Israel: Bulldozers flatten Bedouin village 49 times
Israeli forces have repeatedly demolished homes in Al-Araqib in a bid to get the community to move into townships. - Hakmeh Abu Mdeighem sat quietly on a cement cinderblock last Wednesday, looking out across a small valley at where, moments earlier, Israeli police bulldozers had turned a handful of tents and shacks into piles of sandy rubble. The 49th demolition of the Bedouin village of Al-Araqib had just ended, and Abu Mdeighe, a mother of nine, spoke unflinchingly. "One feels that one doesn't live in one's own country anymore. One feels that a continuous war is going on between him and Israel. This is a war that Israel wages against us everything month," she said. "What can we do when the state comes and fights you inside your own house, on your own ground, when it destroys your house on the heads of your sons?" Abu Mdeighem, her husband and her children, live inside the village's century-old Islamic cemetery. The burial ground is the only place in Al-Araqib that has never been demolished. It is here that the handful of families who remain now call home.