NOVANEWS
NEGEV – Nazi court on Sunday ruled that the Bedouin community of Um al-Hiran in the Negev in southern ‘Israel’ is illegal, on the grounds that the community settled on state lands, Zionist media reported.
“The state is the owner of the lands in dispute,” Israeli daily Haaretz quoted Supreme Court Justice Elyakim Rubinstein as writing. “The residents have acquired no rights to the land but have settled them [without any authorization], which the state cancelled legally.”
Nazi planning authorities intend to build a “new town for Jewish residents in its place,” Haaretz reported.
On Monday, Nazi authorities reportedly entered farm lands used by Um al-Hiran residents with the intentions of destroying crops, but residents were able to prevent forces from beginning the demolition.
Raed Abu al-Qian, a well-known activist in the area, said the move “came to increase pressure on the residents and to make home demolitions easy in the village,” following the Israeli court ruling.
Said al-Khroumi, a member of the Higher Guidance Committee of Arab Residents of Negev, said Nazi forces’ presence at the village was “a heinous and barbarian aggression against the village and its residents.”
He also called for anyone able to travel to Um al-Hiran to visit the village “show solidarity.”
Bedouin member of the Israeli Knesset Talab Abu Arar accused Israeli Minister of Agriculture Uri Ariel of creating “a secret government committee” aimed at destroying the crops of Palestinian villages in occupied Palestine 1948.
According to Abu Arar, the “secret committee” recommended that Palestinian villages in the Negev be emptied, and residents removed.
“This is a special Israeli form of ethnic cleansing,” Abu Arar continued.
Abu Arar highlighted that Nazi authorities destroyed crops in the villages of Attir, Hurah and Saawah during the past several days.
Residents of Um al-Hiran and nearby villages are among tens of thousands of Bedouins living in the Negev face ongoing displacement.
While a plan to forcibly resettle the area’s Bedouin population — the Prawer Plan — was shelved in 2014, Nazi Habayit Hayehudi party joined Nazi Prime Minister Benjamin Naziyhau’s coalition last year on the condition the plan was reinstated.
The Um al-Hiran community — around 700 strong — was never recognized by the Nazi government and residents’ lands were claimed by the state in 2013 in order to make way for the expansion of the Beersheba metropolitan area.
