| A Bedouin man and camel in Negev |
| Total population |
|---|
| 160,000 |
| Regions with significant populations |
| Israel, Egypt |
| Languages |
|
Arabic (mainly Bedouin dialect, also Egyptian and Palestinian), Hebrew (Modern Israeli) |
| Religion |
The Negev Bedouin (Arabic: بدو النقب, Badū an-Naqab; Hebrew: הבדואים בנגב Habeduim Banegev) are traditionally pastoral semi-nomadic Arab tribes living in the Negev region in Israel who hold close ties to the Bedouin of the Sinai Peninsula. The move away from their traditional lifestyle in modern times has led to sedentarization. Most of the Negev Bedouin tribes migrated to the Negev from the Arabian Desert, Transjordan, Egypt, and the Sinai from the eighteenth century onwards.[1]
Estimated to number some 160,000,[2] they comprise 12% of the Arab citizenry of Israel.[3] Of Israel's total population, 12% live in the Negev,[4] and Negev Bedouin constitute approximately 25% percent of the total population therein.[5]
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Negev Bedouin are defined today as Arab nomads who live by rearing livestock in the deserts of southern Israel. The Negev Bedouin community consists of tribes that 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.[6]
The Negev Bedouin tribes have been divided into three classes, according to their origin: descendants of ancient Arabian nomads, peasants (Fellaheen) who came from cultivated areas, and descendants of those brought from Africa as slaves.[7]
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.
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.[8] Nevertheless, Negev Bedouin continue to possess goats and sheep: in 2000 the Ministry of Agriculture estimated that the Negev Bedouin owned 200,000 head of sheep and 5,000 of goats, while Bedouin estimates referred to 230,000 sheep and 20,000 goats.[9]
Historically, the Bedouin engaged in nomadic herding, agriculture and sometimes fishing. They also earned income by transporting goods and people[10] across the desert.[11] Scarcity of water and of permanent pastoral land required them to move constantly. The first recorded nomadic settlement in Sinai dates back 4,000-7,000 years.[11] The Bedouin of the Sinai peninsula migrated to and from the Negev.[12] The Bedouin established very few permanent settlements; however, some evidence remains of traditional baika buildings, seasonal dwellings for the rainy season when they would stop to engage in farming. Cemeteries known as "nawamis" dating to the late fourth millennium B.C. have been also found. Similarly, open-air mosques (without a roof) dating from the early Islamic period are common and still in use.[13] The Bedouin conducted extensive farming on plots scattered throughout the Negev.[14]
During the sixth century, the Emperor Justinian sent Wallachian and Bosnian slaves to the Sinai to build the Saint Catherine's Monastery. Over time these slaves converted to Islam, and adopted an Arab Bedouin lifestyle.[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 Bedouin flourished. However, this activity decreased after the capital was move to Baghdad during the subsequent Abbasid reign.[15]
Traditional Bedouin lifestyle began to change after the French invasion of Egypt in 1798. The rise of the puritanical Wahabbi sect forced them to reduce raiding caravans. Instead, the Bedouin 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 and attracted the Bedouin to newly formed settlements that sprung up along the canal.[11]
During World War I, the Negev Bedouin 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 Bedouin. The Bedouin nevertheless retained their lifestyle, and a 1927 report describes them as the "untamed denizens of the Arabian deserts."[11] The British also established the first formal schools for the Bedouin.[6]
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."[16] Recent scholars have challenged the notion of the Bedouin as 'fossilized,' or 'stagnant' reflections of an unchanging desert culture. Emanuel Marx has shown that Bedouin were engaged in a constantly dynamic reciprocal relation with urban centers.[17] Bedouin scholar Michael Meeker explains that "the city was to be found in their midst."[18]
By the 20th century, much of the Bedouin population was settled, semi-nomadic, and engaged in agriculture according to an intricate system of land ownership, grazing rights, and water access.[19]
