Al-Araqib, Israel - Hakmeh Abu Mdeighem sat quietly on a cement
cinderblock last Wednesday, looking out across a small valley at where, moments
earlier, Israeli police bulldozers had turned a handful of tents and shacks into
piles of sandy rubble. The 49th demolition of the Bedouin village of Al-Araqib had just ended, and
Abu Mdeighe, a mother of nine, spoke unflinchingly.
"One feels that one doesn't live in one's own country anymore. One feels that
a continuous war is going on between him and Israel. This is a war that Israel
wages against us every month," she said. "What can we do when the state
comes and fights you inside your own house, on your own ground, when it destroys
your house on the heads of your sons?"
Abu Mdeighem, her husband and her children, live inside the village's
century-old Islamic cemetery. The burial ground is the only place in Al-Araqib
that has never been demolished. It is here that the handful of families who
remain now call home.
"They threatened to destroy the cemetery before this," Abu Mdeighem said. "It
is really painful… what they are doing. Painful, very painful. When a person
does not scream, and just lets others see his tears, it is painful."
Originally home to about 300 residents reaching back into the very earliest days of humanity, Al-Araqib is
located just north of Be'er Sheva in Israel's Negev desert. The village is one
of dozens that has never been recognized by the state, and doesn't feature on
any official maps. Its residents are denied access to water, electricity, paved
roads, hospitals, schools and other basic services.
Hundreds of Israeli police officers and soldiers first demolished dozens of homes and animal pens and uprooted
thousands of olive trees in Al-Araqib in July 2010. The Israeli authorities have
regularly returned to demolish tents and basic structures that residents have
erected there ever since. It's become a symbol of the right of the Bedouin to live as they've lived for thousands of years rather than forced into ghettos in the towns and cities.
