This morning hundreds of police raided, for the fourth time this month, the "unrecognized" village of el Araqib in the Negev and removed all of the 300 villagers, a majority of whom are children, women and elderly. Using two bulldozers, they demolished all the shelters and shacks built this past week, and all personal belongings in the shelters were loaded onto two trucks brought especially for this purpose.Ayman Odeh, Secretary General of the Hadash party, was detained on charges of disturbing the police.

Yet again the residents find themselves without a roof over their head and lacking in water, food and personal belongings under the blazing sun and at the height of the Ramadan fast.

The village residents are determined to continue to live there and have already begun to rebuild.

Background

The village of el Araqib existed hundreds of years prior to the establishment of the state of Israel. In the early 1950s the residents were removed from their village on the order of the military government, with a promise they would be returned to their homes within six months, a promise that was of course not kept, and three years later the land was declared open and registered under the name of the Development Administration.

In the late 1990s some of the village residents returned to live there. In the past two years, the state set a goal of Judaising the area and removing the Bedouins who live there. In order to fulfill this goal a large part of the village lands were leased to the Jewish National Fund (JNF), which commenced a process of widespread forestation. To date, tens of thousands of trees have been planted, some only a few hundred meters from the village.

The demolitions were conducted although ownership of the land is being legally contested and a court ruling has yet to be made.

(this press release was issued by the el Araqib Popular Committee, the Negev Coexistence Forum for Civil Equality, the Recognition Forum and Tarabut. )

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