100-year-old Bedouin woman homeless after Israel’s demolitions

Israeli forces demolished homes in two Bedouin villages in the Negev yesterday leaving a 100-year-old Arab woman homeless.

Israeli bulldozers, escorted by Israeli police, demolished the house of 100-year-old Ghaytha Zanoun and her 60-year-old daughter Hilala in the village of Wadi Al-Naam in the western part of the Negev in southern Israel.

Locals told Ma’an that the demolished house was owned by an elderly woman and her daughter. A member of the local committee, Yousif Ziyadin, said that an emergency session would be held to discuss the Israeli demolition.

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Their relative, Ahmad Zanoun said that both Ghaytha and Hilala were unable to walk, and noted that the family had renovated the home in accordance with their doctor’s suggestions.

The Wadi Al-Naam village was established in the 1950s soon after the 1948 Arab-Israeli war that established the State of Israel. Military officials forcibly transferred the Negev Bedouins to the site during the 17-year period when Palestinians in Israel were governed under Israeli military law, which ended shortly before Israel’s military takeover of Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, in 1967.