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May 10, 2002/Iyar 28, 5762, Vol. 54, No. 34
Treatment of Bedouin blasted
ORI NIR
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
JERUSALEM - Israel's state comptroller has joined the harsh criticism that academics and civic activists have been voicing for years over government policy toward the country's Bedouin minority.
In a typical, understated tone but peppered with damning facts and figures, the comptroller's annual report, released last week, shows how the Bedouin community has grown in numbers and needs since the state was established - and how government after government put these needs on the back burner.
Today, after years of neglect, the Bedouin community in the southern Negev desert suffers from a higher rate of poverty than the overall population, higher rates of crime, drugs and unemployment, worse health and education services, and appalling infrastructure.
"You neglect what is basically a loyal, quiet, nonpoli-ticized population, and it ends up exploding in your face. There is no way around it," says Thabet abu-Ras of Ben-Gurion University, an expert on the Bedouins.
Bedouins now share, for the most part, the antagonistic, estranged approach that most Israeli Arabs have toward the Jewish state.
Once, most Bedouin voters supported Zionist parties, particularly Labor. In 1992, 17 percent of Bedouin voters chose the Labor Party, but only 9 percent did so in the 1996 elections.
In recent elections, most Bedouin voted for Arab parties, mainly the one that includes Israel's radical Islamic movement.
Once, most young Bedouin men volunteered for military service. Today, only a handful of Negev Bedouin volunteer; unofficial accounts talk about a mere dozen in 2001.
And once, the Negev Bedouin were apolitical, almost unexposed to Arab nationalism. Today, they express opinions that often are more militant than their Arab brethren in the Galilee.
A poll taken among Israeli Arabs last year showed that the Bedouin community feels more estranged from the state than do Arab citizens in the north. Forty-two percent said they reject Israel's right to exist, compared with 16 percent in the non-Bedouin Arab sector.
The population of Bedouin in the Negev, which today numbers about 130,000, has grown more than ten-fold since 1948. Half of them live in seven townships that the state built between 1966 and 1990, and half live in a multitude of small villages, farms and tiny tent-and-shack communities, which are unplanned and unrecognized by the state.
Land ownership in the unrecognized communities is disputed. The Bedouins who live there and work some of the land claim ownership. A minority say they can prove their legal ownership with documents from the Ottoman and British governments that ruled Palestine before Israel's founding, while most claim a historical right of possession.
In 1976, the first Rabin government approved a set of terms and criteria to settle land disputes with the Bedouin for an area that totals approximately 380,000 square miles. Of these, disputes over just 54,000 square miles have been settled.
Since then, Bedouins have illegally invaded vast areas of state land. The state demolishes some of their new, unlicensed buildings, and does not effectively enforce the law. When it does, it sometimes uses force, which further alienates the population.
The state comptroller's report criticizes the government - indeed, all governments since the mid-1970s - for not having tried to settle these disputes, and for not supplying reasonable infrastructure and services to the recognized townships.
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