In late 2007 the Israeli government voted to create a commission to make recommendations on the Bedouin issue, to “solve the problem of the Bedouin in the Negev.” With Judge Eleizer Goldberg presiding, the so-named Goldberg Commission comprises 8 people, 6 Jews and 2 Arabs, neither of whom are residents of the unrecognized villages.

They are:

Yoram Bar Sela – expert on land issues and attorney for the Israel Antiquities Authority.
Bilha Givon – Bar Kayma Negev Sustainability NGO director
Yosi Shai – Vice Director in the Ministry of Agriculture.
Dudu Cohen – Director of the Ministry of Interior in the Negev
Sharon Gamsho – Vice Commissioner for Allocations in the Ministry of Finance, Department of Macro Economy and Lands
Faisal el-Huzayel – Deputy Head of Mayor of the Bedouin city of Rahat
Ahmad el-Asad – Municipal Head of the Bedouin town of Laqiya

They published their findings on November 20th, 2008, and they give us cause to be cautiously optimistic. They include:

• Recognize most of the villages.
• Allow most of the homes to go through a legalizing process
• A committee to be established to hear and settle traditional land claims

Of course, these are simply recommendations, the Knesset must vote on whether or not to accept all or part of the findings, but this signals a change in the political tide, and is evidence that the work of the RCUV has not gone unnoticed. We view this report as extremely positive, and wait with anticipation of the next step the government will take regarding the Bedouin.

Of the 180,000 Bedouins in the Negev (in recognized and unrecognized villages) 67% are under the age of 18. This is the highest percentage of youth per capita of any social group in Israel. The average Bedouin woman has 8 children. Of the 45 villages, only 11 have schools, all other children must travel far distances to attend school. This often involves walking 1-5 kilometers to the road, then taking 2 buses to the school. There is only two secondary schools in all of the villages, and as a result drop-out rates are extremely high, and so only a small percentage of students continue on to institutions of higher learning. In addition, many families are not comfortable having their girls travel to another village to go to a mixed-gender school, and so female drop-out rates are very high (60%) following elementary school. Two acceptable solutions were proposed, namely having segregated high schools (as is the case with the religious Jewish school system in Israel) or having high schools in their communities, but both have been rejected or ignored as of now.

The roads in the villages are not paved, and are only wide enough for one vehicle, making school buses at high risk for accidents. One tragic case several years ago illustrates this point, when a young boy was decapitated when two buses passed each other on the road. As a result, the head of the Parents Committee in the village of al-Atrash petitioned the supreme court for wider, paved roads to the schools and actually won the case. The court ruled to create roads, but that decision was ignored and no roads have been paved, or expanded.

In the recognized townships, there was no secondary school until the 1970s. Between the 70s and the mid-90s, there were only two. The result of this is that an entire generation of Bedouin have received only minimal education, and this has seriously affected their chances for employment and self-betterment.

The residents of the unrecognized villages have little access to medical care. Of the 45 villages, only 11 have clinics present in them. These clinics are marred by the lack of 24-hour electricity, often making the storage of medicines needing constant refrigeration impossible. To make matters more difficult, the clinics are often staffed by non-Arabic speakers, creating not simply a language barrier, but a barrier of trust as well. The segments of the population most often in need of medical attention, children and the elderly, often speak little or no Hebrew.

In addition, many Bedouin women do not speak Hebrew and are illiterate, making diagnosis and thus treatment that much more difficult, as they cannot express medical problems sufficiently, nor can they read what doctors recommend. Furthermore, the clinics are not equipped to deal with medical emergencies, and so in these cases, the nearest hospital is Soroka Hospital in Beer Sheva. Magen David Adom, the Israeli ambulence service, refuses to enter the villages, and so in cases of emergencies, even reaching the hospital is a major challenge.

The clinic in the recently-recognized village of Abu Kaf, recognized under the Abu Basma plan.

One of the most fundamental markers of a developed society is that of access to 24-hour electricity. Israel is by all means a fully-functioning industrialized developed society, but yet there exists 45 villages with more than 76,000 citizens of Israel who have no access to the national electrical grid. In the Negev, a desert home to intense temperatures in both summer and winter, the lack of electricity is exremely harmful, and every year people die due to lack of heating during the bitter cold of winter nights, and intense summer heat.

Electricity comes to the people of the unrecognized village in two forms: generators, and for those who can afford it, solar power. Families will purchase a generator together, splitting it 4 or 5 ways to offset the very substantial cost. If a family can afford it, a solar hook up will supplement the electricity needs of the family, however a single solar power system is not enough to provide 24-hour power to a household. The generators are inefficient and expensive, but currently the only option left to a population denied access to the electricity most Israelis consider basic.

