Previous demolition of the Bedouin village of El Araqib (Photo courtesy of the Negev Coexistence Forum)

AIC, January 31, 2011

The Israeli Land Authority (ILA) demolished the Bedouin village of El Araqib for the 11th time today, 31 January.

The ILA along with Israeli police entered the village this morning with bulldozers and destroyed the tents and makeshift structures the villagers had erected since the last demolition, less than two weeks ago on 19 January.

During the demolition, the villagers moved from their land to the neighboring cemetery, where the women and children waited inside the mosque and the men were forced to stand outside in the rain.

Palestinian and Israeli activists will hold a protest demonstration on Tuesday (1 February) afternoon in front of the Jewish National Fund office in Jerusalem, demanding justice for the residents of El Araqib and all the Bedouin citizens of Israel.

The Jewish National Fund (JNF), which has been trying to build a "peace forest" on the site of El Araqib, began working on the site. They terraced the land and damned the area in order to drain water. When the JNF workers left, the villagers were still waiting in the rain in the cemetery, homeless. It is likely that the JNF will return tomorrow to continue the work.

The Israel Land Authority and particularly the Jewish National Fund are at the heart of the wave of demolitions in Bedouin areas like El Araqib. The ILA is the branch of the Israel government responsible for managing the 93% of the land in Israel which the country considers public domain, though much of the land is actually unrecognized Arab villages and land.

In recent months the JNF and the Israel Land Authority (ILA) have been working to "encourage" the remaining nomadic Bedouin communities to settle in cities and stay off the land. The encouragement has come in the form of regular demolitions of Bedouin villages.

Israeli authorities have demolished thousands of Bedouin homes in unrecognized villages since the 1970s, many of them comprising no more than tents or shacks. In 2010 alone Israeli officials demolished hundreds of Bedouin structures. The government’s goal is that people will move from rural areas to new Bedouin cities.

One such city is Rahat, located in the Negev and founded in 1972. The city currently has a population around 52,000, but numbers are growing as the Jewish National Fund, the Israeli Land Administration, and the government increase harsh treatment of the villagers nearby. A growing number of families from El Araqib are moving to Rahat, in an attempt to provide stability and a better life to their traumatized children.

The ILA has a history of uprooting olive trees in Palestinian villages and is trying to plant forests as part of a plan to "green" the Negev desert, while making the nomadic lifestyle of the Bedouin impossible and pushing them to cities like Rahat, where employment is low and their traditional way of life impossible.