Al-Araqib (Al-Araqeeb)

Al-Araqeeb is an unrecognized village of the Al-Turi Arab Bedouin tribe in Israel, five miles (8 km) north of Beersheba.

The Jewish National Fund plans to include the land of Al-Araqeeb in a new forestation project in the Negev Desert. These plans spurred objection from some Bedouin living in Rahat and several villages nearby. In July 2010 the village was demolished by 1,300 police officers, acting under orders of the Israel Land Administration.

Since 2010 it has been rebuilt and destroyed several dozen times. After a protracted six-year long court case, in a precedent-setting ruling on March 15, 2012, the Beersheba District court ruled against the six lawsuits brought by Al-Uqbi family, which claimed their private ownership of land in the Al-Araqeeb area. Based upon the experts' testimony and the presented evidence, the judge ruled that this land belongs to the State. But the residents ignored the court ruling and came back to rebuild their structures and subsequently have been removed several times.

The Bedouin families of Arakib say they own about 4,600 acres of the Negev desert, and that they paid property taxes to the Ottoman Empire and later to the British Mandatory authorities in Palestine. Community leaders say they were forced by Israel's military into settlements along the border of the West Bank in 1951, and that they have been pushed off their land whenever they have since tried to return.

Israeli officials say the property was taken over by the state in the early 1950s because it was abandoned, and because its inhabitants were unable to produce deeds. They maintained that the Bedouins have been squatters who refused to pay rent; they cultivated land that did not belong to them, and were raising animals without livestock permits. Authorities claim that there has never been a permanent Bedouin settlement in the area. The Ottoman authorities permitted the clan members to graze their sheep and cows on this land, but did not give them ownership over it.