Negev Bedouins

The Negev Bedouins (Arabic: بدو النقب‎, Badū an-Naqab) are traditionally pastoral semi-nomadic Arab tribes indigenous to the Negev region in Israel, who hold close ties to the Bedouins of the Sinai. The forced alteration of their traditional lifestyle has led to sedentarization. The population of Negev Bedouins in Israel is estimated to be 160,000.^[1]

Definition

In the strictest sense, the Negev Bedouin are defined as Arab nomads, who live by rearing livestock in the deserts of southern Israel. The Negev Bedouin community consists of numerous indigenous tribes, who used to be nomadic/semi-nomadic. The community is traditional and conservative, with a well-defined value system that directs and monitors behaviour and interpersonal relations.^[5]

The Negev Bedouin tribes have been divided into three classes, according to their origin:

History

Prior to 1948

Historically, the Bedouin engaged primarily in nomadic herding, agriculture, raiding and sometimes fishing. They also made income by transporting goods and people^[7] across the desert.^[8] Scarcity of water and of permanent pastoral land required them to move constantly.

The first recorded settlement of Bedouins in the Negev/Naqab Desert dates back 7,000 years.^[8] The Bedouins of the Sinai peninsula migrated to and from the Negev repeatedly throughout their history. Similar migrations took place under early Islamic rule.^[9] The Bedouin established very few permanent settlements, however some Bedouin did in fact build in the Negev; some evidence remains of traditional baika buildings, seasonal dwellings for the rainy season when Bedouin would stop to engage in farming. Cemeteries known as "nawamis" dating to the late fourth millennium B.C. have been also found recently. Similarly, open air mosques (i.e. those without a roof), dating from the early Islamic period, are common and still in use.^[10] The Bedouins also conducted extensive farming on plots scattered throughout the Negev. They held this semi-nomadic lifestyle up until the existence of Israel.^[11]

In the seventh century, the Islamic Umayyad dynasty defeated the Byzantine armies, conquering Palestine. The Umayyads began sponsoring building programs throughout Palestine, a region in close proximity to the dynastic capital in Damascus, and the Bedouins flourished. However, this activity decreased after the capital was move to Baghdad during the subsequent Abbasid reign.^[12]

The first major European impact on the traditional Bedouin lifestyle came after the French invasion of Egypt in 1798. The rise of the puritanical Wahabbi sect also forced them to reduce raiding caravans. Instead, the Bedouins acquired a monopoly on guiding pilgrim caravans to Mecca, as well as selling them provisions. The opening of the Suez canal reduced the dependence on desert caravans, thus limiting the Bedouins' income, while attracting them to newly formed settlements that sprung up along the canal.^[8]

During World War I, the Bedouins in the Negev Desert fought with the Turks against the British, but later withdrew from the conflict. The British Mandate in Palestine brought order to the Negev; however, this order was accompanied by losses in sources of income and poverty among the Bedouins. The Bedouins nevertheless retained their lifestyle, and a 1927 report describes them as the "untamed denizens of the Arabian deserts".^[8] The British also established the first formal schools for the Bedouin.^[5]

In Orientalist historiography, the Negev Bedouin have been described as remaining largely unaffected by changes in the outside world until recently. Their society was often considered a "world without time".^[13] Recent scholars have challenged the notion of the Bedouin as 'fossilized,' or 'stagnant' reflections of an unchanging desert culture. In fact Bedouin were engaged in a constantly dynamic reciprocal relation with urban centers. Bedouin scholar Michael Meeker explains that "the city was to be found in their midst."^[14]

Under Israeli administration

During the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, the vast majority of the Bedouins in the Negev region fled or were expelled to Egypt or Jordan^{citation needed}. Of the approximately 65,000 that lived in the area before the war about 11,000 remained.^[15] Those who remained belonged to the Tiaha confederation^[11] and were relocated by the Israeli government the 1950s and 1960s to a restricted zone in the northeast corner of the Negev, called the "Siyag" (closure) made up of relatively infertile land in the northeastern Negev comprising 10% of the Negev desert.^[16]

As of 1951, the United Nations reported the expulsion of about 7,000 Negev Bedouins into neighbouring Jordan, the Gaza Strip and the Sinai. Many, however, returned undetected.^[17] Following the removal of the Bedouin from most of the Negev, the Israeli state erased the traditional Bedouin place names from official maps and actively discouraged their administrative use, replacing them with new Hebrew place names.^[18]

