Israeli police officers shot dead a Palestinian who they allege tried to ram them with his car during a protest against home demolitions in southern Israel.

A policeman who was struck by the vehicle later died of his injuries, according to the Israeli media.

However, residents of the Bedouin village of Um Al Hiran, in the Negev Desert, said that the driver was simply heading to the scene to talk with authorities in an attempt to halt the demolitions.

Al Jazeera's Imran Khan, reporting from Um Al Hiran, said one other Palestinian was killed during clashes that broke out after the incident.

Ayman Odeh, a Palestinian member of the Knesset (Israeli parliament), was injured in the head by police during the confrontation, a parliamentary aide who was with him said.

Conflicting narratives

Israeli police said several officers were injured during the early-morning incident, without providing further details.

"A vehicle driven by a terrorist from the Islamic Movement intended to strike a number of officers and carry out an attack," Micky Rosenfeld, police spokesperson, said in a statement.

A later Israeli statement confirmed that the alleged attacker was dead.

However, Raed Abu al-Qiyan, an Um Al Hiran activist, denied that the driver of the car was seeking to harm police.

Identifying the man as a member of his Bedouin clan by the name of Yacoub Abu al-Qiyan, told AFP news agency: "The Israeli narrative is a lie. He was a revered school teacher.

"He was in his car and they shot at him from everywhere."

The injured Palestinian politician Odeh heads the Joint List, a coalition of mainly Arab parties and the third-largest bloc in the Knesset.

"They attacked the MP and other people - demonstrators - with stun grenades, tear gas directly in people's faces," Odeh's aide, Anan Maalouf, told Israeli army radio.

"There was no car-ramming attack here. There were no clashes here between the demonstrators and police.

INTERACTIVE: Broken homes - Jerusalem home demolitions at record high in 2016

Israeli authorities regularly carry out demolitions of Bedouin homes they deem to have been built illegally.

However, building permits are nearly impossible to obtain, according to residents and activists, who say Jewish Israelis are given preferential treatment.

Israel plans to demolish the whole of Um Al Hiran and replace it with a Jewish village by the name of Hiran.

Um Al Hiran is just one of about 40 "unrecognised" Bedouin villages in Negev scheduled for demolition despite being home to tens of thousands of residents.

Because of their "unrecognised" status, many of them are denied access to electricity, water and other municipal services.

Earlier in January, Palestinian citizens of Israel announced a nationwide strike after Israeli authorities demolished 11 Palestinian homes in the city of Qalansawe in central Israel.

These homes were also demolished on the pretext that they were built without a permit.

Speaking to Al Jazeera, Yousef Jabareen, a Knesset member and professor of architecture, said half a million Palestinians face displacement in Israel and East Jerusalem.

During the past two decades about 5,000 Palestinian homes in Israel have been demolished, Jabareen estimates.

"There is an obvious plan to halt any prospect of Palestinian cities naturally developing and expanding as our population grows. There is systematic ghettoisation of our towns and a strategy to confine us within our existing spaces."

Palestinians have jurisdiction over only 2.3 percent of the entire state's land, causing severe overcrowding in towns and villages and the building of houses without the required permits.

Since the creation of the Israeli state in 1948, no new Palestinian towns or cities were built, in contrast to the 600 Jewish municipalities that have been developed, according to Adalah, the legal centre for Arab minority rights in Israel.</s>Ethnic Cleansing in Umm al-Hiran: Palestinian, Israeli Leadership React to Deadly Police Raid of Bedouin Village

Secretary-General of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) Saeb Erekat condemned Israeli authorities for the “crime” committed Wednesday during a demolition campaign in the Bedouin village of Umm al-Hiran, during which a Palestinian citizen of Israel was shot dead by Israeli police and an Israeli policeman was killed, and numerous Palestinians were injured.

Erekat accused the Israeli government of reacting to attempts by the international community to achieve peace between Palestinians and Israelis by escalating a policy of “racism, ethnic cleansing, and the evacuation of indigenous Palestinians from their lands, in a desperate attempt to Judaize the country.”

He called attention to the estimated 1.7 million Palestinians with Israeli citizenship who “are living amid the racist system of Israel,” adding that the demolition Palestinian homes in the Israeli city of Qalansawe had “continued in Qalandiya refugee camp yesterday and in Umm al-Hiran today.”

