Umm al-Hiran (Arabic: أم الحيران; Hebrew: אום אל-חיראן) is a Bedouin village settled by the Abu Alkian tribe located in the Wadi Atir area of the Negev desert in southern Israel. Located near Hura, the village was established in 1956 and is one of 46 unrecognized Bedouin villages in Israel.

November 2024 :

On November 14, thousands of Israeli police officers, helicopters, and dozens of bulldozers demolished the last remaining structures of the southern Bedouin village Umm al-Hiran in the Negev to make way for a planned Orthodox Jewish community named Dror.

🔸 The Regional Council, a nonprofit advocating for Bedouin villages in the Negev, reports that three Umm al-Hiran leaders were detained before the demolition, in Hura, a village close by, before dawn.. Residents report that at 3 a.m., police from the Yoav unit arrived in neighborhood 12 of the Hora settlement and arrested activist Raid Abu Al-Qian, his father Salim, and his uncle Attawa during a "preventive arrest." As the bulldozers entered the village, police detained two 'Activestills' photographers, preventing them from documenting the mosque's demolition and forcing them to leave the area.

🔸 The Regional Council statement: "The entire village is destroyed, only the mosque is still standing, but the police have set up a station as if preparing to assault a fortified target. There are horses and cavalry, a dungeon for prisoners, everything is ready for confrontation. Yet, there is no one to confront, only a few non-violent activists. Maybe some illegal cats from the village will be arrested." A Council spokesman condemned the demolition, calling it “another chapter in the ethnic cleansing and expulsion of Arabs in this country.”

🔸Shira Tam, head of the Land Protection Division at RMI statement: "This is a long legal saga that is now coming to an end. Throughout the process, the Bedouin authority held talks with the families, and since these talks did not succeed, it was decided to proceed with the evacuation with the help and escort of the Israeli police in order to commercialize the land and develop the area."

🔸Israeli Land Authority statement: "The road has been paved for the establishment of the Dror settlement after the evacuation of the remaining diaspora from Umm Al-Khiran, most of whose inhabitants have already been evacuated... The land in question is within the boundaries of the Dror settlement and is intended for commercialization and the transfer of essential infrastructure for the development of the settlement."

Over the past week, Bedouin residents demolished all of the village's houses themselves, leaving only the mosque standing, to avoid the hefty fines they would face if the state carried out the demolitions.

According to an Israeli observer, B.M., *"Pzura", meaning "scattered" (dwellings) is the name the State of Israel calls the so-called "unrecognized Bedouin villages". The residents of the "pzura" are Israeli citizens, yet they are still denied services from the state.

According to Shameen Suleman Large forces of the Israeli police stormed the village, terrorized the residents, and arrested the young men: Salim, Atwa, and Raed Abu Al-Qi'an. It should be noted that the Israeli occupation had forced them to demolish their homes earlier. The israeli police intends to demolish the mosque in the village, which is the last remaining structure in Umm al-Hiran after demolishing all the houses. The israeli occupation seeks to uproot the residents of the area in order to establish a new settlement called "Dror" for Israeli settlers. The israeli occupation has given the residents until the 24th of this month to evacuate the area completely.

Historical and political context

Before Israel’s establishment in 1948, many Jews were sent to the Negev by the Jewish Agency, including recent migrants from Russia and Ethiopia who lived in tents. In the UN’s 1947 partition plan, the Negev was designated for the Palestinian state, which was never created. Israel seized the region in 1948 after defeating the Egyptian army, forcing about 80% of local residents to flee, mainly to Gaza. Remaining Bedouins became Israeli citizens but lived for two decades under strict military rule, with heavy restrictions on movement.

Under various pressures, Bedouins were encouraged to relocate to seven "new towns" built between 1968 and 1990. In 2011, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu introduced a plan to forcibly urbanize tens of thousands of Negev Bedouins still living in unrecognized villages. This sparked large-scale Bedouin protests and frequent clashes with Israeli police, especially during demolitions, which resulted in fatalities. Unrecognized villages lack basic services like water, electricity, sewage, and bomb shelters, leaving Bedouins vulnerable to Hamas rocket fire

The Negev is home to 37 Bedouin villages housing around 150,000 people, roughly one-third of Israel's Bedouin population. Since the 1990s, Israel has aimed to replace some of these villages with Settement communities. The Council states that current plans could displace 9,000 Bedouins across 14 villages in the Negev. National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir praised the demolition policy, citing a 400% increase in demolition orders in the Negev since early 2024.

The demolition concludes over 20 years of legal battles, implementing a 2015 ruling by Israel's High Court of Justice, which stated that the Bedouins were illegally occupying state land. However, these people are Arab citizens of Israel, and it is the Israeli apartheid laws that deny them the right to exist in their villages and limit their access to water, schools, infrastructure, roads, and even the same justice system as Jewish Israeli citizens.

Efforts to displace by force approximately 300 residents to prepared plots in the nearby Bedouin town of Hura were largely unsuccessful.

Many residents were forced to self-demolish their homes, while police razed the village's mosque, as shown in video footage released by the Regional Council for the Bedouin Villages in the Negev.

A previous demolition in Umm al-Hiran in 2017 ended in tragedy, with police fatally shooting a Bedouin driver, whose vehicle then struck and killed a policeman. The driver was initially, and falsely, accused of being a terrorist.

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