Newsletter
Newsletter Support JNS

Thousands of Bedouin Arabs riot, 12 injured during tree-planting in Negev Desert

Israel Police: “We will allow the freedom of protest as long as it is conducted in a legal manner; we will act with zero-tolerance against disturbances.”

Israeli Police clash with Bedouin during a protest against tree-planting by the Jewish National Fund-Keren Kayemet LeIsrael outside the Bedouin village of al-Atrash in the Negev Desert on Jan. 13, 2022. Photo by Jamal Awad/Flash90.
Israeli Police clash with Bedouin during a protest against tree-planting by the Jewish National Fund-Keren Kayemet LeIsrael outside the Bedouin village of al-Atrash in the Negev Desert on Jan. 13, 2022. Photo by Jamal Awad/Flash90.

More than 2,000 people took part in violent protests in the Negev Desert on Thursday against the planting of trees by the Jewish National Fund-Keren Kayemet LeIisrael (JNF-KKL).

Bedouin rioters threw stones at police and blocked a road, reported Arutz 7. The police had to push the crowd back from the road.

Twelve protesters were injured in the melee.

Israeli Police said “we will allow the freedom of protest as long as it is conducted in a legal manner; we will act with zero-tolerance against disturbances,” according to the report,

Regavim, an NGO that works to preserve Israel’s resources, tweeted: “In light of the unprecedented, violent Bedouin rioting throughout the Negev, we demand that the Border Police & General Security Service take immediate action to secure the safety of the citizens of the Negev.”

“It’s yet another example of the Wikipedia editors’ anti-Israel bias,” Alyza Lewin of the Combat Antisemitism Movement told JNS.
Balad party chair Sami Abu Shehadeh, who wrote a piece lauding Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks, withdrew his candidacy for the upcoming election.
Rabbi Rachel Timoner, of Congregation Beth Elohim, told JNS that there ought to be a conversation “to break down assumptions.”
In her ruling, Katharine Hayden wrote that the alleged victims may have interfered with one of the defendant’s right to protest.