the Naqab. These Bedouins, who have Israeli citizenship, have lived on their ancestral lands for centuries. According to a Human Rights Watch report of 2008: “Even though Bedouin villages in the Negev [Naqab] pre-date Israel’s first master plan in the late 1960s, state planners did not include these villages in their original plans, rendering these longstanding communities ’unrecognized.’ As a result, according to Israel’s Planning and Building Law, all buildings in these communities are illegal, and state authorities refuse to connect the communities to the national electricity and water grids, or provide even basic infrastructure such as paved roads.”99 Al-Araqib is a Palestinian Bedouin village located in the Naqab, north of Bir Saba (Israeli named Be’er Sheva). As such, the discriminatory policies implemented against al-Araqib are implemented against all other Bedouin communities under the same classification, ultimately affecting tens of thousands of Palestinians. Before the intensification of Israeli policies and the wave of demolitions beginning in 2010, the village had over 400 inhabitants.100 Today, 22 Palestinian Bedouin families - around 80 people remain in al-Araqib,101 while the rest have moved to nearby cities such as the Bedouin township of Rahat. The lands of al-Araqib are privately owned by the Touri Bedouin tribe, who purchased the land in 1905 when Palestine was under the rule of the Ottoman Empire. In 1929, during the British Mandate era, they renewed these ownership documents, which they still possess today. Both the Ottoman and British Mandate governments recognized the property rights of the Touri tribe to the lands of al-Araqib. In 1926, a parcel of land was purchased in the vicinity of al-Araqib by a group of Jews (later Jewish-Israelis), which became the Mishmar Hanegev Kibbutz.102 When the British Mandate ended and Israel was established, only the purchase documents of Mishmar Hanegev were recognized by 99 Ibid. 100 Ahmad Melhem, “Why Israel wants these Bedouins to pay for their village’s demolition”, Al Monitor, 17 April 2016, available at: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2016/04/araqib-villageisrael-demolition-palestine-land.html [accessed 21 September 2017]. 101 Oren Yiftachel, Ahmad Amara, and Sandy Kedar, “Israel Says Bedouin ‘Trespass’ on State Land. New Study: Not So,” Haaretz, 1 January 2014, available at: http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/. premium-1.566357 [accessed 25 September 2017]. 102 Amelia Smith & Penny Green, “Forced evictions in Israel-Palestine,” Middle East Monitor, June 2014, 27, available at: http://statecrime.org/data/2014/07/20140709_ForcedEvictionsInIsraelPalestine.pdf [accessed 21 September 2017]. 41