BUSTAN Timeline—Some Highlights
1999: BUSTAN is founded by Devorah Brous. BUSTAN's first big project is a two day festival in the unrecognized village of Dreijatt, bringing together hundreds of Bedouin and Jewish Israelis and internationals, and included cultural exchange, mutual education on history and environmental issues, collecting signatures on a petition to recognize the village and lots of fun! Two months later, the village is recognized.
2000-2002: In the dark days of the intifada, BUSTAN worked with Bedouin communities on the edge of Jerusalem and with new Ethiopian and Russian immigrants. Through hard 
physical work and a publicity campaign, we got the nightmare conditions of the health clinic of the absorption center Givat HaMatos cleaned up and educated parents and their children (with clowns!) about potential health issues.
With a coalition of other organizations, including Rabbis for Human Rights, ICAHD, Physicians for Human Rights, Palestine Medical Relief Society, and Medical Relief Committees, BUSTAN helped open a school, refurnish and re-open a medical clinic, make solidarity visits and distribute supplies, and publicized the plight of the Jahalin Bedouin.
2003-2005: We organized five hundred Jewish and Bedouin volunteers to build an entirely sustainable medical clinic in the unrecognized village of Wadi el Na'am. Made of mud and straw bale and solar powered, volunteer medical personnel staffed the clinic until the Israeli government built a clinic in the village a year later. The clinic is included in the book “Design Like you Give a Damn" has been featured on Architecture for Humanity's homepage, and was nominated for the Aga Khan Award, one of the most prestigious architecture prizes in the world
2005-2007: Transforming the school dump in the unrecognized village of Abu Tlul into a water-conserving orchard, while simultaneously teaching children about local ecology and sustainability.
2007: Tel Sheva Traditional Herb Learning Site is developed in cooperation with Mariam Abu Rayek. The site, now independently run by Mariam, with lots of help and visits by BUSTAN volunteers and Negev Unplugged tours, is now a popular site to learn about Bedouin traditional agriculture and healthcare.
2007: BUSTAN moves to Beersheva! We open our Green Center, and are able to host long-term volunteers and delegations for the first time, as well as have a physical place to build our community. Also this year, BUSTAN becomes an officially registered amuta, or NGO, and Devorah Brous, our founder, passes the Directorship of the organization to Bedouin activist Ra'ed Al Mickawi. We are now fully integrated as a community-based organization.
2008: The second phase of our Children’s Power Project launches by providing solar powered electricity to four families with ill children in unrecognized villages, thus bringing attention to the lack of basic services in Bedouin villages. We are featured in the Global Peacemakers Catalogue, published in May, 2008, and won the national competition for Israel of the Energy Globe award, one of the world's most important sustainability prizes in May, 2008.
Your browser may not support display of this image.Our permaculture course, the first ever joint course for Bedouin and Jewish students, begins in April, and BUSTAN TV, our video documentation and editing course for women begins in June.
How We Work
BUSTAN is a Solution-Oriented Environmental Justice Organization. BUSTAN exposes key environmental justice struggles, and presses for government and corporate accountability by catalyzing strategic community action. BUSTAN facilitates innovative projects to build/plant community infrastructure. Our projects merge traditional knowledge with modern green technology, and are vital until systemic solutions are legitimated in the Israeli Courts and comprehensive decisions are fully-implemented on the ground. BUSTAN advances cost-effective, replicable models for a sustainable form of development that is culturally appropriate, for both Jewish and Bedouin populations.
BUSTAN views sustainability in both social and environmental terms. BUSTAN examines issues of environmental degradation and disappearance of the rural landscape as a by-product of the continued territorial war. We examine the social and environmental impact of development on the people and the land in the region. It involves placing the reciprocal questions of resource exploitation and resource allocation at the center, particularly in the area referred to as "The Last Frontier."
BUSTAN views sustainability in both political and environmental terms. Although environmental concerns are continually relegated to the bottom of the priority list in the face of the security issues of the State, BUSTAN sees them as vital and integral to the future of the state. We look at the implications of exploiting, over-developing, and over-settling this land. Until we can address the existing strain on resources with which Israel already contends, until we can conceive of radical new ways to accommodate the region's current inhabitants without further degrading and deteriorating the health of its people - we should not be considering yet more unsound development. Your browser may not support display of this image.
We challenge the forced displacement of rural culture. BUSTAN is fully aware of the cultural sensitivities around 'resuscitating traditional wisdom',and 'preserving indigenous knowledge'. Jews and Arabs can both teach and learn from the ways the original inhabitants of Israel/Palestine answered food, energy, shelter and water needs using the most readily accessible materials. There is a need to garner the best of traditional wisdom and merge them with the indisputable benefits of renewable technologies.
We work for common Jewish and Bedouin interests. We are interested in efforts which promote genuine convergence around Jewish and Arab interests. BUSTAN seeks to identify and work towards common goals around the necessity of equitably sharing land, water, and energy. Our work is intrinsically based on an acknowledgment of the inequities between the sides and acts as a vehicle for challenging the way public resources are shared and divided among us as inhabitants of the land. We see the question of resource allocation as the fundamental core issue upon which our future health as individuals and peoples rely. The peoples of this land are mutually dependent and thrive best in cooperation.
Bringing the Margins to the Core.. Greening, not Blackening, the Desert
Focusing on the most marginalized communities in the region, since 1999 BUSTAN's focus has been on the poorest communities in the largest yet most peripheral region of the country – the Negev/Naqab Desert. People residing in this triangle of land share some 2.5% of the Negev/Naqab with Israel's nuclear reactor, 22 agro and petro-chemical factories, an oil terminal, closed military zones, a munitions plant, an oil terminal, multiple quarries, a toxic waste incinerator, cell phone antennae, a power plant, several airports, a prison, and two rivers of open sewage. This as an area where the poorest communities suffer the highest infant mortality rates, the highest unemployment and school drop-out rates, living in the most peripheral region of the country.
We Work to Reduce the Isolation of the Negev. Our aim is to create a network of people through the Negev, the region, and the world whose eyes are steered to the Negev, and who can support the efforts of Jews and Arabs who live and work together in the desert.
A sustainable Negev is a place where traditional building and planting practices in a strongly self-determined desert culture are merged with modern green appropriate technologies in order to minimize the impacts of urbanization, overpopulation, and over-consumption. A sustainable Negev is a place where workers have access to safe workplaces in sync with environmental justice principles. A sustainable Negev is a place where the economic and health needs of residents are regarded as reciprocal. A sustainable Negev is a place where the ties of all peoples to this international heritage site are respected.
