1The approximately 130,000 Bedouin currently living in the Negev represent 13 % of the Arab citizens of Israel who in turn constitute 20 % of the total Israeli population. This minority, albeit Sunni Muslim of Arab nationality,1 consistently proclaims its uniqueness. Even as Israeli Arab citizens unanimously identify themselves as Palestinian, the Bedouin refer to their own history and culture that of the Bedu, inhabitants of the desert (Baadia), distinct from and different to both city-dwellers and other peasant groups in the region. Social and political changes that have transformed the Negev since the end of the 19^th Century, wrought by the administrative reorganization of successive authorities, undid the internal organization of the Bedouin community. The Ottoman Empire, the British Mandate and then the State of Israel have each, in their turn, reshaped Bedouin society, its tribal modus operandi and therefore its political management. This social transformation that we will develop further also affected the gender relationship and the position of women in relation to politics. Since politics, as a method of conflict resolution and as a means of administering public business, has changed its nature, the participation of women and their modes of expression have also evolved. It is not enough to note that Bedouin women are marginalized in a political sphere dominated exclusively by men. It is now important to examine the apparent immutability of such a marginalization, and alternative forms of social and political mobilization.   

2The socio-political organization of the Bedouin population of the Negev is not static, and a number of studies assert that there has been a reconfiguration of the tribal system2 and of the relationship between genders3. Since the 19^th century the evolution of the Bedouin community has been marked by the arrival of peasant groups (fellahin) coming from sedentary rural areas of Palestine who affiliated themselves to Bedouin goatherds and farmers by renting and working their land. Linked by mutual obligations of solidarity and assistance, Bedouin and peasants constituted what was called a tribe, which also included families of ancient Sudanese slaves ('abid). The tribe was therefore composed of these three populations which functioned in a closed relationship but almost never, or rarely, had matrimonial exchanges4. In fact, Bedouin were considered nobles and while they would never marry their daughters to inferior groups, the daughters of fellahin could marry Bedouin. This logic, which still stands today, has nonetheless known a good number of exceptions, and is subject to constant modification as the space/time context requires. Nevertheless it is evoked by the Bedouin themselves as a “Bedouin tradition” which indicates the cultural stake and the importance they attach to a collective Bedouin identity that has purportedly never changed and will never change.

3The tribe itself as a social and political reference has known modifications under the effect of administrative measures taken by the Ottomans, the British and then the Israelis.5 Under the authority of the Sublime Porte, the Bedouin political unit was the Gabila, a confederation of tribes led by a small number of Sheikhs. In 1903, the town of Beer Sheva became an administrative center, and in 1906, at a time when Bedouin lived by agro-pastoralism the Turks decided to draw the borders of seven tribal confederations and thus set in motion a process of  sedentarization.  

4The process of territorialization was extended under the British who placed more political weight on the 'ashira – a smaller tribal unit. The number of Sheikhs was multiplied and they were placed in charge of tax collection for the British. The atomization of the tribal structure continued further when the British-made tribal unit became the standard administrative unit. By the 1930's almost 90 % of Bedouin were practicing agriculture, which contributed to the parcelization of the land and the privatization of resources.6 And so the Bedouin tribes, by degrees, began to lose their political relevance.

5The process was at once reinforced and reshaped by the Israelis. Following the 1948 war, most of the Bedouin were expelled,7 and those who remained were concentrated into a more compact perimeter north east of Beer Sheva (sayigh), a zone that represented only 10 % of the area they was previously occupied. The Bedouin were granted Israeli citizenship during the 1950's – the Law of Citizenship (1952) – and the very notion of belonging to a tribe was assailed when the Israeli authorities demanded that each Bedouin register with one of 19 officially recognized tribes.8 19 tribal chiefs (Sheikhs) were then chosen and appointed by Israel, sometimes despite the logic of power which had prevailed up until that point.9 The Sheikhs now acquired considerable power, becoming the intermediary between the population and the Israeli authorities; authority relationships were overturned and recreated in haste. While the territorialization as well as the social organization of the Bedouin froze, they were subjected to martial law which lasted until 1966. As in the Arab zone of the Galilee and in the Triangle, the Bedouin were placed under the authority of a military government that controlled their movements, their political expression and the way they organized.10

