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There has been a 400 percent increase in the issuance of demolition orders, Zionist Minister Ben Gvir confirmed. In order to avoid covering the expenses, about 300 residents of the Arab Bedouin village of Umm al-Hiran, in the Negev desert, destroyed their own homes on Wednesday. On Thursday, the Israeli Police and the Land Authority demolished the only remaining structure, the mosque, with the aim of clearing the area to build a Jewish-only town.

“The destruction of Umm al-Hiran to make way for the settlement of Dror is part of a systematic population replacement program in the Negev, intended to uproot nearly 10,000 people in 14 villages and replace them with almost 20 new Jewish colonies, sometimes on the same land,” the Regional Council of Unrecognized Bedouin Villages (RCUV) said today following this forced evacuation.

After a legal battle lasting over 20 years, this is the fourth Bedouin village destroyed by the Israeli government in 2024, and in December, the same is expected to happen to Ras Jaraba, a community in the Negev with over 500 residents and under judicial eviction orders since July 2023.

Already in 2017, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel (Adalah) reported that the community replacing Al-Hiran would be open only to “Jewish Israeli citizens or permanent residents who observe the Torah and commandments according to the values of Orthodox Judaism.”

An RCUV spokesperson, Nati Yefet, indicated that around a hundred police officers, accompanied by seven bulldozers, entered the village at around 3:30 a.m. Three residents, like many today resettled in the 12th neighborhood of the nearby town of Hura, were detained for nine hours. At the same time, the mosque was demolished.

“There is justice, and there is justice! A mosque and illegal buildings constructed in the village of Umm al-Hiran, in the Negev, were destroyed this morning by government tractors,” celebrated National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, a settler and avowed racist who oversees police forces, today on X.

“Since the beginning of the year, there has been a 400 percent increase in the issuance of demolition orders: Proud to lead a strong policy of destroying illegal houses in the Negev!” added Ben Gvir, who was convicted in 2007 for supporting a terrorist organization and incitement to racism.

Israel does not recognize, nor show on its maps, 36 semi-nomadic Bedouin villages that predate the establishment of this state in 1948. Only eleven have been recognized in the last two decades, but human rights organizations report they lack any basic infrastructure like water, electricity, or roads.

The Zionist government aims for some 350,000 Bedouins to abandon their agricultural lifestyle in the Negev and live in limited, impoverished urban areas. At least 190,000 Bedouins have already been forced to do so.

The government’s ‘Population Replacement’ program in the Negev seeks to displace around 9,000 Arab Bedouins from 14 villages and replace them with a similar number of Jewish settlements. Despite comprising nearly 40 percent of the Negev’s population, Bedouins have access to less than 10 percent of agricultural areas and less than 4 percent of the land.

“The destruction of Umm al-Hiran this morning exemplifies the face of institutionalized racism in its most extreme form. The triumphant statements by the Israel Land Authority are a punch to the gut, although, unfortunately, we expect nothing better from Ben Gvir, the Minister of National Security. It is incomprehensible that a government authority would openly boast about its discriminatory policies,” RCUV stated.