The demolitions came two days after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made comments in a government meeting, as reported by Israeli media, about the “threat” of losing a Jewish majority in the Negev region.

Both Israeli and American human rights organizations harshly criticized the razing of the Bedouin homes.

“This act by the state authorities is no ‘law enforcement’ — it is an act of war, such as is undertaken against an enemy. This act cannot be dissociated from Sunday’s statement by Prime Minister Netanyahu, who at the Cabinet meeting sounded a warning about a situation in which a demand for national rights will be made from some quarters inside Israel, for example in the Negev, should the area be left without a Jewish majority.

Such things happened in the Balkans, and it is a real threat,” the New York based Human Rights Watch said in the statement they released on Monday.

Reports say the Israeli raid began at about 4:30 a.m., terrified residents awoke to find themselves surrounded by a huge force of 1,500 police with guns, stun grenades, helmets and shields.

The Israeli crews forcibly removed the villagers, mostly children and elderly people, from their homes before the demolition operation began.

Awad Abu Freih, spokesman for the Al-Araqib civil committee, told witnesses that residents were unarmed and stayed in their homes after police arrived in a form of passive resistance.

Witnesses say several residents were beaten by the Israeli police, and a female demonstrator was detained by the police.

The police removed the residents’ property into prepared containers, and bulldozers demolished the residential buildings and sheepfolds and destroyed the residents’ fruit orchards, chicken coops, and olive tree groves.

Ortal Tzabar, an Israeli land administration spokeswoman, confirmed that the authorities uprooted 850 olive trees that she said were “to be replanted elsewhere.”

The Israeli government said the raid’s declared aim is to facilitate plans by the Jewish National Fund to plant wood on the site.

The destruction of the village was carried out despite dispute over ownership of the land still pending in the courts.

Observers said the residents of Al-Araqib are neither squatters nor invaders: Their village existed many years before the creation of Israel in 1948. Residents were evicted by the state in 1951, but returned to the land on which they live and which they cultivate.

Nearly 90,000 Palestinian Arab Bedouins, the indigenous inhabitants of the Negev region of southern Israel, live in dozens of ‘unrecognized’ towns.

Because the Israeli authorities refuse to recognize their towns and villages, the Bedouins risk the destruction of their homes at any time.

“We regard this demolition as a criminal act. Bedouin citizens of Israel are not enemies, and forestation of the Negev is not a reasonable pretext for destroying a community which is more than 60 years old, dispossessing its residents, and violating the basic rights of hundreds of Israeli civilians, men, women and children,” said the Israeli Peace Now organization, whose web page describes its mission “is to promote peace and democracy through education of the Israeli public and concerned citizens worldwide.”

Human Rights Watch documented the systematic discrimination that Bedouin citizens face in a130-page report, “Off the Map” released in March 2008.  http://www.hrw.org/en/reports/2008/03/30/map-0.

In early July, Israeli border police destroyed several fields, about 80 acres, in Al Baqa’a Valley just east of Hebron, ruining the livelihood of more than one hundred Palestinians.

International peace activists from Christian Peacemaker Teams said that about 20 workers hired by the Israeli border police cut and disposed of the irrigation pipes laid in two fields. In addition to dismantling the irrigation pipes, the workers also destroyed the crops.