Vol. 4 · No. 2 · 2000

Emanuel Marx

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The governments in the Middle East have always tended to treat the Bedouin as second rate citizens. Even today many government spokesmen argue that the Bedouin contribute little to the region's national economies, that they live apart from the settled population and produce only for their own subsistence (see, for instance, the articles in Arab League 1965 1; Abou Zeid 1996). The Bedouin's nomadic way of life is viewed as little more than an attempt to opt out of civil obligations, such as military service and payment of taxes. By settling the Bedouin, governments hoped to make them more productive and more governable. As they were thought to practise a subsistence economy (see, for instance, Cole 1975: 145), the economic dislocation and loss of production caused by settlement was often ignored. On the contrary, the officials believed that as settled peasants the Bedouin would at last enter the market economy.