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Demographics in the Negev: oppression against the Bedouin community

January 23, 2014 at 5:02 am

Israel’s preoccupation with sustaining a demographic majority has shifted focus to the Bedouin community in the Negev. A significant area targeted since the commencement of the occupation, the Bedouin community has faced discriminative practices which disrupt basic services and access to electricity and water, as well as forced displacement, in an attempt to sustain a Jewish population majority.  Echoing David Ben Gurion’s views that the lack of a Jewish majority in the Negev lessens Israel’s concept of state, the student village network Ayalim’s founder Dany Gliksberg expressed concern that Jews are risking becoming ‘a minority ruling over a majority of non-Jews’, referring to the Bedouin’s high population growth statistics.


Erroneously portraying a Jewish majority as essential to the dynamics of democracy, Gliksberg believes that the Negev should have been considered a priority in the forthcoming elections, to minimise the chances of a non-Jewish population majority in land declared as belonging to the government since the 1950s and 1960s. Jews have been reluctant to relocate to the Negev, owing to its remoteness and lack of urban development. However, a look at the occupation’s history shows that Israel was determined to displace the Bedouin community by moving them to poorly constructed villages, resulting in overcrowding, lack of resources and a forced detachment from land which had been previously farmed and cultivated by the community. Moshe Dayan, former Chief of Staff of the Israeli Defence Forces and later Defence Minister, declared the Bedouin would become a disappeared phenomenon. Forced relocation would ‘transform the Bedouin into an urban proletariat’, in Dayan’s own words.

Land confiscation eventually led the Bedouin to migrate in search of work, effectively and unwillingly aiding Israel’s settlements designed at incarcerating the Bedouin away from their nomadic roots. Under the ‘Prawer Plan’ approved in 2011, Israel further consolidated its oppression against the Bedouin by deciding against legalising unrecognised Bedouin villages and rejected historic ties to their land. Despite opposition from the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination and the European Parliament’s resolution calling for an end to displacement, eviction and dispossession; plans which would further fragment the Bedouin community and disintegrate any semblance of representation for its people.

Despite Israeli spokesperson Mark Regev stating that the Prawer Plan was designed with the intention of allocating a better provision of national resources for the Bedouin, as well as enabling Bedouin to become ‘legal owners of land’, the concept of land ownership remains disputed and houses have been repeatedly demolished. Israel’s hypothetical vision of empowerment fails to empower Bedouin with opportunities to sustain their welfare and rights to the land. Indeed, a discussion of land ownership from the viewpoint of the coloniser can hardly appease people who face eviction and displacement and are rendered observers of settler communities usurping rights and resources.

Regarded by Israel as lesser citizens, it seems that the primary concern of furthering the Prawer Plan stems from the desire to consolidate tactics of land possession based upon the division of the Bedouin community. The reduction of land use enforced by Israelis has not generated any future for Bedouin in state settlements or those residing in unrecognised villages. Bedouin rejection of the Prawer Plan has been unacknowledged, aided by blatant misrepresentation masking rhetoric which appeals to Western governments whose orientalist misconceptions aid in supporting Israel’s colonial practices.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.