Summary
Azazmeh owner of “Suleiman’s Shiq”, a tourist guest tent in the small unrecognized Pezurah village of El-If’dai, quoted at length in Settling for Less — The Planned Resettlement of Israel’s Negev Bedouin as neither “Noble Desert Savage” nor “Noble Victim” but a proud participant in his own fate (PDF p.209-212).
Details
- El-If’dai has fewer than 200 residents, all Azazmeh who in theory should relocate to Segev Shalom; El-Hrenik has run the shiq since the early 1990s, hosting about fifty tourists a year, most Jewish Israelis, in a tent holding up to one hundred visitors (PDF p.209).
- He served in the Tank Corps under Ariel Sharon in the Yom Kippur War in Sinai in 1973, with seven Azazmeh in the unit including Sheikh Ouda (9 July 2007) (PDF p.211).
- A demolition order stood on his son’s house at the time of the interview: “they want to destroy our houses. There is a demolition order on my son’s house right now!… We are bedouin, not Arabs! The Arabs live right next to each other, on top of each other. We can’t live like that. We just want to live out here and be free!” (PDF p.211). In the same narrative: “If they destroy our homes, where will we go, what will we do?” and “In Mitzpe [Ramon] and other places they can live in stone houses, but that’s not for me” (PDF p.211).
- Dinero concludes that El-Hrenik’s story, arguably among the most “genuine” and “authentic” in Negev tourism, is barely heard because his enterprise is small, low-key and on the periphery (PDF p.212-213).
Related pages
Settling for Less — The Planned Resettlement of Israel’s Negev Bedouin, Pezurah, Azazmeh, Segev Shalom, Arik Sharon