JERICHO, Saturday, June 1, 2024 (WAFA) – Israeli colonists today bared a Bedouin community from using a major street, northwest of the occupied West Bank city of Jericho, according to a local activist.

Hasan Mlaihat, supervisor of the al-Baidar Organization in Defense of Bedouin Rights, said that colonists prevented residents of the Arab al-Mlaihat Bedouin community from standing at the al-Mu‘arrajat Street while the latter were waiting for a public taxi to pick them to Ramallah or Jericho to sell their dairy products.

He added that the colonists’ raid into the community was part of the Israeli occupation's ongoing policy of displacing the community to make room for colonial expansion.

According to the Applied Research Institute of Jerusalem (ARIJ), the Arab al-Mlaihat come originally from Negev; people of this area were forcefully expelled to live in different places of the West Bank due to their nomadic nature.  In the mid-1980s, people of al-Mlaihat were sent out from al-Irqa area to Maghair al-Dair, which is only 7km away from it, claiming the area a military closed zone by Israel.

K.F.