“Introduction” in “The Tribal Challenge: Alliances and Confrontations in the Israeli Negev”
Introduction
The Tribal Challenge, Bedouin, Jewish Settlements, and the Mandate
In January 2022, Bedouin inhabitants of the northeastern region of the Negev clashed with police over Israel’s tree planting on disputed land. A year earlier, Sheikh Sliman al-Atrash had petitioned the Be’er Sheva Magistrate’s Court for a restraining order against planting on land he claimed to own. When the court refused to grant him the restraining order because he had no proof of landownership, the sheikh decided to drop the case.1 However, when the planters arrived at the site a year later with the saplings, accompanied by police guards, they faced a large group of protesters who accused Israel of denying Bedouin rights. The situation deteriorated as protesters began throwing stones and burning tires. Gradually, the violence extended to the highway, with more and more stones and even Molotov cocktails hurled at passing vehicles.
In view of the escalating protests, the government ordered the cessation of the planting and sent representatives to restore the peace. Headlines in the Israeli press were divided: Some called for an immediate reinstatement of law and order in the Negev. As stated by Keren Uzan, a prominent journalist and resident of the Negev herself, “[Israel] should enforce the law in every part of the [Bedouin] dispersion.”2 Some agreed that Israel has every right to impose laws in the Negev but questioned the wisdom of doing so in view of the Bedouin protests. As explained by Omer Bar-Lev, public security minister from the left-leaning Labor Party, “The question is: Is it right at this moment after 72 years, in areas that were not planted before, when we’re trying to improve relations, to plant—where the Bedouin grow wheat?”3
Still others denied Israel’s right to impose any laws at all. Prominent Israeli left-wing journalist Gideon Levi argued, “The Negev was Bedouin long before it was Jewish. What’s wrong with that?”4 MK Sami Abu Shade from the Joint List party justified the riots by dint of “the state’s insistence on forcing a lifestyle on the Bedouin Arab population of the Negev they do not want.”5
The three views—that it is necessary and just to impose Israeli law on the Bedouin; that although Israel has a right to implement the law, current circumstances make doing so impracticable, unsuitable, or immoral and the tree planting should therefore be postponed; and that Israel has neither the right nor the imperative to implement its laws—reflect the diversity within Israeli public opinion.
Such controversies in Israel are nothing new. The actions of Israeli authorities in relation to the Bedouin have been punctuated by them since the establishment of the state. These controversies involve not only tactics but also a dilemma: how to establish effective governance of the Bedouin community while maintaining democratic principles vis-à-vis individual citizens within two frameworks—one tribal and collective, governed by traditions and customs shaped over hundreds of years under harsh desert conditions and based on the concepts of honor and blood affiliation, and the other, a newly established democracy with a system of governance based on the separation of powers and written laws that promote civil liberties.
Many Israelis in the Negev who arrived with the intention of establishing Israeli law found themselves puzzled by the complexities of Bedouin life. I myself arrived from Tel Aviv with my family in the late 1990s to work in the southern district attorney’s office of the Ministry of Justice, tasked with implementing Israeli law in the region. The differences I encountered in the Negev, where Israeli law is sometimes unheeded and unenforceable, astonished me. When I tried to pursue the methods of implementation I had used at my previous job as a litigator in the Tel Aviv district, I would often encounter weird, offbeat responses like, “Patience. Israeli law is still on the camel to Be’er Sheva,” or “Don’t be such a stickler. This isn’t Tel Aviv.” Even more disturbing was the response of a senior manager in my ministry to stop asking questions and not to create extra work with my “noise.” Nevertheless, in the ensuing twenty years, I succeeded in doing my job as I understood it, albeit not without raising a few desert storms. A certain amount of inertia was evident from the start in some government offices, but for the most part, those who came in direct contact with the Bedouin community worked with great dedication. I spent much time during my years at the ministry (until 2014), while writing my dissertation in historical geography, and later on in my research at the Ben-Gurion Institute for the Study of Israel and Zionism at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev trying to fathom the disparity between Israeli law and the Bedouin legal ethos. In the process, I met with many Bedouin and administrative officials; explored the Negev by car, on foot, and on camelback; and immersed myself in archival material, including documents, maps, photos, newspapers, dispatches and reports, court rulings—anything at all that might shed light and extend my understanding of Israel’s policy toward the Negev Bedouin.
In the current book, I have endeavored to clarify the mystery, blending history, geography, law, and the policies adopted by those who administered Israel’s Negev between 1947 and 1971. I hope that the story I am about to relate will help the reader better understand not only the events of the past but current events that are still unfolding in the Negev, where planting trees is much more than just an agricultural activity.
