For the 204th time, the Israeli authorities demolished the Al-Arakib Bedouin village in the Negev after surrounding and isolating it.
The Local Committee For Defending Al-Arakib said many army and police vehicles invaded the village and demolished its residential sheds and barns.
The Committee added that the villagers are determined to remain on their lands despite the ongoing Israeli violations and will rebuild their community.
The soldiers demolished all residential sheds, built using wood, tin, and plastic, and its barns, displacing, yet again, 22 families.
Video By Palestine TV
Today’s demolition came approximately three weeks after the army and the police demolished it.
Al-Araqib is a Palestinian village located to the north of the city of Beersheba in the Negev desert (southern Palestine). It was established for the first time during Ottoman rule.
It is one of the 51 Arab villages in the Negev that the Israeli government does not recognize, although they predate Israel.
The occupation authorities have worked since 1951 to expel its residents to control their lands through extensive house demolitions and the vast lands equivalent to two-thirds of historic Palestine.
Israeli bulldozers demolished the village 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, the most recent demolition being the 188th one that happened today. The tents that the villagers had set up were demolished instead of the houses that were demolished in the past.
The steadfastness of Al-Araqib 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 from the policies of Judaization.
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 in section 1: Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others, and in section 2: No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property.
