by Oren Ziv at +972 Magazine
On the morning of May 8, Israeli forces razed the entire Bedouin village of Wadi al-Khalil in the Naqab/Negev desert. The demolitions, which were carried out in order to expand the Route 6 highway, left more than 300 residents homeless.
Wadi al-Khalil is one of 35 Bedouin villages in the Naqab whose existence the Israeli authorities do not officially recognize; as a result, the villages, which are home to around 150,000 Bedouin Arab citizens of Israel, face the constant threat of demolition. Many of the villages are decades old — some even pre-date Israel’s establishment — but they are prevented from connecting to state infrastructure including water and electricity, and their residents are denied municipal services.
According to the Regional Council for the Unrecognized Bedouin Villages, Wednesday’s demolition was the largest in the Naqab for 14 years. It comes as Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir vows to crack down on what he calls “lawbreakers” and restore meshilut — literally “governance,” a euphemism for Jewish-Israeli control — to the area. Eight other unrecognized villages are currently under threat of forced eviction under the guise of urban development.
The police’s arrival in the village was not met with resistance. Officers pushed the residents and a handful of solidarity activists to the outskirts of the village before bringing in trucks and bulldozers. Contractors in yellow vests removed furniture and any personal items that had been left inside the residents’ homes and loaded them onto the trucks. A few horses and camels wandered restlessly between the officers and vehicles as the bulldozers got to work.
“You work eight or nine years,…
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