MA Final Project 2011, Goldsmiths College, University of London
On the 27th July 2010, in the south of Israel, in the Negev Desert, helicopters, bulldozers and over 1,500 riot police arrived at the Bedouin village of Al-Araqib and destroyed over 50 houses, leaving 350 people homeless. The Village of Al-Araqib has been home to the Bedouin families since Ottoman times. All the villagers are citizens of Israel, they have passports, they pay taxes and they have the right to vote in national elections. But as the Jewish Israeli population grows, the Bedouin’s land has become more valuable and the Israeli government has declared the village to be unrecognised. Left off the map, never to have existed and the land belongs to the state.
Since 2010, the families of Al-Araqib have struggled to hold on to their land. Time after time, the villagers rebuild their homes only to have them demolished a week later. Slowly families have left their land to live in the nearby Arab city of Rahat. Only a handful of remain and now seek solace in the graveyard of their ancestors, the only place where the Government cannot legally touch them. There are 37 unrecognized villages in the South of Israel and this is just one story.
