Thread by @ShevGoldberg

THREAD:

[NOTE: This is *one piece* of context for what is happening in Israel-Palestine right now]

1/ Nadine Awad, a talented 16-year-old Palestinian citizen of Israel, was killed alongside her father by a Hamas rocket yesterday morning in the unrecognized village of Dahmash.

2/ This tragedy due in part to the fact that Dahmash has no infrastructure whatsoever, including shelters. I've written about why this is for @TheAtlantic here: theatlantic.com/international/…

3/ But a hard look at Dahmash can help us understand some of the anger and pain of Arab citizens in Israel today -- a kind of microcosm of their struggle for recognition, land and planning rights, and simple fairness.

4/ Dahmash sits 20 minutes southeast of Tel Aviv just between Lod and Ramle. But the town, for all official purposes, does not exist.

There are almost no municipal services: no garbage pickup, no streetlights, no proper sewage, no electrical hookup, and *no addresses*.

5/ Dahmash is not unique. Tens of thousands of Israel’s Arab citizens still live in unrecognized nowhere zones like Dahmash. They are part of a built-in discriminatory legal system that prevents Arab citizens from setting down roots.

6/ Arabs living in unrecognized villages have organized, forming democratically elected bodies like the Regional Council for the Unrecognized Arab Villages in the Negev and the nonpartisan National Committee of the Arab Local Authorities.

7/ NGOs like @ForumDuKium and the Center for Alternative Planning have long advocated for Arab planning rights. Their small victories have been hard-won: the stays of eviction, the handful of unrecognized villages now recognized, better budgets for Arab municipalities.

8/ But the legal regime of dispossession remains.


This is why cries of "Free Sheikh Jarrah" can be heard at protests across Israel.


Palestinian citizens rightly see the same mechanisms at work -- the laws, the foot-dragging in legal battles, the police demolishing homes.

The Absentee Property Law, for example, was part of what prevented the people of Dahmash from going home (to Qatra, now Kidron) after 1948.

Today, that *same law* is being used to evict families in Sheikh Jarrah. In 2021.

So much lies behind the last few days' violence and vandalism. This is just one piece of critical context.

My piece on Dahmash in @JewishCurrents here: jewishcurrents.org/road-to-nowher…

May we all have the courage to see things as they are in these painful times.