JERICHO: Armed Israeli colonists Wednesday evening stormed the Arab al-Mlaihat community, northwest of the occupied West Bank city of Jericho,

Hasan Mlaihat, supervisor of the al-Baidar Organization in Defense of Bedouin Rights, said that a number of armed colonists barged their way into the community and grazed their livestock on the community fodder crops.

The colonists roamed the community all the way to the Arab al-Kaabneh School to provoke the residents.

He added that colonist assaults against the community were part of the Israeli occupation’s ongoing policy of detecting Bedouins’ sheep as a prelude for stealing and 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-eighties, people of al-Mlaihat were sent out from the al-Irqa area to Maghair al-Dair
, which is only 7km away from it, claiming the area a military closed zone by Israel.

Source: Palestine news & Information Agency – WAFA