In order to avoid bearing the cost, some 300 inhabitants of the Bedouin Arab village of Umm al Hiran, in the Negev desert, destroyed their own houses on Wednesday. This Thursday the Israel Police, together with the Land Authority, demolished the only thing that remained standing, the mosque, with the aim of cleaning the area to build an exclusively Jewish town.
Despite the assurances given to the Israeli High Court of Justice, the new town being built on the ruins of the Bedouin village is intended only for Jews, according to the statutes of the cooperative association of the future city, as reported by the Israeli magazine +972.
“The destruction of Umm Al Hiran to make way for the settlement of Dror is part of a systematic population replacement program in the Negev, aimed at uprooting nearly 10,000 people in 14 villages and replacing them with almost 20 new Jewish colonies, sometimes on their own land,” denounced the Regional Council of Unrecognized Bedouin Peoples (RCUV) after this forced evacuation.
Already in 2017, the Legal Center for the Rights of the Arab Minority in Israel (Adalah) denounced that the community that will replace Al Hiran will be open only to “Jewish Israeli citizens or permanent residents who observe the Torah and the commandments in accordance with the values of Orthodox Judaism.
After a legal battle of more than 20 years, it is the fourth Bedouin village destroyed by the Government of Israel so far in 2024, and in December the same is expected to happen to Ras Jaraba, a community in the Negev with more than 500 inhabitants and under court eviction order since July 2023.
As one of the RCUV spokespersons, Nati Yefet, informed EFE, about 100 police officers, accompanied by seven excavators, broke into the town around 3:30 in the morning. Three neighbors, like many resettled today in neighborhood 12 of the nearby town of Hura, were detained for nine hours. Simultaneously, the mosque was demolished.
“There is justice and there is justice! A mosque and illegal buildings built in the village of Umm al Hiran, in the Negev, were destroyed this morning by Government bulldozers,” said the Minister of National Security, the settler and racist Itamar Ben Gvir, in charge of managing the police forces.
“Since the beginning of the year there has been a 400% increase in the issuance of demolition orders: Proud to lead a strong policy of destruction of illegal houses in the Negev!” added Ben Gvir, convicted in 2007 for supporting an organization terrorist and incitement to racism.
Israel does not recognize or show on its maps a total of 36 semi-nomadic Bedouin villages that precede the creation of this State in 1948. Only eleven have been recognized in the last two decades, but human rights organizations denounce that they lack any basic infrastructure such as water, electricity or road facilities.
The Government seeks to get some 350,000 Bedouins to give up their agricultural lifestyle in the Negev to live in small and impoverished urban areas. At least 190,000 Bedouins have already been forced to do so.
The government’s ‘Population Replacement’ program in the Negev seeks to displace some 9,000 Bedouin Arabs from 14 villages and replace them with a similar number in Jewish settlements.
Despite representing almost 40% of the Negev’s population, the Bedouins have access to less than 10% of agricultural areas and less than 4% of the land.
“The destruction of Umm Al Hiran this morning exemplifies the face of institutionalized racism in its most extreme form. The Israel Land Authority’s triumphant statements are a gut punch, although, sadly, we expect nothing better from Ben Gvir, the Minister of National Security. It is incomprehensible that a government authority openly boasts about its discriminatory policies,” RCUV denounced.
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