Bedouin resist Israeli plan to build Jewish towns on ancestral lands

WADI SA'AWA, Palestine — There's no street sign on the dirt road leading to Hassan al Finesh's corrugated tin shack in Israel's rolling southern desert, only a large concrete block with a spray-painted warning: "Danger — Firing Area. Entrance Forbidden."

Finesh and his extended Bedouin family didn't intend to live in the middle of the Israeli military's training grounds. The Israeli government came along a few years ago and transformed the unauthorized Bedouin community into a military training site.

Last month, Israeli officials returned with a new warning for Finesh and the 200 other Bedouin residents: Move, or we'll demolish your homes.

"Where shall I go?" asked Finesh, a dejected, 67-year-old father of nine who walks unsteadily with a hand-carved wooden cane. "Do they want me to go to heaven?"

Israeli leaders have a $3.6 billion plan to transform the vast Negev desert into prospering Jewish communities. Finesh and 80,000 other Bedouin say the land is theirs, however.

As Israel presses ahead with the development, a Human Rights Watch report released Monday concludes that it's using "discriminatory, exclusionary and punitive" policies to push the aside the Bedouin, who are descendants of Arab tribes that once roamed the Negev. More