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<div class="ViewDetails_Title"><b><big><big>Israel police destroy
Bedouin agricultural crops in Negev</big></big></b></div>
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Published today (updated) 03/03/2015 16:06<br>
<b><small><small><small><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.maannews.com/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=759710">http://www.maannews.com/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=759710</a></small></small></small></b><br>
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BEERSHEBA (Ma'an) -- Israeli police on Tuesday destroyed thousands
of acres of wheat, barley and other cereal crops in the Palestinian
Bedouin village of Rakhama, locals told Ma'an.<br>
<br>
Ali Freijat, a local resident, said that 14 tractors escorted by
over 50 Israeli police vehicles arrived early Tuesday and began
leveling the land.<br>
<br>
"This is vandalism through which they plan to displace the Bedouins
from the Negev so as to create a Jewish state free of Arabs.
However, my message to them is that if you turn over the land a
million times, and if you demolish our homes a thousand times we
will continue to live on this land and won't allow any body to take
it from us."<br>
<br>
The land that was leveled was granted by the Israeli state to
compensate the loss of land resulting from forced displacement in
1954, Freijat said.<br>
<br>
"Since 1983, there have been deliberations over our ownership and
our right to this land, and in 2007 the supreme court decided that
they (Israeli authorities) should reach a settlement with us, but so
far they haven't."<br>
<br>
"We are talking about 25,000 dunums (about 6,000 acres) of wheat,
barley and other crops. They demand that we rent this land from the
Israeli land authority but we definitely oppose that because by
doing so we recognize that we have no rights to this land."<br>
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Bedouins in Israel live in 45 unrecognized villages scattered
primarily in the region between Beersheba and Arad. They are the
remnants of the Bedouin population that lived across the Negev
Desert until 1948, when 90 percent were expelled by Israel and the
remainder confined to a closed reservation.<br>
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In 2013, authorities said that the homes of the 1,500 residents of
the village were to be demolished because the area had been
converted into a closed military zone.
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