The Bedouin rights activist Nuri al Okbi, who over the past three years maintains a sit-in strike in a tent on the lands from which his tribe was expelled in 1951, will reach Tel Aviv on November 19, in order to hold the second of his monthly meetings with Jewish Israelis and with the media. The meeting, with the participation also of Akil Tawil Abu Jarwal, Nuri's partner in the struggle, will take place on October 19 at 5.00 pm at Beit Hasofer, 6 Kaplan St., Tel Aviv.

Here is one example: on October 4, one day after the big rally of Jews and Bedouins, after the others dispersed there arrived at my tent in Al-Arakib some 20 people in six vehicles. The Green Patrol people, headed by Gad Biton who already led many earlier attacks on me, and there were also the black-uniformed troops of Matpa ("Coordination, Control and Enforcement Administration") with their guns and clubs. With no identification marks of any kind they surrounded me from all directions, cut down the ropes of my tent, it fell down and they took it with all my belongings. They had no court order, nor did they give any receipt for the property they confiscated. They had left me in the middle of the desert, without water!

Last Wednesday the Green Patrol people came again and assaulted me. I called the police. The police came – but arrested me, not them. For hours and hours I was kept detained in Be'er Sheba. I was told that the condition for my release was that I would sign an obligation not to disturb any more the work of the Jewish National Fund bulldozers, not stand in the bulldozers' way.

I told the police I would not agree to this condition – it is the JNF which is working illegally on land belonging to me and to my tribe, trying to create accomplished facts on land, ahead of the ruling of the court deliberating on the ownership. In the end the police set me free without my signing anything, and I went back to the land – immediately.

Contact: Nuri al Okbi 054-5465556