MENA Environment

Radical History Review #115, “Water” Call for Proposals The Radical History Review seeks submissions for an issue on water.

We welcome works that examine the human impacts on individual bodies of water as well as works that address the interconnections between multiple water worlds. Possible submission may also include: • The impacts of oil and gas production on water systems • Fishing and aquaculture • History of waste and water • The regulation of transnational river systems • Spatial conceptions of water and water systems • Water as a global commodity • The science of water and water safety • The history of conflict over mineral resources in the oceans and seas Radical History Review publishes material in a wide variety of forms. The editors will consider scholarly research articles as well as photo essays, film and book review essays, interviews, brief interventions, essays on museum and other public history forums, “conversations” between scholars and/or activists, teaching notes and annotated course syllabi, and research notes.

The government is to consider a plan drafted in the Prime Minister's Office to relocate close to 30,000 Bedouin residents of unrecognized villages in the Negev to expanded areas of existing Negev Bedouin towns such as Rahat, Kseifa and Hura. The plan would involve transplanting about 40 percent of the 71,000 Bedouin residents in the unrecognized locales. The relocated Bedouin would receive both monetary compensation and alternate land. Unrecognized villages lack necessary infrastructure, as a result of which they suffer from severe environmental and other problems.

About 191,000 Bedouin currently live in the Negev, including about 120,000 in recognized communities, the largest of which is Rahat. Another 71,000 live in unrecognized locales. Data from the Prime Minister's Office shows that Bedouin claim ownership of 640,000 dunams of land. (A dunam is about a quarter acre ). Unrecognized Bedouin settlements constitute 2.7 percent of the area of the Negev.

Many Bedouin leaders, as well as the heads of Jewish localities in the region, are highly opposed to the plan and have threatened immediate legal action to stop if it is approved.

At the top of the list: "placing water at the forefront of the global political agenda." Others items included linking climate change research and water problems, creating a legal right to water, and raising the price of water to reflect its economic value. In areas where water is rationed, the priority should be for food crops and not bio-fuels, said the group