The Study of Negev Bedouin
Scholars’ interest in the modern Bedouin as a branch of nomadic studies was piqued by the journeys of nineteenth-century researchers like Charles Doughty and Alois Musil to the Middle East and the Arabian Desert.6 The study of the Negev Bedouin as a separate group was initiated in the 1930s with the publications of two scholars with a profound interest in Bedouin history and culture: the Zionist orientalist Eliahu Epstein (Elath), a member of the Jewish Agency, and ‘Aref al-‘Aref, an Arab nationalist who served as district officer of Be’er Sheva in Mandatory Palestine.7
In the following two decades, the Bedouin topic did not attract much scholarly attention, with two exceptions. In the 1940s, Ya’akov Shimoni, a Zionist who was born in Berlin and moved to Palestine during the British Mandate, published a work on the Arabs of Israel with a section on the Bedouin. He studied Arabic and orientalism at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, headed the Arab Bureau of the Intelligence Service of the Hagana (the leading prestate paramilitary organization), and later served as deputy director of the State Political Department of the Jewish Agency. During his service, he was involved in decisions regarding the Bedouin.8 In 1946, Joseph Braslavy (Braslavsky) included a section on the Negev Bedouin in the first edition of his book HaYad’ata Et HaAretz: Eretz HaNegev (Know the land: The Negev).9
The 1960s gave rise to the first anthropological study of the Negev Bedouin, conducted by Emanuel Marx. Marx had become familiar with the tribes through his earlier work in the Office of the PM Adviser for Arab Affairs and decided to extend his knowledge via academic research.10 His work discussed Bedouin social structure, economy, and daily life under the military administration.11 In the 1970s, Gideon Kressel, another prominent anthropologist, focused his research on tribal collectivism in the face of urbanization.12 Sasson Bar-Zvi, who had come to the Negev in the late 1940s as a member of the Hagana and become fascinated with the Negev Bedouin culture, began collecting and recording Bedouin oral history after his retirement from the military and devoted much of his time to publishing works on Bedouin customs and traditions. Together with Joseph Ben-David, a historical geographer, he contributed greatly to knowledge of the Bedouin way of life.13
The scholarly study of Bedouin oral history continued to develop in the 1980s, with a focus on the Sinai Bedouin, and resulted in an academic controversy over the limits of oral history.14
While earlier studies had centered mainly on the culture, nomadic roots, and traditions of the Bedouin, the next stage in research, which began during the 1980s, gave rise to a critical approach to the government policy vis-à-vis the Bedouin, dealing with policy flaws and suggestions for their possible remedy. This line of research was inspired by postmodernism, postcolonialism, post-Zionism, and identity theories. It began with the research of Ghazi Falah, a Bedouin geographer from the Galilee in northern Israel. In 1987, he established the Galilee Center for Social Research in Nazareth, and in 1991 he relocated to North America. In his works, Falah argues that Israel’s attempts to settle the Negev Bedouin were immoral and motivated by the Zionists’ desire to grab Bedouin and Arab lands elsewhere in Israel.15 Following the simplistic dichotomy of Arabs and Jews, Falah did not address the distinction between the Bedouin way of life and that of the settled Arabs. They were all put under the umbrella of Arab identity being oppressed by the Jewish state. This path was followed by sociologist Ronen Shamir during the late 1990s. Shamir framed Bedouin-Israeli relations within the broader context of settler colonialism while focusing on the role of the Israeli legal system in what he regards as the deprivation of rights among the indigenous Bedouin.16 Over the ensuing two decades, although scholars like Emanuel Marx, Gideon Kressel, and Joseph Ben-David and geographers like Avinoam Meir, Shaul Krakover, and later Ze’ev Zivan and Hanina Porat continued to discuss Bedouin issues, their work enjoyed much less academic attention.17
From that point onward, the spotlight has been on Israel, with Bedouin relations a salient colonialist phenomenon that lies within the rivalry between Arabs and Jews. This form of discourse, which presents the Bedouin as a passive and submissive society subjected to immoral and unjust government forces, has introduced new spheres and fields of research.18 Hence, no comparison between Israel and other Arab countries with Bedouin populations has been found relevant. The Israel-Bedouin issue has become the domain of critical scholars, who frame it in terms of the broader Jewish-Arab conflict and settler colonialism. Within this polarized framework, the Bedouin are described as an indigenous ethnic Arab minority on the margins of society, dispossessed through racial bias, and a stronger, imperialist settler state because of their Arab affiliation and Israel’s ill intentions.19 It has become politically incorrect to discuss the challenges Bedouin tribalism poses in Israel through the complex perspective of contradictory values. Tribal fractionation and hierarchies, blood vendettas, and other sensitive issues have been largely ignored.20 In the twenty-first century, the most popular scholarly writings have focused on the Negev Bedouin through the lens of colonialism, to the total neglect of other factors. A notable example is the 2018 study by Sandy Kedar, Ahmad Amara, and Oren Yiftachel on Bedouin land rights, which omits any reference to Bedouin tribalism and completely isolates the Israeli case from the wider context of the same phenomenon in other Middle Eastern states.21
Viewing Bedouin studies as part of the Israeli-Arab conflict and the dominance of the settler colonialist approach in the study of the Negev Bedouin has contributed to their absence in the general discourse concerning Bedouin tribalism in the Middle East. There is no doubt that the Israeli-Arab dispute greatly impacted Israel’s policy toward the Bedouin, but does this tell the whole story of the Negev Bedouin situation?
