After years of harrassment by the authorities and endless demolition orders, after the village’s resident, math teacher Ya’akub Abu Al-Qi’an was killed by the police and falsly accumed by goverment minister of being “a terrorist” – Bedouin village Umm al-Hiran finally yielded. Threatened with Israeli demolition and forced displacement, the inhabitants signed an agreement with Israeli authoritie to leave their homes “on their own accord” and move to the town of Hura. “There is only one name for such an agreement,” wrote Jacky Huri in Ha’aretz, “a concented transpher.” He warns that the model demonstrated in that case, removing Arabs to create a town for Jews only, “could be used by the state in the future and have far reaching influence on the demographic division of resources in the Negev”.
Adalah, the legal centre for Arab minoroty rights In Israel, which represented Umm Al Hiran’s resodents in courts for 15 years, compared Israel’s behaviour in Umm Al Hirran to Soputh Africa’s Apartheid regiem. A statement published on Adalah website sais: “Adalah sees the demolition of Umm al-Hiran and forced displacement of its residents as an act of extreme racism, embodying Israel’s colonialist land policies with the backing of the entire Israeli court system. Israel is moving forward with the destruction of Umm al-Hiran in a plan – reminiscent of the darkest of regimes such as apartheid-era South Africa – to build a new Jewish-only town on its ruins.” Read the full statement.
ICAHD UK stands with the Bedouins in the Negev. Khalil Alamour, a senior Bedoouin activist from the Negev, will be speaking about the threat to his community at ICAHD UK’s 2018 conference on 19 May. Khalil will come back to London for a special talk hosted by ICAHD UK in May 2018. Khalil Alamour said this week: “I think that this forced displacement of Umm al-Hiran’s residents an act of racism, and it shows ugly face of the “only democracy in the Middle East”. We feel hopeless and helpless because of these action been taken in front of the open eye of the Israeli court and with its support.”