NEGEV, (The Palestinian Information Center) Israeli authorities demolished, on Wednesday morning, 40 Palestinian homes in the Arab village of al-Sir in the Negev desert, provoking clashes with protesting residents.
Social media videos showed police forces firing tear gas canisters and stun grenades at crowds of Arab protesters and assaulting them.
Knesset member Samir bin Said, from the Arab Movement for Change, said police “used violence against the residents and attacked them with stun bombs and tear gas,” which left several people injured.
He added that some of the protesters sustained injuries and were transported to hospitals.
“We cannot accept a policy of displacing people from their homes and trying to uproot them from their land,” the lawmaker said, stressing that the families in Negev have a basic human right to live in dignity on their own land.
Last week, Israeli authorities demolished 30 homes in the same village, and according to local sources, nearly 200 more homes remain under threat of demolition.
The Israeli government classifies approximately 40 villages in the Negev desert as “unrecognized,” claiming that the roughly 55,000 Palestinian Bedouins living there cannot prove their ownership of the land.
