On Tuesday, the Israeli army, the police and the undercover soldiers invaded the Al-Arakib Bedouin village, in the Negev, and demolished it form the 224th time since 2010.
Media sources said the soldiers and the police invaded the ‘unrecognized’ village, on Tuesday in the afternoon, after surrounding and isolating it.
They added that the soldiers then forced the residents out of their dwellings before demolishing their residential tents, sheds and barns.
In related news, the army demolished a Palestinian home in Kafr Qara city, south of Haifa, for being allegedly built without a permit, although the owners managed to obtain a court order halting the demolition.
Israeli bulldozers first demolished Al-Arakib on July 27, 2010; Israeli troops demolished all its homes and displaced hundreds of its residents under the pretext of building without a permit. The residents of the village built it again, to be demolished again and again.
In late January 2019, the then Israel’s Minister of Agriculture and “Development of the Negev”, Uri Ariel, has completed a massive plan to expel some 36,000 Bedouin Palestinians from their “unrecognized” villages, although they predate Israel.
The steadfastness of Al-Arakib became a symbol of the battle of wills waged by the Palestinians of the occupied interior, especially in the Negev, to survive and preserve land and identity.
About 240,000 Palestinians live in the Negev desert, half of whom live in villages and Bedouin camps, some of which have been in place for hundreds of years.
The Israeli occupation authorities do not recognize their ownership of the lands of these villages and communities, refuse to provide them with basic services such as water and electricity, and try by all means and methods to push the Palestinian Arabs to despair and frustration to uproot and displace them.
Article 17 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights states; 1. Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others. 2. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property.
