Israeli Bulldozers Damage Wheat Crops in Negev

Bedouin citizens from the Negev protest in front of the Prime Minister’s office in Jerusalem against afforestation on their lands, in late January 2022. (EPA)
Bedouin citizens from the Negev protest in front of the Prime Minister’s office in Jerusalem against afforestation on their lands, in late January 2022. (EPA)
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Israeli Bulldozers Damage Wheat Crops in Negev

Bedouin citizens from the Negev protest in front of the Prime Minister’s office in Jerusalem against afforestation on their lands, in late January 2022. (EPA)
Bedouin citizens from the Negev protest in front of the Prime Minister’s office in Jerusalem against afforestation on their lands, in late January 2022. (EPA)

Bulldozers from the Jewish National Fund (JNF) and the Israel Land Authority (ILA) destroyed on Sunday the agricultural farming lands of the Arab citizens in Umm Batin and Tal as-Sabi villages, under the protection of Israeli police and special units.

Witnesses said the police closed the area, prevented the land owners from approaching and destroyed wheat and barley crops. The police claimed the land being planted is state-owned.

In January, bloody clashes erupted between residents of the Negev region and Israeli police after the latter bulldozed their agricultural lands and uprooted olive trees.

Hussein al-Rafay’a, chairman of the Regional Council for Unrecognized Villages, said this process is carried out every year to harm the Arabs of the Negev who stick to their land ownership.

He stressed that the destruction process is part of a plan to end the Arab presence in the Negev.

Israel wants the land to remain barren to be easily looted, he added, viewing the destruction of agricultural crops as an extension of the Israeli authorities’ practices to seize Palestinian lands.

The Negev is a very vast area, located in southern Israel and stretching 12 million dunums.

Dr. Mansour al-Nasasra, a lecturer at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU), said contrary to Israeli claims, there are dozens of historical documents that indicate that the Arabs of the Negev were aware of the importance of land registration.

They demanded that Ottoman authorities and then the British Mandate to officially recognize their ownership of the lands, he added.

Nasasra referred to the citizens’ meeting in this regard with the British Colonial Secretary, Winston Churchill.

The Palestinian academic said many were able to obtain Ottoman and Mandate deeds confirming their ownership of the land. However, Israeli authorities insist that these documents are insufficient.

“We are talking about less than five percent of the land in the Negev,” Nasasra stressed.

He pointed out that the Israeli authorities confiscated 95 percent of these lands in 1948 and now want to confiscate what's left.



Women and Children Scavenge for Food in Gaza, UN Official Says

 Palestinians walk on a destroyed street after Israeli forces withdrew from a part of Nuseirat, following a ground operation amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in Nuseirat, central Gaza Strip, November 29, 2024. (Reuters)
Palestinians walk on a destroyed street after Israeli forces withdrew from a part of Nuseirat, following a ground operation amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in Nuseirat, central Gaza Strip, November 29, 2024. (Reuters)
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Women and Children Scavenge for Food in Gaza, UN Official Says

 Palestinians walk on a destroyed street after Israeli forces withdrew from a part of Nuseirat, following a ground operation amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in Nuseirat, central Gaza Strip, November 29, 2024. (Reuters)
Palestinians walk on a destroyed street after Israeli forces withdrew from a part of Nuseirat, following a ground operation amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in Nuseirat, central Gaza Strip, November 29, 2024. (Reuters)

Large groups of women and children are scavenging for food among mounds of trash in parts of the Gaza Strip, a UN official said on Friday following a visit to the Palestinian enclave.

Ajith Sunghay, head of the UN Human Rights office for the Occupied Palestinian Territories, expressed concern about the levels of hunger, even in areas of central Gaza where aid agencies have teams on the ground.

"I was particularly alarmed by the prevalence of hunger," Sunghay told a Geneva press briefing via video link from Jordan. "Acquiring basic necessities has become a daily, dreadful struggle for survival."

Sunghay said the UN had been unable to take any aid to northern Gaza, where he said an estimated 70,000 people remain following "repeated impediments or rejections of humanitarian convoys by the Israeli authorities".

Sunghay visited camps for people recently displaced from parts of northern Gaza. They were living in horrendous conditions with severe food shortages and poor sanitation, he said.

"It is so obvious that massive humanitarian aid needs to come in – and it is not. It is so important the Israeli authorities make this happen," he said. He did not specify the last time UN agencies had sent aid to northern Gaza.

US WARNING

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin set out steps last month for Israel to carry out in 30 days to address the situation in Gaza, warning that failure to do so may have consequences on US military aid to Israel.

The State Department said on Nov. 12 that President Joe Biden's administration had concluded that Israel was not currently impeding assistance to Gaza and therefore was not violating US law.

The Israeli army, which began its offensive against Hamas in the Gaza Strip after the group's attack on southern Israeli communities in October 2023, said its operating in northern Gaza since Oct. 5 were trying to prevent militants regrouping and waging attacks from those areas.

Israel's government body that oversees aid, Cogat, says it facilitates the entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza, and accuses UN agencies of not distributing it efficiently.

Looting has also depleted aid supplies within the Gaza Strip, with nearly 100 food aid trucks raided on Nov. 16.

"The women I met had all either lost family members, were separated from their families, had relatives buried under rubble, or were themselves injured or sick," Sunghay said of his stay in the Gaza Strip.

"Breaking down in front of me, they desperately pleaded for a ceasefire."