It was at dawn on Saturday, October 7, when a loud explosion sounded in Al Bat, a Bedouin village unrecognized by authorities in Israel’s Negev Desert. Akel Kran, 46, says he went with other residents to check the sheep. Everything was in order. Since it was not the first time that rockets had been fired from Gaza, some 30 miles away, residents went about their business as usual. At the time, no one knew that, in addition to frequently firing rockets, Hamas also carried out a major ground attack on Israeli soil that left about 1,200 people dead and triggered the current war between the militia and the State of Israel.
Minutes after the impact, around 7 a.m., another explosion rocked Al Bat, a village made up of little more than a handful of houses and huts scattered across rocky terrain, reflecting the harsh reality facing Israel’s Bedouins , reflect perfectly. The second projectile hit the Sheq, the meeting place of the men of the community. The prefabricated aluminum room had fallen apart, explains Kran in a hushed voice and quiet gestures. There were four children inside: brothers Jawad and Malik, aged 12 and 15; Amin, 10, and Mohammad, 15, along with an adult. Taleb, 37, Kran’s brother, was injured and was still in the hospital more than three weeks later. All four children died. The two brothers were killed immediately and the other two died on the way to the hospital. Amin was one of Akel Kran’s nine children.
These children were among a group of 18 Bedouins killed on October 7, seven by rocket fire and 11 during the Hamas incursion. In addition, six of the group are among the approximately 240 dormitories being held in Gaza. The current conflict is a reminder of the traditional institutional neglect of the Bedouin community. “In these villages we are not protected by the Iron Cathedral [Israel’s air defense system] because it is an unrecognized area. We also don’t have ambulances, shelters, alarm systems…” explains Kran as he sips a small paper cup of coffee. He tries to describe the situation in which a large part of his community still lives 75 years after the founding of Israel.
A resident of Al Bat next to a concrete pipe that served as a bomb shelter after a Hamas rocket killed four children in the village on October 7. Luis De Vega Hernandez
In the first hours of October 7 alone, Hamas fired around 3,000 rockets from Gaza into Israeli territory last week, according to the army. Most were intercepted. During the last Gaza war in 2014, 4,000 rockets were fired in 50 days. Al Bat, which covers an area of around 400 residents, is one of 37 villages that Israeli authorities consider illegal, do not exist on the map and are therefore not equipped with basic necessities. There is not even a road leading to the village. All services – schools, health centers, markets, jobs – are located outside Al Bat and in wartime, unlike other Israelis, they have neither shelters to protect themselves from rockets nor safe rooms in their homes, if they are considered such such can mean such.
In Makhul, another village with rows of tin shacks, children play next to the pile of materials that made up one of the houses until it was destroyed by another shell fired from Gaza. At dusk, the muezzin’s call to prayer competes with the roar of warplanes bombing the Gaza Strip, where more than 11,000 people have been killed since October 7.
The Adalah organization, which fights for the rights of the Israeli Arab community, condemned on October 30 the “systematic discrimination and negligence of the state” towards the majority of recognized and unrecognized Bedouin villages due to the lack of bomb shelters or similar protected areas. The complaint also highlights the thousands of children from the Bedouin community whose lives are “at risk” because they are forced to attend classes without the protections in place in other parts of the country. “The Bedouin land is gold for Israel,” says Marwan Abu Frieh, coordinator of Adalah in the Negev, a vast desert that covers about half of Israel’s entire land area.
Frieh believes that Israel is not ignoring the Bedouins, but rather is trying to erase their way of life, their traditions, their culture and the places where they have settled for centuries. “The government insists on relocating them, evicting them from their land and relocating them, and does not offer them any solutions because that would mean officially accepting that they can stay where they have lived all their lives. “We have to constantly go to the courts,” he says. According to Frieh, due to the lack of accommodation, only seven of the 13 small health centers in the region are operating.
Together with other organizations, Adalah is trying to close the security vacuum created by the war and set up shelters in the villages. Khaled Eldada is one of the volunteers who helped build 100 of them in the second half of October. Two arrived in Al Bat. A group of camels grazes around one of them. The shelter consists of a simple concrete pipe that Adalah estimates can hold about twenty people.
Residents of Al Bat, an unrecognized Bedouin village located about 30 miles from the Gaza Strip. Luis De Vega Hernandez
Half of Israel’s Bedouin population lives in these illegal villages with no right to build a house, no infrastructure, no running water, no electricity, no sewage system, no education or basic health services, says Yelaa Raanan of the Regional Council for Unrecognized Arab Villages in the Negev. They live under the constant threat of having their homes demolished in areas where there is no transportation, she adds. In addition, around 5,000 children do not have access to kindergarten, even though it is compulsory and they are Israeli citizens. “They are the poorest people,” concludes Raanan, pointing out that the approximately 100 shelters provided are less than 10% of the number needed.
“It is very difficult to be a good student in these conditions,” says Suleiman Kamalat, principal of the school in Rahat, the largest Bedouin town where a fifth-grader named Jawad was killed by a Hamas rocket on October 7, a screen shows he lists the best students, including his own. Walking through the village, several young people from Al Bat show the reporter on their cell phones portraits of the four classmates they lost that day and photos of the collective funeral.
The Bedouin population of Palestinians, who originated in Israel’s Negev, now numbers about 310,000 people, descendants of those who lived in the desert region when the State of Israel was founded in 1948. Of these, around 80,000 live in 37 settlements without official recognition; another 35,000 live in 11 locations that were recognized at the beginning of this century but still lack basic services. The rest, about 195,000 people, live in seven communities established by the authorities between 1969 and 1989. Two-thirds of Bedouins, who make up 20% of Israel’s Arab population, live below the poverty line in the Negev, three times more than the national average.
Several activists gather at a community building in Hura, a recognized Bedouin village. They are convinced that the current war will prove disastrous for the community, even more so because they doubt that the Israeli government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will do anything for them. One of those present is Ezry Keydar, director of the Israeli NGO Keshet, who has been fighting for years for the recognition of the Bedouins and for the preservation of their culture and ancestral way of life. As Frieh, a Bedouin, says goodbye and gets into his four-wheeler, Keydar laughs and makes a friendly remark to him, suggesting that he no longer has the pedigree of a man from the desert: “Being Bedouin is not an origin, that is “It’s a way of life,” he says.
Children in the Bedouin village of Makhul in southern Israel. Luis De Vega Hernandez
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