many of them. The number of families in need has increased enormously and the general situation of the Bedouin community, one source concludes, “is getting worse.”

File photo: Flickr / Duoyen (a girl in the Bedouin village of Umm al-Hiran)