Israeli authorities demolished 16 homes in As-Sirrah, an “unrecognized” Palestinian village in the Naqab (Negev), on Monday.
Hundreds of Israeli police officers were deployed to the area, sealing off the site and blocking residents from approaching as the demolitions took place.
According to Suleiman Al-Hawashla, director of the Regional Council for Unrecognized Villages, the demolitions followed a Be’er as-Sabe’ (Beersheva) court ruling issued last Thursday, ordering the village to be emptied of its residents.
Al-Hawashla stated that at least 16 homes were torn down in this latest attack, while others had already been dismantled by their owners to avoid forced demolition.
Home to around 1,500 Palestinians from the Al-Azazma tribe, the village lacks essential infrastructure, including roads, electricity, water, sewage systems, schools, and medical services.
Al-Hawashla described the demolitions as part of Israel’s broader policy of forced displacement targeting Palestinians in the 1948 territories, particularly in the Negev, even as Israeli authorities continue to unveil new colonialist projects in the area.
Sources from the Regional Council for Unrecognized Villages warned that over 200 more homes in Al-Surra are set for demolition in the coming weeks, meaning the village will be wiped out entirely, forcing its residents from their land.
On Wednesday, May 7, Israeli occupation authorities, under heavy police protection, demolished 47 houses belonging to the Abu Asa family, near the village of Umm Butin in the Negev region in southern Israel.
During the large-scale attack, Israeli police abducted the young man, Ahmed Abu Asa, when he tried to prevent the bulldozers from carrying out the demolition.
Author and expert in Israeli affairs, Amir Makhoul, stated that the targeting of the Negev region in the southern triangle of Israel, is aimed at the entire Palestinian Arab presence in the Negev.
Makhoul added that using the pretext of alleged “development”, including the extension of ‘Route 6’ has long been a strategic plan to sever any communication between the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
At least half of the 240,000 Arab residents of the Negev desert, live in villages and Bedouin camps, some of which have been in place for hundreds of years.
While the occupation authorities refuse to recognize their ownership of the lands and deny them the basic services such as water and electricity, with the aim of forcibly displacing them.
On of the Negev villages that is subject to constant invasions, displacement, destruction and eviction and demolitions in the Negev is Al-Arakib Village that has already been destroyed 236 times.
In the 1970s, the residents managed to prove their ownership of 1,250 dunams of land, out of thousands of dunams, according to Israeli laws and conditions.
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.
