Unrecognized: Bedouin in the Negev desert
Prior to Israel's founding in 1948, estimations say some 65,000 to 90,000 Bedouin lived in the Negev, a desert land in southern Israel spanning over 60 percent of the entire country. Practicing a semi-nomadic lifestyle, their main source of living was cattle, herds, rain-fed agriculture, and commerce. Approximately 80 percent of the Naqab Bedouin population fled during the 1948 war. The 11,000 that remained inside Israel’s borders...
more »Unrecognized: Bedouin in the Negev desert
Prior to Israel's founding in 1948, estimations say some 65,000 to 90,000 Bedouin lived in the Negev, a desert land in southern Israel spanning over 60 percent of the entire country. Practicing a semi-nomadic lifestyle, their main source of living was cattle, herds, rain-fed agriculture, and commerce. Approximately 80 percent of the Naqab Bedouin population fled during the 1948 war. The 11,000 that remained inside Israel’s borders after 1948 were moved into a restricted zone located in the northeastern Negev, living under military rule up until 1966.
Nowadays the Negev Bedouin population number approx. 190,000 people. State estimations quote an average annual population growth of about 4 percent, and predict a population of half-million by 2035.
About 50 percent live in a large number of villages, which are not recognized by state authorities. These villages do not appear on Israeli maps or governmental planning documents, and lack basic services and infrastructure, such as running water, garbage collection, electricity, and services of health and education. It is illegal to build permanent structures in these villages, and those that do so risk home demolitions. A typical unrecognized Bedouin village consists of between 60 to 600 families – a population of between 500 and 5000 people – that live in tents and shacks.
The other half of population is concentrated in 8 government-planned townships, which the state built in the 1960s in the restricted zone: Hura, Kseifa, Laquia, Arara, Rahat, Segev-Shalom and Tel-Sheva, as well as the new township of Tarabin. The townships all state services and are heavily subsidized. However the urbanism process appears to have had its toll on Bedouin society; unemployment and crime rates are disproportionately high, and the townships rank among the country’s ten poorest municipalities. Many have developed a dependency on funds from Social Security, and given the fact that Bedouin families consist of a lot of children, the childcare fundings they get are perceived by many Israelis to be exploitative.
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