Human Rights organisation, Amnesty International, have spoken out against plans by the Israeli government to destroy a Palestinian Bedouin village and force its 500 inhabitants to go and live in a segregated Bedouin only town.
127 residents are taking the Israeli government to court in a trial that will be held shortly in an attempt to appeal against the ruling.
Israel currently does not recognise the Negev/Naqab village Ras Jrabah and, as such, the residents are cut off from public services. By destroying the town, Israel plans to allow the development and expansion of the town of Dimona, which is mostly inhabited by Israeli Jewish people.
Activists say that the plan is part of Israel's systematic racism and apartheid against the Palestinians.
Saleh Higazi, Amnesty International's Deputy Director for the Middle East and North Africa, said of the Israeli plans:
"This eviction plan is steeped in the cruelty of apartheid. Five hundred people are at risk of losing the only homes they have ever known and being forcibly transferred to an impoverished new location, where they will be separated from the Jewish Israeli population. Israeli authorities must cancel all eviction and demolition orders in Ras Jrabah, and immediately grant legal recognition and status to all unrecognized villages in the Negev/Naqab."
"Across Israel and the OPT, displacement is a key strategy used to dominate the lives of Palestinians living under Israel's system of apartheid. There is no alternative to international justice in the face of Israel's continued discriminatory policies and practices and the complicity of Israeli courts in their establishment."
A resident of the town, Ras Jrabah, said of the plans:
"We can't move to a different place. Our whole lives are based here, in this location… Everyone in the village is nervous about the courts, and we are preparing ourselves as best we can."
Many Palestinians believe that the ultimate goal of the Israeli state is the complete removal of Arabs and Palestinians from Palestine and the takeover of the land by Israeli Jews. The land currently occupied by the state of Israel was previously owned by Palestinians who were forced off their land in the late 1940s to make way for Jews coming from Europe and the Middle East.
[Based on reorting by: Amnesty International]
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