Neve Midbar Regional Council
Neve Midbar
נווה מדבר | |
---|---|
Regional council (from 2012) | |
District | Southern |
Government | |
• Head of Municipality | Ibrahim Alhwashla |
Area | |
• Total | 32,700 dunams (32.7 km2 or 12.6 sq mi) |
Population (2021) | |
• Total | 13,300 |
• Density | 410/km2 (1,100/sq mi) |
Website | Official website |
Neve Midbar Regional Council (
List of communities
There are four recognized communities in the Newe Midbar Regional Council:
- Abu Talul,
- Abu Qrenat (Abu Quraynat),
- Qasr al-Sir,
- Bir Hadaj.
These communities are populated by almost 10,000 people (as of 2013), Bir Hadaj the largest of them.[2]
There is also a number of "diaspora" Bedouin living in unrecognized villages and thus ineligible for municipal services, whose number is unknown.
History
Legal background
Prior to the establishment of Israel, the Negev Bedouins were a semi-nomadic pastoralist society that had been through a process of sedentariness since the Ottoman rule of the region. During the British Mandate period, the administration did not provide a legal frame to justify and preserve lands’ ownership. In order to settle this issue, Israel’s land policy was adapted to a large extent from the Ottoman land regulations of 1858 as the only preceding legal frame. Thus Israel nationalized most of the Negev lands using the state’s land regulations from 1969 and designated most of it for military and national security purposes.[citation needed]
Sedentarization
The 1948 UN Partition Plan, which was accepted by the Jewish leaders, envisaged most of the Negev (including most of the ancestral Negev Bedouin territory) as part of a planned Arab state, with the Jewish State of Israel situated to the north in areas with an existing Jewish majority. However, after the rejection of the UN plan by the united Arab nations, their subsequent declaration of war on Israel, and their eventual defeat in the 1948 Palestine war, the Negev became part of Israel and the Negev Bedouin became Israeli citizens.
The new Israeli government continued the policy of
Starting in the 1980s the civilian government took back control of the northern Negev Bedouin from the IDF and began to establish purpose-built townships specifically for Bedouins in order to sedentarize and urbanize them, and to allow for the provision of government services. The government promoted these towns as offering better living conditions, proper infrastructure and access to public services in health, education, and sanitation. The new development towns constructed by the state in the 1980s absorbed a large proportion of the Negev Bedouin population but were unable to handle the entire Bedouin population, and their later reputation for crime and poor economy, together with a cultural preference for rural life, caused many Israeli Bedouin to shun these towns in favour of rural villages unapproved by the State.
Today, the government estimates that about 60% of Bedouin citizens of Israel live in permanently planned towns, while the rest live in unrecognised villages spread throughout the Negev.[3] These villages are considered illegal under Israeli law, and their legal status, coupled with their periodic demolition and evacuation by police, is the subject of considerable debate.
Formation of the Abu Basma regional council
In 2003, the government decided to establish a new regional council, known as the Abu Basma Regional Council, in order to oversee the resettlement and development of Bedouin communities in the area around
The council was established by the
See also
References
- ^ Information for the citizens Archived 2013-08-21 at the Wayback Machine, Abu Basma Regional Council official site (Hebrew)
- ^ Formation of new towns for the Negev Bedouin MMI. p.5
- ^ Bedouin information, ILA, 2007
- ^ Beduin in Limbo Archived 2013-07-06 at archive.today The Jerusalem Post, 24 December 2007
- ^ Government resolutions passed in recent years regarding the Arab population of Israel Archived 2012-02-07 at the Wayback Machine Abraham Fund Initiative
- ^ The Bedouin Population in Transition: Site Visit to Abu Basma Regional Council Archived 2007-09-28 at the Wayback Machine Myers-JDC-Brookdale Institute, 28 June 2005
- ^ Spatial Inequality in the Allocation of Municipal Resources Adalah, December 2004
- ^ RCUV Requests Comment to the Goldberg Commission regarding Bedouin Settlement in the Negev
- ^ Jonathan Cook.Making the land without a people Archived 2009-01-06 at the Wayback Machine; Al-Ahram Weekly, 26 Aug-1 Sep 2004
External links
- An official site of Abu Basma Regional Council in Hebrew and Arabic
- Bedouin of the Negev
- Lands of the Negev, a short film presented by Israel Land Administration describing the challenges faced in providing land management and infrastructure to the Bedouins in Israel's southern Negev region