During the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, the vast majority of the Bedouin in the Negev region fled to Egypt, or Jordan (including the territories of the former British Mandate that came under their control). Of the approximately 65,000 that lived in the area before the war about 11,000 remained.[20][21] Those who remained belonged to the Tiaha confederation.[14] They were relocated by the Israeli government in the 1950s and 1960s to a restricted zone in the northeast corner of the Negev, called the ha-Siyag (Hebrew: הסיג, "the Fence") made up of relatively infertile land in 10% of the Negev desert in the northeast.[22][23]
In 1951, the United Nations reported the deportation of about 7,000 Negev Bedouin to Jordan, the Gaza Strip and Sinai, but many returned undetected.[24] The new government failed to issue the Bedouin identity cards until 1952 and deported thousands of Bedouin who remained within the new borders.[25] Deportation continued into the late 1950s, as reported by Haaretz newspaper in 1959: "The army's desert patrols would turn up in the midst of a Bedouin encampment day after day, dispersing it with a sudden burst of machine-gun fire until the sons of the desert were broken and, gathering what little was left of their belongings, led their camels in long silent strings into the heart of the Sinai desert."[26]
The legal grounds cited for the displacement of the Bedouin was the 1858 Ottoman Land Law. Under the Tanzimat reforms instituted as the Ottoman Empire gradually lost power, the Ottoman Land Law of 1858 instituted an unprecedented land registration process in order to boost the empire's tax base. Few Bedouin opted to register their lands with the Ottoman Tapu, due to lack of enforcement by the Ottomans, illiteracy, refusal to pay taxes and lack of relevance of written documentation of ownership to the Bedouin way of life at that time.[27] Israel claimed the land fell under the Ottoman class of 'non-workable' (mawat) land and thus belonged to the state under Ottoman law. [28]
In the years after the establishment of Israel, Bedouin herding was restricted by land expropriation.[6] Bedouin tribes were concentrated in the Siyag (Hebrew for "fence") triangle of Beer Sheva, Arad and Dimona.[8]The Black Goat Law of 1950 curbed grazing so as to prevent land erosion, prohibiting the grazing of goats outside recognized land holdings. Because few Bedouin territorial claims were recognized, most grazing was rendered illegal. Since both Ottoman and British land registration processes had failed to reach into the Negev region before Israeli rule, and since most Bedouin preferred not to register their lands as this would mean being taxed, few Bedouin possessed any documentation of their land claims. 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, and instead of migrating with their goats in search of pasture, most Bedouin migrated in search of work.[8]
Despite state hegemony over the Negev, the Bedouin regarded 600,000 dunams of the Negev as theirs, and later petitioned the government for their return.[29] Various claims committees were established to make legal arrangements to solve land disputes at least partially, but no proposals acceptable to both sides were approved.[28]In the 1950s, as a consequence of losing access to their lands, many Bedouin men sought work on Jewish farms in the Negev.[16] However, preference was given to Jewish labor, and as of 1958, employment in the Bedouin male population was less than 3.5%.[16]
In 1963, Moshe Dayan told Haaretz: "We should transform the Bedouin into an urban proletariat - in industry, services, construction, and agriculture. 88% of the Israeli population are not farmers, let the Bedouin be like them. Indeed, this will be a radical move which means that the Bedouin would not live on his land with his herds, but would become an urban person who comes home in the afternoon and puts his slippers on. His children will get used to a father who wears pants, without a dagger, and who does not pick out their nits in public. They will go to school, their hair combed and parted. This will be a revolution, but it can be achieved in two generations. Without coercion but with governmental direction ... this phenomenon of the Bedouins will disappear."[30] Between 1968 and 1989 the state established urban townships for housing of deported Bedouin tribes and promised Bedouin services in exchange for the renunciation of their ancestral land.[31] Within a few years, half of the Bedouin population moved into the seven townships built for them by the Israeli government. The largest Bedouin locality in Israel is the city of Rahat. Other towns include Ar'arat an-Naqab (Ar'ara BaNegev), Bir Hadaj, Hura, Kuseife, Lakiya, Shaqib al-Salam (Segev Shalom) and Tel as-Sabi (Tel Sheva).[32]
In the 1970s and 1980s, grazing restrictions and limited access to water, electricity, roads, education and health care, led tens of thousands of Bedouin citizens of Israel to resettle in seven legal towns constructed by the government.[33]
