Subject: Re: Desertification of the Negev
From: amoss@shuldig.cs.huji.ac.il (Amos Shapira)

Center for Policy Research <cpr@igc.apc.org> writes:

Here you give positive, accurate "facts" about what happened to the beduins
and the land:

   After the creation of the State of Israel, 80 percent of the Negev
   Bedouin were expelled to the Sinai or to Southern Jordan. The
   10,000 who were allowed to remain were confined to a territory of
   40,000 hectares in a region were annual mean precipiation was 150
   mm - a quantity low enough to ensure a crop failure two years out
   of three. The rare water wells in the south and central Negev,
   spring of life in the desert, were cemented to prevent Bedouin
   shepherds from roaming.

   A few Bedouin shepherds were allowed to stay in the central Negev.
   But after 1982, when the Sinai was returned to Egypt, these
   Bedouin were also eliminated. At the same time, strong pressure
   was applied on the Bedouin to abandon cultivation of their fields
   in order that the land could be transferred to the army.

And now you say noone knows anything about what happened there:

   No reliable statistics exist concerning the amount of land held
   today by Negev Bedouin. It is a known fact that a large part of
   the 40,000 hectares they cultivated in the 1950s has been seized
   by the Israeli authorities. Indeed, most of the Bedouin are now
   confined to seven "development towns", or *sowetos*, established
   for them.

   (the rest of the article is available from Elias Davidsson, email:
   elias@ismennt.is)

So what you basically say is that "we know for sure that nothing good happens
there now,  we know for sure that the beduins prospered before the Jews arrived
and that they were driven away by the Jews,  noone on earth knows about
what the Jews did there."

Is that what you said?  Could you proove any of the nonsense you wrote?

BTW,  try asking beduins in Sinai how they mis the Israelis.  Not to mention
that there are enough valotaring beduins in the IDF to have at least one full
brigade of them.

--
--Amos Shapira (Jumper Extraordinaire) |  "It is true that power corrupts,
C.S. System Group, Hebrew University,  |   but absolute power is better!"
Jerusalem 91904, ISRAEL                |
amoss@cs.huji.ac.il                    |          -- the Demon to his son
