How unequal shelter access puts Israel’s Arab and Bedouin communities at greater risk

Israeli emergency services and security officers search for casualties in the rubble of a building hit by an Iranian missile in Beersheba in southern Israel on June 24, 2025. (AFP)
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Updated 14 July 2025
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How unequal shelter access puts Israel’s Arab and Bedouin communities at greater risk

  • Decades of infrastructure neglect have left Arab and Bedouin areas without basic protections enjoyed by Jewish communities
  • Residents are calling for equal emergency planning, arguing that safety during conflict should be a right, not a privilege

LONDON: As Iranian rockets shook East Jerusalem in mid-June, Rawan Shalaldeh sat in the dark while her seven-year-old son slept. She had put him to bed early and hid her phone to prevent the constant alerts from waking him, hoping sleep would shield her child from the terror above.

“The bombing was very intense; the house would shake,” Shalaldeh, an architect and urban planner with the Israeli human rights and planning organization Bimkom, told Arab News.

While residents in nearby Jewish districts rushed into reinforced shelters, Shalaldeh and her family in the Palestinian neighborhood of Jabal Al-Zaytoun had nowhere to go.




Israelis gather in a underground shelter in Tel Aviv on June 24, 2025, after sirens sounded in several areas across the country after missiles were fired from Iran. (AFP/File)

“East Jerusalem has only about 60 shelters, most of them inside schools,” she said. “They’re designed for students, not for neighborhood residents. They’re not available in every area, and they’re not enough for the population.”

Her home is a 15-minute walk from the nearest shelter. “By the time we’d get there, the bombing would already be over,” she said.

Instead, her family stayed inside, bracing for the next strike. “We could hear the sound but couldn’t tell if it was from the bombs or the interception systems,” she recalled. “We couldn’t sleep. It was terrifying. I fear it will happen again.”

That fear is compounded by infrastructure gaps that make East Jerusalem’s residents more vulnerable. “Old homes in East Jerusalem don’t have shelters at all,” she said. “New homes with shelters are rare because it’s extremely hard to get a building permit here.”




Arab and Bedouin communities were left without basic protections enjoyed bytheir Jewish neighbors. (AFP)

Israeli law requires new apartments to be built with protected rooms. However, homes built without permits are unlikely to follow the guidelines, leaving most without safe space.

The contrast with West Jerusalem is stark. “There’s a big difference between East and West Jerusalem,” Shalaldeh said. “In the west, there are many shelters, and things are much easier for them.”

Indeed, a June 17 report by Bimkom underscored these disparities. While West Jerusalem, home to a mostly Jewish population, has about 200 public shelters, East Jerusalem, which is home to nearly 400,000 Palestinians, has just one.

Even where shelters do exist they are often inaccessible. The municipality’s website fails to clearly mark their locations, and many residents are unaware they exist. Some shelters even remain locked during emergencies — especially at night.

The report concluded that the current infrastructure is grossly inadequate, leaving most East Jerusalem residents without access to basic protection during attacks.




Men inspect the destruction to a home in the northern Arab-Israeli city of Tamra, on June 24, 2025, days after after an Iranian ballistic missile slammed into the neighborhood. (AFP)

Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem hold temporary residency IDs that lack any listed nationality and must be renewed every five years. Unlike Arab citizens of Israel — often referred to as “48 Arabs” — or residents of southern Israel, they do not have Israeli citizenship.

For many Palestinian and Arab citizens of Israel, the 12-day Israel-Iran war in June laid bare a deeper inequity — one that extends beyond conflict and into the fabric of everyday life.

“I haven’t spoken with any of my friends in the north yet, but I saw videos on Instagram,” Shalaldeh said. “Arab families tried to enter shelters and were prevented — because they’re Arab.”

The war, she said, exposed an uncomfortable truth for many Arab citizens of Israel. “After the war, many realized they’re not treated like Israelis — even though they have citizenship, work in Israel and speak Hebrew.”




This picture shows Bedouin shelters at Khirbat Khlayel near al-Mughayyir village, north of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank on June 1, 2025. (AFP)

“There’s an Israeli policy that tries to blur their identity. But the war opened a lot of people’s eyes. It became clear they’re not equal, and the issue of shelters was shocking for many.”

