SOUTHERN ISRAEL, JULY 27 — Some 1,500 heavily-armed Israeli cops, backed by choppers and bulldozers, demolished the “unrecognized” Palestinian-Bedouin village of Al-Araqib in southern Israel (the Bedouin Arabs are former nomads who have established their villages in the desert), leaving 40 impoverished working-class families stranded in the desert without a roof over their heads. The villagers’ olive orchards, chicken coops and sheep pens, used to supplement their meager incomes, were also destroyed.
Even before its demolition, Al-Araqib’s residents — like the residents of numerous other “unrecognized” Palestinian-Bedouin villages in the Negev — were denied even the most basic infrastructure and services. They lived without modern sewage facilities, with no local medical care or schooling, and had to use expensive on-site generators and plastic tanks to provide their electricity and water. The Israeli government conquered the Negev in 1948 and made it a part of Israel, claiming that the Bedouin — who have lived there for centuries — established the village “illegally” on land now belonging to the state. At the same time the Israeli government easily grants land, infrastructure and services to small Jewish settlements in the area and even to single-family “individual settlement farms” owned by rich ranchers (generally ex-Israel Defense Force ranking officers). Recently, one of these racist ranchers shot and killed a Bedouin; needless to say , he was found not guilty by the bosses’ Zionist court, thus giving the green light for others to follow suit.
Demolition U.S.-Financed
The aim of this racist demolition was to pave the way for a planned ruling-class gated settlement, Hiran, A Religious–Jews Only enclave. It is financed by U.S. billionaires, including Ron Lauder, in conjunction with the racist JNF (the Zionist Jewish National Fund, which controls all the land grabbed in the 1948 and 1967 wars). In other words, the Israeli Zionist police force erased an entire village off the land as a service to real-estate tycoons .
The destruction of Al-Araqib is not an isolated incident. It is another step in the Israeli ruling class’ ongoing attack on workers’ housing in the service of real-estate capital, both local and foreign. This is a racist and colonialist policy — ethnic cleansing to serve the rich. The racist, ultra-nationalist Israeli regime also wants to guarantee a Jewish national supremacy in every part of the country.
Recently, thousands of Palestinian workers living in the ancient city of Jaffa (part of Tel Aviv today), and super-exploited Jewish workers in the Kfar Shalem neighborhood (established on the ruins of a Palestinian village demolished in 1948) in south Tel Aviv are threatened with eviction to make way for massive real-estate development projects in the areas. The Miami-based real-estate tycoon, Irving Moscowitz, is using the Israeli state-machine to evict many Palestinian families from the villages of Sheik Jarah and Ras al-Amud in order to clear the land for real-estate development.
The fascist Israeli state, as well as its racist ideology of Zionism, serve only the capitalists, is more than willing to act with extreme brutality and cruelty against workers when it is deemed necessary by the tycoons’ interests. This government uses racism as a tool to divide the workers and turn them one against the other, all while blatantly ignoring the most basic needs of entire populations of workers.
The interest of the Israeli and Palestinian workers is, therefore, to unite and smash this fascist state-machine and place the working class in power. Only workers’ communist rule would be able to provide for the needs of each and every worker in this part of the world, be that housing, education, healthcare or adequate infrastructure. Only the seizure of power by the working class will do away with all tycoons and their rotten system that breeds racism, poverty and war.
UPDATE - AUGUST 10, 2010 - Al-Araqib was demolished again by the fascist Israeli police force, for the third time in two weeks. Several Jewish and Arab activists who tried to resist the destruction were arrested. But the workers and peasants of Al-Araqib have not given up, and will continue fighting against the racist government and its capitalist masters.