Meanwhile, the Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that not holding Israel accountable regarding its role as an occupying power “lessens the credibility of countries who demand reviving and realizing the two-state solution.”

According to the ministry, the government led by right-wing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has “escalated its aggression against Palestinian existence by conducting daily attacks and field executions against unarmed Palestinian citizens in an attempt to escape its internal crises and take advantage of international and regional changes.”

Meanwhile, Israeli officials were deeply divided on Wednesday over their accounts of Wednesday’s deadly police raid in Umm al-Hiran, as far-right ministers and Knesset members claimed that Yaqoub Abu al-Qian was shot dead while carrying out a deliberate car ramming attack, with Israeli police suggesting he was affiliated to the Islamic Movement and could have been influenced by the so-called Islamic State.

However, numerous witnesses said Abu al-Qian was shot by Israeli police while driving normally, which caused him to spin out of control and crash into policemen, and family members denied his affiliation to the Islamic Movement, insisting he was just a high school math teacher.

Members of the Joint List, which represents parties led by Palestinian citizens of Israel in the Knesset, accused police of intentionally covering up the fact that they shot al-Qian in cold blood.

Israel’s Housing and Construction Minister Yoav Galant meanwhile condemned “the Bedouin violence that awakened this morning,” calling to answer such violence “with a firm hard and uncompromising measures,” Israeli news site Ynet quoted him as saying.

He also accused the Palestinian MKs of “using their status and immunity to disturb security forces as they’re carrying out their assignments. The participation of Joint List MKs in the Bedouin’s protest against the evacuation causes unrest, constitutes incitement, and encourages violence.”

MK Zoabi reacted with outrage to Abu al-Qian’s killing and the demolition campaign, saying that Wednesday’s events were “just like when the Palestinians were expelled in 1948,” Ynet quoted her as saying.

She slammed Israeli media sites for repeating the police version of events, asserting that “this was an incident of expulsion as part of an overall plan of expulsion. You can’t turn it into a vehicular attack.”

“Show what police are doing to people. There are eyewitnesses. Ask the MKs and don’t listen to police who are lying over and over again,” she reportedly said, highlighting Israeli authorities’ record of failing to open investigations into killings of Palestinians by Israeli police.”

Tibi for his part said that “The (Israeli) state treats its Arab citizens as enemies, and that is why even when they are protesting against the demolition of a house — which is part of their basic right for a roof over their heads –they are being shot and killed, and (police) are attacking both citizens and MKs.”

Tibi suggested that Netanyahu was “trying to cover up his own problems by creating a conflict and crisis with the Arab public,” referring to the fact that the Israeli prime minister is currently under police investigation.</s>JERUSALEM - One policeman and one villager was killed Wednesday in clashes in the Arab Bedouin village of Umm al-Hiran in Israel before a planned demolition operation.

The clashes broke out between Israeli police and the Arab villagers as Israeli authorities prepared to demolish several structures that the government says are illegal constructions.

The villagers of Umm al-Hiran are Israeli citizens and members of a Bedouin tribe who have lived on the same plot of land since the late 50s. In 1957, the Israeli military forcefully removed the tribe from their original land in Khirbet Zubale.

But 60 years later, after more than a decade of court cases, the state wants that land back to build a Jewish town. Last year, Israel's high court ruled in favor of the government's plans.

Aerial footage released by the Israeli authorities shows police approaching a white SUV. At the four-second mark, a police officer approaches the car and shoots. He pops off at least three shots as the car remains still. It's unclear exactly what his shots hit. Then the car accelerates down a steep hill and veers into a crowd of policemen before careening into another vehicle and coming to a stop.

Israeli police called the incident a deliberate "car-ramming" attack by a Bedouin with Israeli citizenship, identified as 50-year-old school teacher Yaakub Abu al-Qiyan. The police officer killed was identified as 37-year-old Erez Levy. Al-Qiyan died of gunshot wounds.

Locals who were at the scene said that the driver lost control of his vehicle only after he was shot by police. He had his whole life packed into the SUV and he was trying to leave the village, locals said.

The Israeli police have already called al-Qiyan a "terrorist," and said they are investigating his possible affiliation with ISIS, but no supporting evidence was immediately made public.