According to Ben Gurion University's Negev Center for Regional Development, the towns were built without an urban policy framework, lacking business districts or industrial zones;[34] as Harvey Lithwick of the Negev Center for Regional Development explains: "... the major failure was a lack of an economic rationale for the towns... "[35] According to Lithwick, and Ismael and Kathleen Abu Saad of Ben Gurion University, the towns quickly became among the most deprived towns in Israel, severely lacking in services such as public transport and banks.[6] The urban townships were plagued by endemic joblessness and resulting cycles of crime and drug trafficking.[34]
According to an article published in 2000, over 25% of Bedouin men in the townships were unemployed.[9]According to a State Comptroller report from 2002, the townships were built with minimal investment, and infrastructure in the seven townships had not improved much in the span of three decades. In 2002, most homes were not connected to the sewage system, the water supply was erratic and the roads were not adequate.[36]
In 2008, a railway station opened near the largest Bedouin town in the Negev, Rahat (Lehavim-Rahat Railway Station), a noticeable improvement to the transportation situation.
Those Bedouin who resisted sedentarization and urban life remained in their old villages. They live in 39-45 villages which are not recognized by the Israeli government and are thus ineligible for municipal services such as connection to the electrical grid, water mains or trash-pickup.[37] According to the Israel Land Authority, in 2007 40% of the Bedouin lived in unrecognized villages,[38] although the Regional Council of Unrecognized Villages (RCUV) refer to Bedouin in unrecognized villages as half the Negev Bedouin population.[39] The RCUV figures include the five villages which remain unrecognized despite incorporation into the Abu Basma Regional Council.
Many remain in unrecognized villages in the hope of retaining their traditions and customs; these are rural villages, some of which pre-date Israel.[23] However in 1984, the courts ruled that the Negev Bedouin had no land ownership claims, effectively illegalizing their existing settlements.[3] The Israeli government defines these rural Bedouin 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.[40][41] Extreme unemployment has afflicted unrecognized villages as well, breeding extreme crime levels. Since sources of income such as grazing has been severely restricted, and the Bedouin rarely receive permits to engage in self-subsistence agriculture,[42]
Many of the Bedouin 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 lack basic services like water, electricity and schools. Building permanent structures and farming is prohibited although many do, risking fines and home demolition.[23] The Israeli government frequently demolishes homes and sprays toxic pesticides onto crops[43] in the unrecognized villages. Some Bedouin homes were demolished to make way for the establishment of a Jewish town.[44]
Today, several unrecognized villages are in the process of 'recognition.' They have been incorporated into the Abu Basma Regional Council, but most remain without water, electricity and garbage services. Five of the towns incorporated into the council remain unrecognized. The process is mired in urban planning difficulties and land ownership problems.[45]
Due to the lack of municipal waste services and trash pickup, backyard burning has been adopted on a large scale, impacted badly on public health and the environment.[46]
The Bedouin benefited from the introduction of modern health care in the region.[16] According to the World Zionist Organization, although in the 1980s, as compared with 90% of the Jewish population, only 50% of the Bedouin population was covered by Israel's General Sick Fund, the situation improved after the 1996 National Health Insurance Law incorporated another 30% of Negev Bedouin into the Sick Fund.[47]
The Bedouin infant mortality rate is still the highest in Israel, and one of the highest in the developed world. In 2010, the mortality rate of Bedouin babies rose to 13.6 per 1,000, compared to 4.1 per 1,000 in Jewish communities in the south. According to the Israeli Ministry of Health, 43 percent of deaths among infants up to a year old result from hereditary conditions and/or birth defects. Other reasons cited for the higher infant mortality rates are poverty, lack of education and proper nourishment of mothers, lack of access to preventive medical care and unwillingness to undergo recommended tests. In 2011, funding for this purpose was tripled. [48]
