The Bay City Times · Bay City, Michigan · 5 September 2010

CP-2010-024

The Israeli Committee Against Home Demolitions

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Transcribed from the clipping

ISRAEL/PALESTINE - One week after its previous demolition on Tuesday the 17th of August, the Bedouin village of Al Araqib has again become a victim of demolition. Located in the Negev, north of Beer Sheva, Al Araqib has been subject to four demolitions in less than one month. It houses 300 people, of which a majority are children.

Each time, all structures of the village were completely demolished, targeting particular water infrastructures and livestock shelters. This Tuesday, police forces accompanied by the Israeli Land Administration arrived in the village at 6:00 am with two bulldozers.

Around 25 shelters were demolished that had been previously rebuilt by the villagers with the help of Israeli and international volunteers. Belongings in the shelters and a truck were confiscated by the police. During the course of the demolition Ayman Odeh from the Hadash party was detained on grounds of obstruction police activities.

According to the residents today’s demolition came as a surprise since they expected a minimum of respect by the police due to the current Ramadan holidays. The State of Israel claims that Al Araqib is an unrecognized village settled on state land. Thus its residents are trespassers and have no right over the land they occupy nor to build their houses here.

In this respect, ILA representatives argue that the demolitions occur in conformity with the due process of law. In addition, the land of Al Araqib is targeted by a Jewish Nation Fund project aiming at planting the future “Ambassador forest”. The first trees have already been planted and surround the village.

There are an estimated of 45 unrecognized villages in the Negev. All of them lack basic infrastructures especially regarding water although most of their residents, if not all, are Israeli citizens.

This lack of recognition continues in spite of the fact that Goldberg Committee, created in late 2007 to “solve the problem of the Bedouin in the Negev”, recommended to the Government of Israel that it should formally recognize most of the villages and legalize construction of homes and structures.

How this transcription was made

Read from the scan by a machine looking at the image of the page, not by optical character recognition and not by a person. The clipping carries no masthead or date line, so its date and newspaper rest on the record it arrived with, not on anything visible in the scan.

Context added by this archive

Date check: No masthead, folio or printed date appears on this clipping — it is a single ruled box containing one item, with nothing above or below it. Nothing on the clipping names the newspaper.

The text refers to a demolition “This Tuesday”, one week after “Tuesday the 17th of August”, and to “the current Ramadan holidays”; the fourth demolition of Al Araqib took place on Tuesday, Aug. 24, 2010, so a Sept. 5, 2010 reprint is plausible but unconfirmed.

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