Israeli Policy of Ethnic Cleansing

Israel’s continuous suppression and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians has been part of its governmental policy since its creation in 1948. This policy has even been used against Israeli Palestinians within the green line and not only in the occupied West Bank and Gaza.

The latest crimes are the ones that have taken place in the Israeli Negev desert. There is also the ethnic cleansing of Israeli Palestinians in the southern part of Israel, where around 170,000 Palestinians live. Since 1948, they have been deprived of basic services such as healthcare, education and other social services.

It was reported on July 26th, 2010, that, “Israeli police armed with tear gas, a water canon and two helicopters forced the 200 Bedouin residents of the Southern Israeli village of al-Arakib, out of their homes. Most of the furniture was then removed from the 45 buildings of the village and bulldozers were used to flatten the buildings. It is to be noted that the victims of this act are not residents of the occupied territories. They are non-Jewish citizens of the state of Israel. This sort of thing happens all the time in ‘the only democracy in the Middle East’. According to the Israeli Committee Against Home Demolitions, over 24,000 Palestinian homes have been torn down or blown up in the occupied territories alone.” The report further noted that the Israeli forces arrived in the village accompanied by busloads of Jewish civilians who cheered as the dwellings were demolished. Prior to the “demolitions”, the crowd went into the villagers’ homes to extract their furniture and belongings. They vandalized the sites and defaced family photographs. This was done in “plain sight of the owners”. (readersupportednews.org, 8/810).

This aggressive Israeli policy of demolishing entire villages inhabited by Israeli Palestinian citizens has been a continuous government policy of ethnic cleansing. According to a media statement released by Human Rights Watch (HRW), “Israel has demolished thousands of Negev Bedouin homes since the 1970s and over 200 since 2009. The land administrators also began spraying the villagers’ crops with herbicides in 2002 as a mechanism to cause evacuation, a practice deemed illegal by the Israeli Supreme Court in 2007. HRW says, “Thousands of Bedouins were displaced following the establishment of Israel 1948. Furthermore, HRW noted that, “tens of thousands of Bedouins live in ‘unrecognized villages in the south of Israel’ and Israel has refused to connect them to basic services and infrastructure. However, Israeli authorities granted large tracts of land and public funds for Israeli Jews to establish ranches in the area and connected them to basic electric and water grids. HRW continued to say, “It is clear to us that this action by the Israeli government is politically motivated and systematic discrimination.” (IPS-MIDEAST: Homeless Take On Israeli Forces, 8/17/10).

Many members of the American congress refer to Israel as the “only democracy in the Middle East”. That is one of the main reasons that the state of Israel has been acting above the law in violation of international law and U.N. resolutions.