‘People are suffocating.’ Bedouins in Israel say Gaza war has worsened decades of marginalization

In southern Israel’s Negev desert, residents of the Bedouin village of Khirbet Karkur live in tents and metal-clad makeshift homes. Not far from the border with Gaza, they hear the sounds of the war unfolding next door.

There are some 300,000 Arab Bedouins living in the Negev. As Muslim-Arab citizens of Israel, many are still struggling to find their place in Israeli society 75 years after the Jewish state was established, despite many of them serving in the military.

The war with Hamas has only deepened that sense of uncertainty. Bedouins living near the Gaza border feel they have been doubly victimized: first by being within striking distance of Hamas rockets with minimal protection, and second by state marginalization that has only grown worse since Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel.

The village of Khirbet Karkur is not recognized by the Israeli state. Residents live a semi-nomadic life, in an open desert area and in dwellings that aren’t connected to the Israeli electricity grid or water supply. Like many other unrecognized villages, it has no schools or hospitals, and residents say that women have been forced to give birth in cars on the way to hospital because ambulances struggle to reach the town.

Villagers say the rest of the country had all but forgotten them – until last week, when a swarm of journalists travelled along dirt roads to the dusty village to mark the release of 52-year-old Farhan Al-Qadi from Hamas captivity. Khirbet Karkur is his hometown.

Al-Qadi was abducted along with 250 others by Hamas-led militants on October 7. He was taken from Kibbutz Magen, where he was working as a security guard, and was rescued last week from a tunnel in Gaza by Israeli security forces, the Israeli military said.

Speaking to reporters the day after his rescue, Al-Qadi said he wishes “that the war ends for all Palestinian and Israeli families.”

Israeli officials have said that Al-Qadi’s kidnapping and release shows that all its citizens – Jews and Muslims alike – are equally vulnerable to terrorism, adding that the state is committed to securing the freedom of every citizen.

Israel’s Bedouin community is considered a subset of the country’s Arab population, which makes up about 20% of the total population in the country of 10 million.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called Al-Qadi the day he was released, and according to a transcript supplied by the Prime Minister’s Office, said: “I want you to know that we do not forget anyone, just as we did not forget you. We are committed to returning everyone, without exception.”

In November, the prime minister visited the IDF’s so-called Bedouin battalion in the Negev, a unit mostly made up of Muslim Bedouin soldiers, saying that “Jewish and Bedouin commanders are standing shoulder-to-shoulder,” and that “our partnership is the future of us all against these savages.”

But some Bedouin leaders and residents of Al-Qadi’s village say the state is celebrating his rescue without taking proper action to address the community’s decades-long needs.

Waleed Alhwashla, a Bedouin member of Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, said that while Netanyahu and his coalition portray Israeli Arabs as equal to Jewish citizens, the reality on the ground is starkly different.

‘Displacement and segregation’

The semi-nomadic Bedouin group is predominantly tribal, with family trees that extend into Gaza and Egypt’s northern Sinai. Many identify distinctly as Bedouin Israelis, while others see themselves as Palestinian citizens of Israel.

Unlike most Jewish Israelis, Bedouins are not required to serve in the Israeli military, though some choose to do so anyway, often in specialized units operating in the Negev desert.

Bedouins who join the military receive support from the state to complete high school studies, Hebrew courses and driving lessons. Some also join up to protect the land they live in, Israeli media reported, especially after October 7.

Most Bedouins live in the 4,700-square-mile Negev, which before Israel’s founding in 1948 was home to some 92,000 Bedouins. Only 11,000 remained after the Arab-Israeli war that followed.

Today, over 300,000 Bedouin citizens of Israel live in the Negev, including more than 80,000 who reside in unrecognized Bedouin villages, according to Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel. Many of those settlements predate Israel’s founding.

These villages are often situated next to waste dumps, with little access to water and electricity, said Fayez Sohaiban, a relative of Al-Qadi and former mayor of the nearby Bedouin city of Rahat.

“People are suffocating,” he said.

Residents of unrecognized villages regularly face demolition orders for their buildings due to lack of building permits, they say.

Demolitions have occurred on a “weekly” basis this year, according to the rights group Negev Coexistence Forum for Civil Equality (NCF). In the first half of 2024 alone, 2,007 Bedouin structures were demolished by the state despite a temporary halt in the early months of the war, the group said, up from 1,767 demolitions during the same period of the previous year.

Bedouin residents and leaders say their plight has worsened since the war started.

In May, Amnesty International said that Israel had demolished 47 homes in the unrecognized village of Wadi al-Khalil “without proper consultation or compensation,” adding that Israeli authorities have over the years “employed numerous pretexts to push for the displacement and segregation of the Bedouin community in the Negev,”  from expanding highways and industrial zones, to establishing forests for the Jewish National Fund and the designation of military zones. A report by the NCF said in the case of Wadi al-Khalil, the demolition was justified by the Israeli state as necessary for the extension of Highway 6, “a project not yet scheduled for construction nor budgeted by the state, despite the humanitarian crisis it caused.”

Bedouin-Israeli communities are also among the poorest in the country, with close to 80% of Bedouin children living below the poverty line, NCF said, citing data from Israel’s National Insurance Institute.

Some villagers are afraid to criticize the government, citing fear of retribution by the authorities, which they say has increased since October 7. Villagers say authorities closely monitor their social media for any signs of support for Palestinians in Gaza, or criticism of Israel’s conduct in the war.

United Nations officials have repeatedly called on Israel to stop demolishing homes and property belonging to the Bedouin community.

Victims of October 7

When Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 22 Bedouins were killed, seven of them by rocket fire that fell onto unrecognized villages, according to Alhwashla. A total of eight Bedouins were kidnapped, according to the Hostage Families Forum. Three have been freed, one is believed to be dead in Gaza, one was killed by IDF fire while attempting to flee, and three remain in Hamas captivity, according to the forum.

In April, when Israel and Iran traded direct fire for the first time, a 7-year-old Bedouin girl in the Negev was severely wounded by shrapnel from an intercepted missile, according to Israeli officials.

Last week, residents of unrecognized Bedouin villages filed a petition with the High Court of Justice “demanding that the state provide protective measures against rocket and missile fire,” according to the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, a partner to the petitioners.

“Approximately 85,000 residents of these unrecognized villages lack any means of protection against rocket, missile, or drone attacks,” the association said, adding that residents have since October 7 been forced to rely on “makeshift protective measures, such as sheltering under bridges, digging trenches, or finding narrow crevices in the ground.”

“These villages are without sirens, Iron Dome coverage, or any formal state-regulated protection, due to their unrecognized status,” the association said, citing the petition.

Still, Bedouin communities feel that such efforts have done little to alleviate their longstanding hardships.

Despite their Israeli citizenship, they feel underrepresented, neglected and that their plight has even worsened as the war grinds on.

“We hold the Israeli passport and Israeli ID card. We live in this country and respect the law, so we must be treated the same way Jews are treated,” he said.