“Desert Experience, Discerning Eyes, and Limitless Amount of Time”: Bridging the Gap Between the Bedouin as Primitive and Political Through the Jerusalem Post’s Reporting from 1948 to 1967 Público
Rivers, Sasha (Spring 2023)
Published
Abstract
The Bedouin are a group of Arab tribes found across the Middle East and North Africa who lived formerly nomadic lives, although their way of life has been complicated by modernity. The majority of existing literature on the Bedouin population in Israel focuses on the current Bedouin struggle for land rights, or the role of Bedouin as part of the larger Arab minority in Israel. Of these trends, land rights comprise most of the discussion around Bedouin in Israel, not only in academia but in general. Compared to the aforementioned topics, there is a relative lack of literature on the Bedouin with regards to current Bedouin society and their political role in Israel as one of the fastest-growing populations in the country.
I elected to work with primary sources to analyze the history of the Bedouin in Israel through the way the news depicts the Bedouin. This thesis focuses on reports of Bedouin in the Israeli newspaper, the Jerusalem Post. Using a collection of articles from 1948 through 1967, I illustrate the dual identity of the Bedouin that the Jerusalem Post portrays: one side being a reductive image of pastoral nomads unaware of how to navigate modern society, and the other depicting the Bedouin as political actors involved in the fledgling state of Israel. I posit that in contradicting itself with these two images of the same minority group, the Jerusalem Post demonstrates that the Bedouin have forged a political identity within Israel despite the primitive image society has imposed on them. Not only does this contradiction provide additional context to the history of the Bedouin in Israel, enriching available literature on the Bedouin, but it also expands Israeli history as it pertains to its treatment of minority populations.
Table of Contents
Introduction….………………………………………………………………………………...…..1
Background………………………………………………………………………..1 Methodology…………………………………………………………...………….4 Literature Review………………………………………………………………….8 Structure………………………………………………………………………….13Chapter One: A History of the Bedouin in Israel/Palestine…………………………………...…15
Bedouin Under Ottoman Rule 1516-1917……………………………………….15 Bedouin Under the British Mandate 1917-1948…………………………………17 Life for the Bedouin in Israel 1948-Today…………………………………...….19Chapter Two: Depictions of the Bedouin as Primitive…………………………………………..28
Introduction………………………………………………………………………28 Bedouin, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and Israel as the Holy Land…………………….29 Bedouin as Desert-Dwelling “Animals”................................................................33 Bedouin as Impoverished Beneficiaries of Israeli Aid…………………………..35 The Urbanization of the Bedouin………………………………………………...38 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………….39Chapter Three: A Portrait of the Bedouin in Politics…………………………………………….41
Introduction………………………………………………………………………41 Bedouin Responses to Violence………………………………………………….42 Bedouin Demands………………………………………………………………..45 Bedouin as Participants in & Aids to the State…………………………………..48 Bedouin Espionage………………………………………………………………53 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………….54Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………….56
Looking Ahead………………………………………...….……………………..58References……………………………………………………………………………………….62
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