One town where this inequity became alarmingly visible was Tira, a predominantly Arab community in central Israel with roughly 27,000 residents. Though well within the range of missile attacks, Tira lacks adequate public shelters.

“Most of the few shelters that exist are outdated, insufficient, or located far from residential areas,” Fakhri Masri, a political and social activist from Tira, told Arab News. “In emergencies, schools are often opened as temporary shelters, but they only serve nearby neighborhoods and can’t accommodate everyone.

“Many homes do not have protected rooms, and this leaves families, especially those with children or elderly members, extremely vulnerable.”




Israeli air defence systems are activated to intercept Iranian missiles over the Israeli city of Tel Aviv early on June 18, 2025. (AFP)

When sirens sounded during the attacks, panic set in. “It was the middle of the night,” Masri said. “Many of us had to wake our children, some still half asleep, and scramble for any kind of cover.

With official shelters scarce, families resorted to improvised solutions. “People ran into stairwells, lay on the ground away from windows, or tried to reach school shelters — if they were even open or nearby,” he said.

Others simply fled to their cars or huddled outdoors, hoping distance from buildings would offer some safety.

“It was chaotic, frightening, and it felt like we were left completely on our own,” Masri said. “The fear wasn’t just of rockets — it was also the fear of having no place to run to.”

Underlying this crisis, he argued, is a deeper pattern of state neglect. “Arab towns like Tira were never provided with proper infrastructure or emergency planning like Jewish towns often are,” he said. “That in itself feels like a form of discrimination.




Israeli police officers check the damage following a rocket attack from southern Lebanon that targeted the central Israeli-Arab city of Tira, on November 2, 2024. (AFP File)

“It makes you feel invisible — like our safety doesn’t matter. It’s a constant reminder that we’re not being protected equally under the same state policies.

“We are not asking for anything more than what every citizen deserves — equal rights, equal protection, and the right to live in safety and dignity. It is a basic human right to feel secure at our own home, to know that our children have somewhere safe to go during an emergency.”

Masri, who has long campaigned for equal emergency protections, called on the Israeli government to end discrimination in shelter planning.

“Treat Arab towns with the same seriousness and care as any other town,” he said. “We are people who want to live in peace. We want our children to grow up in a country where safety is not a privilege but a right — for everyone, Jewish and Arab alike.

“Until that happens, we will keep raising our voices and demanding fairness, because no one should be left behind.”

The picture is similar for the roughly 100,000 Bedouin who live across 35 unrecognized villages in the Negev and Galilee regions, often in makeshift homes that provide little protection. Many of these villages are near sensitive sites targeted by Iran.




A bedouin shepherd leads his flock atop his donkey in the hills near the city of Rahat in the north of Israel's Negev desert on August 28, 2024. (AFP)

One such village is Wadi Al-Na’am, the largest unrecognized village in Israel, home to about 15,000 Bedouin residents in the southern Negev desert.

“When we say unrecognized, it means we have nothing,” said Najib Abu Bnaeh, head of the village’s emergency team and a member of its local council. “No roads, no electricity, no running water — and certainly no shelters.

“During wars, people flee the villages. They hide in caves, under bridges — any place they can find.”

IN NUMBERS

250 Shelters built across Negev since Oct. 7, 2023 — half of them by the state.

60 School-based shelters in East Jerusalem, concentrated in select locations.

1 Public shelter in East Jerusalem.

200 Public shelters in West Jerusalem.

(Source: Bimkom)

After the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on southern Israel, the army began installing a small number of shelters in unrecognized villages. But Abu Bnaeh said that these efforts have fallen short.

“In our village, they built two structures,” he said. “But they have no ceilings, so they don’t protect from anything.”

He estimates that more than 45,000 protective buildings are needed across all unrecognized villages.




