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In Limbo of Spatial Control, Rights, and Recognition: The Negev Bedouin and the State of Israel

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Nomad-State Relationships in International Relations

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Abstract

The Negev Bedouin have long struggled with the state of Israel around issues of spatial control, land rights, and recognition of their villages. In this chapter state policies toward the Bedouin on these three issues since the 1950s are reviewed, followed by an analysis of Bedouin responses. It is shown how the Bedouin have been mobilizing their social and cultural resources as derived from their centrifugal heritage and layered as nomadic, Palestinian, colonized, and indigenous minority, to confront the dominant centripetal sedentary politics in the country. Our conclusion is that they have been quite successful with regard to spatial control and recognition of their villages, yet the issue of land ownership remains unsolved as neither side is ready to step back from its entrenched ideological and political positions. Another conclusion is that the recent de-nomadizing discourse, which almost entirely ignores nomadic centrifugality, decontextualizes contemporary Bedouin society from its seminomadic historical heritage.

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Acknowledgment

I am very grateful to Jamie Levin for his many valuable comments in improving earlier versions of this chapter.

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  1. Department of Geography and Environmental Development, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Beer Sheva, Israel

    Avinoam Meir

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  1. Department of Political Science, St. Francis Xavier University, Antigonish, NS, Canada

    Jamie Levin

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Meir, A. (2020). In Limbo of Spatial Control, Rights, and Recognition: The Negev Bedouin and the State of Israel. In: Levin, J. (eds) Nomad-State Relationships in International Relations. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28053-6_9

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