"This is the second ramming attack within the space of a few days. We are fighting this murderous phenomenon which has hit both in Israel and in other parts of the world," Prime Minister Netanyahu said, referring to recent vehicular attacks in Israel and Europe.

Several other people were injured in the clashes that followed, including Knesset Member Ayman Odeh. Odeh and other Arab leaders had been at the village all night awaiting the forced Israeli evacuation.

"The policemen attacked me, brutally beating me," said Odeh. "We did not try to stir things up - it is plain and simple. We wanted to negotiate. What happened is a disgrace."

Amnesty International has called for an investigation into possible police brutality in the day's violence.

"The Israeli judiciary and the government are responsible for the killing in the village today," the Arab advocacy group Adalah said in a statement. "The Israeli Supreme Court's decision to allow the state to proceed with its plan to demolish the village, which has existed for 60 years, in order to establish a Jewish town called 'Hiran' over its ruins, is one of the most racist judgments that the Court has ever issued."

The Negev desert accounts for over half of Israel's land mass, but only about 10 percent of Israeli citizens live there, including more than 100,000 Bedouins. Umm al-Hiran is one of dozens of so-called "unrecognized" villages, and according to Amnesty International, they live without electricity, water, and other basic services the state refuses to provide.

"The Bedouin public is a part of us," Netanyahu said on Wednesday, "We want to integrate it into Israeli society and not to polarize it and cause it to distance itself from the focus of our existence here."

Some five of the village's 70 structures were demolished Wednesday, according to journalists on the ground.

By the time the dust cleared and the sun set Wednesday, several of the village's former inhabitants were left picking through the remains of their homes.</s>UMM AL-HIRAN, Israel – In the predawn hours, hundreds of Israeli police in riot gear, supported by helicopters, horses and armored personnel carriers, swept into this little hardscrabble Bedouin village. Their mission: to demolish homes, barns and sheep pens deemed illegal.

A Bedouin schoolteacher rammed his sports utility vehicle into police, killing one officer – Sgt. Maj. Erez Levi, 34, the son of a policeman.

The driver, Yaqoub al-Qian, was shot and killed at the scene. Israeli officials quickly termed the incident a terrorist attack and said they suspected the alleged assailant was inspired by the Islamic State.

But the driver’s brother told The Washington Post he was just trying to get his car – packed with family possessions – out of the village.

A grainy night-vision video taken from a police helicopter appears to show muzzle flashes from Israeli forces shooting at the slow-moving vehicle before it suddenly accelerates, swerves, rams into the police, then crashes.

The early morning deaths quickly became tinder in an incendiary environment in which Arab citizens of Israel complain of being treated as second-class citizens or worse.

During the demolition raid, Israeli lawmaker Ayman Odeh, head of a coalition of Arab parties in parliament, was struck.

Odeh said he was hit twice by sponge bullets fired by police. Authorities denied the charge. Police said that Odeh’s injuries were sustained from rocks thrown by protesters. Israel’s top ministers accused him of incitement.

After being treated at a hospital, Odeh returned – his T-shirt bloodied and his head bandaged – and held up the bullet he said struck him in the face.

The site of the unrest, Umm al-Hiran, is one of hundreds of small unrecognized Bedouin hamlets in Israel’s Negev desert. The Israeli government says the villages are “illegal,” and the homes are regularly demolished.

These villages are in Israel, not the occupied West Bank. The Bedouins are Israeli citizens. Three generations of Israeli Bedouins have served in the Israeli army, where they are famous for their skill as trackers.

But their relationship with Israel is fraying. Many of the roughly 240,000 Bedouin citizens here claim that the widespread demolitions are part of a grand plan to push the Muslim tribes from their ancestral lands. Bedouins have increasingly identified with the struggles of Palestinians, including their fight against Jewish settlements in the West Bank.

Israeli officials counter that they offer the Bedouins subsidized homes and land inside planned communities.

But the Bedouins often refuse to abandon their pastoral lifestyle and say the cities they are pressed to live in are slums.

Numerous Arab members of Israel’s parliament arrived at the scene to denounce police violence and what they called the government’s unfair treatment of Israel’s Bedouins.

