[Friday September 20, 2013] Dozens of Israeli soldiers invaded Khirbit Makhoul village, in the West Bank’s northern plains area, and removed tents and structures for the third time.Aref Daraghma, head of the Wadi Al-Maleh Village Council, stated that the soldiers removed all tents installed by the Red Cross for the families that lost their homes and structures in previous attacks.
Daraghma added that 10 families said that they ‘will not bow to Israeli oppression, and will stay in the area despite the ongoing Israeli violations’, the Palestine News Network (PNN) has reported.
On Monday at dawn, the army invaded the small village, inhabited by Bedouins, and removed various structures and tents used by the residents.
The small village is located between a group of illegal Israeli settlements, and is also close an Israeli military base in the Jordan Valley.
Israel does not recognize dozens of small villages, Bedouin tribes, in the Northern Plains areas of the West Bank, and near occupied East Jerusalem, as well as near Hebron and other areas.
With no services, no recognition from the occupation, those villages have been repeatedly demolished, and removed, and the residents are frequently displaced due to Israel’s ongoing violations.
Bedouin villages in the Negev are also subject to such frequent attacks and violations, as dozens of small villages have been uprooted and demolished, some tribes have been displaced and their shelters removed hundreds of times.
Hundreds of similar attacks targeted Bedouins in the Negev, who live in villages unrecognized by Israel, and are subject to frequent displacement and ongoing assaults.
Around 70,000 Arab Bedouin – whose presence in the Negev dates to the seventh century – live in 35 villages that either predate the establishment of the state of Israel in historic Palestine in 1948.
These villages are not recognized by Israel, and the inhabitants are considered trespassers. Basic services have been withheld from these villages, and thousands of houses have been demolished since 2011.
Palestinian Bedouins have faced decades of repression and forced removal by Israeli authorities as a result of this refusal to recognize their legitimate claim to continue to live on their ancestral land.
