Vol. 4 · No. 2 · 2000

Longina Jakubowska

Download full article (64 KB PDF) [subscribers only]

The Bedouin in Israel are people of multiple marginalities, both by an inclination derived from nomadic social and political structure, and by their positioning vis-à-vis the competing Jewish and Palestinian nationalities. This, in turn, is reflected in their marginal economic position. In the 1940s, some 75,000 Bedouin inhabited the Negev (Marx 1967). When the region became part of Israel in 1948, most of them became refugees in the neighbouring Arab countries. The Israeli army moved most of the remaining 11,000 Bedouin to a reservation the size of a fraction of the territory formerly utilised by them. The reservation was ruled by a military administration, which strictly controlled movements of Bedouin by a system of permits. Expropriation of land by the State, territorial displacement and restriction on movement eradicated the nomadic and semi-nomadic economy. With no assistance programmes offered by the State, most men were forced into short-term wage labour in the expanding Israeli economy of the 1960s.