Negev _ Palestine News Network
Israeli mechanisms demolished Thursday morning the village of al-Araqib in the Negev desert for the 132nd consecutive time.
The head of the People´s Committee for the defence of al-Araqib, Yousef Abu Zayed, said that Israeli police forces stormed the army on Friday morning and began demolishing all houses there (tents).
He added that the Israeli police had arrested four villagers in conjunction with the demolition, and took them for questioning at a detention centre in the city of "Beersheba".
This is the 132nd time that the village was demolished, the last Israeli demolition in July July, he said.
The Israeli authorities abandoned the inhabitants of the village of al-Araqib for the first time in 1953, arguing that the area was subordinate to the "Jewish National Fund" (Kirin Kayemis), sometimes invoking other security and military reasons.
It is one of 45 Arab villages in the Negev that are not recognized by Israel and deprive them of basic services as "illegal villages".
Some 240,000 Arabs live in the Negev desert, half of whom reside in villages and gatherings, some of them for hundreds of years.
