Israel demolishes Bedouin village for 105th time

Israeli bulldozers raided and demolished the Palestinian Bedouin village of Al-Araqeeb in the Negev desert for the 105th time this morning.

Officers from Israeli police’s Yoav unit, the section created to implement demolitions of Bedouin homes in the Negev, were heavily deployed in the area.

Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld confirmed to Ma’an that police forces were deployed in the area to carry out demolitions on a “number of buildings” in accordance with a court order.

Israeli forces confiscated possessions include vehicles belonging to residents of Al-Araqeeb.

Israeli forces began targeting the village with demolitions in 2010, along with filing multiple lawsuits against the residents and imposing more than two million shekels ($527,920) worth of fines.

The first demolition of Al-Araqeeb took place more than six years ago on 27 June 2010.

Al-Araqeeb is one of 35 Bedouin villages considered “unrecognised” by the Israeli state. According to the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), more than half of the approximately 160,000 Negev Bedouins reside in unrecognised villages.

While Bedouins of the Negev are Israeli citizens, the villages unrecognised by the government have faced relentless efforts to expel them from their lands in order to make room for Jewish Israeli homes.

The classification of their villages as “unrecognised” prevents Bedouins from developing or expanding their communities, as their villages are considered illegal by Israeli authorities.

According to ACRI, entire Bedouin communities have been issued demolition orders in the past. As a result, most of Al-Araqeeb’s residents have left over the years to neighbouring towns.

Israeli authorities have also refused to connect unrecognised Bedouin villages to the national water and electricity grids, while excluding the communities from access to health and educational services, and basic infrastructure.

Rights groups have claimed that the demolition of Al-Araqeeb and other unrecognised Bedouin villages is a central Israeli policy aimed at removing the indigenous Palestinian population from the Negev and transferring them to government-zoned townships to make room for the expansion of Jewish Israeli communities.

Indigenous rights groups have also pointed out that the transfer of the Bedouins into densely populated townships also removes them from their traditional semi-nomadic lifestyles which is dependent on access to a wide range of grazing land for their animals.

The unrecognised Bedouin villages were established in the Negev soon after the 1948 Arab-Israeli war following the creation of the State of Israel. Now more than 60 years later, the villages have yet to be recognised by Israel and live under constant threats of demolition and forcible removal.