In the years after the establishment of Israel, the Bedouin lost their ancient means of self-subsistence, almost completely ceasing to move around with their herds as a result of State land confiscation.^[5] Between 1950 and 1966, the Bedouin, like other Arabs, were placed under military administration by Israel.^[6] During this time they were restricted to the Siyag, unable to graze their goats outside their holdings. Between 1948 and 1966, the new State of Israel imposed a military administration over Arabs in the region and designated 85% of the Negev "State Land." All Bedouin habitation on this newly-declared State Land was retroactively termed illegal and "unrecognized."^[19] Now that Negev lands the Bedouin had inhabited upwards of 500 years was designated State Land, the Bedouin were no longer able to fully engage in their sole means of self-subsistence – agriculture and grazing. The government then forcibly concentrated these Bedouin tribes into the Siyag (Arabic for 'fence') triangle of Beer Sheva, Arad and Dimona.^[20]

In the 1950s, as a consequence of this loss of their traditional means of self-subsistence, many Bedouin men emigrated to newly established Jewish farms in the Negev in search of employment. However, they were not allowed to bring their families with them. Another major source of employment were regional mines and the Ramat Hovav toxic waste facility and its factories, all very hazardous occupations. As of 1958, employment in the Bedouin male population was less than 3.5%. Bedouins were generally discriminated against in employment, as preference was given to Jews.^[13]

Also in the 1950s, Israel began to extend mandatory education to Bedouin citizens. As a result there was a general rise in literacy levels; illiteracy went down from around 95% to 25% within the span of a single generation, with the majority of the illiterate being 55 or older.^[21] The Bedouins also benefited from the introduction of modern techniques of health care in the region.^[13]

Grazing restrictions

In order to reinforce the invisible Siyag fence, the State employed a reining mechanism, the Black Goat Law of 1950. The Black Goat Law curbed grazing so as to prevent land erosion, prohibiting the grazing of goats outside recognized land holdings. Since few Bedouin territorial claims were recognized, most grazing was thereby rendered illegal. Both Ottoman and British land registration processes failed to reach into the Negev region. Most Bedouin who had the option, preferred not to register their lands as this would mean being taxed. Those whose land claims were recognized found it almost impossible to keep their goats within the periphery of their newly limited range. Into the 1970s and 1980s, only a small portion of the Bedouin were able to continue to graze their goats. Instead of migrating with their goats in search of pasture, the majority of the Bedouin migrated in search of wage-labor.^[20]

In 1979 Agriculture Minister Ariel Sharon declared a 1,500 square kilometer area in the Negev, a protected nature reserve, rendering a major portion of the Negev almost entirely out of bounds for Bedouin herders. In conjunction, he established the Green Patrol,^[22] the 'environmental paramilitary unit' with the mission of fighting Bedouin 'infiltration' into national Israeli land by preventing Bedouin from grazing their animals, seen as creating 'facts on the ground.' During Sharon's tenure as Minister of Agriculture (1977-1981), the Green Patrol removed 900 Bedouin encampments and cut goat herds by more than 1/3. Today the black goat is nearly extinct, and Bedouin in Israel do not have enough access to black goat hair to weave tents.^[23]

Sedentarization and establishment of urban townships

Counter to the image of the Bedouin as fierce stateless nomads roving the entire region, by the turn of the 20th century, much of the Bedouin population in Palestine was settled, semi-nomadic, and engaged in agriculture according to an intricate system of land ownership, grazing rights, and water access.^[20]

In the 1970's, the government established seven urban townships and promised Bedouin services in exchange for the renunciation of their ancestral land.^[25] Denied access to their former sources of sustenance via grazing restrictions, severed from the possibility of access to water, electricity, roads, education, and health care in the unrecognized villages, and trusting in government promises that they would receive services if they moved, in the 1970s and 80's tens of thousands of Bedouin citizens of Israel resettled in 7 legal towns constructed by the government.^[26] Within the span of a few years, half of the Bedouin population moved into these seven urban townships.^[27]

According to a study published by Ben Gurion University's Negev Center for Regional Development, the towns were built in the absence of any urban policy framework, lacking business districts or industrial zones;^[28] as Harvey Lithwick of the Negev Center for Regional Development explains: "... the major failure was a lack of an economic rationale for the towns... "^[29] According to Lithwick, and Ismael and Kathleen Abu Saad of Ben Gurion University, the towns quickly became amongst the most deprived towns in Israel, severely lacking in services such as public transport and banks.^[5] The urban townships became concentration centers for tens of thousands of Bedouin lacking job prospects or access to self-subsistence agriculture, and came to be know as ghettos suffering from endemic joblessness and resulting cycles of crime and drug trafficking.^[28]

The other half of the Negev Bedouin resisted sedentarization and concentration into urban townships in the hope of retaining their traditions and customs; these Negev Bedouin remained in rural villages, some of which pre-date the existence of Israel.^[16] The Israeli government defines these villages as "dispersals" while the international community refers to them as "unrecognized villages." Few of the Bedouin in unrecognized villages have seen the urban townships as a desirable form of settlement.^[30]^[31]^[32] Extreme unemployment has afflicted unrecognized villages as well, breeding extreme crime levels. Since grazing has been severely restricted, and the Bedouin rarely receive permits to engage in self-subsistence agriculture,^[33] the only remaining source of income for unemployed Bedouin is trade in drugs and prostitutes.

