JERICHO: Israeli occupation forces Tuesday evening stormed the Arab al-Mlaihat Bedouin community, northwest of the occupied West Bank city of Jericho, according to a local activist.

Hasan Mlaihat, the supervisor of the al-Baidar Organization in Defense of Bedouin Rights, said that many colonists barged their way into the community, ransacked and marked several dwellings, a signal that Mlaihat considered as signalling the risk of impending danger.

He added that the Bedouin communities in the Jordan Valley are subjected to ongoing assaults, tightened restrictions and raids, all carried out within the larger context of Israeli attempts to forcibly expel and ethnically cleanse them 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 away from it, claiming the area a military closed zone by Israel.

Source: Palestine News and Information Agency – WAFA