[News] Israeli forces demolish Palestinian Bedouin village for 119th time

[Anti-Imperialist News]

  Israeli forces demolish Palestinian Bedouin village for 119th time

Oct. 4, 2017 - http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=779262

BETHLEHEM (Ma'an) -- Israeli forces demolished the Palestinian Bedouin 
village of al-Araqib in the Naqab (Negev) region of southern Israel on 
Tuesday for the 119th time since 2010, Palestinian Authority-owned Wafa 
news agency reported.

Aziz al-Turi, a local activist, told Wafa that Israeli bulldozers 
accompanied by Israeli police forces raided the village and demolished 
its makeshift homes "without any consideration for their residents, and 
despite of the bad weather conditions," the report said.

“The (Israeli) police is always trying to provoke us … The demolitions 
will not frighten us and will not deter us from rebuilding our homes,” 
he was quoted as saying.

An Israeli courtruled 
<http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=778829>last month 
<http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=778829> thatsix residents of 
al-Araqib must pay 262,000 shekels (more than $72,000) for previous 
demolition costs, in addition to 100,000 shekels ($27,693) to cover the 
costs of the state’s lawyer. It wasonly the latest payment in which the 
village has had to compensate Israel for its routine demolitions in the 
village.
According to al-Araqib residents, before the latest court ruling, the 
village was 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.

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.

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.

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.
-- 
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