There are numerous Bedouin tribal communities in Middle Eastern states that gained independence around the same time as Israel. In two inspiring works on the Bedouin of the Middle East, the Bedouin of Israel were entirely omitted. One of these, Tribes and State Formation in the Middle East, edited by Philip S. Khoury and Joseph Kostiner, probes relations between the Bedouin and the states they inhabit and “the continuing viability of tribal structures and systems in contemporary times, within contemporary nation-states.” The contributors to the collection attest to the power held by Bedouin chiefdoms vis-à-vis the state and stress their strong tribal solidarity (‘asabiyya). The power of tribal authority in nomadic and formerly nomadic societies may prevail over the territorially based organization of nation-states. The dominance of Bedouin chieftaincies in the states of the Middle East posed a challenge that had to be addressed during the state-building process. Khoury and Kostiner find that Tribalism challenges the process, and while some states have been able to “accommodate” it by empowering the Bedouin and including them in the nation-building process, others have not been able to do so, and in the latter case tribalism plays a destructive role.22
Stimulated by the continued viability of tribalism in the course of events, which came to be known as the Arab Spring, Uzi Rabi, an Israeli historian of the Middle East, complied a collection of articles titled Tribes and States in a Changing Middle East, which follows the ideas in Khoury and Kostiner’s book while focusing on twenty-first-century Bedouin-state relations.23 The collection examines developments in the states, dictatorships, and monarchies of the region with the understanding that “when considered as ideal types, there seemed to be an incompatibility between tribes and states, particularly nation-states.”24
Rabi offers examples of strategies developed by various countries to cope with the ongoing challenges of tribalism, ranging from various forms of mutually beneficial alliances that contribute to the stability of the regime to a climate of antagonism and conflict that leads to instability. Rabi’s analysis determines that constructive alliances between states and Bedouin tribes are likely to occur when three main conditions are met: the state succeeds in maintaining “a balance of power between tribal families”; the state is willing to incorporate tribal values in its national ethos; and the state allows the tribes a certain measure of political independence to apply their own norms.25 If the state fails to do so, it loses a mutually beneficial alliance with the Bedouin and is subjected instead to constant antagonism and unrest.
Cases from various other countries in the Middle East instantiate not only the continuum between alliance and antagonism but also the “price” incurred for adopting one or the other and the likely outcome: constant conflict or calm and tranquility. Jordan, Oman, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia have been able to accommodate alliances with tribalism and achieve relative calm while others such as Yemen, Iraq, Bahrain, and Syria adopted repressive measures that led to constant unrest. Furthermore, even when a state decides to pursue alliances, it must constantly maintain a balance of power between different tribes and between the tribes and the state.26
While the insights regarding the Bedouin in the Middle East that Rabi introduced are fresh, the inherent challenges states face from tribal groups are nothing new. A collection edited by the anthropologist Dawn Chatty includes many examples of how tribal-nomadic societies from the Middle East and North Africa contested state authority.27 There are also numerous non-Arab tribal societies. The array of challenges that such populations pose to modern states has been the focus of anthropologist Philip Carl Salzman, who explored the tribal pastoral shepherds of Sardinia, the Yoruk of southern Turkey, the Bharawad of Gujarat, the Reika of Rajasthan, and more. Most of these societies were forced to settle and subject to assimilation, which completely dismantled their group ties.28 Another study conducted by anthropologist Anatoly Khazanov indicated that the commitment of tribal members to the tribal-nomadic framework threatens governmental institutions’ sovereignty. Khazanov showed that the dominant approach by modern states is to settle the tribal nomads to facilitate control or at least delineate their areas of migration and distance them from the borders. Their way of life was found to be incompatible with the needs of the modern state.29
The acknowledgment that tribalism within the state is an ongoing challenge and that no Middle Eastern Arab state can live in peace with its Bedouin communities unless it accommodates the tribal norms and values is a fascinating topic that merits further exploration. How did Israel address this challenge? Which alternatives did the State of Israel choose? What was the influence of its liberal democracy agenda? Was it willing to accommodate tribal norms, and if so, which ones? How has Israel’s position vis-à-vis tribalism changed over the years? What figures and institutions were involved in decision-making, and what were their motivations? Finally, what part did the Jewish-Arab dispute play?
Before delving into these questions, there are several factors to explore by way of introduction: the history of the Bedouin and their sociopolitical structures, the pioneering ethos of Jewish settlements in the Negev before statehood, and finally my sources, methodology, limitations, and scheme of periodization.
The Negev Bedouin Population
The Bedouin population described in this book, commonly referred to as the Negev Bedouin, are mostly descendants of pastoral nomadic Bedouin tribes, also referred to as genuine Bedouin.
Pastoral Tribalism and Nomadism
The term tribe is hard to define, as there are so many different meanings and contexts in which the term is used. In its basic and somewhat simplified usage, the term relates to a social unit of people ascribed to a common ancestor, real or imagined. Affiliation is determined by birth through male kinship, and blood relations help shape the strong bonds and total devotion to the tribal unit.30
Tribalism in general and nomadic tribalism in particular are deeply rooted in human history. Socio-tribal frameworks were formed prior to the establishment of modern states.31 The tribal framework, developed in the absence of a central government, gave rise to internal systems with a unique code of morality and behavior.32 As Salzman explains it, “Tribal pastoralists live as members of a political unit that provides protection through collective responsibility, with each individual obliged to support the other. For individual pastoralists, the tribe is the maximal political entity to which he or she has loyalty and within which the rule of law—customary law—applies.”33
Lacking permanent structures, fortresses, fences, and walls, their only protection against external threats was the protection they could provide for each other. The more warriors a tribe had to call on, the more powerful it became. The tribal system required discipline and unconditional cooperation. All members were duty-bound to participate in raids and bloody disputes. Norms were strictly enforced, with severe sanctions applied in cases of violation.34
The linguistic derivatives tribal and tribalism are used in the current book in their original meaning to describe the Bedouin lifestyle and organizational structure. It is worth noting that some anthropologists have begun to question the use of these highly charged terms, often deemed derogatory.35 Scholars now use the terms with an overlay of meaning far removed from their original sense, as in various studies of dysfunctional political parties within democratic systems.36 Nevertheless, the terms continue to be used in academic discourse to describe Bedouin societies in the Middle East.