“This is all part of plan to rid the Negev of Palestinians. To expel us and replace us with Jews,” said Haneen Zoabi, a member of parliament.

One of her fellow legislators, Yousef Jabareen, pointed to a nearby hilltop where a planned community, mostly for Jewish residents, is under construction.

“They get rid of us and they build for them,” Jabareen said. “That’s called apartheid.”

Israeli activists at the scene said the soldiers came looking for a fight.

“They brought the violence with them,” said Isaac Kates Rose, 24, from the peace group All That’s Left.

Another witness, Michal Haramati, 30, said she first heard shots, and only then saw a white SUV drive erratically down a hill and hit the police officers.

Bedouin villagers and activists said no rocks were thrown at the time the Arab Israeli legislator was shot and that police were lying.

“No, no, no. No stones were thrown. Police were pushing people, throwing stun grenades and firing sponge bullets,” said Kobi Snitz, 45, another Israeli activist.

Micky Rosenfeld, a police spokesman, confirmed that officers used stun grenades and sponge bullets to suppress what he described as a riot.

Odeh, who had turned out to support the roughly 700 villagers and prevent the demolition, said the police employed excessive force.

“Police officers fell upon me, beat me, shot me. They shot me brutally. But I am less important. What is important is that two people may have been killed there. It’s a shame they’re destroying everything,” he said.

Police said they had evidence that the Bedouin driver was a member of a local Islamist movement. But so are some members of the parliament.

Police said the driver, Qian, may have been motivated by the Islamic State.

As evidence, police posted a photo of a newspaper they found in his house dating to Nov. 5, 2015, that had front-page articles on a car-ramming incident in the West Bank and a plane crash in the Sinai blamed on the Islamic State.

The newspaper was the popular Israel Hayom, in Hebrew, owned by the American casino magnate Sheldon Adelson.

Villagers told reporters that Qian was a respected member of his community, a school principal married to three women and the father of 20 children.

His brother told Israel Radio that he was not affiliated with any organization: “He was an educator in the state of Israel. The police are lying. He promised me and his mother.”

Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan said Odeh and other Arab members of the Israeli parliament had incited the violence that unfolded.

Odeh “is putting on some kind of charade, with a whining voice, because he apparently understands that he has made a contribution to a very severe incident, which may also have criminal repercussions,” said Erdan.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed: “Not only does this incident not intimidate us, it strengthens us. It strengthens our determination to enforce the law everywhere.”

Yair Maayan, director of the Bedouin Development and Settlement Authority in the Negev, said the villagers had moved to the area of Umm al-Hiran in the 1990s and built homes there without a permit.

He said the land was owned by the Israeli government and that a legal case to move the residents to the nearby Bedouin town of Hura began in 2004.

“The court took 13 years to reach the decision that the families had robbed the land and had to be moved, their houses destroyed,” he said. “Since May 2015 until today, we have been negotiating with the families to move them to Hura.”

Maayan said the government had offered the villagers some 150 free properties and additional compensation to build new homes. He said that at least 20 families have moved to Hura over the last few years.

“Last night, the rest of the families came to sign the contract to move to Hura, but at the last minute decided they did not want to do it and canceled the agreement,” he said.

Police on Wednesday moved forward with their plans, demolishing a dozen structures, including barns, animal pens and homes.

According to a 2016 report by the Negev Coexistence Forum for Civil Equality, some 1,041 structures in Bedouin villages were demolished between 2013 and 2015. A further 1,711 structures were destroyed by their owners after receiving demolition orders.

“The house demolition policy is a complicated policy based on various laws and operated by several authorities,” the report concluded. “The enforcement authorities use many tools: eviction and demolition orders, severe penalties, imposition of costs and civil lawsuits, short time frameworks and high legal costs, making the struggle against the house demolition policy a struggle in which the authorities gain more and more power over time against Bedouin citizens.”

The report noted that existing Bedouin towns are already overcrowded and unable to absorb more residents, especially when government building permits are almost nonexistent.</s>JERUSALEM — A police officer was killed in southern Israel on Wednesday in a suspected ramming attack ahead of protests against the demolition of Bedouin Arab homes, police said, but a police video raises questions about what exactly happened.