Cars destroyed in a rocket attack allegedly fired from the Gaza strip are seen through a damaged window of a house in the village of Arara in the Negev Desert, a place residents say is constantly hit by rockets, on October 14, 2023. (AFP)

As the head of Wadi Al-Na’am’s emergency response team, Abu Bnaeh leads a group of 20 volunteers. Together, they assist residents during missile alerts, evacuating families to shelters in nearby townships such as Segev Shalom and Rahat, and delivering food and medicine.

“We train people how to take cover and survive,” he said. “We also help train teams in other villages how to respond to injuries, missiles and emergencies.

“The best way to protect people is simple. Recognize the villages. Allow us to build shelters.”




This picture shows a view of the Bedouin community of al-Auja west of Jericho in the Israel-occupied West Bank on March 16, 2025, which was attacked the previous week by Israeli settlers who reportedly stole sheep. (AFP)

Even recognized villages face issues. In Um Bateen, officially recognized in 2004, basic infrastructure is still missing.

“Although our village is recognized, we still don’t have electricity,” Samera Abo Kaf, a resident of the 8,000-strong community, told Arab News.

“There are 48 Bedouin villages in northern Israel. And even those recognized look nothing like Jewish towns nearby.”

Building legally is nearly impossible. “The state refuses to recognize the land we’ve lived on for generations,” she said. “So, we build anyway — out of necessity. But that means living in fear; of winter collapsing our roofs, or bulldozers tearing our homes down.”




Bedouins from the Zanun family, which is part of the Azazme tribe, eat a holiday meal after slaughtering one of their sheep on the first day of the Eid al-Adha holiday in their village of Wadi Naam, currently unrecognized by Israeli authorities, near the southern city of Beersheba in the Israeli Negev desert. (AFP/File)

Abo Kaf said that the contrast is obvious during her commute. “I pass Beer Sheva and Omer — trees, paved roads, tall buildings. It’s painful. Just 15 minutes away, life is so different.

“And I come from a village that is, in many ways, better off than others,” she added.

With each new conflict, the fear returns. “Israel is a country with many enemies — it’s no secret,” Abo Kaf said. “Every few years, we go through another war. And we Bedouins have no shelters. None.




Bedouins protest against the Israeli government's demolition of houses in the area, in the southern town of Beersheba, on June 12, 2025. (AFP)

“So not only are our homes at risk of demolition, but we also live with the threat of rockets. It’s absurd. It’s infuriating. If something doesn’t change, there’s no future.”

Michal Braier, Bimkom’s head of research, said that no government body had responded to its report, though many civil society organizations have supported its findings based on specific cases.

“There are stark protection gaps between high- and low-income communities,” she told Arab News. “And most Arab and Palestinian communities rank low on socio-economic indicators.

“This is a very neo-liberal planning and development policy that, by definition, leaves the weak behind.”
 

 


Israel says intercepted missile fired from Yemen

Updated 3 sec ago
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Israel says intercepted missile fired from Yemen

A missile launched from Yemen was intercepted by the air force, said a military statement

JERUSALEM: The Israeli military said it intercepted on Friday a missile launched from Yemen toward its territory, after reporting that sirens sounded in several areas.

“Following the sirens that sounded a short while ago in several areas in Israel, a missile launched from Yemen was intercepted” by the air force, the military said in a statement.

Israel strike kills one in south Lebanon

Updated 8 min 38 sec ago
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Israel strike kills one in south Lebanon

  • Health ministry said an Israeli strike on a vehicle in Baraachit resulted in one dead
  • Israel’s military said it had “eliminated the personnel officer for Hezbollah’s Bint Jbeil sector“

BEIRUT: An Israeli strike on southern Lebanon on Friday killed one person, authorities said, with the Israeli military identifying the slain man as an official with militant group Hezbollah.

Israel has repeatedly struck Lebanon despite a November ceasefire that sought to end over a year of hostilities with Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah.

The Lebanese health ministry said Friday that “an Israeli strike on a vehicle in the village of Baraachit resulted in one dead.”

The Israeli military said it had “eliminated the personnel officer for Hezbollah’s Bint Jbeil sector,” near the Israeli border.

The man “was involved in efforts to rehabilitate the terrorist organization in the Bint Jbeil area of southern Lebanon and operated to recruit terrorists during the war,” a military statement said.

