Bedouin served eviction notices - with nowhere to go

[Classical_Liberal]

Yet the most distressing occurrence of all did not happen on this bitter Monday. It occurred a week earlier, when the Israel Lands Administration sent eviction notices to hundreds of residents of the unrecognized village where the Abualkia'an extended family lives.

This whole sequence of events, says Fuad Abualkia'an, "is no coincidence. Altogether, this says something about Bedouin circumstances in the Negev."

The Abualkia'an clan has some 5,000 members. The extended family's recent roots stretch back to the Negev area around the town of Rahat. In 1956, the family members were asked to leave this area, and move to where they are currently located, between Be'er Sheva and Meitar, in the northern Negev. Some 3,500 Abualkia'an clan members live today in the Hura village (whose total population is 8,000). Salam Abualkia'an, the head of the local council, comes from the clan. Another 1,500 clan members live in unrecognized villages around Hura. The largest such village, which is adjacent to the Green Line, is the focal point of a land dispute between the extended family and the State of Israel.

The ILA decided to take the unusual step of sending eviction notices to all village residents over the age of 16. These notices, which reached residents about two weeks ago, demand they leave their lands "vacant - without a person, object or animal in the area."

"This is where I was born. I don't know anywhere else. They brought us here to populate the Jordanian border. We helped them plant trees and now they want me to demolish my own home," says Hamuda Abualkia'an, a village resident. Twenty such eviction notices reached his large home. "This government fosters hatred against it," he says. "They want to evict me? They should come speak to me respectfully, just as they go off to speak with settlers on the Gaza Strip. They should offer us somewhere else to live, and compensations.".....

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/442135.html