‘We are part of this land' - Thousands of Israel's Bedouin face demolitions and evictions in the Negev desert
Freij Al-Hawashleh's Israeli ID lists his date of birth as 00.00.1939, because no one in his village of Ras Jrabah was sure what month he was born. But he knows the spot, by a large tree in the dusty Negev desert, where he began life in a Bedouin tent: 'My grandfather was born here, I was born here. We are part of this land.'
The state of
Israel
was established when Al-Hawashleh was about nine. Tens of thousands of Bedouin were forced from the desert in 1948 or fled elsewhere in the region; those who remained were later granted Israeli citizenship and became part of Israel's Arab minority.
Al-Hawashleh describes meeting Jewish Israelis who arrived in caravans at Ras Jrabah for the first time: 'We gave them water and milk.'
Ras Jrabah lies on the outskirts of Dimona, a predominantly Jewish Israeli town built on the ancestral land of Al-Hawashleh's tribe. For two decades, he worked as a gardener for the municipality, maintaining the manicured parks and playgrounds that exist for both children and dogs in Dimona.
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On the drive from Dimona to Ras Jrabah, the tarmac road turns to a dirt track that passes by a single toilet cubicle standing on the shrub land and rubber tubes snaking across the open ground carrying a rudimentary water supply to the Bedouin village. A tin-roofed mosque and a large concrete tube that has served as
an inadequate, makeshift bomb shelter
for lethal rockets falling in the Negev during the
Israel-Hamas
war mark the entrance to Ras Jrabah.
Freij Al Hawashleh, a Bedouin elder in the village of Ras Jrabah in the Negev desert, southern Israel. Photograph: Hannah McCarthy
About a third of the 310,000 Bedouin community in the Negev live in Bedouin villages like Ras Jrabah that are not legally recognised by the Israeli government. As a result, these communities are denied access to basic infrastructure including state electricity and sewage systems, as well as schools and medical clinics, while facing regular
eviction and demolition orders
for construction deemed illegal under Israel's planning laws – even if the construction predates the relevant law.
Eleven unrecognised villages with 6,500 Bedouin are now fighting eviction orders in Israeli courts, while facing the
highest rates of poverty in Israel
– which have worsened amid the economic fallout of the war in Gaza.
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Since 2019, the Ras Jrabah community – half of whose members are children – has been facing the threat of eviction after the Israel Land Authority filed 10 lawsuits accusing the Bedouin villagers of living illegally on state land zoned for the expansion of Dimona, a
bastion of support
for the right-wing Likud party led by Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu.
The community has been told it must move to one of the Bedouin villages recognised by the Israeli state in the 2000s. 'The government says we have to move to Qasr al-Sir,' says Al-Hawashleh, who believes there will be tension and possible violence if his tribe and the two other tribes living in Ras Jrabah move to land already occupied by the other Bedouin tribes in Qasr al-Sir. 'They want us to be at war with other tribes.'
Freij Al Hawashleh: 'My grandfather was born here, I was born here. We are part of this land.' Photograph: Hannah McCarthy
The rapid, state-driven urbanisation of Bedouin tribes after centuries of nomadic living has fractured long-standing familial structures and separated communities from the land and animals that formed the backbone of the Bedouin livelihood and culture. The seven Bedouin townships the Israeli state established in the 1960s have become ghettos where Bedouin live on the periphery of Israeli society, with
few economic opportunities
and high rates of crime.
A handful of Bedouin villages were
recently recognised
, but Marwan Abu Frieh, a lawyer with Adalah, a Palestinian human rights centre in Israel, says: 'There is very little difference in practice between the infrastructure and services in recognised and unrecognised Bedouin villages.'
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Born in an unrecognised Bedouin village since demolished, and now living in Rahat, the largest Bedouin town, Frieh says successive Israeli governments have
concentrated Bedouin people into small, urban areas
while building on Bedouin land, citing examples of Jewish Israeli towns, forests and
military firing zones
that have been built on Bedouin land – 'we've lost almost all of our lands'.
Ras Jrabah residents are willing to become part of Dimona if a section of the new neighbourhood includes housing for them, as well as an agricultural zone for their livestock to graze on. 'We have lived here for years, and receive all of our services from the Dimona municipality,' says Al-Hawashleh. 'Our life is here.'
Adalah and the NGO Bimkom submitted
an alternative plan
to the planning authority that outlined how the integration of 90 families from Ras Jrabah into Dimona could be achieved without obstructing or fundamentally altering the expansion plan for the Israeli town – which will double in size.
The Ras Jrabah community is awaiting a decision from Israel's supreme court after Adalah appealed
its eviction
and the requirement to pay the state's legal expenses. Adalah lawyer Myssana Morany
argued
in March that the plan to evict residents of Ras Jrabah and expand the town of Dimona for other residents was 'clearly segregationist', citing numerous international human rights conventions that prohibit segregation and the forced displacement of populations, particularly indigenous peoples.
One of the main roundabouts in Dimona features a display depicting a Bedouin with three camels. Israel refuses to classify camels as 'farm animals', preventing Bedouin herders from enjoying grazing rights in the Naqab desert region. Photograph: Hannah McCarthy
Dolev Arad, the chief of staff at the Bedouin Authority, the official agency for the development and settlement of the Bedouin in the Negev, which lacks popular support from Bedouin communities, said: 'We do not prevent anyone from living in Dimona, Beersheba or anywhere else they choose.' But without a section specifically zoned for Bedouin, housing in Dimona is unaffordable for impoverished Ras Jrabah villagers and ill-suited to their communal and agricultural lifestyle.
Amos Sarig, a spokesman for Dimona municipality, rejected the claim that Ras Jrabah predated Dimona, and noted that the district court has
ruled
that the evidence demonstrated only that it had existed since 1978, despite aerial photographs filed in court demonstrating that the village was already there in 1956. Bedouin leaders say they often struggle to meet demands for proof of ownership because they have not historically kept physical records.
Sarig says the Dimona municipality has asked for the supreme court appeal to be expedited 'because thousands of housing units need to be built there'. There was, however, low demand for Dimona –
which is near a nuclear facility
– when the government ran a national housing lottery in 2021, while newly constructed apartments have been slow to sell.
Frieh is not optimistic about Ras Jrabah's chances of succeeding at the supreme court. 'You can postpone yes, but to win a case regarding land in Israel, they have maybe a 10 per cent chance [of winning],' he says.
According to the far right national security minister Itamar Ben Gvir
, there was a 400 per cent increase in demolition orders carried out in the Negev in 2024, with many families dismantling their own homes to avoid
onerous penalties
if the Israeli authorities demolish them. 'People come to my office with more than $100,000 in fines,' says Frieh.
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Defiance in Bedouin hamlet as Israel prepares to demolish it
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Not far from Ras Jrabah is what remains of another unrecognised Bedouin village that was once home to 70 families. Wadi al-Khalil was razed in May 2024 in the presence of hundreds of Israeli security personnel on t
he pretext of expanding the highway
that runs by the Bedouin community.
Wadi al-Khalil was razed in May 2024 in the presence of hundreds of Israeli security personnel on the pretext of expanding the highway that runs by the Bedouin community. Photograph: Hannah McCarthy
Piles of rubble and household debris – with a handful of tents for Bedouin families with nowhere else to go – are all that's left. 'Many of them lost everything,' says Frieh.
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