[News] Israeli troops decimate Bedouin village in Negev, leaving 24 children homeless

[Anti-Imperialist News]

  Israeli troops decimate Bedouin village in Negev, leaving 24 children
  homeless

author Monday May 27, 2013 00:34author by Celine Hagbard - IMEMC News
http://www.imemc.org/article/65559

    The village of Atteer Um al-Hieran is considered an 'unrecognized'
    village by the Israeli government, and has experienced home
    demolitions in the past, in 2007. But this week, residents say, 600
    Israeli officers came and "destroyed everything".

The village is home to around fifty people, half of them children. All 
of the residents are now homeless, with no accommodation made by the 
Israeli authorities who destroyed their homes.

One 18-year old resident of the village, Nour Abu al-Qian, told reporter 
Jillian Kestler D'Amours, "This time, they destroyed everything." 
According to a report by Kestler D'Amour in 'The Electronic Intifada', 
Nour, who witnessed the demolition from beginning to end, said residents 
had no time to take their belongings out of their homes before the 
demolitions were carried out.

Kestler D'Amours continues, "Nour now sleeps in a makeshift tent with 
four of his siblings; inside the tent, thin mats and blankets were piled 
on cinderblocks, gathering dust as the wind swept through the village. 
'It's very difficult. But we will rebuild the houses. We will remain 
here,' he said."

The Israeli government, since its creation in 1948, has refused to 
recognize the Bedouin villages that have been in place in the Negev 
desert for hundreds of years. Instead, the government has forcibly 
transferred tens of thousands of indigenous Palestinian Bedouins into 
government-run townships that are rife with poverty and disease, and 
have few basic services. One of the most well-known of these townships 
was constructed by the Israeli government adjacent to the city dump of 
Jerusalem.

According to Kestler D'Amours, "Some 200,000 Palestinian Bedouin 
citizens of Israel live in the country's southern Naqab (Negev) desert 
region. Though they constitute approximately 30 percent of the area's 
total population, the Bedouin live on just five percent of the land. 
Many have legal claims to their lands pending before Israeli courts."

The Israeli government recently approved a plan to forcibly remove the 
remaining two dozen 'unrecognized villages' of Bedouins, along with a 
plan for housing developments, businesses and shopping centers in place 
of the villages.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated in January 2013, "The 
goal of this historic decision is to put an end to the spread of illegal 
building by Negev Bedouin and lead to the better integration of the 
Bedouin into Israeli society. This brave decision will facilitate the 
continued development and prosperity of the Negev, for the benefit of 
all its residents."

But the residents of the so-called 'unrecognized villages' disagree with 
the Prime Minister's plan for their future, and have pleaded on the 
Israeli government to allow them to remain in their homes. The plea has 
fallen on deaf ears, however, as the demolition of villages continues 
and Bedouin families like those living in Atir-Umm al-Hieran continue to 
be made homeless.

-- 
Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415 
863.9977 www.freedomarchives.org
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