Israel demolished 697 buildings in the Negev in 2013

The Israeli Ministry of Public Security released a report revealing that in 2013 Israel demolished 697 buildings in the Negev, a desert and semi-desert region of southern Israel.

The report was released on Monday evening, and according to Israeli media it revealed “that Israel demolished 697 building in the Negev in 2013; 321 of them were demolished by the ministry and 376 buildings were demolished by their owners who feared the ministry’s threats of taking legal actions against them if they did not demolish their own homes.”

The report states that the number of demolitions almost doubled in 2013 in comparison with 2012, when only 369 buildings demolished, “174 of which were demolished by the ministry and 195 by their owners who had received judicial orders”.

The High Steering Committee of the Arabs of the Negev has accused the Israeli government of ethnically displacing the Arabs of the Negev by demolishing their homes and properties.

The Association for Civil Rights in Israel, the largest and oldest human rights organisation in the country, notes that the Israeli government considers more than half of the approximately 160,000 Negev Bedouin to be residing in “unrecognised villages”, based on the claim that they do not have any legal rights to the land.