In limbo of spatial control, rights, and recognition: The negev bedouin and the state of Israel

Abstract

The Negev Bedouin have long struggled with the state of Israel around issues of spatial control, land rights, and recognition of their villages. In this chapter state policies toward the Bedouin on these three issues since the 1950s are reviewed, followed by an analysis of Bedouin responses. It is shown how the Bedouin have been mobilizing their social and cultural resources as derived from their centrifugal heritage and layered as nomadic, Palestinian, colonized, and indigenous minority, to confront the dominant centripetal sedentary politics in the country. Our conclusion is that they have been quite successful with regard to spatial control and recognition of their villages, yet the issue of land ownership remains unsolved as neither side is ready to step back from its entrenched ideological and political positions. Another conclusion is that the recent de-nomadizing discourse, which almost entirely ignores nomadic centrifugality, decontextualizes contemporary Bedouin society from its seminomadic historical heritage.