Bedouin Tribalism
The general term Bedouin refers to a Muslim Arab ethnic group of pastoral nomadic herdsmen who wander through the deserts of the Middle East and North Africa and share a local dialect of the Arabic language. Muhammad Yussef Suwaed estimates the Bedouin population at about twenty-five million.37 Bedouin society is described as a society of honor with its own unique codes.38 Bedouin rules, customs, and traditions are largely shared by all tribes and predate the advent of Islam.39 Although they accepted Muslim beliefs and principles, they did not follow all its religious practices, such as praying in a mosque or studying the Qur’an.40
Bedouin economy was based mainly on herding domesticated camels, sheep, and goats, supplemented by a certain amount of dryland farming, protection money collected from caravans, and raids conducted on other tribes and settled communities41 (see fig. Intro.1). The tribes developed their own customary law for the settling of disputes and a system for the enforcement of legal decisions.42
Socially and politically, the Bedouin are organized in confederations (al-Qabilah), subconfederations, and tribal units (al-‘Ashirah).43 Confederations and subconfederations are political alliances between different tribes formed for the purpose of controlling resources, mainly water and land.
The tribal unit includes a group of families in a paternal blood relationship with a real or mythical common ancestor. Although not necessarily closely related by blood, all members of the tribe bear the same last name. The tribal structure is actually tiered according to kinship ties, from the nuclear family unit consisting of spouses and their children to the extended family, which includes at least one primary nuclear family and other families closely related by blood.
Figure Intro. 1. A Bedouin camp in the Negev. Source: Israeli Government Press Office.
One of the main affiliations within the tribal framework is the “blood money group,” a union of extended families, usually up to five generations, with a paternal blood relationship (Khams). Members of the Khams share responsibility for the actions of every other member. If a ransom is demanded, the amount to be paid is divided among them. If a murder occurs, the duty to seek revenge lies with every member of the victim’s Khams and can be taken on by anyone belonging to the Khams of the murderer.44
Such solidarity, or “balanced opposition” and “complementary solidarity,” as it is sometimes called, is evinced in the old Arab Bedouin saying “I against my brother; I and my brother against my cousin; I and my brother and my cousin against the world.”45
Within the patriarchal framework of the tribe, Bedouin women are owned by men, by their fathers before marriage and by their husbands thereafter, and are restricted to a private area of the dwelling. They are excluded from any involvement in political decisions, which is why they rarely appear in archival documentation.46 Since power is correlated to the number of male warriors in the tribe, many offspring are an advantage, and this contributes to the phenomenon of extensive polygamy.47
Nomadic tribes may also take in families seeking refuge from blood feuds, conflicts, or other threats, and such families may then form subtribal units. In the Negev, most of the subtribal units are descendants of peasant families (hereafter fellahin-Bedouin) from the Nile region. Their arrival was part of a larger phenomenon of immigration to Eretz Israel, mainly during the nineteenth century, in the wake of economic distress and political pressures in their countries of origin, and the promise of a growing demand for skilled workers and the availability of arable land in Ottoman-ruled Eretz Israel.48 The fellahin-Bedouin adopted the Bedouin way of life but were perceived as having a lower status than the genuine Bedouin who controlled the land and invested much effort in maintaining their position.49 Bedouin relations with fellahin-Bedouin were based on patronage. Granting plots of land to the fellahin-Bedouin and receiving a percentage of the crop in return, the genuine Bedouin were able to carry on with their pastoral way of life50 (see fig. Intro.2). Another subtribal unit was formed by descendants of slaves (Afro-Bedouin) who had been bought by the genuine Bedouin.
Figure Intro. 2. Bedouin of the al-Huzayyil plowing with a camel. April 10, 1951. Photo: Eldad Davis. Source: The Government Press Office.
After the establishment of the state, Israel became involved in the effort to reconstruct tribal units that had been split into smaller divisions as a consequence of altered borders, as will be explained in chapter 2. In this context, the term tribe is used to denote an amalgam of Bedouin families, ancestral or constituted by the authorities, that form a functioning unit under the leadership of a sheikh and appear under his name in official documents.
The word sheikh carries several meanings in Arabic: tribal leader, elder, notable, religious devotee, an honorific, and so forth. In this book, it is used in its primary meaning as someone who functions as a tribal leader. The specific tasks of the sheikh differed little from tribe to tribe and included administrative, representational, and political functions.51 Apart from bearing responsibility for the well-being, security, and economic conditions of the tribe, the sheikh also played a key role in the preservation of the tribal ethos. The sheikh’s success depended on the support and cooperation of tribal dignitaries including heads of large families. To a great extent, the power of the sheikh derived from his personal abilities and intra-tribal traditions. The position was usually passed down dynastically, with priority given to the son of the sheikh. In the absence of an external source of authority, the sheikh was required to achieve a consensus by means of persuasion, since he could not expect to impose his opinions on the elders. However, when external forces like governments became involved, the tribal leader gained an added source of power, first from the Ottomans, then from the British, and later from the Israelis52 (see fig. Intro.3).
Figure Intro. 3. Bedouin sheikhs in Be’er Sheva with ‘Aref al-‘Aref, the district officer. The photo was taken between 1934 and 1939. Source: Library of Congress.