The Negev Bedouin today

Around half the population live in seven towns built for them by the Israeli government between 1979 and 1982. The largest Bedouin locality in Israel is the city of Rahat. Other towns include Ar'arat an-Naqab (Arara BeNegev), Bir Hadaj, Hura, Kuseife, Lakiya, Shaqib al-Salam (Segev Shalom) and Tel as-Sabi (Tel Sheva).

The other half of Bedouin citizens of Israel live in 39-45 villages which are not recognized by the israeli government and are thus ineligable for municipal services such as connection to the electrical grid, water mains or trash-pickup.^[34] According to the Israel Land Authority, in 2007 40% of the Bedouin lived in Unrecognized villages,^[35] although the Regional Council of Unrecognized Villages (RCUV) and Human Rights Watch (HRW) refer to Bedouin in unrecognized villages as half the Negev Bedouin population.^[36] The RCUV figures include the five villages which remain unrecognized despite incorporation into the Abu Basma Regional Council.

The number of Bedouin in the Negev is increasing fast: at 5.5%, their birthrate is amongst the highest in the world.^{citation needed} In 2002 The Center for Bedouin Studies and Development at Ben Gurion University estimated that around 120,000 Bedouins lived in the Negev, and projected that with a stable birth rate there will be 320,000 Bedouin in the Negev by 2020;^{citation needed} in 2008 the number of Bedouin is commonly estimated at 160,000.^{citation needed} Within the Israeli government, key officials have expressed concern that high Bedouin birth rates pose a threat to sustaining a Jewish demographic majority in the Negev Desert. In 2003, the Israeli daily Ma’ariv published an article entitled, "Special Report: Polygamy is a Security Threat," detailing a report put forth by the Director of the Population Administration at the time, Herzl Gedj.^[37]

Today, many Bedouin call themselves 'Negev Arabs' rather than ‘Bedouin,’ explaining that 'Bedouin' identity is intimately tied in with a pastoral nomadic way of life – a way of life they say is over. Although the Bedouin in Israel continue to be perceived as nomads, today all of them are fully sedentarized, and about half are urbanites.^[20]

Forms of settlement

Urban townships

Dayan’s vision of the transformation of the indigenous Bedouin into an urban proletariat has both manifested and failed: In the most established of legal urban townships, over 25% of Bedouin men (not to speak of the women) are unemployed.^{citation needed} An additional 7 urban townships are 'planned' by the government today; none feature any business districts, and no permits for Arab-owned industrial zones have been dispensed (as is the case throughout Arab towns across Israel).^{citation needed}

Unrecognized villages

Many of these villages were created in the 1950s when the Israeli army resettled Bedouin from the Sinai desert. These villages do not directly appear on commercial Israeli maps, and are denied basic services like water, electricity and schools, despite being located adjacent to regional electrical and water stations. It is forbidden by the Israeli authorities for the residents of these villages to build permanent structures, though many do, risking fines and home demolition.^[16]

Today, several unrecognized villages are in the process of 'recognition' - these villages were incorporated into the Abu Basma Regional Council, but are yet to receive many services from the government - most remain without water, electricity and garbage services. Five of the towns incorporated into the council remain unrecognized. The process is mired in complexities involved with regards to urban planning difficulties and land ownership problems.^[38]

Several, including Wadi al-Na'am, are located close to the Ramat Hovav toxic waste dump, and residents have suffered from higher than average incidences of respiratory illnesses and cancer.^[39] The Israeli government frequently demolishes homes and sprays toxic pesticides onto crops in the unrecognized villages, including one episode where Bedouin homes were demolished to make way for the establishment of a Jewish town.^[40]

