Palestinians in Israel
Israel demolished 5,742 Naqab structures in 2025, double 2022's count
Palestinians in IsraelGraphic: Times of Palestine
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Israel's National Security Ministry recorded 5,742 demolitions of what it calls "illegal structures" in the Naqab (Negev) in 2025, more than double the 2,850 demolished in 2022, with over 1,000 of last year's total being homes rather than agricultural or storage structures.
Against that count, Israel's Bedouin Settlement Authority allocated relocation plots to only 40 families in the same period, according to the ministry's own figures — a gap rights groups cite as evidence the demolition rate is not a planning process but an expulsion pressure.
Where it is happening now#
In April 2026, Israeli forces demolished homes in al-Sir, a village that had already lost most of its structures in a late-2025 campaign, placing roughly 1,500 Palestinian Bedouin residents at risk of displacement, according to reporting from the ground. Amnesty International documented a similar mass-demolition wave in 2024 that left over 300 Bedouin citizens facing eviction.
The villages the state does not recognise#
Thirty-seven Bedouin communities in the Naqab are classified by Israel as "unrecognized villages," a status dating to master plans drawn up in the 1960s that excluded them entirely.
The designation denies residents state connections for water, electricity, sewage, schools, clinics and roads, according to Adalah, the Haifa-based legal centre that has documented the villages' status for decades — and it keeps every home built there exposed to a demolition order, since none can obtain a building permit under a plan that does not acknowledge the village exists.
"Trespassers on State land."
The state's official classification of unrecognized-village residents who have lived on the same land for generations, per Adalah's documentation
What residents and rights groups are asking for#
Adalah and allied groups have pressed for retroactive recognition of the 37 villages under a revised regional master plan, connection to the national water and electricity grids ahead of any demolition decision, and a moratorium on demolitions in villages where recognition proceedings are already open. None of the three has moved forward in 2026.