Many of the Bedouin living in the Negev today are the descendants of nomadic Arab tribes who migrated in several waves over different periods, particularly in the past two hundred years, from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the Sinai Peninsula, and Jordan.53 Eretz Israel, which had been administered by the Ottoman regime (1517–1917), became Palestine after the British defeat of the Ottoman forces (1917–48).54
Nomadism continued in the Negev until the beginning of the twentieth century, when a transition to seminomadic life began.55 This was due mainly to the arrival of the fellahin-Bedouin. Near the end of the Ottoman period, the regime had attempted to gain control over the Bedouin tribes by legal means, by incentivizing them to settle, or through military suppression of their tribal wars. The regime established Be’er Sheva as its seat of government and encouraged the Bedouin to settle in the area by allocating free plots of land and establishing a school, a mill, and a market there.56 The British who replaced them did not encourage Bedouin settlement. They did, however, formulate other means of control and supervision, deploying a network of police stations in the Negev and developing strategies to address the unique challenges posed by tribal groups in the areas they controlled.57 Legislation like the Bedouin Control Ordinance of 1942 afforded them special powers, and the district commissioner was authorized to direct the Bedouin “to go or not to go, or to remain in a specified area.”58 Another example is the Collective Punishment Ordinance from 1926, which took into account the collective character of tribal societies and the Bedouin methods of solving disputes through customary law, for which tribal courts were established.59
Robert S. G. Fletcher’s study of the tribal question in different parts of the world under the British shows that their tribal policies were transferred from one region to another, and that issues of Bedouin tribal life had to be addressed separately from those of settled communities.60
The location and extent of tribal and confederation territories (Dirah) had been determined through a series of wars in the nineteenth century that ended with Ottoman attempts to subdue the region.61 There are numerous maps that represent the borders of Bedouin confederations.62 Map Intro.1 shows Bedouin tribal borders in 1947, as presented in an IDF booklet and based on a map sketched by Al-‘Aref during his tenure as mandate district officer in Be’er Sheva.63
During the British period, the Negev Bedouin were organized in seven confederations comprising ninety-five tribes. Their numbers were merely estimates, as it was difficult to obtain their cooperation for the census. Demographer Helmut Muhsam and others number their population at approximately sixty-five thousand.64 Table 0.1 shows that the largest confederation was that of the Tarabin in the western Negev, followed in size by the Tiyaha in the northern Negev, smaller by 20 percent, and the ʽAzazmah in the southern Negev, half the size of the Tarabin.
Neither the Ottoman Empire, which ruled the region for four hundred years, nor the British Mandate, which succeeded it and lasted for thirty years, were able to resolve the legal land rights claims of the Bedouin. Much of the land legislation in the country was first enacted by the Ottoman Empire, followed by the mandate government and later by Israel. The two principal laws applicable to the subject were the Ottoman Land Law of 1858 and the Mandate Land (Settlement of Title) Ordinance of 1928. These two pieces of legislation are still relevant today.65
Map Intro. 1. Bedouin tribal borders in 1947. Source: A booklet on the southern Bedouin, 1959, Appendix D. Source: file 457–72/1970, Israel Defense Forces and Defense Establishment Archives [originally in Hebrew].
Tribal Confederation | Location | Population |
|---|---|---|
Tarabin | Southwest | 22,100 |
Tiyaha | Northwest and northeast | 18,850 |
ʽAzazmah | South of Be’er Sheva | 11,700 |
Jubarat | Northwest | 5,850 |
Hanajrah | Southwest, near Gaza | 5,200 |
Ahaywat | The most southern confederation | 650 |
Saʽidiyyin | In the east, Arava area | 650 |
Total | 65,000 |
Ottoman Land Law classifies five types of land use: Waqf, Mulk, Matruka, Miri, and Mewat. Waqf is endowed land set aside for a specific purpose; Mulk is land with immovable structures, granted in full to specific people; Matruka is land owned by the regime and granted to a particular group or the general public, with public areas such as roads, creeks, woodland, granaries, and the like for common use.66
The remaining two types are Miri and Mewat. Miri is sovereign land granted to individuals for certain uses. In order to prove one’s right to these lands, the claimant was obliged to show that it had been assigned to him by the regime and that he had obtained a formal document (Kushan) for it. In addition, under sections 20 and 78 of the Ottoman Land Law, the claimant had to prove a series of cumulative terms, including the intensive cultivation of the land in a continuous manner.67 As opposed to Miri land, Mewat, literally dead land, belonged to the sovereign, and an individual could not acquire rights to it unless he could prove that it had been “revived” (i.e., that the nature of the soil had undergone a complete and permanent change).68