Army service

Each year, between 5%-10% of the Bedouins of draft age volunteer for the Israeli army, (unlike Druze, and Circassian Israelis, they are not required by law to do so).^[41] The legendary Israeli soldier, Amos Yarkoni, first commander of the Shaked Reconnaissance Battalion in the Givati Brigade, was a Bedouin (born Abd el-Majid Hidr). Despite their uniquely high numbers in the Israeli Defense Forces over the decades, the percentage of Bedouin in the army fell drastically after the October 2000 events. It is believed that reduced willingness to join the IDF is due to the fact that despite their service in the army over half are denied access to water, electricity, and trash pickup, and are denied the right to build roads to make schools and hospitals accessible. Furthermore, quite commonly, Bedouin soldiers from unrecognized villages return home after reserve duty to find their homes demolished.^{citation needed}

Services

In 2006, the formerly unrecognized village of Drijat became the first community in the world to be outfitted with a solar electricity system that provides power to the entire village.^[42] In 2008, a railway station has opened near Rahat (Lehavim-Rahat Railway Station), a noticable improvement to the transportation situation.

Each year, between 5%-10% of the Bedouins of draft age volunteer for the Israeli army, (unlike Druze, and Circassian Israelis, they are not required by law to do so).^[43] The legendary Israeli soldier, Amos Yarkoni, first commander of the Shaked Reconnaissance Battalion in the Givati Brigade, was a Bedouin (born Abd el-Majid Hidr). Despite their uniquely high numbers in the Israeli Defense Forces over the decades, the percentage of Bedouin in the army fell drastically after the October 2000 events. It is believed that reduced willingness to join the IDF is due to the fact that despite their service in the army over half are denied access to water, electricity, and trash pickup, and are denied the right to build roads to make schools and hospitals accessible. Furthermore, quite commonly, Bedouin soldiers from unrecognized villages return home after reserve duty to find their homes demolished.^{citation needed}

Health

The Bedouin infant mortality rate is still the highest in Israel, and one of the highest in the developed world. In 2003, the infant mortality rate among Arab citizens overall was 8.4 per thousand, more than twice as high as the rate 3.6 per thousand among the Jewish population.^[44] As yet the Israeli government has not seen fit to address this disparity through equitable budget allocations: in the 2002 budget, Israel's health ministry allocated Arab communities less than 0.6% of its 277 m-shekel (£35m) budget (1.6 m shekels {£200,000}) to develop healthcare facilities.^[45] However, due largely to improvements in health care, the infant mortality rate has dropped over the past few decades.^{citation needed}

Education

Enforcement of mandatory education for the Bedouin has been weak, particularly in the case of young girls. According to the aforementioned 2001 study by the Centre for Women’s Health Studies and Promotion, poor access to education has resulted in troubling data: more than 75% of Bedouin women had no schooling at all or had not completed their elementary school.^[46] This is due to a combination of internal Bedouin traditional attitudes towards women and lack of government investment in enforcing the Mandatory Education Law and allocating resources to Bedouin children's needs; Amnesty International decries "the lack of government investment for the Bedouin population in this region" which they say "stands in stark contrast to the resources allocated to developing infrastructure for Jewish communities in the Negev region, as well as in Israeli settlements in the Occupied Territories."^[47]

On the other hand, the number of Bedouin students in Israel has started to rise. As of 2006 there were 162 male and 112 female students in Ben Gurion university. In particular, the number of female students grew sixfold from 1996-2001.^[48] The university had made special Bedouin-only scholarship programs available in order to encourage higher education among the Bedouin.^[49]

Challenges

As mentioned above, Bedouin citizens of Israel suffer from extreme rates of joblessness and endure the highest poverty rate in Israel. The government has failed to allow industrial zones and town centers to service the job needs of Bedouin towns. On the other hand Tourism and crafts are growing industries and have helped the Drijat reduce its unemployment to zero, and Arabic summer schools are being developed.^[50]

Women's status

According to a range of studies, including a 2001 study by the Centre for Women’s Health Studies and Promotion at Ben Gurion University, in the transition from self-subsistence agriculture and animal husbandry to a settled semi-urban lifestyle, women have lost their traditional sources of power within the family. The study explains that poor access to education among women has triggered new disparities between Bedouin men and women and compounded the loss of Bedouin women's status in the family.^[51]

Crime

The crime rates in the Bedouin sector in the Negev are widely thought to be high, although statistics to uphold this contention are not available. To that end, a special police unit, codenamed Blimat Herum (lit. emergency halt), consisting of about 100 regular policemen, was founded in 2003 to fight crime in the sector. The Southern District of the Israel Police cited the rising crime rate in the sector as the reason for the unit's inauguration. The unit was founded after a period of time when regular police units conducted raids on Bedouin settlements to stop theft (especially car theft) and drug dealing.^[52]

What is irrefutable, although again no statistics are available, is that the criminal activity of the Negev Bedouin has particular characteristics differentiating it from the general population. Notable is human trafficking from Egypt to Israel through the Sinai Desert, mostly of prostitutes, and illicit drug trafficking and this is due to the Bedouin's intimate knowledge of the area. It is claimed that the police and the IDF is doing little to stop this from occurring.^[53] Other characteristic crimes are racketeering (the collection of "protection" payments from local businesses), drug pushing and the theft of cars. Other crimes, eg domestic violence, alcohol related offences or burglary (house breaking} are lower amongst the Bedouin.