The national electric grid runs through the villages in the form of high tension wires, in fact there is even a major electric plant smack in the center of one of the largest villages, but the residents do not have access to any of it.

The electric plant in Wadi al-Naam.

Among the most crucial and serious human rights violations taking place in the unrecognized villages is that of access to water. The World Health Organization defines access to clean water as a fundamental human right, as defined by the United Nations, articles 11 and 12 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.

That being said, the residents of the unrecognized villages have little or no access to the national water grid, despite living alongside the main pipes used to transport drinking and irrigation water through the Negev. In cases where the government has granted access to the grid, the access is through a one-inch diameter access point, which is equipped with a pressure valve to prevent too much water from going through the pipe at any one time. From there, above-ground hoses connect the houses in the village. However, if one does not live close to the access point, there is still no water connection, as the water pressure is not great enough to carry the water to houses outside the limited radius of water pressure allowed by the pressure valve.

If, however, one does not live in a village with this connection, or one lives far away from the pump, large water tanks must be used to transport water to the house. In cases such as this, the residents must go to a house close to a water access point, and another resident must fill these tanks up once or twice a week. This process takes two hours to fill the tank. So, if one arrives on the designated filling day to find 2 or 3 other people in line ahead of him, simply procuring water for the week can take all day. In addition, these tanks are often rusted out and extremely unhygienic, further exacerbating the already-dire health situation in the villages.

According to Physicians for Human Rights, the average Israeli in Tel Aviv pays roughly 4 shekels per cubic meter of water. For those in the unrecognized villages who must use a water tank to bring water to their homes, it costs roughly 50 shekels per cubic meter of water. For the most impoverished segment of Israeli society, this is a major strain on livelihood.

For more information, we suggest the following reports:

Water = Life: Ensuring the Right to Water of the Residents of the Unrecognized Villages in the Negev Prepared by Friends of the Earth: Middle East

Water Discipline: Water, the State, and the Unrecognized Villages in the Negev
Prepared by Physicians for Human Rights

The Right to Water
Prepared by the World Health Organization

Many people pose the question, “what is the difference between an unrecognized Bedouin village, and a recognized one?” And this is a very valid question, with a relatively simple answer.  Unrecognized villages show up on no official maps, receive no basic services from the state such as water, electricity, sewage, or roads, and are deemed illegal settlements, and thus are constantly subject to home demolitions.  The residents there have no official address, which precludes them from municipal elections of any kind. Some of these villages have been in the same location since the Ottoman times, others were created in the wake of the creation of the State of Israel. Following Israel’s victory in 1948, the Bedouin settlements in the western Negev were destroyed, their residents expelled to a triangular region known as the Siyaj (‘fence’ in Arabic), with the cities of Beer Sheva, Dimona, and Arad forming the points of this triangle. At this point in time, there are 45 unrecognized villages in the Negev, with a combined population of 76,000 people. All of these people are Israeli citizens, yet receive no basic services from the government.

The goal of the Regional Council of Unrecognized Villages is to represent the interests of these people, pressure the Israeli government to change this awful situation, ultimately culminating in the recognition of their rights to the services one expects from an industrialized democracy such as Israel.

On the other hand, the cities and towns recognized by the Israeli government are of two types: the townships, of which there are seven, and the Abu Basma villages, of which there are ten. Please see above for more information on both the Abu Basma Regional Council, the townships, and the unrecognized villages.

The Regional Council of Unrecognized Bedouin Villages was created in 1997 by more than fifty leaders from across the Negev, tired of being denied access to the political process. Among the prominent leaders of this group were the following nine individuals:

Hussein al-Rafay’a from Bir Hammam, current president of the RCUV, Lubad abu Afash from Wadi al-Na’am, Salman al-Asam from Khirbat al-Watan , Hussein al-Atrash from al-Mkaimin, Saaed al-Uqby from al-Qrein, Ali al-Kashakhr from Tel Arad, and Ibrahim al-Waqily from Bir al-Mashash, Attiyah al-Asam from Abu Tlul, Jabr abu Kaf from Um Batin. However, these nine would not have succeeded had it not been for the support of dozens of others, among them Dr Amir al-Wuzail, Khalil al-Ammur and others. Attiyah al-A’sam was the first head of the council. He is currently the point man for the Forty Committee in the Negev. Jabr Abu Kaf was the second head elected for the council. Hussein Al–Rafay’a is the current head of the regional council.

They started by forming 45 committees, one in each of the unrecognized villages, which were then assembled into a council, the Regional Council of Unrecognized Villages. The work of the RCUV expanded, as did our reputation on both sides of the political fence, until the RCUV became recognized as a legitimate political action body, and one that was created by the new generation to meet the needs of a changed world.

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