According to section 103 of Ottoman Land Law, Mewat is defined as dead land that has not been allocated for public use, while section 6 indicates that such lands “are so remote from any village that a loud voice cannot be heard at the point nearest an inhabited place, (interpreted as a mile and a half, or about half an hour’s distance).”69 The terms village and inhabited place, used in the law, refer to a permanent settlement dating back to ancient times, not to an encampment of movable tents. Under Ottoman Land Law, Mewat could be revived through cultivation, but the British Mewat Land Ordinance of 1921 ruled out such a possibility and granted a limited period to reclaim lands that had been revived.70 During both the Ottoman and the British Mandate periods, the Bedouin refrained from registering lands. Al-‘Aref explained that when called upon to cooperate in the government process of registration, “they pointed to their swords and rifles and said: ‘Here are our titles.’”71 Other reasons enumerated were the long-standing Bedouin tradition of noncooperation with governments in general, an unwillingness to pay taxes or fees involved in the registration process, a fear of being drafted into the army, inexperience with registration mechanisms, and lack of ownership evidence.72
The Mandate Settlement Ordinance was intended to reorganize the Ottoman registration records and introduce a new system of survey claims and cadastral mapping.73 In one case that reached the mandatory court, the judge expressed his disapproval of the Bedouin’s resistance to registering lands and made them pay the consequences.74 The Jewish community cooperated with the registration procedures, but the Arabs typically did not, hence the mandate government registered no more than a quarter of the lands.75
Jewish Settlement in the Negev before Statehood
Relations between the Bedouin and Jewish communities have been difficult and complex ever since the Zionist movement first evinced an interest in the Negev.76 In the early twentieth century, a number of Jewish families established a community in Be’er Sheva, the city of Abraham they knew so well from the Bible. They built a synagogue and ran a commercial flour mill (consistent with a saying in the Ethics of the Fathers: “Without flour, there is no Torah; without Torah, there is no flour” [3:21]).77 Jewish-Bedouin cooperation developed in the region through commercial transactions, which later included land sold by Bedouin sheikhs to Jewish agencies, including the Jewish National Fund (JNF). By then the Jewish community had reached about a hundred members.78 Nevertheless, hostilities soon erupted, especially during the tenure of al-‘Aref as mandatory district officer (1929–38). In 1932, during a visit of the Mufti Hajj Amin al-Husseini to Wadi a-Shari’ah, north of Be’er Sheva, Bedouin sheikhs determined that the blood of any Bedouin guilty of selling land or involvement in the sale of Arab lands to Jews “will be duly spilled.”79
During the Arab riots that broke out in 1936, known as the Great Arab Revolt, the remaining members of the Jewish community of Be’er Sheva were evicted from their homes and did not resettle in the city until it was captured by Israel in 1948.80 In the early 1940s, there were only a few kibbutzim in the southern coastal plane and the northwestern Negev. The first three settlements south of Be’er Sheva were established in 1943: Revivim, Gvulot, and Beit Eshel. The Jewish presence there became more significant in October 1946, when eleven Jewish settlements were established in response to the Morrison Grady Plan for the division of the territory under the mandate. The plan reflected an understanding between Britain and the United States regarding the establishment of a Negev District that would include the southern and western Negev and would be administered by a British central government.81 All Jewish settlements in the Negev were established on lands previously purchased from the Bedouin.82 The settlements found it necessary to employ local Bedouin to guard the fields.83 Between February and November 1947, six more settlement were established, most of them south of Be’er Sheva.84
The situation in most of the settlements was extremely precarious. They were remote and scattered in the northwestern Negev and around Be’er Sheva. Revivim was the southernmost point, and the easternmost was Nevatim (apart from housing built for laborers at the Dead Sea Works in Sdom). The settlements, most of them with no more than twenty or thirty members, depended on external supplies and the assistance of Jewish institutions. By September 1947, the total number of Jewish settlers was about three thousand.85
Rooted in the Ottoman administrative reform of the nineteenth century, the mandate adopted the mukhtar system and officially nominated and paid a member of the local community to perform duties and shoulder responsibilities of community leadership. This included, among other things, recording demographic data, issuing needed identification and certificates, and representing the local community before the authorities.86 The word mukhtar, meaning “chosen” in Arabic (or muhtar in Ottoman Turkish), refers to the fact that mukhtars were selected by a process that sometimes involved election. Mukhtars were not restricted to the Muslim population and were also nominated for Jews, usually identified as Jewish mukhtars. There were mukhtars for neighborhoods in urban towns, villages in rural areas, and tribes in nomadic populations, where they were also identified as “nominated sheikhs.”
In the Jewish settlements in the Negev, the mukhtar’s official role was to supervise the community and to serve as a mediator between the different settlements and the mandate. They also acted as liaisons with neighboring Bedouin and guards of the settlement fields, which enabled them to provide information to the intelligence units of the Hagana. Most of the mukhtars did not speak Arabic as their mother tongue and acquired their knowledge in Arabic and Bedouin culture in diverse ways, some by themselves and some in courses taken during their stay in the Negev87 (see fig. Intro.4).
Figure Intro. 4. Bedouin affiliated with the al-Huzayyil tribe and Jews of the kibbutz, posing for a picture outside Kibbutz Shoval, November 1, 1947. Photo: Zoltan Kluger. Source: The Government Press Office.
