Summary
The changing self-definition of the Negev Bedouin as analysed in Chapter 5 of Settling for Less — The Planned Resettlement of Israel’s Negev Bedouin: a tribal, lifestyle-based identity re-formed under forced Sedentarization, in which the survey label “bedouin” collapsed between 1996 and 2007 while “Muslim” and, to a lesser degree, “Arab” rose, and “Israeliness” became an identity of youth, wealth and success (Settling for Less — The Planned Resettlement of Israel’s Negev Bedouin, PDF p.147-165).
Details
- Dinero states the state’s aim as seeking to de-territorialize, control, encapsulate, assimilate, proletarianize and essentially de-bedouinize the Bedouin through land confiscation and forced resettlement — an “active policy of social conquest” that instead strengthened resolve and fostered Arabicization and Islamicization (PDF p.147).
- Following Cole (2003, as cited), bedouinism is a lifestyle, not a national/ethnic group; today’s Bedouin identity is defined largely by deprivation — an ancestral connection to herds they no longer have, and by who they are not — motivating “rebellion or resistance against the dominant political economy” (PDF p.148-149).
- Before de-territorialization, identity worked at a micro level through three allied groups — ‘Arab (the “True” Bedouin), fellahin and Abid — and at a macro level through El-‘Arab/El-Bedu against El-Yahud, into which anyone outside the collective falls (PDF p.151-152).
- The word “bedouin” is in lower case throughout Dinero’s text, except when quoted, because bedouinism is a lifestyle and not a national/ethnic group (chapter note, PDF p.172).
- Self-labelling in the Segev Shalom surveys (Table 5.1): bedouin totals 75.4 percent (1996), 19.4 percent (2000), 19.0 percent (2007); Muslim totals 8.8, 22.2 and 49.6 percent; Arab totals 2.9, 37.5 and 18.5 percent; Israeli totals 2.9, 12.6 and 6.1 percent; Palestinian totals 7.8, 8.4 and 6.9 percent (PDF p.157).
- In all three surveys the vast majority said they are not treated equally with other Israelis despite their citizenship (Table 5.2) (PDF p.156, 158).
- By 2007 “Israeliness” appears to be evolving into an identity of youth and economic success: its choosers were more likely to be in wage labour (p=.04), longer resident in town, and — reversing earlier surveys — more likely to say they came by government force (p=.02), while “bedouin” choosers owned fewer consumer goods and rated town services lower (PDF p.159, 164-165).
- Residents voice the older definition against the town: a Pezurah shopkeeper in Segev Shalom (March 2007) insisted “There, you will find bedouin. Not here!”, and Dinero records the refrain from years earlier that as the tent becomes a thing of the past “there are no more bedouin” in the Negev (Dinero 1999:25, as cited) (PDF p.153).
- Jewish Israeli scholars’ binaries present the Bedouin as “anti-Jews” and as “geographically marginal and politically dependent” (Rabinowitz 2002:307-317, as cited); Dinero holds that the identity changes are far more complex than such binaries (PDF p.149-150).
Related pages
Settling for Less — The Planned Resettlement of Israel’s Negev Bedouin, Islamicization, Segev Shalom, Azazmeh, Tarabeen, Sedentarization, Judaization