Al-Araqeeb
The Bedouin from Al-Araqib ("Gentle Hills"), such as the al-Tūris and al-‘Uqbis, have fought to return to their ancestral lands.
The village lies on the 200mm RPA (rainfall per annum) line drawn by Israeli meteorologists on the basis of a schema developed by Wladimir Köppen to define cultivable land in the desert.
Two archives were established to document the local Bedouin's rights to their land, one by Nūri al-‘Uqbi and another by Israeli geographer Oren Yiftachel.
Israeli courts have rejected suits to reclaim this land, refusing to acknowledge Bedouin tenure south of the 200 mm line, which is reserved for kibbutzim and moshavim.
[4] In 2012 an Israeli court turned down a suit by the al-'Uqbis to win their title based on a claim of continuous cultivation, recognized by the state.
[9] The Bedouin families of Arakib say they own about 4,600 acres of the Negev desert,[10] and that they paid property taxes to the Ottoman Empire and later to the British Mandatory authorities in Palestine.
[10] Community leaders say they were forced by Israel's military into settlements along the border of the West Bank in 1951, and that they have been pushed off their land whenever they have since tried to return.
[10] They maintained that the Bedouins have been squatters who refused to pay rent; they cultivated land that did not belong to them, and were raising animals without livestock permits.
The Ottoman authorities permitted the clan members to graze their sheep and cows on this land, but did not give them ownership over it.
[16] In July 2010, Israel Land Administration inspectors and 1,300 police officers demolished the villages' 46 buildings and uprooted 850 trees, which were transferred for replanting elsewhere.
[6] Witnesses told CNN that the hundreds of Israeli riot police who stormed the village were accompanied by "busloads of cheering civilians".
[20] The Bedouin Knesset member, Taleb el-Sana, was forcibly removed from the scene by police after he had tried to stop the demolition.
Taleb el-Sana attended and told Israeli media that, "The state is pushing its Bedouin citizens to the point where they may launch a popular intifada, which will have severe results.
[23] On January 31, the village was again demolished, while police forces also guarded Jewish National Fund (JNF) forestation work in the area.
[27] The Israeli authorities forcibly removed the residents of the village in September 2019, before demolishing all their homes and tents for the 162nd time.
For the plaintiffs spoke Ben Gurion University’s Prof. Oren Yiftachel, a critical geographer and a social scientist.
Testifying for the state was Prof. Ruth Kark, a leading expert on the historical geography of Palestine and Israel from the Hebrew University.
In an expert opinion filed to the court, Oren Yiftachel said that these "tribal areas" of scattered tent clusters were not at that time registered with the authorities, but were nevertheless considered settled and met the definition of a "village" in the 1921 Land Ordinance.
[7] The State presented an aerial shot of the place which they said proved that the Al-Araqeeb area had no cultivated land during the British mandate period.
