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Today, Thursday 12 June 2014, Palestine Solidarity Campaign called for the Foreign Secretary, William Hague, to intervene to stop Israel’s demolition of Al Arakib village.
PSC called for the Foreign Secretary “to urgently meet with the Israeli Ambassador to the UK and for the UK Embassy in Israel to meet their counterparts to express the UK’s shock and displeasure at Israel’s demolition of Al Arakib village”.
This was following news from the Negev Forum for Coexistence, alerting the international community to Israel’s demolitions in Al Arakib this morning. According to the Negev Forum, Israeli Forces began demolishing water tanks and structures around the cemetery.
The village of Al Arakib has already been destroyed more than 60 times since July 2010, and each time the villagers have rebuilt their homes, determined to stay on their ancestral lands, despite the physical and emotional hardships.
The remaining residents had already received eviction orders stating that by 13th July they must leave the village or be evicted by force. The orders include the dead and people who have left the village.
The residents of Al Arakib lay claims to the lands on which their village is built and from which they were first evicted after the establishment of the Israeli state in the fifties. Their land claims are still before the courts and have yet to be decided.
During the last four years the non-violent resistance of Al Arakib has become a symbol of the Arab-Bedouin struggle against Israeli government plans to forcibly concentrate its Bedouin citizens in government “planned” townships and to demolish 35 so-called unrecognised villages, whose population numbers in the thousands.
Sarah Colborne, Director of Palestine Solidarity Campaign said:
“We are calling on the Foreign Secretary to immediately tell the Israeli Ambassador that the demolitions must be stopped. It is not enough for the UK Government to simply express its displeasure. The government must impose sanctions upon Israel for its violations of international law. Only action will work.”
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