schools or clinics in most of the villages. This harms the rights of some 37,000 residents who live in the 30 unrecognized villages without any education or health service. It harms their right to equality and all because of obstacles in planning. The law as a discriminatory tool Israeli policy over the years has continually sought to obtain lands previously used by the Galilee and Negev Bedouin and to register them in the name of the state. Legal machinations have featured prominently in this exercise. Israeli governments have made use of the law as a tool for expropriation of lands, for the dispossession of the indigenous Bedouin population and the negation of their property rights, and for the judaization of these lands. The process goes as follows: the state first registers the lands and arranges their planning and zoning status, and then it transfers those lands to various organizations charged essentially with judaizing the area. All this is made possible through various land expropriation laws, such as the Absentee's Property Law (1950), Land Acquisition (Validation of Acts and Compensation) Law (1953), and Acquisition of Land in the Negev Law (1980). Infringement of the Right to Housing The direct result of the state's discriminatory planning policies is that it is impossible to receive legal building permits in any of the unrecognized villages. Without building permits or fair settlement alternatives, the Bedouin residents have no choice but to build illegally without permits. Thus, it is no wonder that the threat of house demolitions hang constantly over their heads, and in fact dozens of residents each year do lose their homes to demolition and are left without a roof over their heads. Israel's policy of house demolitions has become a common phenomenon in the Negev. Earlier this year, the Ministry of Interior, Israeli Land Authority and the police commander of the southern region aggressively decided to triple the number of houses that will be