Umm al-Hiran

Umm al-Hiran, with its neighbour Atir, stands in the Naqab hills south-east of the town of Hura. Its residents are Israeli citizens, members of the Abu al-Qi’an tribe, and they had lived on the site for some sixty years when the state moved to remove them. The purpose of the removal was stated plainly in the planning documents: a new town, Hiran, to be built on the same land for a Jewish population. Adalah represented the villagers in legal proceedings against the demolition for thirteen years; when the Supreme Court finally permitted the state to proceed, the organisation called the judgment one of the most racist the court had ever issued.

On the morning of Wednesday 18 January 2017 police entered the village in force to carry out demolitions. Yaqub Musa Abu al-Qi’an, a fifty-year-old teacher, packed some belongings into his vehicle and drove away rather than watch his house destroyed. Police opened fire. His car, out of control, struck and killed a police officer, Erez Levi. Abu al-Qi’an bled to death where the car came to rest. A Knesset member, Ayman Odeh, was wounded by police fire in the same operation.

Within hours the police, and then government ministers up to the prime minister, described the killing as the thwarting of a car-ramming attack and linked Abu al-Qi’an to the Islamic State. Villagers and activists who had watched it happen said the opposite: that he had been trying to leave and lost control of the vehicle only after being shot. A police investigation later found no basis for the terrorism claim, and video and forensic evidence established that he had been shot without justification and then left without medical treatment while he bled. No officer has been prosecuted.

Umm al-Hiran’s residents eventually accepted relocation to a neighbourhood of Hura, and the village was demolished. The case remains the sharpest illustration of what “unrecognised” means in the Naqab: not a technical planning status but a mechanism by which citizens can be removed from land they were directed to, so that a different community can be settled on it — and by which the state’s account of a killing can stand for years against the eyewitness account of the people who live there.

Sources

• Umm al-Hiran man killed after police open fire during violent demolition operation in Bedouin village — Adalah, 18 January 2017
• Probe shows Bedouin man was shot by police in 2017 for no reason, left to die — The Times of Israel
• On the Map: The Arab Bedouin Villages in the Negev-Naqab — Negev Coexistence Forum