Unrecognized Bedouin villages in Israel

[1] According to the Human Rights Watch report based upon the 2006 statistics offered by the Adva Center,[2] approximately half of Bedouin citizens of Israel (85,000 out of 170,000) live in 39 such villages.

[7] Testifying before the Goldberg Committee in 2010, Israeli right-wing NGO Regavim reported 2,100 separate concentrations in Negev of 3–400 constructions each, covering over 800,000 dunams.

As the state considers them a menace, they remain ineligible for municipal services, such as connection to the electrical grid, water mains or trash-pickup, and they cannot elect government representatives.

[22] In 1858 the Turks enacted a law stating that all landowners names must be officially documented as a means of regulating matters relating to land in the Ottoman Empire.

[25] In preparation for a 1946 census of Palestine that was never carried out, the British government surveyed all the tribes in situ and concluded that the number of bedouin in the Beersheba district was about 92,000 out of 127,000 in the whole country.

[26] It also reported that they "cultivated about two million dunums of cereal land and that aerial photographs of the northern Beersheva taken by the Royal Air Force revealed the existence of 3,389 houses and 8,722 tents.

Both Bedouin citizens and state authorities agree that only a small minority of the claim can be backed with full legally valid documentation, however the Bedouin claimants demand that their traditional ties with the lands, namely the fact that they de facto held the rights on these lands without objection on behalf of the former Ottoman or British authorities, be recognized by the State of Israel as ownership.

[31][32] In order to reinforce the invisible Siyag fence and sedentarize the Bedouin, the State employed a reining mechanism, the Black Goat Law of 1950.

[22] In the mid-1970s Israel let the Negev Bedouin register their land claims and issued special certificates that served as the basis for the "right of possession" later granted by the government.

Indeed, this will be a radical move which means that the Bedouin would not live on his land with his herds, but would become an urban person who comes home in the afternoon and puts his slippers on.

The Bedouin communities in the Negev, many unrecognised by the Israeli government, were classified as "open areas" during the 2014 Israel–Gaza conflict and so their 200,000 residents did not have warning sirens or anti-rocket protection.

According to recent data submitted to the Goldberg Commission by the Bedouin Administration in July 2008, 2840 claims remained, whose overall area is 571,186 dunams.

[39] According to Ben Gurion University's Negev Center for Regional Development, these first towns were poorly planned and were lacking business districts or industrial zones;[43] as Harvey Lithwick of the Negev Center for Regional Development explains: "the major failure was a lack of an economic rationale for the towns".

[49] Israel is trying to solve the problem of unrecognized villages by attracting the scattered communities into government-planned townships and villages offering land plots at low prices[50] and as an extreme measure – following the court order and all the legal procedure – demolishes houses built without state's permission on what it considers to be state lands.

It's important to note that the nature of these future communities, whether agricultural, rural, suburban or urban will be decided in full cooperation with the local Bedouin.

[61] There are several examples of success in this matter: after a number of complicated agreements with the state all of the Bedouin of Tarabin clan moved into a township built for them – Tirabin al-Sana.

[63] According to the head of the unrecognized villages – Hussein Abu Pia testifying in front of the Goldberg Committee members: "If the land is in a one Bedouin's claim of ownership, the other will not come close.

[64] There is a common phenomenon of the Bedouin who receive compensation and new homes in legal towns, yet return and construct again in state lands thus not fulfilling the agreements signed with the government.

The state should set a date by which it is willing to give increased compensation for those who erase the claim of ownership, and from there on – no more compromise and a confrontation is needed even if it will come at a high price.

[73] They note that in 2003, director of the Israeli Population Administration Department, Herzl Gedj, described polygamy in the Bedouin sector as a "security threat" and advocated various means of reducing the Arab birth rate.

"[42] Bedouin rights groups opposed this plan, as they were concerned that the unrecognized villages might be cleared to make way for Jewish development and potentially ignite internal civil strife.

[78] Israel has encountered a problem of maintaining law due to uncontrolled illegal construction in the Negev Bedouin dispersed communities.

[81] According to enforcement officials, it is not possible to monitor every case of illegal construction because the residents who build in the dispersed communities impose on the inspectors criminal and terrorist threats.

There is a transitional area between the desert and the border region of the south of Judaean Mountains and Shfela, where most plant and animal species perform a gradation between habitats.

The Bedouins keep livestock in herds greater than the carrying capacity of the land, which leads to serious overgrazing, and to the creation of vast areas of empty of any plants.

Species unique to the region as Pterocles, houbara bustard, leopard fringe-fingered lizard and irises, disappeared from large surfaces.

[87][88] According to Itamar Ben Dodi from the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel, the lack of sewage infrastructure and waste removal and illegal slaughter houses in the Bedouin dispersed communities cause an accumulation and spreading of wastewater and household waste that reach streams channels and cause odor nuisances, health problems for residents, and damage to nature.

[89] In July 2013 Israeli government ordered to allocate NIS 40 million for garbage pick-up and recycling for the Negev Bedouin communities in the area of the Al-Kasom and Neveh Midbar regional councils – for the first time.

[90] A large number of Israelis, including both Bedouin and Jews, are settled in some 2.5% of the Negev desert available for civilian use living in proximity to Israel's nuclear reactors, 22 agro and petrochemical factories, an oil terminal, closed military zones, quarries, a toxic waste incinerator (Ramat Hovav), cell towers, a power plant, several airports, a prison, and two rivers of open sewage.

According to the Ministry of Health data (as of June 2004), the rates of cancer and mortality are 65% higher for those living within a 20 km radius of the Ramat Hovav Industrial Zone.