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<h1 id="reader-title">Al-Araqib villagers protest 100th
demolition of Bedouin village, demand freedom for Bilal Kayed</h1>
<div id="reader-credits" class="credits">July 5, 2016<br>
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<p>On 3 July, Palestinians of <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/content/photos-israeli-bulldozers-raze-bedouin-community/13478">Al-Araqib
village</a> 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 <a
href="http://samidoun.net/2016/07/bilal-kayed-transferred-to-ashkelon-i-did-not-go-on-hunger-strike-to-negotiate-but-for-freedom/">Bilal
Kayed</a>, 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.</p>
<p>Al-Araqib is an <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/content/how-israel-forces-bedouins-live-graveyard/13969">“unrecognized”
Palestinian Bedouin village</a> 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 <a
href="http://www.adalah.org/en/content/view/7650">years
of struggle</a> under military rule and following it,
many of the people of Araqib returned to their lands in
the 1990s to <a
href="http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/07/israel-destroys-palestinian-village-100th-time-160703091747401.html">reestablish
their life on the land</a>, 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.</p>
<p>On 29 June 2016, the village was <a
href="http://972mag.com/israel-demolishes-bedouin-village-al-araqib-for-100th-time/120287/">demolished
for the 100th time</a>. 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.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, across the road from Al-Araqib, the Israeli
state supports, irrigates, and funds the Jewish-only
settlement of <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/content/how-israel-forces-bedouins-live-graveyard/13969">Givot
Bar</a>, 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.<a
href="http://samidoun.net/2016/07/8-15-july-call-to-action-to-free-bilal-kayed-and-commemorate-ghassan-kanafani/">
International protests in cities</a> 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.</p>
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<div class="moz-signature">-- <br>
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522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
415 863.9977
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