03 Apr 2023; MEMO: The Israeli Occupation authorities demolished today Al-Araqeeb village, based in the Negev (Naqab) Desert for the 215th time since 2010, and the 4th time this year.
Israeli forces raided the village and forced the residents, mainly women and children, out of the village to demolish what the residents had rebuilt using wood and plastic sheets to re-shelter their families since the last demolition.
Every time the village is demolished under the pretext of illegal construction, its Palestinian residents return to the land and rebuild their homes in a clear rejection of the Israeli attempt to expel them from their land where they have lived for generations.
Al-Araqeeb, home to about 800 people living on raising livestock and farming, is an unrecognised village despite the residents having proven through legal means in the 1970s their right to own 1,250 dunams of land.
In a past report, Zochrot, an organisation of Israeli Jewish and Arab activists which documents the Palestinian Nakba of 1948, said that Al-Araqeeb was built for the first time during the Ottoman period, on land purchased by the residents.
The organisation says that the authorities are working to expel the residents of the village to control their land, noting that Israel does not recognise dozens of other villages in the Negev (Naqab) Desert, home to over 240,000 Palestinians and refuses to provide any public services to them including electricity and water networks, roads, schools and health centres.
Residents of this village have been living under constant threat of being forcibly removed and relocated and their homes demolished.