6At the end of the 1960's, Israel altered its political stance vis a vis the Bedouin and decided to urbanize them by locating them in planned cities and villages. In most cases these settlements were built without prior consultation with the people involved, their objective being to gather the Bedouin into urban concentrations in order to prevent them spreading out in the Negev.11 Beginning in 1966, seven settlements were created, that contain today more than half the population of the Bedouin in the Negev12. The other half live in the so-called non-recognized villages on lands which had traditionally been theirs and which the State had nationalized in the 1950's.13 A considerable differential opened up between the urban, semi-urban and rural, this last enjoying the benefit neither of infrastructure nor services. The administration of the planned settlements was entrusted to a local authority appointed by the Ministry of Interior. It would not be until the 1990's that the organization of the first free elections for Bedouin local councils would take place. The urbanization and the socio-economic changes that appeared in the 1960's had caused the Israeli-made tribes to disintegrate; they lost all political relevance as well as their administrative legitimacy. Today, reference to belonging to a tribe has not completely disappeared, but it is used occasionally more to recall the familial and territorial origin of a lineage.

8In the first place we need to be precise about the terminology used in this study and to distinguish between “power” and “politics.” The study of political modes of expression and mobilization is one thing, the analysis of power is quite another. In this regard, Lila Abu Lughod (1988, 1990) Cynthia Nelson (1973) and Gillian Lewando Hundt (1978) have stressed the modality of the power exercised by Bedouin women in the Middle East.14 Lila Abu Lughod who studied the social and political significance of poems recited by the members of the Egyptian tribe Awlad 'Ali tried to demonstrate the forms of resistance used by women to masculine domination. She discusses poems – sometimes subversive – and the attitude of young girls who, by the way they dress and by their refusal to submit to forced weddings, demonstrate that they hold power of a kind. Cynthia Nelson has a theory concerning the place of women in the semi-nomadic way of life of the desert. She demonstrates that women exercise power by controlling the Harem, particularly in freely criticizing men and by being in charge of matrimonial bargaining. It is the women, mainly the oldest, who arrange the unions and exercise power over their juniors. Gillian Lewando Hundt has studied the position of women in planned Bedouin townships in the Negev. She shows how the urbanization has changed social norms by enclosing women in the family cell, but at the same time how this seclusion has allowed them to dominate their space and has given them a kind of autonomy from men.

9Each of these studies thus addresses the question of “power” but not that of “politics.” This power that women exercise, however influential, is confined to the feminine and private space. Women have little or no influence on public affairs. This was true in the semi-nomadic setting where the shigg (space for men) was still the place for debates and political arrangements, and this is still true today where the political parties as well as elected bodies are exclusively masculine. Then it was easier for women to circulate and move between spheres, thereby informing themselves about the issues of the day.  Today a couple still discusses politics and there are secretaries working in the town halls.  Does this mean that women, because of their knowledge of political matters, exercise a form of political power?  No. It is quite evident that Bedouin women have always been aware of what goes on around them, but to claim that they hold political power solely because they hold information, would be a gross overstatement.  In order to exercise political power, even at an informal level, it is not sufficient just to be in the know, you must also be in a position to act.  Even when Bedouin women exert influence in the social sphere – weddings are an example – they are not autonomous in the exercise of this expertise. Again, one has to differentiate between political expertise and political involvement,15 the latter being demonstrably circumscribed if not non-existent. Furthermore, it is not at all certain that the political expertise Bedouin women have could be adapted to the existing political game, given the extent to which it is codified and controlled by men today.

