Israel didn’t give permits to these Bedouin villages to build bomb shelters. So they built their own
Beersheba, Israel (AP) –
While the sirens wait to herald a missile in the Southern Israeli desert, Ahmed Abu Ganima’s family is mixed outside. Some dirt swallow steps are squeezed one by one, 10 feet (three meters) from the window of a minibus buried from the bottom.
Abu Ganima, a mechanic, was peeled for the pieces and took the casting bus from the employer. He buried it in his garden to create a temporary bomb shelter for his family. Abu Ganima is a part of the Bedouin community of 300,000 people, a nomadic tribe, which was previously scattered in the Kurak Negev desert of Israel.
Huda Abu Obaid, General Manager of the Gap forum together for the Bedouin issues in Southern Israel, has no access to shelters, two -thirds of the Bedouin. As the threat of missiles during the 12 -day war with Iran last month became even more terrible, many Bedouin families applied to build DIY shelters from existing materials: embedded steel containers, embedded trucks, redesigned construction debris.
“You can see that 55 -year -old Amira Abu Queider, a lawyer for Sharia, or 55 -year -old Amira Abu Queider, who is a system of Islamic Court, says,” You can see from Gaza, Iran or Yemen, “he says. “We are not guilty, but we are hurt.”
Communities lack public services
Al-Zarnug is not recognized by the Israeli government and does not receive services such as garbage collection, electricity or water. Almost all power comes from solar panels on the roofs and community cannot obtain construction permits. They often receive destruction orders to the inhabitants.
Approximately 90,000 Bedouin live in 35 villages in southern Israel. Even the Bedouin living in “recognized” areas by Israel has inadequate access to the shelter. Abu Obaid, the largest Bedouin city of Southern Israel, has eight public shelters for 79,000 residues, while there is a 150 public asyluming house for 41,000 inhabitants with a Jewish town.
Sometimes, more than 50 people try to jam to three square meters of a mobile bomb shelter or buried truck. Others became crowded to the cement culverts under the train tracks, hanging the storm flows and hanging the sheets to provide privacy. The shelters are so far away that sometimes families are forced to leave behind the elderly and people with mobility problems.
According to local leaders, 21 Bedouin were killed on October 7, 2023 and six were hostage. Seven Bedouins, including Abu Obaid and children, were killed by missiles during the Hamas Dam on the first day of the attack.
No Bedouin was killed or injured during a 12 -day war with Iran. Iran’s April 2024 attack on IsraelThe Bedouin daughter suffered a serious head trauma from the missile shrapnel, one of the only civil injuries.
More than 1,200 people died in Israel and 251 took hostage during the attack. In the subsequent war of Israel in Gaza, more than 57,000 Palestinians were killed according to the Gaza Ministry of Health, which did not distinguish between civilians and militants.
People want an escape plan
For bomb shelters and protected rooms, engineering standards are comprehensive and specific, the thickness of the walls and the shock wave that should be used reveal the types of -proof windows. Bedouins who make their own shelters know that they do not offer too much or any protection directly from a stroke, but many people say it feels good to go somewhere. In the minibus, Abu Ganeima says that the sound of the sirens is dead, which is relaxing for their children.
Najah Abo Smhan, a medical translator and a single mother of al-Zarnug, says, “Our bomb shelters are not safe,” he says. His 9 -year -old daughter was horrified, insisted that they ran to a neighbor, where they knew that it would not be enough to protect them from a big, cast -up truck scale from a direct stroke, as the roof of a excavated underground shelter. “We just pray a lot.”
Sirens began to warn the incoming missiles, the “scene full of fear and panic” appeared. “The children screamed and mothers were more afraid of their children. They were screaming, felt stomach pain, they were afraid and crying, ‘We will die, where will we go?’ ‘Says Abukweder, part of a large clan in the region.
Many of them, the feeling of not having anywhere to go and hide, almost as terrible as the missiles themselves.
Some shelters were donated but not enough
Immediately after the October 7 attack, Israeli security services placed approximately 300 mobile bomb shelters in Bedouin regions, Abu Obaid. Public service organizations also donated a handful of mobile shelters. However, these mobile bomb shelters have not been built to withstand Iran’s ballistic missiles and are very inadequate to meet the common need. Abu Obaid predicts that thousands of mobile shelters are needed in very far Bedouin communities.
The House Front Command, the Israeli military organ responsible for civil issues, says that bomb shelters are the responsibility of local authorities and property owners. There are no local authorities responsible for the Bedouin villages that are not recognized. The Home Front Command says that due to ongoing wars, local communities, including Bedouin, have helped with dozens of temporary bomb shelters in the coming months, but the communities have received destruction orders rather than shelters in recent weeks.
Israel’s Arabs – about 20% of the 10 million people of the country – citizens who have the right to vote, but often suffer from discrimination. Bedouin Israeli citizens and some serve in the army, but the poorest members of the country’s Arabic minority. Abu Obaid says more than 70% of them live below the poverty line.
Abu Obaid did not want the Bedouin residents to finance Israel from Israel; They only ask the state to give them construction permits, so they can build houses with sufficient shelters. Because of the lack of permission, many people face the risk of building an illegal way. However, very few are willing to build reinforced rooms or shelters due to high construction costs.
“People don’t even want to try, Ab says Abu Obaid. “Very expensive, and then two weeks later the state comes and says you have to destroy it.”
