Nowadays there is a big engagement of Bedouins in the Israeli labor
market, and the independent Bedouin economy is fully destroyed because
of the land confiscations and forcible displacement of the Bedouins which
brought a decline in their cultural life not only in being an economic entity.
One of the Israeli politicians, Moshe Dayan,346 once said,
We should transform the Bedouin into an urban proletariat in industry,
services, construction and agriculture. Eighty-eight percent of the Israeli
population is not farmers; let the Bedouins 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…. The children would go to school with
their hair properly combed. This would be a revolution, and it may be fixed
within two generations. Without coercion but with government direction…
this phenomenon of the Bedouins will disappear.347
This is a colonial speech that aims to make the Palestinians and especially the
Bedouins part of the Israeli economic structure and to prevent any kind of an
independent Palestinian economy.
Bedouins by nature are strong people; they live in a kind of challenging
and tough environment which made sumud [steadfastness] easier for them.
Even in the past they never obeyed any kind of authority, they are patient,
determined and stubborn people. For example, now we have around 20
Bedouin communities, most of them do not have any recognition from
the state. This means that those communities do not have any kind of
basic services and suitable infrastructure. Yet, people did not leave those
communities and the building of a city next to them to attract Bedouins to
move there was also not successful.
After Oslo, and specifically during the Second Intifada, there was fear of a
geographical expansion of Palestinian Bedouins to the borders of the West
Bank and the Gaza Strip, so what Israel did was to build a separation bloc
by establishing Israeli colonies around the borders of the Naqab, in order
to separate the Palestinian Bedouins from Palestinians in the West Bank or
the Gaza Strip. In order to achieve this plan Israel had to transfer several
Bedouin communities. One of them is Umm al-Hiran village which used
to connect the West Bank with the Naqab and its population was forcibly
displaced.
There are now almost 250,000 Bedouins living in the Naqab and around
100,000 are living in villages and communities that are not recognized by
Israel. Moreover, Israel does not provide them with any services or suitable
infrastructure and also the continuous home demolitions is one of the main
policies affecting the Palestinian Bedouins on a large scale.
346 Israeli military leader and politician; he served as Minister of Agriculture between 1949-1964 and
Minister of Defense between 1967 and 1974, among other positions
347 T. J. Demos, The Migrant Image: The Art and Politics of Documentary During Global Crisis, Duke
University Press Books, 13 February 2013, page 132
94
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