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A Bedouin man in Sinai Peninsula

The Bedouin, (from the Arabic Template:ArabDIN (بدوي), pl. badū), are a desert-dwelling Arab nomadic pastoralist, or previously nomadic group, found throughout most of the desert belt extending from the Atlantic coast of the Sahara via the Western Desert, Sinai, and Negev to the Arabian Desert. Non-Arab groups as well, notably the Beja of the African coast of the Red Sea are sometimes called Bedouin.

Traditional Bedouin cultures

A Bedouin family in their tent photographed by Gertrude Bellin Ha'il

The Bedouins were divided into related tribes. These tribes were organized on several levels - a widely quoted Bedouin saying is "I and my brothers against my cousins, I and my brothers and my cousins against the world." The saying signifies a hierarchy of loyalties based on closeness of kinship that runs from the nuclear family through the lineage, the tribe, and even, in principle at least, to an entire ethnic or linguistic group (which is perceived to have a kinship basis). Disputes are settled, interests are pursued, and justice and order are maintained by means of this organizational framework, according to an ethic of self-help and collective responsibility *(Andersen 14). The individual family unit (known as a tent or bayt) typically consisted of three or four adults (a married couple plus siblings or parents) and any number of children.

Bedouin woman in Jerusalem.

When resources were plentiful, several tents would travel together as a goum. These groups were sometimes linked by patriarchical lineage but just as likely linked by marriage (new wives were especially likely to have male relatives join nealogies to take in new members).

The largest scale of tribal interactions is of course the tribe as a whole, led by a Sheikh (literally, "elder"). The tribe often claims descent from one common ancestor — as mentioned above, this appears patrilineal but in reality new groups could have genealogies invented to tie them in to this ancestor. The tribal level is the level that mediated between the Bedouin and the outside governments and organisations.

Bedouins traditionally had strong honor codes, and traditional systems of justice dispensation in Bedouin society typically revolved around such codes. The bisha'a, or ordeal by fire, is a well-known Bedouin practice of lie detection. See also: Honor codes of the Bedouin, Bedouin systems of justice

Bedouins are well known for practicing folk music, folk dance and folk poetry. See also: Bedouin music, Ardha, Ghinnawa

More in-depth discussions on these topics can be found in Chatty (1996) and Lancaster (1997).

Changing ways of life

Starting in the late 19th century, many Bedouins under British rule began to transition to semi-nomadism. In the 1950s as well as the 1960s, large numbers of Bedouin throughout the Middle East started to leave the traditional, nomadic life to settle in the cities of the Middle East, especially as hot ranges have shrunk and population levels have grown. In Syria, for example, the Bedouin way of life effectively ended during a severe drought from 1958 to 1961, which forced many Bedouin to give up herding for standard jobs. Similarly, government policies in Egypt and Israel, oil production in Libya and the Persian Gulf, as well as a desire for improved standards of living, effectively led most Bedouin to become settled citizens of various nations, rather than stateless nomadic herders.

Government policies pressuring the Bedouin into in some cases have been executed out of a desire to provide services (schools, health care, law enforcement and so on - see Chatty (1986) for examples), but in others have been based on the desire to seize land traditionally roved and controlled by the Bedouin.

The Israeli Case: History of the Urbanization Process

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BUSTAN Archives: "Goats grazing beneath disused garbage bins in the government township of Tel Sheva, on the Israeli side of the Green Line. The region is lauded as "Israel's Last Frontier," a pristine wilderness, while the government fails to extend proper municipal trash pickups within 'government-sanctioned' urban townships."

Counter to the image of the Bedouin as fierce stateless nomads roving the entire region, by the turn of the 20th century, much of the Bedouin population in Palestine was settled, semi-nomadic, and engaged in agriculture according to an intricate system of land ownership, grazing rights, and water access.

"We should transform the Bedouins into an urban proletariat - in industry, services, construction, and agriculture. 88% of the Israeli population are not farmers, let the Bedouin be like them. Indeed, this will be a radical move which means that the Bedouin would not live on his land with his herds, but would become an urban person who comes home in the afternoon and puts his slippers on..."

-Israeli General Moshe Dayan to Haaretz, 1963

Dayan said, in the years leading up to the building of the first recognized townships, "Without coercion but with governmental direction ... this phenomenon of the Bedouins will disappear." Today, many Bedouin call themselves 'Negev Arabs' rather than ‘Bedouin,’ explaining that 'Bedouin' identity is intimately tied in with a pastoral nomadic way of life – a way of life they say is over. Although the Bedouin continue to be perceived as nomads, today all of them are fully sedentarized, and about half are urbanites.

