Palestinians rally against Prawer Plan

Hundreds of supporters of the Islamic Movement in Israel have rallied in Jaffa in protest against the Prawer Plan. Palestinian members of the Israeli parliament Ibrahim Sarsour, Masud Ghanayim and Talab Abu Arar participated in the rally, as well as Sheikh Hammad Abu Daabis, the leader of the Islamic Movement in southern Israel. The rally marched from Ajami Mosque to the Gazan Park in Jaffa with the protestors waving flags of the Islamic movement as well as signs denouncing Prawer Plan, reported the Palestinian Maan news agency. Israeli police and special units deployed heavily in the area in response, but no clashes or detentions were reported. "The Arab population of Negev declares here from Jaffa that they will never abandon their land no matter what the toll is," Knesset member Ibrahim Sarsour said during the rally. We will not allow the Prawer Plan to pass" he added. Knesset member Masud Ghanayim said that the Plan shows that Israel is planning to "concentrate the largest number of Arab citizens in the smallest possible piece of land." Saturdays rally follows last week's Day of Rage, in which tens of thousands took to the streets in around 30 cities across Israel, the West Bank, Gaza, and around the world in protest against the plan, which if implemented will displace tens of thousands of Palestinian Bedouins. The Israeli government approved the Prawer-Begin plan in 2011, in what it says was an attempt to address the problem of unrecognized Bedouin villages in the Negev desert of southern Israel. The 2011 proposal was formulated without any consultation with the Bedouin community and rights groups slammed it as a major blow to Bedouin rights. According to the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, the plan will forcibly evict nearly 40,000 Bedouins and destroy their communal and social fabric, condemning them to a future of poverty and unemployment. Israel refuses to recognize 35 Bedouin villages in the Negev, which collectively house nearly 90,000 people. Source: QNA