Police say 34-year-old Erez Levi was among police carrying out security for the demolition of 15 buildings in the Negev Desert village of Umm al-Hiran, where the nomadic Bedouin have built structures that Israel’s High Court ruled illegal. Levi was killed when police say the Bedouin man rammed his car into the officers.

The alleged assailant, 50-year-old Ya’akub Musa Abu Al-Qi’an, was shot and killed.

Israeli police spokeswoman Luba Samri says Abu Al-Qi’an was a member of the Islamist movement of southern Israel, and police are investigating possible links to ISIS. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the attacker may have been an ISIS sympathizer.

Levi was posthumously promoted to First Sergeant.

A video from a police helicopter shows a wide angle of the scene.

The police video, posted on YouTube by The Times of Israel, appears to show the driver slowly moving the car forward along a dirt road. A police officer can be seen in the video firing approximately three times. From the video, the shots appear to be in the direction of the car. Only after the shots were fired does the car accelerate and, seconds later, hit a group of police officers before the car turns sharply to the right.

Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan said on Twitter that the shots were warning shots fired into the air.

“The car drove toward the officers, the officers called him to stop and when he continued, they fired into the air in order to stop the car. And then the driver sharply diverted the steering wheel and sped quickly in order to run over the group of police officers,” Erdan tweeted. Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said the incident is under investigation.

Adalah, a legal organization representing the Bedouin villagers, disputes the police version of events.

“Eyewitnesses have confirmed that Abu Al-Qi’an was trying to leave the village and lost control of his car only after police fired at him,” Adalah General Director Hassan Jabareen said.

Member of Knesset Ayman Odeh, leader of the Arab Joint List Party, was also injured in the demonstrations, he told Israel’s Army Radio.

“The police forces came, about 1,000 police officers, and attacked the people in Umm al-Hiran,” he said, in a characterization denied by police.

Umm al-Hiran has been the subject of a 13-year legal battle over the fate of the Bedouin village. Israel’s High Court ruled that the village could be demolished to make way for the construction of the Israeli city of Hiran. The Bedouins had lived in Umm al-Hiran for 60 years after they were initially removed from their native villages in 1948, Jabareen said.

Minister of Agriculture Uri Ariel told Israel’s Army Radio the government was negotiating with the Bedouin families until late Tuesday night, offering them replacement lots in the nearby village of Hura.

“We already developed a neighborhood [for the Bedouin families],” said Yair Maayan, CEO of the Bedouin Development and Settlement Authority in the Negev.

“We have there about 150 properties. That’s enough for all the families.”

Some 40 families have already moved from Umm al-Hiran to Hura, Maayan said, while the government continued negotiations with the other families to join them.

“Last night, they came here to sign on this contract to move to Hura, but they canceled it and they didn’t want to do it,” Maayan said.

Israeli authorities have carried out regular demolitions of Bedouin homes they say have been built illegally, according to Human Rights Watch. They say Israel fails to recognize Bedouin villages and makes it incredibly difficult for Bedouin to obtain building permits.

Maayan says, of the approximately 50,000 illegal Bedouin structures in Israel, approximately 70% will be legalized in their current locations over the next 5 to 7 years. Another 20% will be moved less than half a mile, while the remaining 10%, including Umm al-Hiran, will be moved to alternative locations.

The Bedouin make up around 200,000 people of Israel’s population of 8.6 million.

The incident follows a similar attack on January 8 in Jerusalem, when a Palestinian driver plowed a truck into a group of Israeli soldiers, killing four and injuring at least 10 others.</s>On Wednesday, an Israeli police officer was killed as a result of a car ramming in Umm al-Hiran during a protest against the demolition of local houses. The attacker was shot dead by the police. The demolition works continued after suppressing the protest.

The strike organized by the Arab follow-up committee and the high commission for the Negev Bedouins’ affairs, includes official organizations, schools, local communities, the Palestine News Network said.

In 2015, the Supreme Court of Israel ruled that this land belonged to the state. In November 2016, Israeli authorities approved plans to demolish a part of the village and displace 20 people to make way for an Israeli settlement following a 13-year legal dispute between the Bedouin community and the state.

Israel's Negev Bedouin population is estimated at around 200,000. Most of these were expelled to the West Bank and the Gaza Strip after the 1948 Arab-Israeli conflict. Around 40 unrecognized Bedouin villages currently exist in Israel.</s>A police officer and an Israeli Bedouin were killed when fierce clashes erupted during an operation to demolish illegally built structures in a Bedouin village in Israel’s southern Negev desert.