60% of Bedouin men smoke. Among the Bedouin, as of 2003,7.3% of females and 9.9% of males have diabetes.[49] Between 1998 and 2002, Bedouin towns and villages had among the highest per-capita hospitalization rates. Rahat and Tel Sheva ranked highest.[50] However, the rate of reported new cancer incidents in Bedouin localities is very low, with Rahat having the 3rd-lowest rate in Israel at 141.9 cases per 100,000, compared to 422.1 cases in Haifa.[50]
The Centre for Women's Health Studies and Promotion notes that in the unrecognised Bedouin villages in the Negev, very few health care facilities are available; ambulances do not serve the villages and 38 villages have no medical services.[51] According to the Israeli NGO Physicians for Human Rights (PHR-Israel) the number of doctors is a third of the norm.[52]
In urban townships, access to water is also an issue: an article from the World Zionist Organization Hagshama Department explains that water allocation to Bedouin towns is 25-50% of that to Jewish towns.[47] Since the State has not built water infrastructure in the unrecognized villages, residents must buy water and store it in large tanks where fungi, bacteria and rust develop very quickly in the plastic containers or metal tanks under conditions of extreme heat; this has led to numerous infections and skin diseases.[52]
In the 1950s, mandatory schooling was extended to the Bedouin sector, leading to a massive increase in literacy levels. Illiteracy decreased from around 95% to 25% within the span of a single generation, with the majority of the illiterate being 55 or older.[53]
Drop-out rates are very high among Negev Bedouin. In 1998 only 43 percent of Bedouin youngsters reached the 12th grade.[36]Enforcement of mandatory education for the Bedouin has been weak, particularly in the case of young girls. According to a 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.[51] This is due to a combination of internal Bedouin traditional attitudes towards women, lack of government enforcement of the Mandatory Education Law and insufficient budgets for Bedouin schools.[51]
However, the number of Bedouin students in Israel has started to rise. Arabic summer schools are being developed.[54] 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.[55] The university had made special Bedouin-only scholarship programs available in order to encourage higher education among the Bedouin.[56]
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.[57]
There were reports that some Bedouin tribes had previously conducted female genital cutting. However, this practice was considered far less severe than what is carried out in some places in Africa, consisting of a "small" cut. The practice was carried out independently by women, and men didn't play a part and in most cases were unaware of the practice. However, by 2009 the practice seemed to have disappeared. Researchers are unclear as to how it disappeared (the Israeli government was not involved) but suggest modernisation as the probably cause.[58]
Bedouin citizens of Israel suffer from extreme rates of joblessness and endure the highest poverty rate in Israel. According to a 2007 Van Leer Institute study, 66 percent of Negev Bedouin as a whole lived under the poverty line (in unrecognized villages, the figure reached 80 percent), as compared with a poverty rate of 25 percent in the general Israeli population.[59] Tourism and crafts are growing industries and in some cases, such as Drijat, have reduced unemployment significantly.[54]
The crime rates in the Bedouin sector in the Negev are alleged to be high. 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.[60]
In 1979, a 1,500 square kilometer area in the Negev was declared a protected nature reserve, rendering it out of bounds for Bedouin herders. In conjunction with this move, the Green Patrol, was established that disbanded 900 Bedouin encampments and cut goat herds by more than a third. With the black goat nearly extinct, black goat hair to weave tents is hard to come by.[61]
Israeli environmental leader Alon Tal claims Bedouin construction is among the top ten environmental hazards in Israel.[62] In 2008, he wrote that the Bedouin are taking up open spaces that should be used for park land.[63] In 2007, Bustan organization disagreed with this contention: "Regarding rural Bedouin land use as a threat to open spaces fails to take into account the fact that Bedouin occupy little more than 1% of the Negev and fails to call into question the IDF’s hegemony over more than 85% of the Negev’s open spaces."[32] Gideon Kressel has proposed a brand of pastoralism that preserves open spaces for rangeland herding.[64]
