BEDOUINS BARRICADED IN CEMETERY

AS ISRAEL DEMOLISHES VILLAGE

FOR 17TH TIME, INJURING CHILDREN

  

Already rebuilding

By Tania Kepler 

for the Alternative Information Cente

16 February 2011

The residents of the Bedouin village Al Araqib were forced from their land for the 17th time Wednesday (16/2) and barricaded inside the village cemetery, as Israel continues its ethnic cleansing efforts in the Negev.

Israeli forces arrived in the early hours of the morning and immediately began shooting rubber bullets at the residents. When the first round of shooting subsided, the Special Forces pushed people from their homes and began demolishing the village for the 17th time.

When residents of Al Araqib protested, the Israeli authorities again shot them with rubber bullets, resulting in injuries. Three children were taken by ambulance to the hospital, according to Awad Abu Frieh, the village spokesperson.

The Jewish National Fund, an active participant in forcing Bedouin from their land, bulldozed the property and began working the land for the planting of a peace forest.

Israeli forces used such excessive violence Wednesday morning that residents fled their homes and entered the adjacent cemetery. JNF bulldozers then approached the cemetery in an attempt to also destroy the Bedouin burial place.

The residents of the village are currently barricaded inside the cemetery, watching as their homes are once more destroyed and hoping the cemetery is not next. All of the exits have been closed, and the bulldozers are circling the site.

One week ago (10/2), women and children of the Bedouin village of Al Araqib were beaten and gassed by Israel forces, in an attempt to halt the 16th demolition of their homes and property.

Three residents were also arrested, including a sixteen year old, and they have been in jail since. There was a court hearing for them Wednesday (16/2) morning in Beer Sheva, and their detention was extended for at least another day.

Another resident was arrested in the village Tuesday night (15/2), and is currently being held by the Israeli police, though the reason for his arrest is unclear.

Israeli forces and Jewish National Fund workers entered the Bedouin village and again destroyed the residents’ homes, and continued preparing the land for the planting of a “peace forest”.

Following last week’s demolition, six residents, four women and two children, were hospitalized at the Soroka hospital in Beer Sheva.

“The police harshly beat the women and children who were standing in quiet protest, they simply beat women and children…I stood alongside a woman who was beaten by four police officers, actual fists in her face, ears and neck, in addition to kicks until she almost lost consciousness…people are sitting on the ground, in the rain, and not moving, women and children. The police shot stun grenades and foam bullets directly at the women, at point blank,” reported Tamar, an activist who was present in the village. 

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On February 10, 2011, police and black-clad special units forces arrived to the Bedouin village Al-Arakib, 15 km north of Beer Sheva, Israel, to demolish their homes and expel them from their land for the 16th time. The inhabitants of Al-Arakib were dispossessed in the early 1950s and since then they have demanded to return to their ancestral land and recognition of their rights to the land at the site where the village had existed before the establishment of the state of Israel.

Various means have been used during the past 10 years to break their resistance: their fields were sprayed with pesticides from the air and they themselves suffered health damages; their cultivated fields were deep-plowed to destroy the crops, and since July 2010, their homes were demolished time after time. 

The demolitions were accompanied by massive violence against the inhabitants and hundreds of fruit trees were uprooted. The KKL-JNF, the Jewish National Fund is preparing the ground for planting trees in order to take possession of the land and prevent its future cultivation by the Bedouins.

Since January 2011 the JNF and the Israel Land Administration escalated the oppressive measures: the homes are demolished several times a week, heavy violence is used against the inhabitants and social activists who have joined them, and in front of the very eyes of the people of Al-Arakib, their village is erased and the land is leveled by bulldozers to prepare the ground for forestation. On February 10, police forces arrived again to the village. The inhabitants of Al-Arakib and activists tried to resist nonviolently and hold on in the face of dispossession.

Just to add to this mess, from henceforth, the Bedouin are to be fined the costs incurred during the demolitions.

THE VILLAGE OF AL-ARAKIB WAS RE-BUILT 

Now please watch what happened the last time the camp was torn down. I do believe you will be surprised to see that the people had help rebuilding. The next time someone says all Israelis are cut from the same cloth, please remember this video. We can only pray they are able to return and help once again.
 

On Saturday 31 July 2010 the village was rebuilt with the support and help of Jewish Israelis who came from all over Israel.

For more Jewish activism on this situation:

WHERE ARE THE JEWISH GREENS?

SEEN ENOUGH YET?

GOD TV AND JEWISH NATIONAL

FUND'S FOREST OF HATE

NO?  Well now you can watch how Christian Zionists, a contradiction if ever there was one, are giving the Zionists money to carry on with this "reforestation" of the "desert that is empty and treeless". Yes treeless and empty after the orchards are torn up and the people driven away!  THIS is thoroughly nauseating.
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