[News] Israel demolishes Palestinian Bedouin village for 116th time

[Anti-Imperialist News]

  Israel demolishes Palestinian Bedouin village for 116th time

Aug. 1, 2017 -http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=778472
BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) -- Israeli forces demolished the Bedouin village of 
al-Araqib in the Negev region of southern Israel for the 116th time 
since 2010 on Tuesday morning, and for the eighth time this year, 
according to Palestinian Authority (PA)-owned Wafa news agency.

Wafa quoted witnesses as saying that officials from the Israel Land 
Authority (ILA), accompanied by Israeli police and bulldozers, raided 
the village and demolished all the tin homes in the area, which were 
built by the village’s residents following the most recent demolition in 
early July>

An Israeli police spokesperson was not immediately available for comment.

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

Right groups say that the demolition of unrecognized Bedouin villages is 
a central Israeli policy aimed at removing the indigenous Palestinian 
population <http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=775038> from the 
Negev and transferring them to government-zoned townships to make room 
for the expansion of Jewish Israeli communities.

The classification of their villages as “unrecognized” prevents Bedouins 
from developing or expanding their communities, while Israeli 
authorities have also refused to connect unrecognized Bedouin villages 
to the national water and electricity grids, and have excluded the 
communities from access to health and educational services.

Moreover, al-Araqib residents have been ordered to pay more than two 
million shekels (approximately $541,000) for the cumulative cost of 
Israeli-enforced demolitions carried out against the village since 2010.

The unrecognized Bedouin villages were established in the Negev soon 
after the 1948 Arab-Israeli war following the creation of the state of 
Israel. Many of the Bedouins were forcibly transferred to the village 
sites during the 17-year period when Palestinians inside 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.

Now more than 60 years later, the villages have yet to be recognized by 
Israel and live under constant threats of demolition and forcible removal.

Meanwhile, Israeli Jewish communities in the Negev continuously expand, 
with five new Jewish housing plans approved last year. According to an 
investigation undertaken by Israeli rights groups ACRI and Bimkom, two 
of the approved communities are located in areas where unrecognized 
Bedouin villages already exist.
-- 
Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415 
863.9977 www.freedomarchives.org
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20170801/0236d386/attachment.htm>