State-Directed ‘Development’ as a Tool for Dispossessing the Indigenous Palestinian Bedouin-Arabs in the Naqab

Abstract

The Naqab Bedouin are among the indigenous Palestinian Arabs who remained in Israel in the aftermath of the war of 1948. Today, they are a minority that is systematically being underdeveloped, within the context of a high-income, developed state. Traditionally, they inhabited the Naqab Desert, were organized into tribes, and derived their livelihood from animal husbandry and seasonal agriculture. Presently, they have the lowest education levels and incomes, the highest infant mortality and the highest unemployment rates in the country. The provision of poor-quality educational services, which are selectively distributed in a manner that disproportionately disadvantages Bedouin girls and women, ensures that the Bedouin continue to lag behind as Israel leaps forward and develops scientifically and technologically. This chapter explores the central issues and motivations underlying the Israeli state’s use of selective ‘development’ in order to further dispossess and subordinate the Bedouin, including the conflict over land, practices of forced urbanization, and the settler-colonial ideology underpinning the need to maintain the underdevelopment of the indigenous Palestinian Bedouin in Israel.