10Although women have little access to public politics as it relates to conflict resolution and the administration of the affairs of the group, they are politically socialized in the private space and conduct “private politics” by acting within the tribal organization and today the familial organization. On the other hand, concerning another aspect of politics which corresponds to the collectivization of a social question carried into the public arena, here the mobilization of women is a more recent phenomenon.  Women's associations, notably national and international feminist networks have allowed certain Bedouin women to endow social themes with a public dimension, and enabled them to start to play the game of the political negotiation, not only with national bodies (the Knesset) but also international ones (UN and donors). This is where the novelty of this last ten years resides: the access of Bedouin women to the Israeli and transnational public arena, employing political tools outside the conventional arena which is locked down by the dominant groups.16

13Furthermore conflict resolution in Bedouin communities follows customary practices which involve patrilineal lineage solidarity. Obviously it would be too simplistic to characterize Bedouin by their customs. This would mean denying the transformation in their practices and the socio-legal environment in which they live. Nevertheless the question of blood revenge is a good example of the exclusion of women from the codes of conflict resolution. In fact, in case of conflict, notably in case of murder between individuals from different lineages, the khams acts as a political organ of conflict resolution. The khams gathers all the men of patrilineal descent who claim a common ancestor within five generations. All these men must in principle help one another and bare a collective responsibility for the actions of each one of them. If a member of lineage A is killed by a member of lineage B, then the khams of lineage B is responsible for paying the debt, haqq al daam (price of blood) in order to resolve the conflict. Without entering into the details of a practice that is a lot more complex than it seems, blood revenges are proof of traditional management of some conflicts and an exclusively masculine responsibility17. In this system which results in the payment of the debt, the death or the exile of the guilty party, men alone are competent and empowered to negotiate.

14Let us state clearly that these logics or Bedouin norms have undergone many changes and their transformation has been under the effects of policies imposed by those who exercised authority in the region. One of the most brutal of the contemporary modifications, certainly a product of the creation of the State of Israel, was the forced departure of the major part of the Negev Bedouin and the transformation of the way of life of those who remained. These new Israeli citizens were subjected to Military Government within a much reduced territory. Modes of political administration were swept away by the imposition of martial law, the appointment of salaried Sheikhs – not always representative – and the development of a broad system of patronage between local leaders and the Israeli authorities.18 If the clientelist logic is not new, then patronage such as the one that developed at that time was of a new order. In fact, since the 1950's, Bedouin became Israeli citizens and they voted in the parliamentary elections of 1955. In the same manner as in the North, Zionist parties, primarily Mapai – ex-Labor party – courted the Arab vote, in this case Bedouin vote.19 Bargaining for the Arab vote was done in exchange of material and symbolic gain. The Arab satellite lists affiliated to Mapai were specially created on the eve of the election in order to win the Israeli Arab vote. It was in this manner that Arab MPs, such as the Bedouin Hamed Abu Rabia, entered the Knesset, elected on a list affiliated to Labor at the end of the 1970's.

16The change took place in the 1980's with the creation of autonomous Arab political parties.20 Up till then, only the Rakah communist party, then the Jabha (Democratic Front for Peace and Equality)21 had represented the Arabs' interests in Israel.  Well established in the North, they had not succeeded in penetrating the Negev and to be a counterweight to Zionist groups. It was not until the formation of Arab political parties in the 1980's that the Bedouin vote became autonomous and they started to claim a collective Palestinian identity. National elections and then local elections gained in importance and further mobilized the Bedouin electorate. Thus Bedouin participation in the elections of 1988 was 61.3 % compared to 50 % in 1981. At these elections the Arab Democratic Party (ADP), that had just been created, gained 43.7 % of the suffrage, while the Jabha only received 5.8 % of the Bedouin vote.  At the elections of 1999, the Arab parties were made up of the United Arab List – a joint list of the ADP and the Islamic movement – the Tajammu' – National Democratic Assembly22 – and the Jabha. These three lists gained more than 70 % of the Bedouin vote.  

