Israeli authorities have demolished 40 Palestinian homes in the Arab village of al Sir in the Negev desert, sparking clashes with residents who tried to resist the operation.

Videos circulating on social media on Wednesday showed police firing tear gas and stun grenades at crowds of protesting Palestinians who live in Israel.

Witnesses said officers assaulted demonstrators, leading to scuffles.

Palestinian Israeli lawmaker Samir bin Said from the Arab Movement for Change said police “used violence against residents, including sound bombs and tear gas,” which left several people injured and led to multiple arrests.

He added that some of the wounded required hospitalisation.

Uprooting Palestinians from their land

“We cannot accept a policy of chasing people from their homes and trying to uproot them from their land,” the lawmaker said, stressing that families have a basic human right to live in dignity on their property.

The Israeli government classifies approximately 40 villages in the Negev Desert as "unrecognised," claiming that the roughly 55,000 Palestinian Bedouins living there cannot prove their ownership of the land.

There are around 1.6 million Palestinians in Israel, accounting for around 20 percent of the country's population.

For years, Palestinians have protested against systematic Israeli efforts to displace the Palestinian population from their ancestral homes under the pretext of title deed issues and bringing Israelis to live in those areas instead.

‘Dead land’

According to a report by two Palestinian media committees in June, the Israeli military has demolished more than 1,000 Palestinian homes and killed at least 55 people since January.

Under Israeli law, much of the land Palestinian villagers traditionally lived on was declared “Mawat” (dead land), a classification that treats uncultivated land as state property and does not recognise customary use as proof of ownership.

This legal framework enabled the state to reclaim vast areas as state land, stripping many Bedouin communities of their ancestral lands and leaving their villages without legal status or basic services.

Israel is also demolishing more Palestinian homes across the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, at a faster pace in 2025 than in any other year since the occupation began in 1967.