Summary
One of the seven pre-1948 Negev Bedouin macro-tribes (kabila), and the tribe providing the focus of most of Dinero’s monograph (Settling for Less — The Planned Resettlement of Israel’s Negev Bedouin, PDF p.31).
Details
- Since the late 1910s the Azazmeh lived in a territory demarcated by the “arid mountains” of the Negev interior, as the stronger Tiyaha and Tarabeen moved into better grazing land further north (Marx 1967:9, as cited, PDF p.31).
- The tribe was split by the 1948 War but experienced no wholesale flight; of its twelve major sub-tribes only the Mas’udiyin remained intact, and by 1960 some 1,000 remnants of several other tribes were united under a few Azazmeh sheikhs, including some Tarabeen, Subhiyan, Sbeihat and Sarahin El-Ryati (Marx 1967:13; Boneh 1983:53, as cited, PDF p.31).
- Neither fellahi newcomers, the Ottoman government nor traders penetrated Azazmeh territory in the southern Negev Highlands; modern farm machinery arrived only well after Israel’s creation, and a continued preference for livestock rearing contributed to later Azazmeh resistance to permanent settlement (Kressel et al. 1991:46-47, as cited, PDF p.40).
- Kressel (2003:56, as cited) notes the Azazmeh were the last of the tribes to adopt agriculture as a supplement to herding; as “True” landed Bedouin they had a great deal to lose by abandoning their lands for the towns, so their resistance was in part pragmatic as well as traditional (PDF p.65).
- Segev Shalom was created primarily for the Azazmeh, who dominate its positions of significance and power and have always been its numeric majority, though never more than about two-thirds of survey respondents; some 10,000-12,000 Azazmeh continued to live south of Be’er Sheva in the early 1990s, resistant to relocation (PDF p.64, 67, 70).
- In Dinero’s 2007 analysis the Azazmeh are the town’s better-off group against the Tarabeen/Abid: less likely to raise animals or crops in town (an economic supplement among the poorer Tarabeen), more likely to own a personal computer, VCR/DVD player and gaming system, and, when employed in wage labour, more likely to work in Jewish areas at higher salaries (PDF p.103-105).
- Respondents who said they had moved to the town by government force were significantly more likely to live in polygynous Azazmeh households, and Azazmeh who came by force were more likely to say they did not feel equal with other Israelis and that the government was not able or willing to serve the Bedouin community’s needs (PDF p.108).
- In education, Azazmeh members are in general more educated than the Tarabeen (p=.05), with Azazmeh newcomers more educated than the Azazmeh veterans who founded the town; yet for Azazmeh men Dinero finds no statistical correlation between educational achievement and obtaining a wage-labour position compatible with it, the education–employment correlation holding for the Tarabeen but not for them (PDF p.142-143).
Related pages
Settling for Less — The Planned Resettlement of Israel’s Negev Bedouin, Naqab, Siyaj