It is more than scandalous that no bus service connects the Negev’s ’second city’ with Beersheva and the rest of the country. Rahat –the only Bedouin city anywhere in Palestine, and the poorest city by socioeconomic indicators anywhere in Israel. A hands-on campaign should be organized by progressive Jews hand in hand with their Bedou brothers and sisters to publicize this and force the hand of the power brokers who control Eged and the Israeli public transport to serve this community.

Rahat deserves a college of its own and efforts should be made to demand a mikhlala, where courses will be taught in Arabic. Rahat could become a model for another kind of Israel if only people could organize to effect real change. Today the city is a monument in steel, concrete and mud to the apartheid that festers at the heart of Israeli society.

Jews should be encouraged to begin by their own initiative to move to Rahat to help build a community of togetherness, ta’ayush.

Assistance is needed for the Azial Youth Centre in Rahat described by Nick in his article “The Nowhere People” http://www.countercurrents.org/pa-pretzlik200504.htm Assistance is needed for the youth group One Step Foward. Nick writes of the Azial Centre created by Mohhamed Younis: “It has a computer room with fifteen terminals, a well-stocked children’s library and a demountable stage for theatricals and puppet shows. The centre provides opportunities for fun, learning and personal development – a beacon of light in a bleak environment; a beacon whose beam is about to be intensified. Mohammed has a dream and he intends to fulfil it.

The Bedouin in the Unrecognized Villages are unable to come to the Azial Centre, so the theatre will go to the villages. A van must be bought, a driver employed, glove puppets stitched and operators trained. It will take time and needs funding and – given the resources available – it will not be easy. But I have little doubt that Mohammed’s dream will be realized.”

The well-meaning people at http://www.dukium.org , some in their large villas and comfortable academic posts, should be doing more to help the so many kids and youth of Rahat, nearly two-thirds of the city’s population.

75% of the kids in Rahat finishing high school do not get the bagrut, the 12th grade certificate they need to go on to college or university. New schemes have to be invented to address that problem. As Dr. Awad Abu Freich of Shatil recently noted in regard to Rahat: “The number of pupils who passed was lower than in 2003, so what is the Ministry rejoicing about?
I think that after 58 years of independence, the State should be worried about the fact that more than 70 percent of Bedouin children do not matriculate. What program does the Education Ministry offer to bridge these gaps? And if it does offer something, apparently it’s not good. Because the fact is that nothing has changed for many long years.”
( http://www.nif.org/content.cfm?id=2647&currbody=3 )

These are the hard realities. The present system of apartheid needs disinventing. The answer in blowing in the Negev wind.