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<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">For 198th time, Israeli forces demolish Al-Araqib Bedouin village</h1>
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<div class="gmail-reader-estimated-time" dir="ltr">February 22, 2022<br></div>
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<p>Al-Araqib (QNN)- Israeli occupation forces demolished Al-Araqib
village in the Al-Naqab Desert earlier on Tuesday for the 198th time,
despite the severe weather conditions.</p>
<p>Reports said Israeli occupation forces raided the village, which is
rebuilt by its residents after each time it has been demolished, and
removed all the tents and destroyed the tin shelters placed on the land
by the residents to provide a roof over their heads in the cold weather,
leaving them homeless.</p>
<p><strong>Translation: </strong> <em>A Palestinian documenting how Israeli occupation forces demolish his own shelter in Al-Araqib village</em></p>
<p>Al-Araqib was demolished for the first time in 2000. Today’s
demolition is the 198th so far and the second since the start of 2022.
In 2021, it was demolished 14 times.</p>
<p>‘Israel’ does not “recognise” the village, but its residents point
out that they own the land and have done, since the Ottoman period,
decades before ‘Israel’ was created in occupied Palestine.</p>
<p>Despite the repeated demolitions, every time the residents of
Al-Araqib rebuild their tents and small homes. However, the occupation
forces return to raze them, sometimes several times in a month. There
are 22 Palestinian families living in the village.</p>
<p>Al-Araqib village is one of 35 “unrecognised” Arab villages in the
area, and is constantly targeted for demolition by Israeli bulldozers,
for which Bedouins are then charged.</p>
<p>Lately, the Al-Naqab Desert villages have been under the Israeli threat of demolition and bulldozing works.</p>
<p>Last month, for over three days, hundreds of peaceful Palestinians
took part in large demonstrations in several villages of the Al-Naqab
against Israel’s demolition and bulldozing works in their lands.</p>
<p>The Higher Follow Up Committee of Arabs in the Naqab, a local
umbrella body that represents Palestinians in the area, also announced a
general strike in response to the Israeli demolitions.</p>
<p>“We took the decision to undertake proactive measures, beginning with
adopting a cumulative resistance programme over a period of six months
that will lead to a regional general strike and a massive demonstration
outside the prime minister’s office, and the internationalisation of the
issue to expose the racist practices [of Israeli authorities] before
international institutions,” the committee said in a statement.</p>
<p>The general strike was announced in villages facing the threat of
Israeli demolition including al-Atrash, al-Sawa, al-Zarnouq, al-Ruwais,
Beir Haddaj and Khirbet Watan.</p>
<p>However, the Israeli occupation forces stormed the Palestinian
villages in the Al-Naqab desert and started violently attacking and
arresting the peaceful protesters who gathered to denounce the
demolition work.</p>
<p>The Israeli forces fired tear gas canisters and sound bombs directly
and intensively towards the protesters to disperse them, resulting in
the suffocation of dozens of them due to gas inhalation.</p>
<p>They also used skunk water cannons to disperse the nonviolent protesters.</p>
<p>This all started on January 9, when the Jewish National Fund (JNF)
began several days of the so-called “planting trees” on disputed land in
the Al-Naqab.</p>
<p>For over three days, the Israeli bulldozers carried out demolitions on lands of local Bedouins used for cultivation.</p>
<p>The forces closed off the villages and prevented the residents from
entering their lands. Thus, the Palestinian residents moved their
protests to the entrance of the villages.</p>
<p>During and following the protests, Israeli forces arrested over 140 Palestinians from the Al-Naqab, including minors.</p>
<p>The Israeli demolitions in al-Naqab are part of a controversial
Israeli plan, led by the JNF, to plant trees across some 40,000 dunams
(15 square miles) of the Naqab.</p>
<p>In December, Israeli forces attacked Palestinians in six villages:
al-Mashash, al-Zarnouq, Bier al-Hamam, al-Ruwais, al-Gharaa, and Khirbet
Watan, destroying crops and excavating soil.</p>
<p>The JNF and the Israel Land Authority (ILA) were planning to plant
hundreds of trees on lands from the six Bedouin villages, which had all
received demolition orders and faced the displacement of thousands of
residents “in the name of developing the area.”</p>
<p>‘Israel’ has used the forestation projects as a tactic for land grabs
and to prevent Palestinians from returning to lands from which they
have been displaced.</p>
<p>The residents say that such policies are an attempt to pressure them
into being internally displaced despite Bedouins having lived on or near
these lands prior to Israel’s establishment in 1948.</p>
<p>There are almost 100,000 Palestinians live in 35 Bedouin villages in
the Al-Naqab and are all unrecognized by the Israeli occupation
government who views the Bedouin residents of these villages as illegal
squatters and does not provide them with basic services or
infrastructure, including electricity, water, sewage systems, roads,
schools or hospitals.</p>
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