17Since then, the new successful actor has been the Islamist movement which has enjoyed since the 1980's, but mainly in the 1990's, a large social and political base in the Negev.  While the ADP has a famous MK, the Bedouin Talab as-Sana, the Islamic movement is still the most active and the best established organization among the Bedouin.  Each settlement has active members of the movement that seem to be closer to the moderate branch of Ibrahim Sarsur than to the radical branch of Ra'ed Salah.23

18The professionalization of politics in the Bedouin milieu implied the creation of political parties and politicians. A young educated cadre became the new specialists in politics, mastering the wheels of the electoral game and of the clientelist horse-trading. Once again women were excluded from this transformation because they were neither involved nor invited to participate in the political parties, they do not have interests to negotiate and they are not familiar with the new tools of the Israeli political system. A Bedouin woman has never been elected to a local council or as an MK.24 It is important to specify that many other social and economic groups remain at the periphery of the political game in a Bedouin society who has a strong internal hierarchy.

19The mechanisms of representation and mainly of political expression have professionalized themselves, throwing up political technicians who know how to play all the solidarities, no matter if they are familial or more materialistic.25 Today local and national elections are built on a network of personal connections and interests that is not only founded on lineage, but is integrated into other forms of clientelism from which women are even more marginalized. They go along with the choices of their father or their husband but they do not mobilize themselves autonomously. The proof can be found in the way the elections are run, and in the fraudulent practices used.  During the local elections in Laqiyya in September 2004, we observed a fraud which was repeated in all the Bedouin settlements.26 Men took the ID cards of certain women, or bought their vote, then gave the cards to a trusted woman in charge of voting for all the others. This was a way of ensuring the vote of women and to prevent the risk of potentially deviant individual expression. As they liked to tell it themselves, the cards could be exchanged in an emergency for several hundred, sometimes thousands of shekels. Women spent their day changing their cloths to deceive the police at the polls and they played this game several times during the day. It also happened for certain national elections, women were sent to other settlements in order to vote instead of local women. The system was widespread and well-polished. The circulation of the cards was done inside the voting office next to the rooms where the police officers and the electoral inspectors of the Ministry of Interior stood. In this game the Israeli authorities were not duped, they knew exactly how the election was being run. But they consciously refused to intervene in order to avoid friction with the local population. This fraud was practiced as much at national as local elections. The men were organizing the fraud and the women are executing it; but once again Bedouin women proved that while they participate in their way in the political game they remain voluntary auxiliaries still dependant on men.

22On the other hand a lot more women are active in the network of associations of the Islamic movement, and it is here that the border between social and political becomes unclear. Many Bedouin women participate in the activities of the Islamic movement organized for women. In each Bedouin settlement there are those responsible for feminine sections. These women do not participate in the elections but they organize debates, religious classes in mosques and the collection of donations for the poor notably Palestinians of the Occupied Territories. In fact women are active and mobilized as much on cultural questions as on social and political. They are not affiliated members, but supporters and volunteers. This phenomenon is quite recent and corresponds to the process of Islamization of the Bedouin community of the Negev observed since the 1970's.27 Muslim religious rules are collectively followed and the Islamic movement has imposed itself as an indispensable political and social actor. Furthermore this highly respectable movement shows interesting practices concerning the legitimization of access of women into the public space. Social, cultural and political activities of the Islamic movement have become spaces that are respectable and appropriate for women.

24Some Bedouin women regularly stand shoulder to shoulder with men to protest Israeli policy towards the Bedouin of the Negev. In 1996 the inhabitants of the non-recognized village of Abdeh were victims of forced expropriations.  A sit-in of several tens of days was organized at the door of the Knesset in Jerusalem. Fadiya Abu Gardud, an old widow was standing next to the Bedouin MK Talab as-Sana. Today she is known throughout the Negev for her active participation in this protest. She explains that her action was self-evident, a survival instinct to which men are not subject alone, but also women who must protect their land for the good of their children and for the preservation of their identity.28 She therefore refuses to see any political significance in her initiative because politics remains a male world, the prerogative of professionals and not for those who 'simply' struggle for their survival.

