Israeli Prime Minister's Office (PMO) this week approved a comprehensive plan to relocate some 30, 000 Israeli Bedouins living in officially unrecognized villages into three major population areas.

The green-lighting of the five-year "Prawer Plan," (named after the PMO policy planning chief, Ehud Prawer) include a 1.2-billion- shekel (323 million U.S. dollars) economic and social development package and is aimed at improving municipal infrastructure, social welfare, and boosting the economic standards for Bedouins, local daily Ha'aretz reported Wednesday.

The program, which involves no less than 16 government agencies and ministries, calls for concentrating the residents of some 45 officially unrecognized villages and shantytowns into three main population centers that are close to seven existing towns and major highways, officials said.

However, several Bedouin and human rights groups have sharply criticized the program, which they view as an attempt to rein in an ancient nomadic life, and parcel out lands for farming and grazing without consulting the residents first.

The officially unrecognized village of A-Sra is one example of what Bedouins view as decades of unfair and restrictive government policies.

During the period Israel's Arab citizens were under military administration (1948 to 1966), the state forced the resettlement of the traditionally nomadic tribes into two percent of the land.

Since few, if any, of the tribal and village elders can produce legal documentation of land ownership, the villages don't appear on any official maps, and do not receive basic municipal services, such as running water, sewage treatment, medical clinics or schools.

However, what dominate the daily concern of most Bedouins is the dearth of government-issued building permits and, as a result, many such villages have already been demolished.

"Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants to throw us from our lands, destroy our homes, put us all together in a tiny place, who the hell knows where -- how's that possible?" one village leader, Muhammed al-Amour Nassasrah, recently told Xinhua.

However, PMO Spokesman Mark Regev said that "the goal of the government's policy is to narrow unacceptable gaps in Israeli society, bring the Bedouins out of this current sub-standard position and integrate them into Israeli society in a more effective way."

He cites the fact that Israel is a small country with limited land resources, and simply cannot allow unrestricted growth.

"Ultimately, all modern countries have a challenge in dealing with Bedouin concepts of land ownership which are very broad. What we've done here is to meet the Bedouin half-way," according to Regev.

Fares Abu Abayed from the NGO "Bimkom" (Planners for planning rights) said that the plan "simply denies our rights and ignores us."

"'Take 50 percent of the land you live on,' is the government's motto -- 'if you can prove you own it,'" Fares noted derisively. " That's the catch! They've been moving us from place to place since Israel's establishment. How can we prove that the land is ours?"

"We don't have deeds because we've lived all our lives in the tribes. Tribes know the borders delineating their respective domain. Our word of honor is worth a thousand signatures," Fares said.

For Israeli ethnographer Clinton Bailey, "modernism and development is part of the problem" for the Bedouins.

"They settled where they wanted to. I can understand that the state has a problem with them. It's a small country and what you do with the land and the space has to be planned. They have to prepare housing, there have to prepare infrastructure for them. But in this case, they haven't done enough."

Meanwhile, the decision on the program came days ahead of Friday's "Land Day" annual protest by Israeli Arabs against government policy toward their sector.

The umbrella Arab Higher Monitoring Committee is set to hold a protest march near one of the wildcat villages in the Negev, due to be torn down and its residents moved elsewhere, according to Ha 'aretz.

"The plan will be carried out in full cooperation with the council and authority heads and planning agencies, and through the regional steering committee that will be convening within the next several months," according to Maj. Gen. (res.) Doron Almog, in charge of the relocation project.

"The plan for development and economic growth seeks to bring about a substantial improvement in quality of life ... of the Negev Bedouins," he told the newspaper.