The Mapam-sponsored kibbutz movement, Kibbutz Haartzi, will establish settlements in the Pithat Rafah area only after the rights of the Bedouins dislodged from that region are restored, Mapam secretary general Meir Talmi said today. Addressing the Mapam Secretariate, Talmi said the party continued to oppose the dispossession of Bedouin tribes from the region that the Israeli army declared a military security zone several years ago. The region forms a buffer between the Gaza Strip and northern Sinai.
Talmi said the Bedouins had suffered wrongs which have not been corrected and demanded that the government send a commission to the Rafah region to examine what he termed the “dislodgement of the Bedouins.” Only after the Bedouins’ rights are restored will Kibbutz Haartzi settle the area, he said. Talmi spoke in reply to the criticism from some Mapam circles of Kibbutz Haartzi’s announcement that it planned to establish settlements in the Rafah region.
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