25While strikes and demonstrations have been much on the rise in the 1980's, their use has been less prevalent in the Negev. Bedouin do not mobilize themselves massively in order to defend their rights or those of the Palestinians of the Occupied Territories; notwithstanding the fact that this theme is unanimously supported today in an Arab population which publicly claims that it is a part of the Palestinian people.29 Bedouin also insist on the reference to identity, notably among young nationalists, and in the public sphere where there is a call to be distinguished from the Jewish Israeli population. Demonstrations were therefore organized against the massacre in Lebanon in 1982 in the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Chatilla or in support of the first and the second Intifada. Some women have participated in these demonstrations, which confirms a recent phenomenon fairly typical of educated young Bedouin women who claim their Palestinian identity and their solidarity with the struggle in the Occupied Territories. The fact that Bedouin university students, male and female, insist that their identity is Palestinian does not mean that they have forgotten their Bedouin origin, on the contrary, but they articulate it with an identity more politicized and national. Calling yourself a Bedouin is about remembering your territorial anchorage and your attachment to the land, whereas calling yourself a Palestinian has a more encompassing political connotation which leads the Bedouin into an historic, nationalist and far-reaching protest.

27Nevertheless some militants of these associations participate in a feminist organization called Ma'an (Forum) which was created in 2000 in Beer Sheva and whose goal is to defend the rights of Bedouin women. The outlook is one of intense engagement and feminism. The organization produces a newspaper and participated in 2005 in the writing of a report on the condition of Palestinian women in Israel intended for the UN CEDAW committee.30 Parallel with the official report written by the Israeli authorities on the condition of women in Israel, an Arab organization, the Working Group on the Status of Palestinian Women in Israel has been producing counter-reports since 2001. For the first time this year some Bedouin women with the help of Ma'an have been able to participate in this report and to give international visibility to the place of women in the Negev. Furthermore Ma'an also expects to write its own independent report on Bedouin women and to address the feminine questions that are most often marginalized in the Negev: health, employment, education, personal status, polygyny and the political role of women.

28To accomplish this, the association is financed with external help from the EU and other overseas NGOs.  Recourse to the international scene for the last ten years is not only a feature of Bedouin associations but of all organizations both Israeli and Palestinian. The involvement of international donors has seen a new rise with the success of programs of “Gender and Development,” set in motion by the UN and numerous international conferences on development. This phenomenon has in fact changed the configuration of the associations of Arab women which seek to comply with the requirements of their foreign donors; to conform to their feminist aims. In fact the financing criteria developed are essentially inspired by western feminist theories, augmented by new economic and political criteria of “good governance.”31 In the new quest for democracy in the Middle East, women are considered to be the guarantors of social change. The associations, once they have polished up their feminist and largely depoliticized agendas, they then become a prime target for international financing. One of the consequences of the recourse to the international is the decontextualization of the priorities and the needs32. In trying to change the women without changing the context of their discriminations these measures extract all trace of potentially nationalist and subversive politics. This explains why the associations are often reproached for the fact that they struggle for women without taking account of the needs of the community as a whole. Another reproach targets the social and political negotiations employed by these associations. Some Bedouin men see the recourse by these associations to national financial support places them in dangerous proximity to the state apparatus.  Equally suspect, they see the influence of Israeli feminists in the emphasis the associations place on the patriarchal foundation of Bedouin society and the suffering of women.  This is why some acts of sabotage and degradation have been carried out against these associations in protest against both the activities, the independence of women and their insertion into the Israeli political game. In fact, it would be a simplification to think that the reticence of men towards the associations of women can only be found in the patriarchal system.  There also exists some political and social reasons notably of frustration, jealousy and mistrust for feminine initiatives that de facto exclude men and are supported by Israeli authorities.