![]() ![]() Since its establishment, the facility has experienced frequent accidents, fires, explosions, and leaks, resulting in birth defects and long-term health problems in the Bedouin community. In the 1970s, Israel built Neot Hovav, the country’s primary toxic waste disposal facility, in Wadi an-Na’am. It was established in the 1950s by internally displaced Bedouins from surrounding villages who’d been forcibly removed from their homes and lands, but it’s never been officially recognized. ![]() The largest of the unrecognized villages is Wadi an-Na’am. Less than 5 miles away are unrecognized villages where people live in tents and tin shacks. It is a thriving college town, a growing tech hub, and interestingly, the chess capital of the world. Originally founded in 4,000 BCE, Be’er Sheva has been at times a Bedouin encampment, part of the Ottoman Empire, and now, the fourth most populous metropolitan center in Israel. It is home to 205,000 people, about 10 percent of whom are Palestinian citizens of Israel. ![]() I visited three villages to understand the effect of occupation.īe’er Sheva is the largest city in the Negev desert. Today, the unrecognized villages of the Negev desert have the highest unemployment and poverty rates in Israel. The Bedouin are Israeli citizens, but because their villages aren’t formally recognized by the state, they have no access to state services including water, electricity, telephones, sewage systems, and roads. Of the Bedouins still living in the Negev, half live in government-designated towns and cities, much like Native reservations in the United States, and the other half live in unrecognized villages. 11,000 Bedouins remained, a population which has now grown to over 200,000. ![]() Nearly 90 percent fled during the Nakba of 1948. While all of these statements are true, Palestinians insist that occupation still exists inside the state of Israel, and nowhere is that fact more apparent than in the unrecognized Bedouin villages of the Negev desert.īefore the creation of modern Israel, the Negev desert, which constitutes the southern half of the country, was almost entirely populated by Arab Bedouins. There are Arab members of parliament, the Arab population in Israel has been growing steadily for decades, and the Arab cultural scene is thriving in places like Haifa. It is commonly believed that Palestinian citizens of Israel - officially known as Arab Israelis - enjoy full equality in the Jewish State. I decided to head over there and see for myself. Much less thought and literature is dedicated to the treatment of Palestinians living inside modern-day Israel proper. Most people agree that the West Bank and Gaza Strip have been occupied since 1967. It’s no secret that there is an occupation happening in and around Israel. ![]()
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