Amid war in Gaza and Lebanon, Umm al-Hiran, an “unrecognized” Arab-Bedouin village in the Negev Desert, southern Israel, was demolished early Thursday, November 14, to make way for a planned new Orthodox Jewish community called Dror. Earlier, cops arrested three members of Umm al-Hiran’s leadership at their home.
According the Regional Council for the Unrecognized Bedouin Villages in the Negev, which represents the impoverished southern communities, some 9,000 Arab-Bedouins are at risk of losing their homes as 14 of the villages will be replaced with a similar number of Jewish ones.
Cops stand into the mosque, that they demolished in the Arab-Bedouin village of Umm al-Hiran, November 14, 2024 (Photo: Israeli Police)
Thursday’s demolition came after a protracted legal battle and followed a 2015 court ruling that the local Bedouins “were squatting on state land.” Efforts to find housing solutions for Umm al-Hiran’s roughly 300 residents had largely failed, and too little space had been allotted to them in the nearby Bedouin town of Hura.
During a previous demolition in Umm al-Hiran, in 2017, during the raid, two people were killed: a villager, Yaqub Musa Abu alQi’an, and a policeman, Erez Levi. The police shot and killed the Arab-Bedouin driver, causing his vehicle to run over and kill a policeman. The driver was falsely accused of being a terrorist. Hadash MK Ayman Odeh, was also injured by police, likely by sponge bullets, in a way which contradicts the police regulations.
A spokesman for the Council called Thursday’s demolition “another chapter in the ethnic cleansing and expulsion of Arabs in this country.” “The destruction of Umm al-Hiran to build the community Dror is part of the population replacement plan in the Negev,” said the Council. “The democratic Jewish population also needs to protest this injustice.”
“The militias of [racist National Security Minister Itamar] Ben-Gvir and his gangs demolished the Umm al-Hiran Mosque and the homes of residents, effectively displacing them,” Hadash Knesset Member Yousef Atawneh told Zo Hadereh. Atawneh was in place and said the demolition was the true “racist, fascist face of the Israeli government headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which views Arab citizens as enemies and invaders.” Ben Gvir hailed the demolition, boasting that an alleged 400-percent rise in demolition orders against Arab-Bedouins in the Negev under his watch “is the only way to bring back sovereignty to the Negev.”
Umm al-Hiran is the fifth “unrecognized village” to be razed since the start of 2024, and was one of 37 unrecognized villages in the Negev, which house some 150,000 people, or roughly a third of Israel’s Arab-Bedouin population, according to the Council. The villages’ unrecognized status means they are off the electric grid — residents power their homes with solar panels — and, according to the nonprofit, have few bomb shelters and receive scant protection from Israel’s air defenses.
The next unrecognized village to be razed will be Ras Jrabah, to make way for Rotem, a new neighborhood in the largely Jewish town of Dimona. Ras Jrabah’s roughly 400 residents have been given until December 31 to leave the premises. The court has forbidden the Israel Land Authority from earmarking homes in the new neighborhood for the Bedouins as a group, since Dimona is not considered an Arab0Bedouin locality.
In May, Israel demolished the village of Wadi al-Khalil to make way for an extension of Route 6, the cross-country toll road. The village’s 400-odd residents had agreed to move to a dedicated neighborhood in the southern Arab-Bedouin town of Tel Sheva, but the move never materialized because Interior Minister Moshe Arbel from the Shas orthodox party, neglected to sign the necessary documents.