Michael Hanegbi of Kibbutz Negba (later the first military governor of the Negev) was nominated as a senior Jewish mukhtar of southern Mandatory Palestine while serving as a commander of the Hagana intelligence unit of the Negev. Hanegbi, who was born in 1911 in Poland as Michael Kopitevsky, followed the Zionist call that Jews should return to their homeland and arrived in Eretz Israel in 1934, where he grouped with others to establish Kibbutz Negba, a socialist collectivist settlement in the northern Negev. Like many other Zionists, he changed his last name to a Hebrew name. The meaning of his name is “man of the Negev.”88
A key factor in the development of the Jewish settlements of the Negev was the water supply. The Jews developed a water pipeline from the pumping facility at Kibbutz Nir Am to supply the other settlements in the Negev, and the mukhtars, led by Hanegbi, played a significant role in laying the pipeline with Bedouin support. The project was promoted as beneficial for Jews and Bedouin alike, and drinking taps were installed in places where the pipe passed through Bedouin encampments. However, some of the sheikhs sold the free water they received to their tribesmen by the drum. The pipeline was only partially completed before serious hostilities broke out in November 1947.89
Despite the anticipated cooperation with the Bedouin, the pipeline became a source of daily sabotage and theft, leading to stoppages in the water supply and a breakdown of security. The process of radicalization among some Bedouin tribes ran parallel to that of the Arabs. As researcher Ze’ev Zivan concluded, based on personal interviews, ties between the Negev Bedouin and the Arabs of Mount Hebron and the influence of ‘Aref al-‘Aref’s anti-Zionist propaganda led most of them to join the campaign against the Jewish community. According to Suwaed, pressure was exerted on the Bedouin by the Arab Higher Committee to take part in sabotage operations and assaults against Jews. The Jewish settlers and their mukhtars were not sufficiently aware of the process Bedouin society was undergoing.90
State, Nation-State, and Western Liberal Democracy
Although there is no agreed definition for the phenomenon known as state, it is usually considered a large politically sovereign administrative unit that has control over a territory. Max Weber’s definition regards the state as a political organization that possesses the exclusive right and ability to use force toward a population within a defined territory. According to Weber, state ruling can be based on tradition, charisma, or legal mechanism. A state can be in a form where the administrative staff is either beneath the ruler or separate from him.
Modern states receive their legitimacy through legislation while usually dividing their coercive power over their population between the police and the courts. Through its laws, the state sets binding rules for behavior and is obligated to care for the people’s security, economic needs, education, welfare, health, and more. Nation-states are typically states where the majority of their inhabitants share a common ethnicity. These states also serve as a source of affiliation and identity.91
Among the various types of states, Western liberal democracies are a kind that has developed from the idea that a person is bound only by his own actions. This idea may seem trivial to those who were born in liberal democratic societies; however, such states are a relatively new phenomenon. As Mark Weiner explains, “The individualistic focus is fundamental to the law of modern liberal societies. It lies in the core of nations that trace their democratic political heritage to the Enlightenment and their economic roots to the Industrial Revolution—and that hold individual self-fulfillment and personal development as a central moral value.”92
John Locke’s political philosophy as set forth in Two Treatises of Government holds that “men being, as has been said, by Nature all free, equal and independent, no one can be put out of this Estate, and subjected to the Political Power of another, without his own Consent.”93 A democratic body is thus based on a social contract between individuals, as opposed to one in which members are bound by group ties and whose rights devolve from their status at birth.94 Other political philosophers like Karl Popper consider democracies open societies marked by a critical attitude to traditional or closed societies.95
A liberal state adopts strong measures to ensure that all individuals, regardless of gender, make their own decisions and are solely responsible for the outcome of their own actions. The democratic system is based on the concept that human intelligence gives individuals the right and the ability to make decisions and control their political destiny. This includes freedom of action in many spheres of social, economic, and political life and free will to enter agreements, whether in business or personal relations like marriage. It also means freedom to take part in the political system, to vote and run in free and fair elections, freedom of speech, and the right to be heard. The whole system is based on the proposition that human beings are created equal, regardless of kinship, religion, or color. One of the most important democratic principles is that of the rule of law, the requirement to obey the laws passed in a democratic way. It also ensures the balance of powers between the executive, legislative, and judicial branches.96 Democracy includes mechanisms designed to protect the individual rights of the minority.
The role of the democratic state is to ensure the well-being of its citizens, as well as their safety and security. Democracy is based on the assumption that ideological disagreements and conflicts will arise in social and political life, and the way to settle them is through public debate and mutual persuasion, according to the accepted rules of the game. The use of force is permitted only on behalf of the state.
Some regimes of modern Middle East Arab states promote a separate national identity. Others are satisfied, at least most of the time, with their Arab ethnic identity. None of the Arab states are liberal democracies.
Israel is self-declared as a modern nation-state that follows Western liberal democratic rules. Some scholars question Israel’s claim of being a democracy and argue that as a Jewish nation, it prevents non-Jews from enjoying equal rights. Indeed, during the period discussed in the book, rights and freedoms were temporarily suspended, for reasons that will be explained. However, even during that time, many core aspects of individual rights, such as freedom of speech, free elections, separation of powers, individual responsibility for one’s actions, the rule of law, and other aspects of liberal democracies were kept to a great extent.
Sources, Methods, Limitations, and Periodization Scheme
In summary, the book examines Israel’s policy in regard to Negev Bedouin tribalism, using a historical perspective and geographical methodologies. It combines an analysis of a vast amount of archival material with field studies and graphic information derived mainly from maps and photos. This methodology is useful in understanding historical events with a strong spatial component.97 The book’s main contribution lies in the material it uncovers and the light it sheds on the institutional decision-making process. For those who are interested in the social and anthropological aspects of Bedouin life, there are many other studies available.98
The spatial domains considered here are the northern and eastern Negev, semiarid areas that were designated for Bedouin encampments during the military administration period. The southern Negev, which is mountainous, is described only briefly, as the limited Bedouin presence there was not formally permitted. The history of relations between the southern Bedouin and Israel forms part of another study and deserves a separate platform.99
The issues of the Bedouin of the Galilee in northern Israel are also not part of the current research. Unlike the Negev Bedouin, they lived in a rainy area, in small enclaves surrounded by Arab and Jewish settled communities. These tribes, which were in enmity with the settled Arabs, did not control large plots of land and were willing to move to permanent settlements.
