State Comptroller Matanyahu Englman slammed a wide number of government ministries and authorities in a report on Wednesday, saying they had failed to either help reduce poverty or to enforce the law regarding Bedouin in the Negev.
On the one hand, Englman said, “The Bedouin population[s] of the Negev are the poorest group in Israel and suffer from a lack of quality infrastructure and education.”
On the other hand, he said that there is too much lawlessness emanating from the Bedouin sector and that the national government and law enforcement must crack down hard on these issues.
More specifically, the report said that there is rampant tax evasion, polygamy, protection payments and attacks on both civilian and military infrastructure.
The report covers more than a dozen agencies involved in the issue, but some of the central ones include: The Authority for Development and Settlement of the Bedouin in the Negev (the Authority), the Ministry for the Development of the Periphery, the Negev and the Galilee, the Agriculture Ministry, the Education Ministry, the Finance Ministry, the IDF, the Interior Ministry and authorities in seven major Bedouin towns.
Regarding the Authority, the report said that by 2019 it had only prepared 758 residential areas for marketing to Bedouin out of more than 2,000 areas it was due to have prepared and marketed. This is only 38% of the goal the government had set for the authority.
As of January 2021, the Authority has marketed 1,050 specific residences to Bedouin.
The report noted that the Authority had also moved forward on preliminary statutory issues for 24,652 residential units which was 23% more than the target.
Englman criticized the government and specifically the Economy Ministry for failing to approve and release additional needed recent budget items for reducing poverty.
Further, the report said that budget allocations from prior years had failed to make any real dent in the broad poverty issue.
According to the report, nine Bedouin towns are rated the lowest on the poverty rating scale among the 255 authorities and areas nationwide.
Sewage for 70,000 residential units is not being cleared by modern means and is an environmental danger to the Bedouin residents, said the report.
In one instance, the report said that in a period of over several years, the state has failed to move a Bedouin school from an environmentally hazardous area to a new safe area where it has been allocated space.
Despite improvements in some areas of Home-Front defense for Bedouin from Gaza rocket attacks, the report said that warning systems for Bedouin areas are still negligible and put the sector into much greater danger relative to other areas of the country.
Next, the comptroller said that the state’s records regarding where Bedouin are actually residing are problematic and inaccurate.
For example, he wrote that of the 268,000 Bedouin in the Negev, there are 46,000 more Bedouin in the largest seven towns than the Authority has in its records.
REGARDING LAWLESSNESS, the comptroller recorded that it appears that NIS 21 million in water was stolen by Bedouin townspeople from water authorities in 2016. These numbers were arrived at by comparing the larger water consumption in these towns as compared to other Negev communities.
Likewise, in the electricity sector, Englman said there was extensive theft, with 13 incidents recorded from January 2018 to September 2019.
Since the number of recorded incidents is much smaller than the number of total incidents, the comptroller emphasized that NIS 41m. was stolen from electricity authorities by individuals in 2020 in order to provide a fuller picture.
Another NIS 400m. is said to have been lost to the state due to the “pirate gas stations” phenomenon, when gas is stolen from a licensed concern and resold illegally.
In the tax arena, Bedouin communities collected only NIS 25m. in taxes, making up only 0.2% of their municipal authorities’ budgets whereas non-Bedouin Negev communities collected NIS 1.12 billion, making up 14% of the budget.
Englman said that despite orders from both the national government and the High Court of Justice in 2012, many local authorities still are not even mailing tax collection requests to their populations.
Vandalism is also a huge issue with around 105 incidents per year in Bedouin areas. In monetary terms, the vandalism to infrastructure and other structures between 2008-2018 cost the state around NIS 1.5b.
From 2017-2020, army bases in the Negev suffered over 1,600 incidents of theft of equipment.
At the highly sensitive Nevatim base, there were 73 criminal incidents of rock throwing or infiltrating the base.
From 2015-2020, 87 indictments were filed for extortion and protection payment threats in the Negev with another 177 investigations closed, but with an implication that some might have been closed because of complex social circumstances and despite the law having been broken.
In addition, the report said that the phenomenon and volume of extortion and protection payments is likely much more common than even the combined statistics on cases opened and closed.
The report said that 244 out of the 399 minors underage for driving who were arrested for driving without a license in recent years were Bedouin. Moreover, the report also draws a connection between those driving without a license and the high percentage of deaths from road accidents in Bedouin areas of the Negev.
In the area of polygamy, in spite of a major push by Attorney-General Avichai Mandelblit and law enforcement to bring down rates, little progress has been made according to the report. It implies that due to complex social issues, only 5% of the 345 cases investigated have led to indictments and enforcement.
In the broader perspective, the report draws attention to the fact that the battle over whether Bedouin will be moved into set areas or be allowed to continue to live in spread out and uncharted evolving villages remains unresolved.
The previous government of Benjamin Netanyahu tried multiple tactics to address the issue but never succeeded. Some Jewish groups demanded more law enforcement and Bedouin groups demanded more funding and continued autonomy.
The current government has reached new compromises on these issues, but it is unknown when they will be implemented with the budget still in play until November 4.