On Thursday, Israel said it had struck Hezbollah weapons depots and a rocket launcher, and “eliminated a Hezbollah terrorist” in Lebanon’s south.

Under the November truce, Hezbollah was to withdraw its fighters north of the Litani river, about 30 kilometers (20 miles) from the Israeli border, leaving Lebanon’s army and United Nations peacekeepers as the only armed parties in the region.

Israel was to withdraw its troops from Lebanon but has kept them in five areas it deems strategic.


Paramilitary attacks kill 30 in Sudan village

Updated 16 min 47 sec ago
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Paramilitary attacks kill 30 in Sudan village

  • The group added that the RSF also stormed major medical facilities in the city, expelling patients and using hospitals to treat wounded paramilitary fighters

PORT SUDAN: Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces killed at least 30 civilians in a two-day assault on a village in the country’s western region of Kordofan, a war monitor said Friday.
In recent months, as the war between the paramilitary troops and the regular army roared into its third year, Kordofan has emerged as a key battlefront, with the paramilitaries seeking to consolidate their control in the west after losing the capital Khartoum.
The Emergency Lawyers, a group that has documented atrocities throughout the war, said paramilitary fighters attacked the village of Brima Rasheed on Wednesday and Thursday, killing three civilians in the first raid and 27 others the following day.
It added in a statement that the dead included women and children.

FASTFACTS

• In recent months, as the war between the paramilitary troops and the regular army roared into its third year, Kordofan has emerged as a key battlefront.

• The Emergency Lawyers, a group that has documented atrocities throughout the war, said paramilitary fighters attacked the village of Brima Rasheed on Wednesday and Thursday.

The Emergency Lawyers said the paramilitary troops’ “indiscriminate killing” of civilians constituted “a serious violation” of international law.
Casualty figures are nearly impossible to independently verify, with most health facilities shut down and large swaths of Sudan inaccessible to journalists.
The monitor said sporadic clashes were also reported between paramilitary fighters and armed civilians in Brima Rasheed village, near the RSF-held city of En Nahud in West Kordofan state — a key transit point once used by the army to send reinforcements further west.
The Emergency Lawyers said that in recent days violence has spread across En Nahud, with reports of dozens of civilians killed and residential areas attacked.
The group added that the RSF also stormed major medical facilities in the city, expelling patients and using hospitals to treat wounded paramilitary fighters.
Those who resisted were beaten or detained, the Emergency Lawyers said.
Meanwhile, the UN said Friday that more than 1.3 million people who fled the fighting in Sudan have headed home, pleading for greater international aid to help returnees rebuild shattered lives.
Over a million internally displaced people have returned to their homes in recent months, UN agencies said.
A further 320,000 refugees have crossed back into Sudan this year, mainly from neighboring Egypt and South Sudan.
While fighting has subsided in the “pockets of relative safety” to where people are beginning to return, the situation remains highly precarious, the UN said.
In a joint statement, the UN’s IOM migration agency, UNHCR refugee agency and UNDP development agency called for an urgent increase in financial support to fund the recovery as people begin to return.
It said humanitarian operations were “massively underfunded.”
Sudan has 10 million IDPs, including 7.7 million forced from their homes by the current conflict, they said.
Over 4 million have sought refuge in neighboring countries.
Sudan is “the largest humanitarian catastrophe facing our world and also the least remembered,” the IOM’s regional director Othman Belbeisi, speaking from Port Sudan, told a media briefing in Geneva.
He said most of the returns (71 percent) had been to Al-Jazira state, while 8 percent had been to Khartoum.
Other returnees were mostly heading for Sennar state. Both Al-Jazira and Sennar are located southeast of Khartoum.
With the army controlling Sudan’s center, north and east, and the RSF holding nearly all of the western Darfur region, Kordofan in the south has become the main battleground of the war in recent weeks.
“We expect 2.1 million to return to Khartoum by the end of this year but this will depend on many factors, especially the security situation and the ability to restore services in a timely manner,” Belbeisi said.
He said the “vicious, horrifying civil war continues to take lives with impunity,” imploring the warring factions to put down their guns.
“The war has unleashed hell for millions and millions of ordinary people,” he said.
“Sudan is a living nightmare. The violence needs to stop.”

