The images are just the sort Israel’s enemies love to see splashed across the globe on satellite TV: Distraught, impoverished Arabs weep and wring their hands as massive Israeli bulldozers crush their rickety homes.
Ishmael Khaldi didn’t have to tune in to the 11 o’clock news to see that, however (and he grew up without electricity, let alone a TV). All San Francisco’s new deputy Israeli consul general had to do was look out the window of his childhood home in a remote Bedouin village.
So when he was informed that the New Israel Fund has sent a letter to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert describing the recent razing of 17 Bedouin homes in the unrecognized Negev village of Al-Twayil as “inhumane,” he didn’t engage in any verbal dances — he agreed.
“Especially now in the winter, it is inhumane,” the 35-year-old, who took office on the first of the month, said Monday, Dec. 11.
“The law is the law, but this does not help. In every modern country the laws have to be implemented. But sometimes they only create more frustration and a feeling against the authorities — not a feeling against the state, that is totally different.”
Khaldi, the first Bedouin to ever serve as an Israeli diplomat, said contentious home demolitions are the sorry result of many years of well-meaning but unworkable Israeli policy toward its Bedouin minority.
The sudden curtailment of a nomadic way of life, an impenetrable bureaucracy, property disputes hinging on lost or misplaced titles from the days of the Balfour Declaration, rampant poverty and a mindset that erecting a house is the same as “building a tent” are all factors in a difficult if not intractable situation.
“No one feels the pain like the people living in these homes. No one feels the anguish. Not the organizations trying to help them or me or you, sitting thousands of miles away,” he said.
“I believe, and I want to be even quite sure, that if they had done the right steps, they would have gotten permission [to build], but we have a leadership problem today, especially among Bedouin in the Negev. We say it takes two to tango — it is an unbeatable bureaucracy but, on the other side, there are [Bedouin villages] where everyone wants two homes or claims ownership of this land or that land. The two [sides] can never meet. There must be compromise.”
Khaldi sees a pressing need for aid and programming to deal with poverty and educational shortcomings, and “a clear blueprint” for villages — “a school here, a mosque here, like a kibbutz.”
In the meantime, however, while Israel is within its rights to demolish homes, it is a move that benefits no one. But Khaldi is quick to point out that this is far from just a Bedouin problem.
“This can happen in Tel Aviv, Kiyrat Atta, any Jewish town. Maybe there it won’t happen so quickly. These people have a strong knowledge of the law and can afford having a lawyer … Bedouins are shepherds who are not 100 percent familiar with the law. They have eight or nine kids on average and can’t afford a lawyer.”
He pointed to a “crisis of leadership” in the Bedouin community and argued the need for a “Bedouin lobby” in the Knesset.
“If we will establish a political lobby, like the cell phone companies have a lobby in the Knesset, then things will really look much different,” he said with a smile.
And while dozens of Israeli Bedouins are now forced to look for new homes, Khaldi is settling into his. He sums up his first two weeks in San Francisco by noting that “the weather is fine and the people are very calm.
“I am coming from a very, very small Bedouin village, so the difference is really huge. It could be traumatic but, step by step, I am learning mutual respect and acceptance and this is fine.”