By day Mohammed Talake, a construction worker, is helping to build Intel's new semiconductor plant in Kiryat Gat. At night he returns to his tent. The 37 year-old Bedouin remembers the morning of June 13th with great anguish. "Just after dawn at about 6 am without any prior warning, there was a knock on our door," he recalls. "When I opened up the police demanded that my wife and myself and our five children immediately vacate the house."

"When we went outside," he continues, "they took all our furniture and belongings away and then bulldozed the house down."

Mohammed Talake (right) and his 20-month old son
Hasan at the protest in Jerusalem.

Talake, from the unrecognized village of Tawail Abu Jawal north of Beer Sheva, and his family are currently living in the "refugee camp" opposite the Knesset. "For the past month," he said, "we have been living in a tent and a tree house in the Negev adjacent to our land that we were able to build with help from nearby communities. It has been very hot and uncomfortable. We will stay here in Jerusalem as long as it takes, but our village will always be our home."

While the demolitions and evictions at Um El Hiran were well documented in the Israeli press, the police actions at Tawail Abu Jawal, also in June, where a dozen of the 30 families living there were evicted, was not reported. The evictions show a clear trend by the government to escalate an already-harsh policy against the Negev Bedouin.

I do not have the energy to build my house again," said Talake, "We'll carry on living in tents. But I do have the energy to continue the struggle for the right to my land."