Israel / Bedouins

The Destruction of a Negev Village
By Jonathan Cook
Counterpunch.org, August 6-8, 2010
"Israeli security forces destroyed a Bedouin village this week for the second time in a matter of days, leaving 300 inhabitants homeless again after they and dozens of Jewish and Arab volunteers had begun rebuilding the 45 homes. Human rights groups warned that these appeared to be the opening shots in a long-threatened campaign by the Israeli government to begin mass forced removals of tens of thousands of Bedouin from their ancestral lands in the southern Negev. The High Follow-Up Committee, the main political body for Israel's Arab minority, vowed this week to help rebuild the village for a second time and said it would call on the UN to investigate Israel's treatment of the Bedouin. Al Araqib village, which is a few kilometres north of the Negev's main city Beersheva, has become a symbol of the struggle by about 90,000 Bedouin to win recognition for dozens of communities the government claims are built on state land. In a test case before the Israeli courts, an inhabitant of al Araqib has been presenting documents and expert testimony to show his ancestors owned and lived on the village’s lands many decades before Israel's establishment in 1948. The judge is expected to rule within months.
'Tearing down an entire village and leaving its inhabitants homeless without exhausting all other options for settling longstanding land claims is outrageous,' said Joe Stork, the deputy Middle East director of Human Rights Watch. A force of 1,500 police, including a special riot squad wearing black balaclavas, entered the village early on Wednesday to pull down a dozen wooden shacks and a half-built concrete home. The local Aturi tribe had been in the process of rebuilding the village after it was razed by bulldozers a week earlier. The Israeli forces also uprooted 850 olive trees, said Ortal Tzabar, a spokeswoman for the government's Land Administration. ... The first demolition of the village, late last month, came shortly after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned his cabinet that the growth of the country's Arab minority, already a fifth of the population, posed a 'palpable threat' to the state's Jewishness. 'The effect could be that different elements will demand national rights within Israel -- for example, in the Negev -- if we allow for a region without a Jewish majority.' Last month the government announced a $50 million assistance programme to encourage army personnel to relocate to Jewish communities in the Negev. The Bedouin's increasing assertiveness about their indigenous status, which is backed by international groups, has led to a backlash from officials, who regularly refer to the Bedouin as 'squatters' and 'invaders' of state land. [...]"