by Dr. Reuven Berko
Once, when the state
was paying compensation to the Bedouin living in the pastures
surrounding the Nevatim air force base, a distinguished Bedouin man
arrived from a great distance demanding compensation. The old man
surprised local dignitaries and army officers alike. Swearing by the
Quran, he claimed that the land upon which he trod was his. Everybody
knew, with certainty, that this elderly man and his entire family hailed
from lands far away. In the words of an Arabic parable, one cannot
claim lands lacking either mare or camel to pasture. Still, the man
stuck by his word. When his arguments began to contradict each other, he
revealed that he had put sand from his home in one of his shoes, which
proved his avowal true. Indeed, the Quran doesn't speak highly of the
Bedouin. In surrahs 9 and 48, for example, the Bedouin are described as
shirkers who evade their obligations.
The Bedouin are Israeli
citizens by virtue of historical circumstances. Most of them originally
migrated from deserts in the Arabian Peninsula, traveling through
Sinai, and eventually settling in the lands today known as Jordan, Syria
and Israel. The migration to Israel accelerated over the last 200 years
as military, political and climactic developments influenced the
Bedouin's regional dispersal. Their ultimate locations derived from
traditional occupations along city edges. They traveled with tents made
from camel hair, leading their flocks from pasture to pasture. They
robbed and they plundered, they engaged in random agriculture and based
themselves off of existing settlements, alongside highways and within
state-established trading zones.
These reasons formed
bases of the argument to settle the Bedouin tribes alongside Jewish
towns since the state's inception. But the proximity between Bedouin and
Jews spawned quite a few social, security and criminal issues. The 14th
century Arab historiographer Ibn Khaldun, in his book "The Muqaddimah,"
described the Bedouin as being characterized by movement, wandering and
a natural abandon, their very existence rejecting the foundations of
civilization. For the sake of building and cooking, they would wreck
existing buildings and loot other people's property. According to Ibn
Khaldun, wherever the Bedouin live, one finds ruin, destruction and
degradation. Because the Bedouin refuse to heed authority, Ibn Khaldun
warned, central governments must set limits controlling these subjects.
Planning permanent
settlements for the Bedouin tribes of the Negev Desert is a process the
state has developed intermittently since independence. It poses a
difficult challenge. The Bedouin, many of whom served in the IDF, agreed
over the years to several necessary changes, but they disagreed over
the level of material and territorial compensation that they deserved.
Meanwhile, thousands of Bedouin began settling in the new cities and
towns built especially for their communities. The data indicate that,
today, most Bedouin agree to the terms of the Prawer plan, even now.
Clearly, the process of urbanization, becoming permanent residents,
involves revolutionary and expensive social, economic and normative
changes; the gap to bridge is huge.
State institutions
cannot accept Bedouin land-grabs, which have seen Bedouin transform
their hair tents to tin shanties, laying the foundation for permanent,
stone structures able to seize control over territory. The state's
willingness to solve the Bedouin quagmire actually reflects a
combination of good intentions and enforcement, since most Bedouin
actually don't have rights to the lands they claim. In May 1984, the
Supreme Court ruled that the state is the effective owner of all Negev
territory, adding that the Bedouin have no claims to any part of it. The
state's willingness to offer the Bedouin monetary and territorial
compensation is beyond the letter of the law.
The Bedouin are the
lowest on Israel's socio-economic list in several different categories.
Bedouin enlistment rates have gone down in recent years, while the
indoctrination to radical, Palestinian Islam has taken off. The approach
such Bedouin have adopted could end up costing them everything they
have been offered thus far.
The so-called "Day of Rage," in
which thousands of demonstrators, in conjunction with the Palestinian
Authority, hoisted Palestinian flags and hurled Molotov cocktails,
illustrated the "pilot" for the intifada and the national struggle over
Israeli land. In response to the third-intifada scaremongering, Southern
District police chief Maj. Gen. Yoram Halevy said rather nonchalantly:
"So what? For every 'resistance' there's a 'counter-resistance'; these
miscreants should remember that."
Dr. Reuven Berko
Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=6529
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
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