Here Are Israeli Malicious Attempts to Uproot Palestinians From Their Own Land

The Israeli Occupation is trying by all means to exclude the Palestinians, in the occupied territories, from their lands, starting with military force, then restricting living conditions, spreading crime, and even launching security campaigns against them, to destroying their homes and villages.

The Israeli Occupation’s plans did not stop at this point but resorted to a new method in which medicine and fraud were used to fight the Palestinian presence.

 

Ethnic Cleansing Injection

Hebrew magazine, Liberal, conducted an investigation on September 21, 2022, revealing that the Israeli Occupation authorities injected Palestinian women in the Negev (al-Naqab) with the Depo-Provera contraceptive without providing any information about the drug.

Preventive discrimination 360 investigation was prepared by journalist Eden Solomon and dealt with cases of Bedouin women during the past months who were given the treatment without giving them clarifications about its effects in preventing pregnancy.

Depo-Provera is a contraceptive injection that contains the hormone progestin and is given as an injection every three months and typically suppresses ovulation, keeping the ovaries from releasing an egg. It also thickens cervical mucus to keep sperm from reaching the egg.

The investigation proved that Bedouin women in the occupied territories are the only targets of this campaign.

Referring to data and evidence, the report proved that what is happening is not random; women from Palestinian society are always injected with this hormone.

The investigation could not find out how long ago the Israeli Occupation used these injections against Palestinian women in the occupied territories, but it insisted that “Israel” is using all power to fight the Palestinian presence in the Negev. In fact, the Israeli Occupation has succeeded in reducing the number of Palestinian births over the past decades.

In 1996, the birth rate of Palestinian women in the Negev was more than 10 children, and thus they had the largest number of children in the occupied territories.

However, during the following two decades until 2015, the birth rate decreased to 5.5 children per mother, according to Myers JDC Brookdale Institute, concerned with social policy in the Israeli Occupation.

On the other hand, the rate of childbearing among Jewish women within Haredi Judaism reached seven children, a constant rate since the eighties of the last century.

For her part, Anaam, 27, a Palestinian woman from Hura town, in the central Negev, in the occupied Palestinian interior, said that she and most of the women where she lives were among the victims of the Israeli campaign to control Palestinian birth control.

In her interview with Al-Estiklal, she said: “I was injected with a needle, the type of which I did not know, and the nurse told me nothing about it except that it is within the treatment protocol for women, and it turned out later that it is Depo-Provera, which works to prevent pregnancy, and it is only given to Palestinian women.”

She explained that she had received the injection three times since November 2021, but after the awareness campaign organized by Palestinian activists at home, she abstained from receiving the drug.

She continued: “The injection was preceded by many attempts to discourage Palestinian women from childbearing, as awareness campaigns about the danger of pregnancy and recurrent childbearing were limited to Bedouin women, while Jewish women are encouraged to have babies.”

She stressed that medical care for Palestinian women inside the country is very limited, and it turns out that all this aims to encourage the increase of the Jewish population in exchange for limiting Palestinian births.

Atiyah, 31, a Palestinian from Hura town, said that the Israeli Occupation authorities are using the worst methods, including trying to infect women with sterility through drugs, to obliterate the Palestinian Bedouin community.

He added: “We are subjected to a massacre, exactly as the people of Jenin and Gaza are subjected to, but without bloodshed, as Israel is trying to uproot the Palestinian descendants; the Nakba has not stopped since 1948.”

He continued: “Years ago, health centers were involved in a sterilization campaign, targeting men and women, but a press investigation revealed that the campaign was targeting only Bedouin women.”

Atiyah stressed that he does not trust Israeli medical institutions, even if they export some of the residents of the interior to the nursing staff, but the hospital management remains affiliated with the Israeli Occupation authorities, which implement a plan to uproot Palestinians from their land and prevent them from having children.

He explained that the Israeli Occupation authorities, in addition to targeting women’s fertility, targeted the home front of the Arab communities in the Negev by spreading drugs and weapons, facilitating the spread of gangs, and working on the rule of security chaos to make Palestinians feel insecure and think about emigration.

He added: “The lands are being distributed to any Jew who wants to settle in the Negev. We are the land owners, our homes are demolished, and our lands are confiscated, but we won’t give up.”

 

Alarming Growth

Despite the Israeli campaigns, it seems so far that the population growth rate among the Palestinians in the Negev is so high, as the 250,000 Palestinians currently living in the Negev will be half a million in 2036.

Thus, the Bedouins will constitute half of the population of the Negev, according to the Hebrew economic newspaper, TheMarker.

Observers say that the campaigns against the Palestinian presence in the Negev will continue and intensify in the following years.

The estimates come in light of the formation of a new Israeli government on December 29, 2022, the most right-wing in the history of the Israeli Occupation, led by Benjamin Netanyahu.

In mid-2017, the official Israeli television revealed a closed discussion led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about the birth rate among the Palestinians of the Negev.

He explained that the data made Netanyahu stunned, and said: “This is an existential threat that imposes the development of a national plan.”

Netanyahu’s current coalition includes far-right parties, the most important of which is the Jewish Power led by the extremist Itamar Ben-Gvir, who won the Ministry of Internal Security and a seat in the security cabinet.

Ben-Gvir will assume the portfolio of internal security, with broad and unprecedented powers that include managing the Border Police in the occupied West Bank.

Saleh al-Naami, an expert in Israeli affairs, said that health institutions, with political and security instructions, are now participating in fighting the Palestinian presence, at least in the occupied Negev, by using injections that harm women’s fertility.

He added in an interview with Al-Estiklal: “Israel assumes that the awareness of the residents of the Negev is limited, and therefore this enables it to carry out medical procedures and inject Palestinian women with drugs on a regular basis at each visit to health centers.”

Al-Naami explained that the Israeli Occupation’s problem with the Palestinians inside the Negev is demographic, as their reproduction rate is high. Therefore the medical fraud used against Palestinian women there amounts to “a crime against humanity in all international conventions.”

He continued: “With the formation of Benjamin Netanyahu’s new government, the most extremist in the history of the Israeli Occupation, the campaign will certainly increase.”

The campaigns to fight the Palestinians inside the Negev did not stop at this point; “Israel” started revoking nationalities.

Haaretz Hebrew newspaper revealed that “Israel” continues to revoke “Israeli citizenship” from thousands of Palestinians in the Negev for years, under the pretext that this nationality was mistakenly granted.

After the battle of Saif al-Quds in May 2021, the Israeli Occupation authorities increased their campaigns against the Palestinians of the interior in a crude and clear manner after the role they played in supporting Jerusalem (al-Quds), the West Bank, and Gaza.

Political analyst Mustafa al-Sawaf said that the Israeli Occupation is fighting the Palestinian presence without thinking about the expected consequences of these campaigns.

He added: “The Occupation campaigns increased after the internal uprising in May 2021, when the Palestinians confused the Israeli home front, and this prompted the Occupation to direct the army forces to Arab cities to control the situation.”

He stressed that the Israeli campaign against the Palestinians of the interior includes all of them in all regions, but it becomes more fierce in the Negev as Palestinians there have a high reproduction rate compared to the settlers.

“Therefore, their presence in this sparsely populated area allows them to control entire parts of the occupying state, and it may lose control over it in the coming years.”