JERICHO: Israeli occupation forces Friday night stormed Arab al-Mlaihat Bedouin community, 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 the occupation forces barged their way into the community, ransacked all dwellings and carried out an electronic census of the population, registering their ID card numbers.
He added that the raid was carried out within the larger context of Israeli attempts to forcibly expel and ethnically cleanse all the Palestinian Bedouin communities in the Jordan Valley as a prelude to take over their land.
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 aw
ay from it, claiming the area a military closed zone by Israel.
Source: Palestine news & Information Agency – WAFA
