To avoid bearing the cost, some 300 residents of the Bedouin Arab village of Umm al Hiran in the Negev desert destroyed their own homes on Wednesday. This Thursday, Israeli police, working with the Land Authority, demolished the only thing left standing, the mosque, in an effort to clear the area to build an exclusively Jewish town.
Despite the guarantees given to the High Court of Justice of Israel, the new city 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 Dror settlement 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 nearly 20 new Jewish colonies, sometimes alone. 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 which will replace Al Hiran would only be open 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 lasting more than 20 years, this is the fourth Bedouin village destroyed by the Israeli government so far in 2024, and in December the same thing is expected to happen to Ras Jaraba, a Negev community of more than 500 residents . and under a court eviction order since July 2023.
As one of the RCUV spokespersons, Nati Yefet, informed EFE, around 100 police officers, accompanied by seven excavators, broke into the city around 3:30 in the morning. Three neighbors, like many others resettled today in Ward 12 of the neighboring town of Hura, were detained for nine hours. At the same time, 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 National Security Minister, settler and racist Itamar Ben Gvir, in charge of the management of police forces.
“Since the beginning of the year, there has been a 400% increase in demolition orders: proud to lead a strong policy of destroying illegal houses in the Negev!” added Ben Gvir, convicted in 2007 for supporting to a terrorist and terrorist organization! incitement to racism.
Israel does not recognize or show on its maps a total of 36 semi-nomadic Bedouin villages that predate the creation of that state in 1948. Only eleven have been recognized in the past two decades, but human rights organizations men denounce the lack of basic infrastructure. such as water, electricity or road infrastructure.
The government seeks to get some 350,000 Bedouins to abandon their agricultural lifestyle in the Negev to live in small, poor urban areas. At least 190,000 Bedouins have already been forced to do so.
The government’s “population replacement” program in the Negev aims to displace some 9,000 Bedouin Arabs from 14 villages and replace them with similar numbers in Jewish settlements.
Although they represent almost 40% of the Negev population, Bedouins have access to less than 10% of agricultural areas and less than 4% of land.
“The destruction of Umm Al Hiran this morning illustrates the face of institutionalized racism in its most extreme form. The triumphant declarations of the Israel Land Authority are a real gut punch, although, unfortunately, we expect nothing better from Ben Gvir, the Minister of National Security. It is incomprehensible that a government authority openly boasts of its discriminatory policies,” denounced the RCUV.
