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I was in the tent camps in Beer Sheva and in Sahknin. Sahknin is my city. The difference
between BS and Sahknin is that in the tents in Beer Sheva we are placing more emphasis
on the unrecognized villages. Before I can talk about the cost of renting
a house, it’s more important for me to talk about recognition of these Bedouin villages.
You cannot talk about rent, because twenty percent, or even more, of the Negev are Arabs
who do not have anywhere to live. They don’t have villages, they don’t have
social services. Israel created 7 or 8 villages and told them you are going to live in these
villages and stay there and live there. What Israel’s agenda is, is to have more Bedouins
concentrated in less land. In Sahknin, it’s different. For example,
we are demanding to expand the jurisdiction in the Arab villages, as Falah mentioned before.
For example, my family had lands taken away from them, which were then tuned into a closed
military compound that I could look at but could never enter. It hurts a lot that there
were olive trees there that were uprooted, and it hurts because this is a personal story.
Why should I pay taxes when those taxes go to building in the settlements and to the
security budget? They invest in the security budget, which goes to the settlements and
the building of the ‘separation wall’. If all this money was invested in the country
– both Arab and Jewish communities – the whole situation would have been different.
There wouldn’t have been the “social revolution” that is happening now. But that’s the way
it is. What’s important to this government is to
give tax breaks to those who monopolize the wealth. You can see it. They don’t give
it the common worker, and even when they decided to reduce taxes, they did it just for the
very wealthy people, for the people who already have businesses, not for the common people.