 

 


Aid groups sue Belgium to do more to stop Israel’s war in Gaza

Updated 23 min 21 sec ago
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Aid groups sue Belgium to do more to stop Israel’s war in Gaza

  • Humanitarian organizations warn of starving children as European powers discuss the crisis

BRUSSELS: Two Belgian aid groups launched a court case on Friday seeking to pressure the country to do more to help stop Israel’s war in Gaza, as the EU struggles to take action.

Belgium has been one of the most outspoken of the EU’s 27 countries in seeking to call out Israel over its devastating military operation in Gaza.
The EU’s top diplomat floated a raft of options after Israel was found to have breached a cooperation agreement with the EU on human rights grounds.
But the bloc’s member states are deeply divided over their approach to the conflict.

FASTFACTS

• The two organizations behind the court case are pushing for Belgium to try to unilaterally halt the EU’s cooperation deal with Israel.

• They are also demanding other steps, including the closure of the country’s airspace for any flights taking military equipment to Tel Aviv.

The two organizations behind the court case — the Belgian-Palestinian Association and National Coordination for Peace and Democracy — are pushing for Belgium to try to unilaterally halt the EU’s cooperation deal with Israel.
They are also demanding other steps, including the closure of the country’s airspace for any flights taking military equipment to Israel.
“Unless there is a sudden change, the European Union will not be able to suspend the association agreement with Israel,” Vincent Letellier, a lawyer representing the NGOs said — alluding to the bloc’s divisions.
“Countries must now be put under pressure by their voters and by the courts.”
A preliminary hearing in the case was held before a judge in Brussels on Friday and full proceedings were scheduled for Sept. 15.
International criticism of Israel is growing over the plight of the more than 2 million Palestinians in Gaza, where more than 100 aid and rights groups have warned that “mass starvation” is spreading.
Aid groups warned of surging numbers of malnourished children in the enclave as a trio of European powers held an “emergency call” Friday.
Doctors Without Borders said that a quarter of the young children and pregnant or breastfeeding mothers it had screened at its clinics last week were malnourished, a day after the UN said one in five children in Gaza City were suffering from malnutrition.
More than 100 aid and human rights groups warned this week that “mass starvation” was spreading in Gaza.
Israel has rejected accusations it is responsible for the deepening crisis, which the World Health Organization has called “man-made.”
Israel placed the Gaza Strip under an aid blockade in March, which it only partially eased two months later.

 


Syria, US and France agree to engage in efforts to support Syria's transition

Updated 39 min 4 sec ago
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Syria, US and France agree to engage in efforts to support Syria's transition

  • In joint statement, Syrian, US and French officials said they held “a very frank and productive meeting at a critical moment for Syria”

PARIS: Syria’s foreign minister held frank and productive talks with the United States and France at which they said on Friday they underlined the importance of ensuring the success of Syria’s political transition, unity and territorial integrity.

Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad Al-Shibani, French Foreign Minister Jean Noel Barrot and US Special Envoy for Syria Thomas Barrack met in Paris, days after a ceasefire halted bloodshed in Syria’s southern province of Sweida.

Hundreds of people were reported killed in the clashes between Druze fighters, Sunni Bedouin tribes and government forces, and Israel carried out airstrikes to prevent what it said was mass killing of Druze.

In a joint statement, the Syrian, US and French officials said they had held “a very frank and productive meeting at a critical moment for Syria.”

Underlining the importance of engaging quickly to ensure the success Syria’s political transition following the fall of President Bashar Assad, they said they had agreed on the need to ensure Syria’s neighbors do not pose a threat and that Syria does not pose a threat to its neighbors.

They also agreed to support efforts to hold those responsible for violence accountable, the statement said.

Last week’s clashes underlined the challenges interim President Ahmed Al-Sharaa faces in stabilising Syria and maintaining centralized rule, despite warming ties with the US and his administration’s evolving security contacts with Israel.