A large number of Israeli police forces aboard different vehicles stormed the eastern area of Beersheba in the Negev desert on Monday morning and assaulted local residents as bulldozers were leveling a vast tract of land belonging to a local family.
According to local sources large bulldozers belonging to the Bedouin development authority escorted by police forces embarked on carrying out a large-scale leveling operation on a land belonging to the Attrash family as a prelude to seizing the area and turning it into open shrubland.
The Israeli forces also clashed with local residents and assaulted and arrested a number of them during the bulldozing operation.
Local activist Hussein al-Rafai’ah said that the Israeli authorities decided to seize about 40 dunums of private land belonging to the Attrash family at the pretext of turning it into shrubland describing the seized area as “the gateway to the Negev and a strategic asset for its Arab population.”