Using mainly institutional documentation has its drawbacks, including an absence of primary sources of the period recorded by the Bedouin themselves. Generally speaking, the Bedouin rarely wrote or maintained written records of events and instead transmitted their history orally, in poems and stories. Oral history is highly important, but it is not systematic and hence cannot be used as a primary source and record of events,100 nor is it available for research in the archives of Arab states, although some Arab documentation is included in this book. It should be noted that the same difficulty occurs in all studies related to the Negev Bedouin, including those conducted by Arab scholars, and thus the focus here is on the Israeli position toward the Bedouin where much documentation is available, and less on the Bedouin perspective. The large amount of documentation used in the research of this book facilitates cross-checking and verification.
In the course of writing, I was uneasily aware that women are almost entirely absent from these pages. Hardly any women served in decision-making capacities with the main authorities involved in Bedouin issues, neither in the Negev Military Administration nor in the Office of the PM Adviser for Arab Affairs. This is highly unfortunate, as women did hold roles during the period of the Jewish “state in the making,” as the Yishuv was called. The most prominent woman of the period, Golda Meir, held a ministerial position, but it was as foreign minister. Even after her election as prime minister in 1969, she seldom appears in the documentation.
As for linguistic issues, the book uses transliteration to present titles of articles and books from non-English languages. However, it also provides a full translation of titles in the reference list.
Furthermore, the names of people and places that are translated from Arabic are presented according to the unique Negev Bedouin dialect. The full methodology and format of the exact translation are provided in the book.
Overview
The book is composed of an introduction, three sections, and an epilogue. The introduction provides some essential background on tribalism in general and Bedouin tribalism in particular, as political and social phenomena that challenge the modern state; it likewise sets forth the historical and legal context and the prestate demographic and geographical layout of the Bedouin and Jewish populations of the Negev.
The first section includes two chapters detailing the early years that shaped the relationship between Israel and the Bedouin and Israel’s effort to accommodate tribalism in collaboration with the sheikhs.
Chapter 1, titled “Bedouin in the War of Independence, 1947–49” explores the period of November 1947 until the armistice agreement and the involvement of the different tribes in the War of Independence. The political dimension of tribalism was manifested principally through the capacity of each tribe, under its own leadership, to operate as a separate negotiating and decision-making unit. This allowed them a certain autonomy in the forging of tribal alliances with Israel and enabled Israel to differentiate among them, allowing certain tribes to return after the war and denying return to others.
Chapter 2, titled “Creation of the Military Regime: Nominated Sheikhs and Tribal Units, 1949–56,” focuses on the first postwar decade when the Bedouin came under the inclusive power of the military administration. During this period, two contradictory approaches to tribalism emerged. The first was motivated by those who aimed to disband tribalism and transform the Bedouin into communities made up of individual farmers (fellahin) and hoped to accomplish this by establishing agricultural villages, similar to the Israeli Moshavim. In these villages, each nuclear Bedouin family was to be granted a plot of arable land, thus freeing it from subordination to the sheikh and his possible exploitation. The contrary approach, which eventually won out, was promoted by the military administration—a policy that used the tribal framework, gave official status to nominated sheikhs, reorganized segmented tribes to forge tribal units, and opened tribal courts. The policy of allying with the sheikhs not only preserved tribalism but reinforced it. It was chosen mainly because it was practical—that is, it enabled the sheikh, with the help of a small number of officers provided by the state, to maintain the peace and achieve control over the Bedouin by using structures that were familiar to them.
The second section includes two chapters dealing with the next stage in Israel’s policymaking under the military administration. Although various forces were at work to break down tribal life, especially the hardship of prolonged droughts, the pro-tribal policy won out in the end.
Chapter 3, titled “Bedouin Exit from the Negev, 1957–60,” discusses the extreme drought conditions that led to a massive migration of Bedouin from the Negev and eroded their tribal structures. Bedouin encamped in regions beyond the control of the military administration and in proximity to population centers where they became acquainted with the Israeli job market and lifestyle. This chapter sheds light on another less discussed episode, Moshe Dayan’s 1960 initiative to modernize the Bedouin by transforming them into a settled urban proletariat in mixed cities like Ramleh in the center of Israel. This initiative was rejected by the Bedouin leadership and was therefore quashed.
Chapter 4, titled “The Decline of the Military Administration, 1961–66,” addresses the central government’s promotion of an urban settlement plan for the Negev and the military administration’s attempt to delay it. The attempts to implement state laws dealing with issues of illegal construction and landownership led to confrontations with Bedouin sheikhs who demanded that the state effectively recognize their land rights. Once again, the state suspended its confrontational approach in favor of achieving peace.
The last section of the chapter deals with the years following the military administration, the incentives for cooperation with tribalism that remained in place, and the possible reasons for this.
Chapter 5, titled “New Institutions—Old Alliances, 1967–71,” begins with the abolition of the military administration and explains how its powers and responsibilities as well as its collaborative policy were transferred to other agencies. The latter kept the tribal framework as it was. Once again, the authorities’ aspiration for three new settlements in the Negev to become a platform for an altered Bedouin way of life came to naught.
The conclusion, titled “The Question of Functional Alliances,” presents and analyzes major themes that emerged from the study and explains why Israel ultimately implemented a policy of alliances rather than confrontations.
The book concludes with an epilogue that connects the past with present events.
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