The reasons for the high crime phenomenon are contested, and are probably not as high as thought. After a group of Bedouin ran over a policeman in March 2008, Asaf Hefetz, a former Israel Police commissioner, claimed that while the police should act with a strong hand on the matter, the reason for the high crime rates in the "Wild South" is long-term neglect by the state and a low socio-economic level. Yaakov Turner, the mayor of Beersheba and himself a former police commissioner, believes that the Bedouins as a whole are not responsible for all the crime in their sector.^[54]

Bedouin and the environment

Concentrating the indigenous Bedouin into urban townships so as to preserve National Reserve spaces for tourist uses and Jewish-only development purposes has been argued to be necessary to preserve the pristinity of the 'Last Frontier'. In 1979 Agriculture Minister Ariel Sharon declared a 1,500 square kilometer area in the Negev, a protected nature reserve, rendering a major portion of the Negev almost entirely out of bounds for Bedouin herders. In conjunction, he established the 'Green Patrol,'^[55] the 'environmental paramilitary unit' with the mission of fighting Bedouin 'infiltration' into national Israeli land by preventing Bedouin from grazing their animals, seen as creating 'facts on the ground.' During Sharon's tenure as Minister of Agriculture (1977-1981), the Green Patrol removed 900 Bedouin encampments and cut goat herds by more than 1/3.^[23] Today the black goat is nearly extinct, and Bedouin in Israel do not have enough access to black goat hair to weave tents.^{citation needed}

Prominent Israeli environmental leader Alon Tal has openly referred to Bedouin construction as among the top ten environmental hazards in Israel.^[23] However other environmentalists argue that the Bedouin should not be compared with large-scale industrial pollution, or for that matter, the role of the military in the Negev.^[23] Not long after Sharon’s 1979 decision to set aside a portion of the Negev as a nature reserve, the military soon took over the State Lands from which the Bedouin had been evicted, conducting exercises on JNF lands designated as park space. Some argue that these exercises cause erosion or leave behind 'footprints' that can remain for decades.^[23] This military range today amounts to 85% of the Negev (the Negev is 60% of Israel).

In the remaining portion of the Negev available for civilian purposes, a large number of citizens live together in close proximity to a range of types of hazardous infrastructure. The most toxic infrastructure in the Negev, including waste dumps, mines, and chemical factories, is located adjacent to unrecognized Bedouin villages and grazing grounds, as well as in close proximity to Jewish towns. Given the small scale of the country, in the past few decades both Bedouin and Jews of the region have come to share some 2.5 % of the desert with Israel's nuclear reactors, 22 agro and petrochemical factories, an oil terminal, closed military zones, quarries, a toxic waste incinerator (Ramat Hovav), cell towers, a power plant, several airports, a prison, and 2 rivers of open sewage.^[56] Much of this infrastructure is concentrated on the grounds of the unrecognized village of Wadi el-Na'am.

Demolitions, development and demographics

Bedouin advocates argue that the main reason for the transfer of the Bedouin into townships against their will is demographic.^[57] Today there are around 160,000 Bedouins living in the Negev, and the number is increasing fast. With an annual growth rate of 5.5%, their birthrate is amongst the highest in the world; there will be 320,000 Bedouin in the Negev by 2020.^{citation needed} In 2003, Director of the Israeli Population Administration Department, Herzl Gedj, described polygamy in the Bedouin sector a "security threat" and advocated various means of reducing the Arab birth rate.^[58] In 2003, Shai Hermesh, the treasurer of the Jewish Agency and head of its effort to establish a solid Jewish majority in the desert told The Guardian: "We need the Negev for the next generation of Jewish immigrants" and added, "It is not in Israel's interest to have more Palestinians in the Negev."^[32]

In 2005 Ronald Lauder of the Jewish National Fund announced plans to bring 250-000-500,000 new settlers into the Negev through the Blueprint Negev, incurring opposition from Bedouin rights groups concerned that the unrecognized villages might be cleared to make way for Jewish-only development and potentially ignite internal civil strife.^[59]^[60]^[61]^[62] Some Bedouin advocates claim the Blueprint Negev is motivated by demographic considerations, aimed at the increasing Jewish population to offset the skyrocketing Bedouin population.

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