'Day of Rage' Marks Resistance to Israel's Expulsion Plan

November 5, 2020News

Thousands of people in Israel, the occupied territories and around the world took part in actions on Saturday to mark opposition to an Israeli plan that would expel up to 70,000 Palestinian Bedouins living in the Negev desert.

Dubbed a “Day of Rage,” the day’s protests were held against the proposed Prawer Plan, which would destroy roughly 35 “unrecognized” villages and enact new Israeli settlements.

If the plan gets its final approval, it “would be the largest confiscation of Palestinian-owned land since the 1950s,” writes Nadia Ben-Youssef of the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel.

According to a media release posted by the International Solidarity Movement,

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Dozens of noted British artists, musicians, actors and others added their voices to the opposition, writing a letter in which they urge the UK to protest the expulsion of the Bedouins.

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The letter, which is signed by musicians Peter Gabriel and Brian Eno, writer Jemima Khan, and historian Ilan Pappe, among others, states that the Prawer Plan “means forced displacement of Palestinians from their homes and land, and systematic discrimination and separation.”

“It is time for the UK government to make its relationship with Israel conditional on respect for human rights and international law and take concrete action to hold Israel to account,” they write.

Hugh Lanning, Chair of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, also one of the signatories, stated:

One site of protests was the Negev village of Houra, where clashes broke out between police and the roughly 1,000 protesters gathered, and 11 protesters were arrested.

“People who have no land do not exist. We have been living here since before the creation of the state of Israel (1948),” said 70-year-old demonstrator Maqbul Saraya.

“We have submitted a complaint to the court but we feel that democracy and justice in Israel do not apply to us,” he said.

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