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href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/charlotte-silver/israel-poised-raze-bedouin-village-so-jews-can-take-land"
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<h1 id="reader-title">Israel poised to raze Bedouin village so
Jews can take land</h1>
<div id="reader-credits" class="credits">
<p class="node__submitted">
<span class="field field-author"><a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/people/charlotte-silver"
typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label
skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Charlotte Silver</a></span>
-<span class="field field-blog"></span>
<span class="field field-publication-date"><span
class="date-display-single" property="dc:date"
datatype="xsd:dateTime"
content="2016-08-08T20:37:52+00:00">8 August 2016</span></span>
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<article class="node-17601 node node-blog view-mode-full
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media="(min-width: 72rem)"><figcaption
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<p>Israeli bulldozers are poised to raze the Bedouin
village <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/umm-al-hiran">Umm
al-Hiran</a> in the <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/naqab">Naqab</a>
(Negev) region in the south of the country.</p>
<p>On 31 July, bulldozers began ploughing a trench around
the village, encircling those homes Israel intends to
demolish to make way for a Jewish community.</p>
<p>The village <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/patrick-strickland/israel-court-approves-demolition-bedouin-village-make-way-jews">lost
its 13-year legal battle</a> in May 2015, when a
three-judge panel on Israel’s high court ruled that the
government was authorized to demolish the village and
displace its residents.</p>
<p>In January this year, the high court’s president Miriam
Naor <a
href="http://www.jpost.com/printarticle.aspx?id=441872">rejected</a>
the village’s final request for a review by broader
panel of judges. Naor said, according to <em>The
Jerusalem Post</em>, that the village’s case did not
qualify as a major constitutional issue that merited a
special high court panel.</p>
<p>Like <a
href="http://www.adalah.org/en/content/view/8603">about
40 other Bedouin villages</a> home to 70,000 people in
the Naqab, Umm al-Hiran is <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/unrecognized-villages">not
recognized</a> by Israeli authorities, leaving its
1,000 residents, who are Israeli citizens, without basic
services or rights.</p>
<h2>Violent repression of protests</h2>
<p>When the bulldozers arrived last weekend, protesters
attempted to block the heavy machinery. Police responded
with force, arresting six protesters, including former
Rabbis for Human Rights president Arik Ascherman and
activist Salim Abu al-Kayan.</p>
<p>A <a
href="http://972mag.com/authorities-start-process-of-replacing-bedouin-town-with-a-jewish-one/121065/">video</a>
from the day shows police throwing people to the ground,
punching a child before violently detaining him, and
wrestling men to the ground.
</p>
<p>Raad Abu al-Kayan, the son of Salim, <a
href="http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/1.734465">told
the Tel Aviv newspaper <em>Haaretz</em></a> the
police fired tear gas directly at young protesters.</p>
<p>Though the village has been inhabited since 1956, when
the Israeli military forcibly moved Bedouins there after
removing them from their original village, the court
ruled they have no legal rights to it.</p>
<p>Israel now wants to take over the land for the use of
Jews. Palestinian legal rights group <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/adalah">Adalah</a>
calls the move a “dangerous precedent,” allowing
authorities to displace residents for “the sole purpose
of building a new Jewish town called Hiran on its ruins
and grazing area.”</p>
<h2>Dangerous implications</h2>
<p>Since the court ruled the residents were not
“trespassing,” a term Israel frequently employs to
describe the thousands of Bedouins who live in so-called
unrecognized villages, Adalah believes authorities have
carved out a new justification to <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/forced-displacement">forcibly
displace</a> Bedouins in the Naqab.</p>
<p>According to Adalah, the court found that the state had
“merely allowed” the Bedouin citizens to use the land,
but was now within its rights to revoke such permission.</p>
<p>“The state is the owner of the lands in dispute, which
were registered in its name in the framework of the
arrangement process; the residents have acquired no
rights to the land but have settled them [without any
authorization], which the state cancelled legally,” <a
href="http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/1.734465">wrote</a>
high court justice <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/elyakim-rubinstein">Elyakim
Rubinstein</a>.</p>
<p>A lone dissenting judge on the panel of three, Daphne
Barak-Erez, argued that authorities should offer the
villagers space in the new Jewish community.</p>
<p>Residents of the planned Jewish Hiran are currently
living in trailers and temporary houses that were
established in 2011 in the forest of Yatir, waiting to
expand onto the ruins of Umm al-Hiran.</p>
<p>In a <a
href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlgU6oLswv0">video
produced</a> by Adalah in 2013, the spokesperson for
the Hiran settlers says they have received the support
of the settlement department, the regional councils and
the OR Movement, which seeks to settle Jews in the Naqab
and the Galilee.
</p>
<p>The video also shows that the temporary Jewish
settlement was established with funds from JNF-USA,
which funnels tax-exempt charitable donations from
Americans to the Israeli-government-backed settlement
organization the Jewish National Fund.</p>
<p>When asked about the difference between what is
happening in the Naqab and the Hebron Hills area, the
spokesperson stated, “There isn’t really any difference
in my worldview but there is another worldview stating
that there is a difference.”</p>
<p>While the Naqab is within present-day Israel and the
Hebron Hills are in the occupied West Bank, the
experience for Palestinians – even those with Israeli
citizenship – of violent displacement for the benefit of
Jewish settlers is indistinguishable.</p>
<br>
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