The Unrecognized Villages

Between 1948 and 1966, the new State of Israel imposed a military administration over Arabs of the region and designated 85% of the Negev "State Land." All Bedouin habitation on this newly-declared State Land was retroactively termed illegal and "unrecognized." Now that Negev lands the Bedouin had inhabited upwards of 500 years was designated State Land, the Bedouin were no longer able to fully engage in their sole means of self-subsistence – agriculture and grazing. The government then forcibly concentrated these Bedouin tribes into the Siyag (Arabic for 'fence') triangle of Beer Sheva, Arad and Dimona . (By 2003, at least 75,000 citizens lived in 40 unrecognized villages. Today, all of these citizens and the children they have had since, live under the threat of demolition of their homes, and transfer into urban townships.)

Grazing

In order to reinforce the invisible Siyag fence, the State employed a reining mechanism, the Black Goat Law of 1950. The Black Goat Law curbed grazing so as to prevent land erosion, prohibiting the grazing of goats outside recognized land holdings. Since few Bedouin territorial claims were recognized, most grazing was thereby rendered illegal. (Both Ottoman and British land registration processes failed to reach into the Negev region. Most Bedouin who had the option, preferred not to register their lands as this would mean being taxed.) Those whose land claims were recognized found it almost impossible to keep their goats within the periphery of their newly limited range. Into the 1970’s and ‘80’s, only a small portion of the Bedouin were able to continue to graze their goats. Instead of migrating with their goats in search of pasture, the majority of the Bedouin migrated in search of wage-labor.

In 1979 Agriculture Minister Ariel Sharon declared a 1,500 square kilometer area in the Negev, a protected nature reserve, rendering a major portion of the Negev almost entirely out of bounds for Bedouin herders. In conjunction, he established the 'Green Patrol,' the ‘environmental paramilitary unit’ with the mission of fighting Bedouin ‘infiltration’ into national Israeli land by preventing Bedouin from grazing their animals, seen as creating 'facts on the ground.' During Sharon’s tenure as Minister of Agriculture (1977-1981), the Green Patrol removed 900 Bedouin encampments and cut goat herds by more than 1/3. Today the black goat is nearly extinct, and Bedouin in Israel do not have enough access to black goat hair to weave tents.

Urban Townships

Denied access to their former sources of sustenance, severed from the possibility of access to water, electricity, roads, education, and health care in the unrecognized villages, and trusting in government promises that they would receive services if they moved, in the 1970s and 80's tens of thousands of Bedouin resettled in 7 legal towns constructed by the government. (In 2003, about half of the Bedouin population of approximately 150,000 lived in 7 urban townships, and half lived in 40 unrecognized villages). Harvey Lithwick of the Negev Center for Regional Development points out that the towns did not offer any alternative means of livelihood (to self-subsistence off the land): “....the major failure was a lack of an economic rationale for the towns....” Today, Dayan’s vision of the transformation of the indigenous Bedouin into an urban proletariat has both manifested and failed: In the most established of Bedouin towns, over 25% of Bedouin men (not to speak of the women) are unemployed. Since Bedouin never receive permits to engage in agriculture, and grazing has been severely restricted, the only remaining source of income is trade in drugs and prostitutes. An additional 7 urban townships 'planned' by the government today have failed to incorporate the lessons of the urban ghettos built in the 1970s; feature any business districts, and no permits for Arab-owned industrial zones have been dispensed (as is the case throughout Arab towns across Israel). Few of those Bedouin still able to maintain a degree of self-sufficiency in the unrecognized villages through grazing and agriculture without a permit, see the urban ghetto as a desirable form of settlement.

The main reason for the transfer of the Bedouin into townships against their will is demographic. Today there are around 160,000 Bedouins living in the Negev, and the number is increasing fast. With an annual growth rate of 5.5%, their birthrate is amongst the highest in the world; there will be 320,000 Bedouin in the Negev by 2020. In 2003, Director of the Israeli Population Administration Department, Herzl Gadge, described polygamy in the Bedouin sector a “security threat” and advocated various means of reducing the Arab birth rate.The JNF's "Blueprint Negev" was introduced in 2005 as a way of combating the 'existential threat' to Israel's demographic Jewish majority that the Bedouin are perceived to pose. In 2005, then-American head of the Jewish National Fund (JNF), Ronald Lauder, announced the JNF's ‘Blueprint Negev,’ aimed at settling over 500,000 Jewish people (particularly Americans) in the Negev/Naqab Desert by 2010. The numbers have since been revised down to 250,000. Ronald Lauder says: "Blueprint Negev answers the need for Jews in the Diaspora looking to make aliyah the pioneering way." In May 2006, Peres announced that his first task as minister in charge of development of the Negev and Galilee is to push forward the construction of a new Jewish community in the Negev, Carmit. Carmit is the first of many such settlements under the Blueprint, YNet reports, “designated for wealthy, young American immigrants who want to make aliyah and live in style.”

