RAMALLAH, West Bank — The residents of Umm al-Hiran in the Negev are on standby, awaiting Israeli bulldozers to arrive someday and destroy their homes as a prelude to establishing a Jewish community on the ruins. Around 70 Bedouin families, some 1,000 people, face forced evictions after a May 5 ruling by the Israeli Supreme Court upholding a 2002 government decision to destroy their village and build a Jewish town called Hiran.
Lawyers from Adalah: The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel had argued before the court that the residents of Umm al-Hiran and their ancestors have been living in the village since 1956 on the orders of the Israeli military governor after they were displaced from their original home, Khirbet Zbala. They did not seize the land on which they live. Moreover, their displacement and the demolition of their homes would be unfair and unjust treatment, because they had been established decades prior at the will of the state but would now be demolished based on claims that they had not been permitted.
