For the last few days, I traveled throughout the Negev desert with my program to learn about the ecology, culture, and politics of the region. The Negev desert covers over 60% of Israel and most of the desert contains army-owned land and nature reserves, although a few small cities, kibbutzim, and Bedouin villages are scattered throughout. Rainfall levels range from 2 inches to 10 inches, and the landscape resembles the moon with its beige, crater-like mountains and just a few acacia trees scattered about. Yet as we learned on the trip, geologically the Negev is rich with fossils and layers of different types of rocks. (Hundreds of million years ago the Negev was covered by an ocean.) Still, from someone who is from the “City in the Forest,” the desert is a desolate, though subtly beautiful, place.
The trip largely focused on land use—who owns the land and the politics of how the owners use that land—and these opinions depended upon the guide. An ecologist for the Israeli National Park Service advocated for the consolidation of unrecognized Bedouin villages and a halt on the development of single-family owned farms. A NGO representative in the small city of Mitzpe Ramon told us a story about the proposed development of single-family houses on previously public land on the edge of the Mitzpe Ramon crater and the NGO’s efforts to divert this development to a different area of the town. The town overlooks the Ramon Crater, which is Israel’s largest national park.
Most importantly, we heard from Bedouins, who are the pastoral nomads of the region. There is debate about whether they are indigenous to the area as the Bedouins are nomadic people and most of the Bedouin population migrated to Israel from Saudi Arabia in the past 250 years. However, small populations of Bedouins migrated to and from the Negev in the past few thousand years. On the trip, we learned about their struggles with the Israeli government to receive recognition for their towns and to receive governmental services, like trash collection, electricity, and water. For a desert that is so large and desolate, there is a lot of politics. Furthermore, at the end of the day, all land is limited in Israel, a country which is the size of New Jersey.
I also had the opportunity to learn more about the Bedouin population on the trip. The 210,000 Negev Bedouins live in either recognized villages or villages that are unrecognized by the Israeli government. (This stemmed from the 1948 war of independence, as before 1948 the Bedouins did not claim land ownership due to their nomadic culture.) On the first night, my program stayed in the tent of Salman Al Azme, who is a Bedouin man in an unrecognized village. To get to his village, the bus had to slowly make its way along a gravel road. We passed ramshackle houses, a small pasture of sheep, and tents. The village was not on the grid and any available power came from a few solar panels or bio-gas generators. From my perspective, the village was a third-world village in a developed country.
Salman hosted us graciously. He made libba, a delicious Bedouin bread baked under hot coals. We were served Arabic tea and coffee and slept in Bedouin tents for the night. (We also heard the hum of helicopters at night; this is a typical phenomenon in the army-rich Negev.) Salman sent his kids to school in Mitzpe Ramon and told us about the great responsibility and connection to the land that Bedouin children have. Although the Bedouin may appear poor, they are rich in culture and, in my opinion, misunderstood by the Israeli Jewish population.
I do not want to get into the politics of the Bedouin in the Negev, as it is a very complex and emotionally-charged issue from both a state and Bedouin perspective. Generally, I think they have been mistreated by the Israeli government, and the unrecognized villages deserve recognition or, at the very least, government services. One thought that lingers with me though—can a nomadic people even exist in a Western state? Many Bedouin are not happy in recognized villages as they cannot take their flocks to graze in neighboring land, as this land is owned by someone else. Furthermore, as I learned, the Bedouin “way of life” is the most central part of their identity. Although the Israeli government has made poor, often unjust decisions, a nomadic “way of life” inherently clashes with Western land-ownership laws. There are many questions left unanswered.
Pictures: 1) Ramon Nature Reserve 2) Salman serving us libba 3) Ecological building on a single-family farm 4) and 5) En Avdat National Park (ruins)