Wadi al-Na'am is located close to the Ramat Hovav toxic waste dump, and residents have suffered from higher than average incidences of respiratory illnesses and cancer.[65] Given the small scale of the country, Bedouin and Jews of the region 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.[66]
Bedouin advocates argue that the main reason for the transfer of the Bedouin into townships against their will is demographic.[67] The Bedouin comprise the youngest population in Israeli society[68] and with an annual growth rate of 5.5%.[36]In 2003, Director of the Israeli Population Administration Department, Herzl Gedj,[69] described polygamy in the Bedouin sector a "security threat" and advocated various means of reducing the Arab birth rate.[70]
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.[71]
Despite the problem of illiteracy, the Bedouins attribute importance to natural events and ancestral traditions.[72] The Negev Bedouins have been compared to the American Indians in terms of how they have been treated by the dominant culture.[16]The Regional Council of Unrecognized Villages describes the Negev Bedouin as an "indigenous" population.[73]However, this concept is unknown in Arabic, and attempts to categorize Negev Bedouin this way are a recent phenomenon, with the earliest instance dating to 1996.[74]
Each year, between 5%-10% of the Bedouin of draft age volunteer for the Israeli army, (unlike Druze, and Jewish Israelis, they are not required by law to do so[75]).[76]
Amos Yarkoni, first commander of the Shaked Reconnaissance Battalion in the Givati Brigade, was a Bedouin (born Abd el-Majid Hidr). A 2004 study found that Negev Bedouins tend to identify more as Israelis than other Arab citizens of Israel.[77]Ismail Khaldi is the first Bedouin vice consul of the State of Israel and the highest ranking Muslim in the Israeli foreign service.[78] Khaldi is a strong advocate of Israel. While acknowledging that the state of Israeli Bedouin minority is not ideal, he said
I am a proud Israeli - along with many other non-Jewish Israelis such as Druze, Bahai, Bedouin, Christians and Muslims, who live in one of the most culturally diversified societies and the only true democracy in the Middle East. Like America, Israeli society is far from perfect, but let us deals honestly. By any yardstick you choose -- educational opportunity, economic development, women and gay's rights, freedom of speech and assembly, legislative representation -- Israel's minorities fare far better than any other country in the Middle East.[79]
Before 1948 the relationships between Negev Bedouin and the farmers to the north was marked by intrinsic cultural differences as well as common language and some common traditions. Whereas the Bedouin referred to themselves as ‘arab’ instead of ‘bedû’ (Bedouin), farmers in the area ‘fellahîn’ (farmers) used the term Bedû, meaning "inhabitants of the desert" (Bâdiya), more often.[80]
Because of their status in Israeli society as the principal Arab population that served in the army (in addition to a portion of the Druze), Bedouin have experienced a rift with the Palestinian population on several levels. On the one hand, many Bedouin have played a role in policing borders which they themselves traditionally moved across freely, ejecting Palestinian workers sneaking into Israel, and even preventing the free movement of other Bedouin to whom they are often related. Identifying themselves with the same national terminology applied to those they have played a role in occupying presents serious moral quandaries. Many Bedouin want to disassociate themselves from the ‘term’ Palestinian, which is associated with terrorism in Israel; already in an extremely tenuous situation, they fear that identifying themselves with Palestinians will further injure their status in Israeli society and their potential to gain respect for their rights as citizens. Some scholars regard these developments as an illustration of a strategy of 'Divide to Rule'.[81]
A 2001 study suggests that regular meetings and cross border exchanges involving Negev Bedouin and their relatives or neighbors living in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip or Sinai may be more common than expected, casting "doubt on the accepted view of relationships between the Bedouin of the Negev and their Palestinian neighbors."[80] According to a 2008 report of Human Rights Watch, Bedouin in Israel see themselves as a part of the larger Palestinian Arab minority, with a distinct history of a nomadic and semi-nomadic lifestyle.[37]
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