Israeli Arab Knesset member Ayman Odeh, head of the predominantly Arab Joint List, sustained head wounds after being hit by a rubber bullet and was evacuated to hospital for treatment.

Immediately after the incident a general strike was declared in Arab communities in southern Israel and protest marches were planned in Arab towns throughout the country ahead of a general strike on Thursday, raising fears that unrest would spread.

While violence between Israeli security forces and Palestinians in the West Bank is common, fatal clashes involving Israeli Arabs are rare, although tensions over home demolitions are never far from the surface.

Hundreds of heavily armed police arrived at the Bedouin village of Umm al-Hiran in the early hours of Wednesday morning to implement a court ruling to demolish 10 homes in the village that had been built illegally.

The police claim that they opened fire after a villager drove his car at high speed into a group of officers, killing one and wounding another, as a large crowd resisted the planned demolitions. The driver, a local teacher and a member of the Islamic Movement, was killed.

However, relatives and villagers claimed the man lost control of his vehicle after being shot by police, who they claimed used excessive violence from the start of the operation.

Police sources said they are looking into potential ties between the driver and Islamic State, hinting that the incident may have been a copy-cat attack after the recent truck ramming in Jerusalem in which four women soldiers were killed. Police said after raiding the man’s house they found Israeli newspapers with headlines about Islamic State, though his family denied any links with militant groups.

About 1,000 people live in the Bedouin community of Umm al-Hiran, which lies south of the West Bank, but the court has upheld demolition orders to make way for the building of the new Jewish town of Hiran.

A few months ago, after the court ordered the demolition of the illegal Jewish settler outpost of Amona in the West Bank, prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu said demolitions of illegally built structures would also be stepped up in the Arab sector.

“Not only does this incident not intimidate us, it strengthens us, it strengthens our determination to enforce the law everywhere,” he said. “I request of everyone, first and foremost Knesset members in the Israeli parliament, to act responsibly, to stop fanning the flames and stop inciting violence.”

Mohammed Baraka, chairman of the Israeli Arab Follow-Up Committee umbrella group, accused Mr Netanyahu of fanning the flames to divert attention from corruption allegations currently being investigated by police.

“I warn Netanyahu not to lead to more bloodshed and total destruction,” he said.</s>PNN/ Bethlehem/

 Palestinians living in Israel and the 1948 lands on Thursday announced strike over the Israeli crimes that took place in Umm Al-Hiran Bedouin community on Wednesday.

These include killing of two Palestinians and demolishing homes of the community which has been rebuilt several times by the residents following ongoing Israeli demolition.

Israeli Occupation is trying to take over this land to build illegal settlements.

The intense clashes between the youths and Israeli police on Wednesday lead to the killing of an Israeli policeman as well, under claims that he was run over by a motorist.

The strike today, which was decided by the Arab follow-up committee and the high commission for the Negev Bedouins’ affairs, includes official organizations, local communities, schools and universities.

To its part, the Israeli police announced a state of alert in the Arab towns and areas, especially after calls for protests against the Israeli crimes in Umm Al-Hiran.

The state of alert also comes in synchronization with the upcoming funeral of Palestinian killed on Wednesday, which Israel accused of attempting to carry out a ramming attack.</s>Residents of the Bedouin village claim that the man whose car crashed into a group of Israeli policemen lost control of the vehicle after being shot for no reason. Authorities insist the 50yo village teacher attempted a deliberate “car-ramming attack.”

At predawn on Wednesday, Israeli police conducted a demolition raid in the Bedouin village of Umm al-Hiran in the Negev region. As security forces approached, one of the Bedouins slammed his car into police lines, killing one Israeli officer and injuring others. The Israeli soldier killed in the episode was Erez Levi, 34, who, among other officers, watched over the demolition ordered by Israel’s High Court.

The teacher, identified as Ya’akub Musa Abu Al-Qi’an, was shot dead by the Israeli forces as he, according to Tel Aviv, tried to carry out a car ramming attack, similar to the one which happened in Jerusalem earlier this month.

