Homeless Take On Israeli Forces

[ConsAreLiars]

RAMALLAH, Aug 10, 2010 (IPS) - A bruising battle of will is taking place between Israeli security forces and Palestinians recently made homeless after two Palestinian villages were razed and hundreds left homeless.

During the last few weeks over a thousand heavily armed Israeli riot police, soldiers and police, at times accompanied by helicopters and bulldozers, have clashed with the expelled Palestinians and their supporters as the latter attempt to rebuild the villages.

Al-Araqib, a Bedouin village in Israel's Negev desert, was destroyed in a pre- dawn raid at the end of July to make way for a Jewish National Fund forest. The razing of the village was carried out despite pending legal action on land ownership that Al-Araqib residents have launched in the local Beer Sheva District Court.

During the destruction hundreds of Palestinians -- including at least 200 children - were left homeless. At least 45 homes, chicken co-ops, animal pens, carob trees and fruit orchards were leveled, and about 800 olive trees uprooted. A protesting Arab-Israeli member of the Knesset (the Israeli parliament) was amongst those injured.

The destruction of the village came two days after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke at a government meeting of the "threat" of losing Jewish majority in the Negev region. Bedouin constitute 25 percent of the population of the northern Negev, but occupy less than two percent of its land.

edit to add the link. More at: http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=52439

[Ken Burch]

1. THey have every right to stand up to their oppressors.

This is no different than any other dispossessed group fighting those who dispossessed them.

Remember Al-Araqib!

[ConsAreLiars]

2. These dispossessions and home destructions are in stark contrast to the actions taken

against the settlers who have built illegally in the West Bank and had their land seizings enforced by the occupation forces and the IDF. It is the same story everywhere, from the homes Rachel Corrie defended to the remote places in the Negev and land grabbing and demolitions in East Jerusalem.

And the usual and utterly predictable genocidal intent is again shown by their actions: "At least 45 homes, chicken co-ops, animal pens, carob trees and fruit orchards were leveled, and about 800 olive trees uprooted."

[Ken Burch]

3. There is always symbolism when the IDF trashes an olive grove

Olives were first cultivated in Israel/Palestine. Some of the olive trees are 2,000 years old or older.

The message the IDF sends to Palestinians or Bedouins when uprooting their olive trees is "we can move these trees, we can move you. WE can declare that you never had any right to be here and that this was never YOUR land".

It's probably the worst insult you can inflict on a person in those lands.

[ConsAreLiars]

4. Exactly. When the IDF takes down some jackass "outpost" (while defending illegal

settlements numbering a half million or so) there are never any any associated land infrastructure, because they just moved there with a bit of lumber and no connection to the land. When the Israelis move Bedouins off their land, they also destroy the evidence of the long historical record of occupancy and heritage.