T. Belman. We cannot leave them unattended. We must reduce their reproduction rates and inclination to Islamism. It is obviously in our interest to do so. First and most important is to get more women to go to college. This has proven very effective in reducing Arab fertility. Secondly we should enforce laws that penalize bigamy.
Finally we must make them abide by all our laws. They cannot live their nomadic lifestyle at our expense. We have no obligation to allow them to. They must learn to conform. They must stop incest within their ranks. Its a crime for good reason.
Like other countries in the region, Israel has failed to provide its Bedouin population with housing, employment, and education opportunities.
Prof. Eyal Zisser, ISRAEL HAYOM
At the beginning of the 1950s, the Bedouin population in the Negev was a little over 10,000. Today, 70 years later, there are almost 300,000 Bedouins in the Negev. Alongside infiltration into Israel, primarily in the years after its establishment, this astounding increase is the result of unprecedented natural growth – in Middle Eastern terms as well – of a population that has doubled every 15 years.
In 1951, there were 12,700 Bedouin. Twenty years later, in 1970, there were 25,000. In 1980, that number stood at 37,000, and in 2000, it had already reached 120,000. Today, the number stands at almost 300,000 people.
Israel’s governments allowed and even encouraged natural growth and it is, therefore, their creation and something they can be proud of. They allowed polygamy in which each man can marry several women. They allowed Israeli Bedouin to marry women, or, should I say girls, from Gaza and the Hebron Hills, where dowries are ridiculously cheap. Finally, they gave generous benefits that encouraged family cells that included a man, a few women, and dozens of children, living off government benefits. It’s no wonder that the cuts in child benefits at the end of 2002 led to a dramatic decline in the birth rate among the Bedouin from about 10 children per woman to five.
Israel is not the only country in the region dealing with a challenge that is in its essence demographic, but which also integrates tensions between an itinerant, wandering population that tends to be rebellious and a modern state that wishes to impose its will upon them and integrate them into the fabric of society. This was the case in Syria where the Bedouin tribes took an active role in the protests that erupted against the Syrian regime in 2011. And this is the case in Jordan where the Bedouins, while being the backbone of the Hashemite regime, have in recent decades also instigated, again and again, protests over their economic situation.
Just as in other countries in the region, the government of Israel has failed in dealing with the Bedouins in the Negev. It has not succeeded – perhaps it is a lost cause – to provide housing solutions, employment, and, before all of that, to establish an education system that will advance Bedouin children and take them out of the circle of poverty. This before we have even mentioned the lack of governance and the absence of law enforcement.
It seems that of Israel’s politicians, only the late Moshe Arens, in his various positions, among them Minister of Defense, was attentive to voices from the ground. In the 1980s and 1990s, he called for increased integration of the Bedouins into Israeli society and for them to be enlisted into the IDF, but his was a lone voice in the desert, and nothing was done. In the meantime, the Bedouins were abandoned to the influence of the Islamic Movement and in particular to that of the radical Northern Branch. They also adopted a Palestinian identity that was alien to them when the state was established.
Thus, when one does not open nursery schools and classrooms, when one does not provide employment and housing, and when one does not make sure to maintain governability and the presence of the state institutions in the Negev, at the end of the day, you harvest a storm.
But there is no need to give up. A policy that combines law enforcement and governability alongside providing a true response to the economic and social distress of the Bedouin population is the solution but the time has passed for lofty declarations and plans left in drawers and not executed. The time has come for deeds before it is too late.
What about a “Druze kind of option”?