“As (security forces) were getting there, a car of a terrorist from the area suddenly appeared, an operative of the Islamic Movement, and sped toward the soldiers with an intent of carrying out a car-ramming attack,” the police announced, Ynet news reports.

Rubber bullets, tear gas, and stun grenades were also used in the immediate aftermath by the Israelis to quell the anger of the locals who resisted the demolitions of at least 12 homes.

The incident was “a deliberate attack. This is clear. This is a fact. There is no other explanation, and anyone who tries to offer an alternative explanation wasn’t here at the time and doesn’t understand,” said deputy commander of the police southern district, Peretz Amar, Times of Israel reports.

Following the incident, Israeli authorities released footage allegedly showing a car driven by the Bedouin. The video taken from a police helicopter seems to show that an officer opened fire while the car was slowly passing by.

But while the IDF believes the attack was deliberate and that the dead teacher potentially had links to an Islamist movement in southern Israel and probably ISIS, locals say that the driver lost control of the vehicle as Israeli forces started shooting.

Witnesses say that the math teacher at al-Salam High School in the nearby town of Hura, lost control of his car after he was shot, which caused him to crash into Israeli police. A video later emerged showing the teacher bleeding on the ground moments after he was shot.

Following the tragic incident, Arab Israelis took to the streets of Tel Aviv, Jaffa, and Jerusalem in a protest calling for an independent investigation. Adalah, an organization standing for the rights of the Bedouin villagers, is now trying to challenge the police version of events.

“Eyewitnesses have confirmed that Abu Al-Qi'an was trying to leave the village and lost control of his car only after police fired at him,” Adalah General Director Hassan Jabareen said, according to CNN.

Dr. Yeela Raanan of the Regional Council of Unrecognized Villages who was at the scene of the tragedy told The Jerusalem Post that the IDF came to the Bedouin village “with a will to harm.” She added that Al-Qi’ann was not a terrorist.

She testified that the teacher ran over police after they had already killed him, “I know this man... he is a gentleman, gentle and smart,” Raanan said. 



Arab-Israeli lawmaker Ayman Odeh, head of the Arab Joint List, was injured by sponge-tipped bullets fired by Israeli police during the incident.

READ MORE: Netanyahu calls for pardon of Israeli soldier convicted of manslaughter

“This has been a terrible morning. It was possible to prevent the spilling of blood,” Odeh said in a statement after he had been discharged from hospital.

The village of Umm al-Hiran has been disputed in courts for as long as 13 years. Israel’s High Court recently ruled that the village where Bedouins have been living for 60 years must be demolished as the Israeli city of Hiran is going to be built on its ruins.</s>A Palestinian citizen of Israel was killed after police fired on his vehicle in the Naqab village of Umm al-Hiran in the south of the country on Wednesday. A sergeant was also killed and another officer was injured during the pre-dawn raid to demolish several homes in the Bedouin village.

Israeli police asserted that Yaqoub Abu al-Qiyan, 50, deliberately ran over and killed the policeman, 37-year-old Erez Levi.

Police spokesperson Micky Rosenfeld stated that “a vehicle driven by a terrorist from the Islamic Movement intended to strike a number officers and carry out an attack.”

The Islamic Movement is a Palestinian political organization, the northern branch of which is banned by Israel. The northern branch’s leader, Sheikh Raed Salah, was released by Israel after nine months of imprisonment on Tuesday and was present in Umm al-Hiran on Wednesday.

Police told media that they are looking for ties between Abu al-Qiyan and Islamic State.

“They say that after raiding his house they found Israeli newspapers with headlines about the group, though his family denies any such relationship, saying he is just a math teacher at the local high school in the Bedouin town of Hura,” the Tel Aviv newspaper Haaretz reported.

Rosenfeld made further claims of Islamic State ties on Twitter:

Witnesses interviewed by multiple media outlets disputed Israel’s version of events, saying that Abu al-Qiyan was attempting to leave the scene and it was Israeli police fire that caused him to lose control of his vehicle and crash into police.

Police aerial surveillance video of the incident leaked to the media appears to support eyewitness claims that Abu al-Qiyan accelerated only after he was fired on.

“A short while after the video was leaked to the media, the police released an edited version with captions explaining how the incident unfolded,” Haaretz reported. “The captions did not mention the gunfire and the beginning of the incident is seen as the moment the car started accelerating.”