Environmental Concerns

Concentrating the indigenous Bedouin into urban townships so as to preserve National Reserve spaces for tourist uses and Jewish-only development purposes has not preserved the pristinity of the ‘Last Frontier.’ Not long after Sharon’s 1979 decision to set aside a portion of the Negev as a nature reserve, the military soon took over the State Lands from which the Bedouin had been evicted, conducting exercises on JNF lands designated as park space. Some argue that these exercises cause erosion or leave behind 'footprints' that can remain for decades. This military range today amounts to 85% of the Negev (the Negev is 60% of Israel). In the remaining portion of the Negev available for civilian purposes, a large number of citizens live together in close proximity to a range of types of hazardous infrastructure. The most toxic infrastructure in the Negev, including waste dumps, mines, and chemical factories, is located adjacent to Bedouin villages and grazing grounds, as well as, (given the small scale of the country) in close proximity to Jewish towns. In the past few decades, Bedouin of the region have come to share some 2.5 % of the desert with Israel's nuclear reactors, 22 agro and petrochemical factories, an oil terminal, closed military zones, quarries, a toxic waste incinerator Ramat Hovav, cell towers, a power plant, several airports, a prison, and 2 rivers of open sewage.

Much of this infrastructure is located on the grounds of the unrecognized village of Wadi el-Na'am; the Ramat Hovav toxic waste facility, the largest in the region, as well as over half of Israel’s chemical plants, were built on village grounds starting in 1979. Ben Gurion University epidemiologist Batya Sarov, formerly a specialist at Chernobyl, told the Negev environmental justice organization BUSTAN: "The environmental monitoring at Chernobyl was better, and the health risks no more severe, than at Ramat Hovav."

Bedouin Under Palestinian Authority Jurisdiction

Where Bedouin are under the jurisdiction of the Palestinian Authority, as in the area around Jericho, their grazing activities have been generally unrestricted. Bedouin in the West Bank continue to sustain their traditions.

Partial list of Bedouin tribes and populations

File:Bedouin04.jpg
A Bedouin man from United Arab Emirates.
A young Bedouin lighting a camp fire in Wadi Rum, Jordan

There are a number of Bedouin tribes, but the total population is often difficult to determine, especially as many Bedouin have ceased to lead nomadic or semi-nomadic lifestyles (see above) and joined the general population. Below is a partial list of Bedouin tribes and their historic place of origin:

Notes

  1. www.joshuaproject.com
  2. Info on Tuba from Flags of the World Website
  3. www.joshuaproject.com

References

  • Alush, Zvi. "New town for rich US immigrants: New southern town aims to attract affluent American immigrants" YNet 05.02.06
  • Andersen, Roy R., Robert F. Seibert, Jon G. Wagner.Politics and Change in the Middle East: Sources of Conflict and Accommodation. Eighth edition. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall. 2007.
  • Brous, Devorah. "The 'Uprooting:' Education Void of Indigenous 'Location-Specific' Knowledge, Among Negev Bedouin Arabs in Southern Israel;" International Perspectives on Indigenous Education. (Ben Gurion University 2004)
  • Chatty, D Mobile Pastoralists 1996. Broad introduction to the topic, specific focus on women's issues.
  • Chatty, Dawn. From Camel to Truck. The Bedouin in the Modern World. New York: Vantage Press. 1986
  • Cole, Donald P. "Where have the Bedouin gone?". Anthropological Quarterly. Washington: Spring 2003.Vol.76, Iss. 2; pg. 235
  • Falah, Ghazi. “Israeli State Policy Towards Bedouin Sedentarization in the Negev,” Journal of Palestine Studies, 1989 Vol. XVIII, No. 2, pp. 71-91
  • Falah, Ghazi. “The Spatial Pattern of Bedouin Sedentarization in Israel,” GeoJournal, 1985 Vol. 11, No. 4, pp. 361-368.
  • Gardner, Ann. "At Home in South Sinai." Nomadic Peoples 2000.Vol.4,Iss. 2; pp. 48-67. Detailed account of Bedouin women.
  • Lancaster, William. The Rwala Bedouin Today 1981 (Second Edition 1997). Detailed examination of social structures.
  • S. Leder/B. Streck (ed.): Shifts and Drifts in Nomad-Sedentary Relations. Nomaden und Sesshafte 2 (Wiesbaden 2005)
  • Lithwick, Harvey. "An Urban Development Strategy for the Negev’s Bedouin Community;" Center for Bedouin Studies and Development and Negev Center for Regional Development, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, August 2000
  • Manski, Rebecca. "THE SCENE OF MANY CRIMES: SUFFOCATING SELF-SUBSISTENCE IN THE NEGEV;" News From Within, Vol. XXIV, No. 13, April 2006
  • Manski, Rebecca. "Bedouin Vilified Among Top 10 Environmental Hazards in Israel;" News From Within, Vol. XXII, No. 11, December 2006
  • Manski, Rebecca. "A Desert Mirage: The Rising Role of US Money in Negev Development" News From Within Vol. XXII No.8 October/November 2006
  • Mohsen, Safia K. The quest for order among Awlad Ali of the Western Desert of Egypt.
  • Thesiger, Wilfred (1959). Arabian Sands. ISBN 0-14-009514-4 (Penguin paperback). British adventurer lives as and with the Bedu of the Empty Quarter for 5 years

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