Unrecognized Bedouin village in Negev razed to make way for new Jewish community
Group representing impoverished towns slams ‘population replacement’ plan set to affect 9,000 residents from 14 localities; demolition said to go ahead over Shin Bet objection
Umm al-Hiran, an unrecognized Bedouin village in the Negev Desert, was demolished early Thursday to make way for a planned new Orthodox Jewish community called Dror, ending a protracted legal battle.
Police arrested three members of Umm al-Hiran’s leadership ahead of the demolition and released them shortly afterward, according to a nonprofit called the Regional Council for the Unrecognized Bedouin Villages in the Negev, which represents the impoverished southern communities.
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. The Ynet news site cited residents saying too little space had been allotted to them in the nearby Bedouin town of Hura.
The Kan public broadcaster said the National Security Ministry, under far-right minister Itamar Ben Gvir, went forward with Thursday’s demolition over the opposition of the Shin Bet security agency and the government’s Bedouin Authority. According to the report, both agencies thought progress had been made in negotiations with residents, and that it was better to resettle them by agreement than by force.
During a previous demolition in Umm al-Hiran, in 2017, police shot and killed a Bedouin driver, causing his vehicle to run over and kill a policeman. The driver was falsely accused of being a terrorist.
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It is the fifth unrecognized village to be razed since the start of 2024, which has seen a steep rise in enforcement of laws against illegal construction in the area.
Police stand around the ruins of a mosque they demolished in the unrecognized Bedouin village of Umm al-Hiran, November 14, 2024. (The Regional Council of the Unrecognized Bedouin Villages in the Negev)
Most of Umm al-Hiran’s residents had already torn down their homes to avoid being saddled with the higher cost of demolition by the police, the Council said. The community’s mosque had still been standing and was razed by police early Thursday, according to a video released by the Council.
Or Hanoch, an activist who witnessed the demolition, said drones and helicopters hovered overhead as seven police bulldozers demolished what remained of the village.
“After the mosque was demolished, the rest of the heavy machinery started re-destroying the rest of the houses, which were already demolished,” Hanoch said.
Umm al-Hiran is one of 37 unrecognized villages in the Negev, which house some 150,000 people, or roughly a third of Israel’s 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.
According to the Council, some 9,000 Bedouins are at risk of losing their homes as 14 of the villages will be replaced with a similar number of Jewish ones, in accordance with urban development plans drafted in the 1990s.
The Bedouins assert that they have roamed the area since long before Israel was founded, were driven out during the War of Independence in 1948, and were resettled there in the 1950s by the martial law administration imposed on many largely Arab-populated areas during the state’s early years.
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,” argued the Council. “The democratic Jewish population also needs to protest this injustice.”
Ben Gvir hailed the demolition, boasting that an alleged 400-percent rise in demolition orders under his watch “is the only way to bring back sovereignty to the Negev.”
However, the rise appears to have been much smaller than Ben Gvir claims. The Negev Coexistence Forum for Civil Equality nonprofit, which tracks the demolitions, says 2,007 structures were razed in the unrecognized villages in the first half of 2024, representing a nearly 25% increase over the same period in 2023 — the current government’s first six months — and a 51% increase over the same period in 2022, under the previous government.
Waleed Alhawshla, a lawmaker from the Arab Ra’am party, assailed Ben Gvir for taking pride in the “‘sovereignty tractors’ which are demolishing a Bedouin community that has existed for 68 years and defiling the sanctity of the mosque.”
Speaking to The Times of Israel in October, Alhawashla said the previous government, which included Ra’am, had tried to reach settlements with the Bedouins, but the current government had written them off.
“They don’t see us as equals,” said the lawmaker, himself a Bedouin from the Negev. “Not the Welfare [Ministry], not the Health Ministry, not the government — they all look out for the boss.”
“Who’s the boss? Ben Gvir,” he added.
An investigative report broadcast on Channel 13 news earlier this week quoted correspondence between Ben Gvir and his aides, in which the far-right minister — contrary to statements he has made during the war in Gaza — said he wouldn’t demand the destruction of Hamas, in part because he was satisfied by the increased enforcement against illegal construction in the Negev.
Haaretz reported in October that the government had reversed a 2021 decision by the previous government to recognize Rahmeh, a Bedouin village of some 2,500 people.
Ye’ela Ra’anan, the Council’s executive director, said 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 a Bedouin 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. According to Ra’anan, the village’s 400-odd residents had agreed to move to a dedicated neighborhood in the southern Bedouin town of Tel Sheva, but the move never materialized because Interior Minister Moshe Arbel neglected to sign the necessary documents. The ministry could not be reached for comment.
AP contributed to this report.