In a zoomed-in version of the video published by Haaretz, the car is seen traveling at a slow speed. At seven seconds into the clip, a police officer positioned in front of the car is seen opening fire towards the vehicle. Several seconds after the gunfire, the car is seen speeding up and veering off the road and into a group of police, before ultimately crashing into another vehicle:

“Following the release of the video, Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan tweeted that the police gunfire that can be seen at the beginning of the video were warning shots which were not directed at the driver,” Haaretz stated.

“Erdan said the warning shots were fired after [Abu] al-Qiyan refused to heed calls to halt, and instead he attempted to run over the police force.”

The human rights group Adalah rejected the police’s claim – echoed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who linked the incident to a car ramming attack targeting soldiers earlier this month – that Abu al-Qiyan was killed while carrying out a terror attack.

“This statement reflects the Israeli police’s culture of lying. A few weeks ago, the Israeli police also accused Arab citizens of the state of launching arson attacks, which has not been proven at all,” Adalah stated, referring to wildfires that swept through the country in November.

Raed Abu al-Qiyan, an activist in Umm al-Hiran village, told the AFP news agency that the slain man owned one of the structures slated for demolition. Rosenfeld, the police spokesperson, said that Israeli forces were carrying out orders to destroy 15 structures built without a permit.

Several others were hospitalized after Israeli forces “used sponge-tipped bullets, tear gas and stun grenades to violently suppress locals and supporters who had gathered to resist the demolitions,” the Ma’an News Agency reported.

Ayman Odeh, a Palestinian member of Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, was among those injured. He stated on video that he was directly sprayed in the face with tear gas, and that police fired rubber-coated bullets that hit him in the head and back.

Footage from the scene shows Israeli forces wrestling protesters to the ground:

The deadly demolition raid in Umm al-Hiran comes a week after police destroyed 11 homes in Qalansawa, a Palestinian town in Israel.

Ahead of that raid, Netanyahu promised settlers due to be evacuated from Amona, an unauthorized outpost in the occupied West Bank, that he would apply the law equally by cracking down on “illegal construction” across the country.

Palestinian citizens of Israel face severe restrictions on the amount of land they are allowed to use or live on, and receive a disproportionately small allocation of housing tenders, forcing many to build without permits.

The demolitions in Qalansawa took residents by surprise. But people in Umm al-Hiran have been braced for the destruction of their village, as Israel plans to build a Jewish settlement in its place.

A large mobilization of protesters kept Israel’s bulldozers away from Umm al-Hiran in November last year.

“The Israeli judiciary and the government are responsible for the killing in the village today,” Adalah stated on Wednesday. “The Israeli [high court] decision to allow the state to proceed with its plan to demolish the village, which has existed for 60 years, in order to establish a Jewish town called ‘Hiran’ over its ruins, is one of the most racist judgments that the court has ever issued.”

According to Adalah, the residents of Umm al-Hiran were expelled from their ancestral lands in Khirbet Zubaleh in 1948, when hundreds of Palestinian towns and villages were depopulated during the establishment of the State of Israel.

Sarah Leah Whitson, director of Human Rights Watch’s Middle East division, called on Israel to investigate Wednesday’s deadly incident and “abandon the discriminatory plan to raze Umm al-Hiran.”

“As in the West Bank, Israel discriminates against Bedouins and Palestinians more generally inside its borders in its planning policies, which seek to maximize control of land for Jewish communities,” she said.

The Joint List, a coalition of parties led by Palestinian citizens of Israel in the Knesset, accused the police of lying. Several lawmakers from the party were in Umm al-Hiran during the raid.

“The Netanyahu government has effectively declared a military war against our people in the 1948 area,” the party stated, referring to the territory of present-day Israel. “The war started with demolitions in Qalansawa, and it is continuing today in Umm al-Hiran.”

Palestinians in Israel declared a general strike and three days of mourning following the deadly raid. Rallies were held throughout Israel, the West Bank and Gaza Strip to protest the demolitions:
Two Israeli Bedouins and one Israeli police officer are killed in a clash during a home-demolition operation in the Bedouin village of Umm al-Hiran. Israeli police claim to have found evidence that the Bedouins were supporters of the Islamic State.