A group fighting for the legal rights of Arabs in Israel on Monday petitioned the High Court of Justice with a request to connect unrecognized Bedouin communities to the national water infrastructure.

The petition was submitted by the Adalah Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel after the Haifa District Court, presiding as a tribunal on water issues, backed a decision by the Water Commissioner to block the water supply from several hundred families living in unrecognized communities in the Negev.

The petition said that the commissioner's decision is based on irrelevant considerations that seek to promote a government policy intended to takeover the lands of the Bedouin population by forcing it to leave their homes.

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Attorney Adel Badir of Adalah wrote in the petition that by depriving the residents of their water supply, the state is compromising the basic human right to dignity and minimal living conditions of the residents, as well as their right to health, which should not be conditioned upon any government policy.

Badir argued in the petition that the government also discriminates against the Bedouin population in the Negev by allowing Jewish families to operate large ranches without obtaining the necessary permits.

These ranches, Badir says, are connected to modern infrastructures despite lacking the proper legal status, while the Bedouin communities are hoping to have local water distribution points by gaining access to the main pipelines in the area.