Are Israel’s Ministry of Interior and the Population and Immigration Authority trying to deny citizenship to Bedouin residents of the Negev Desert? Both the ministry and the attorney general’s office claim that the problems are the result of registration errors, which are currently being fixed. Nevertheless, the number of complaints is still large. Bedouin who have lost their citizenship have appealed to the office of Knesset member Aida Touma-Suleiman of the Arab Joint List, asking her to investigate the situation. Meanwhile, Attorney Sawsan Zaher from the Adalah Legal Center appealed to Interior Minister Aryeh Deri and Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit, demanding that the policy be overturned. Her appeal claims that this has been happening since at least 2010.
According to Adalah, when Bedouin in the Negev go to the Interior Ministry to take care of their mundane affairs — a change of address, obtaining a birth certificate, registering a name, and so on — their status, and that of their parents and grandparents, is checked against the population registry, reaching as far back as the 1948 founding of the state. In certain cases, the ministry informs them right then and there that they received their citizenship by mistake, and then changes their status on the population registry from citizen to permanent resident.
