Israeli minister seeks to lower birth rate of Bedouin citizens

A member of Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet has urged for steps to be taken to reduce the birth rate of Palestinian Bedouin citizens in the Negev.

Agriculture Minister Yair Shamir made the remarks Sunday during a visit to the south of the country. Speaking to reporters, Shamir suggested that the government could seek to “reduce the birth rate” by tackling polygamy in the Bedouin community.

Shamir added that “only a suicidal country doesn’t recognize the Bedouin problem.”

The minister’s comments on the birth rate and apparent existential threat posed by the ‘Bedouin problem’ echo previous remarks made by Israeli officials. In 2010, Netanyahu warned  that a Negev “without a Jewish majority” would pose “a palpable threat”. Delegates at the 2003 Herzliya conference were told by a senior arms expert that “the delivery rooms in Soroka hospital in Be’er Sheva have turned into a factory for the production of a backward population.”

Shamir’s recommendation that the state “take all the Bedouin and get them out of the desert a bit”, is consistent with the state’s historical approach, as exemplified by famous comments made in 1963 by Moshe Dayan, who said “we should transform the Bedouins into an urban proletariat” so that “the children would go to school with their hair properly combed.”

Many will find the Agriculture Minister’s remarks even more disturbing given that he is responsible for overseeing a government plan for the Negev that threatens to forcible displace tens of thousands. Shamir is also an opponent of Palestinian statehood, commenting in 2013 on the West Bank: “The Arabs there who call themselves Palestinian, they’ll stay or go, but we’ll definitely stay. We need to keep building in the land.”