Israel approves five-year development plan for Bedouin villages
Not everyone in the Bedouin community approves of the five-year development plan recently adopted by the government, as it does not resolve the issue of unrecognized Bedouin villages.
After weeks of political arguments between right-wing parties in the coalition and the Muslim Ra’am party, the Israeli government passed March 14 the five-year plan for the social and economic development of the Bedouin community for 2022-2026 at the inclusive cost of 5.2 billion Israeli shekels ($1.61 billion) for the entire period. This is the budgetary portion of the Bedouin community in the five-year plan for the Arab sector, which continues the five-year-plan passed in 2017 that ended in 2021, for which the government had budgeted 3 billion shekels ($930 million) for the Bedouin community.
Instead of approving development budgets for the Bedouin community inside the framework of one plan for the whole Arab sector, the government opted for taking two separate decisions. The reason was the unique needs of the Bedouin community, because of the enormous gaps between it and the rest of the Arab community.
