From The Irish Times this morning.
Now what was the question again!!!
Jim Carroll

BEDOUIN PEOPLE ISRAEL WANTS TO RELOCATE TO FORMER DUMP

As Palestinians prepare to seek UN statehood recognition, Israeli settlers have petitioned for the demolition of a school serving the children of 20 families
WE SET out from Jerusalem on Route One, Israel's fine new West Bank highway, turn off on to the narrow shoulder, plunge down a steep ravine along a slithery, sandy track, duck under a tunnel and climb to the hilltop where 20 Jahaleen Bedouin families have settled. To the right is the school that proudly proclaims itself a "primary mixed school" where 70 boys and girls study through sixth form.
During break, boys in blue T-shirts and jeans wrestle and rush about while girls in grey and white smocks, their hair neatly plaited, stroll round in threes and fours sharing packets of crisps.
The school consists of five one-storey buildings constructed by the men of the community using old tyres and plastered with mud. Here and there they left indented patches where tyre treads are exposed. The sixth and final form holds classes in a shed.
The UN Relief and Works Agency (Unrwa), which looks after Palestinian refugees, paid salaries to the men who worked 24 hours a day for a month to build the school with the help of Italian volunteers, nuns from Bethany, Rabbis for Human Rights, Israel's Peace Now movement and the Israeli Committee against Home Demolitions.
The school walls are thick, which means the rooms are cool in summer and warm in winter. A small generator stands idle near the latrine building: the Bedouin do not have $30 a month to run the motor.
On the other side of the fence marking the boundary of the school yard and just outside the window of the first-form classroom, the Israelis have placed vents for gas emitted by sewage piped to Route One from Kafr Adumim, the expanding Israeli settlement and outposts looming on the crests of hills rising high above Khan al-Ahmar. Israeli settlers have filed a petition for the school to be demolished.
The Jahaleen stopped sending smaller children to schools in Jericho because five of them were killed on the road while waiting for a bus. In any ease, families can no longer afford fares.
After the new school was built in 2010, Israel cancelled work permits for the menfolk who had menial jobs in the settlements, depriving them of their main source of income. Only the shepherd has work these days.
Unemployment is 99.99 per cent. Jahaleen men, women and children are slender and of medium height, and are totally dependent on Unrwa for sustenance. Some children have been stunted by malnutrition.
The tidy, elegant school buildings contrast starkly with the shelters where 160 members of the community live. These are ramshackle dwellings constructed on wooden frames, with walls of press board and cloth, and roofed with plastic in summer and metal sheets in winter. Israel has issued demolition orders for eight shelters, several livestock pens, and the makeshift mosque - built without permits which Israel does not grant.
The community lives in a tight enclave, bordered by the highway and the wadi below where the community's remaining 140 goats and sheep water.
Spokesman Abu Khamis, an accountant who was employed as a bulldozer driver, invites us to his diwan. Slipping off our shoes, we sit on mattresses in the shade of a mulberry tree. Kafr Adumim with its settler houses gleaming white under red tile roofs sits on the horizon. A cool breeze stirs the leaves of the the mulberry, its twin and a pomegranate, heavy with ripening fruit.
As sweet tea is served, Abu Khamis says, "We get water legally from Israel's Makarot company. Ten families have a supply, 10 do not."
Asked about power, he quips, "Is there something called electricity? We use the generator when we have a feast, wedding or funeral... Settlers come any time, day or night. Drive around, walk into the school and our houses. They sing or throw pebbles at our homes, waking us. The children scream and cry. Many wet their beds."
He shrugged when asked if the Palestinian leadership's bid for UN membership and recognition of statehood in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza could improve conditions.
"The sulta [the Palestinian Authority] and the Israelis co-operate against us."
The Jahaleen of Khan al-Ahmar are just one of 20 Bedouin communities, totalling 2,300 people, whom the Israelis intend to relocate to Jerusalem's vast rubbish dump at Bethany, the home of Lazarus raised by Jesus from the dead.
On the way back to the holy city, we pause at the dump where bulldozers have already buried the rubbish and levelled the site, which still reeks of toxic fumes.
To the east is the massive Israeli settlement of Maale Adumim, to the west Jerusalem, both forbidden to the Jahaleen. The move will destroy their way of life, force them to sell their livestock and compel traditional tribal antagonists to live together.