[News] Palestine - Al-Araqib villagers protest 100th demolition of Bedouin village, demand freedom for Bilal Kayed

[Anti-Imperialist News]

http://samidoun.net/2016/07/al-araqib-villagers-protest-100th-demolition-of-bedouin-village-demand-freedom-for-bilal-kayed/ 



  Al-Araqib villagers protest 100th demolition of Bedouin village,
  demand freedom for Bilal Kayed

July 5, 2016

On 3 July, Palestinians of Al-Araqib village 
<https://electronicintifada.net/content/photos-israeli-bulldozers-raze-bedouin-community/13478> 
gathered in the Naqab desert to protest against the 100th demolition of 
their village by Israeli forces – and to stand in solidarity with 
Palestinian prisoner Bilal Kayed 
<http://samidoun.net/2016/07/bilal-kayed-transferred-to-ashkelon-i-did-not-go-on-hunger-strike-to-negotiate-but-for-freedom/>, 
on open hunger strike since 15 June against his administrative detention 
without charge or trial, imposed on him following the expiration of his 
14.5 year sentence in Israeli prisons on 13 June.

Al-Araqib is an “unrecognized” Palestinian Bedouin village 
<https://electronicintifada.net/content/how-israel-forces-bedouins-live-graveyard/13969> 
in the Naqab desert, whose lands were expropriated by the Zionist state 
under the “Land Appropriation Law of 1953,” and the villagers internally 
displaced. After years of struggle 
<http://www.adalah.org/en/content/view/7650> under military rule and 
following it, many of the people of Araqib returned to their lands in 
the 1990s to reestablish their life on the land 
<http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/07/israel-destroys-palestinian-village-100th-time-160703091747401.html>, 
and was home to about 300 residents when it was demolished for the first 
recent time in July 2010. Al-Araqib is one of dozens of so-called 
“unrecognized” Palestinian Bedouin villages, where the state refuses to 
connect the villages to the national water and electricity grid, provide 
health and educational services, or support any basic infrastructure, 
despite the residents’ status as Israeli citizens allegedly entitled to 
equal rights. Instead, the state attempts to push the Bedouin families 
to “planned cities” like Rahat, preventing them from accessing a 
traditional Bedouin lifestyle or their agricultural lands.

On 29 June 2016, the village was demolished for the 100th time 
<http://972mag.com/israel-demolishes-bedouin-village-al-araqib-for-100th-time/120287/>. 
Not only does the Israeli state attack and demolish Palestinian 
residences throughout Palestine, making clear the status of Palestinians 
who hold Israeli citizenship as an oppressed and excluded indigenous 
people alongside all other Palestinians (in the West Bank, Jerusalem and 
Gaza; in exile and diaspora as refugees) – it also attempts to bill them 
for the repeated demolitions, demanding hundreds of thousands of dollars 
from the villagers for “costs” for demolishing their homes.

Meanwhile, across the road from Al-Araqib, the Israeli state supports, 
irrigates, and funds the Jewish-only settlement of Givot Bar 
<https://electronicintifada.net/content/how-israel-forces-bedouins-live-graveyard/13969>, 
established ten years ago by the Or Movement, a Zionist settler movement 
that aims to “Judaize” the Naqab and the Galilee, in partnership with 
the Jewish National Fund. The villagers’ land is classified by the state 
as “recreational,” with a JNF-sponsored forest scheduled to be planted 
on their land – and 3,500 native citrus and olive trees uprooted and 
destroyed in order to make way for it.

On 3 July, villagers of Araqib, including the president of the Popular 
Committee to Defend Al-Araqib, Ahmad Khalil Abu Medeghem, gathered for 
their weekly protests asserting their right to defend their land and to 
stand in solidarity with Bilal Kayed.

Kayed, 35, has been on hunger strike since 15 June demanding his 
freedom; he was ordered to administrative detention without charge or 
trial upon the completion of his 14.5 year sentence in Israeli prisons 
on 13 June. He is joined by hundreds of fellow prisoners taking part in 
hunger strikes and other protests demanding his freedom; his case is 
seen as threatening a dangerous precedent of indefinite imprisonment of 
Palestinian prisoners upon the completion of their 
sentences.International protests in cities 
<http://samidoun.net/2016/07/8-15-july-call-to-action-to-free-bilal-kayed-and-commemorate-ghassan-kanafani/> 
around the world, as well as mass marches and protests throughout 
Palestine, have gathered in the past three weeks to demand Kayed’s 
immediate release.

-- 
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