THE NAQAB, Thursday, January 13, 2022 (WAFA) – For the fourth day in a row, Palestinian residents of the Naqab desert in the south of Israel demonstrated against government attempts to take over their lands through razing and planting the lands with trees.

A large police force attacked the demonstrators who gathered at the intersection between al-Atrash and Saawa Bedouin communities to protest the takeover using rubber-coated metal bullets, tear gas and skunk water causing several injuries and suffocation cases.

Israel does not recognize dozens of Bedouin communities in the south of the country, which until today lack basic services such as water and electric networks, and attempt to force them out of their lands and homes in order to take them over. It has employed the tree-planting scheme in order to justify pushing the residents out of the area.

Several demonstrators have also been arrested over the past few days.

M.K.