Volume 27, Number 9 · May 29, 1980
Forgotten Israelis
By Lesley Hazleton
If most of the half million Israeli Arabs are forgotten Israelis, the 40,000 Bedouins who live in the Negev are the forgotten of the forgotten. To a certain extent this is their own doing, for they have always considered themselves a people apart. Called Bedouin only by outsiders (from badiya, the Arabic word for desert), they call themselves el-Arab—the Arabs—and consider themselves the elite of the Arab peoples, the ones who spread the word of Mohammed throughout the Middle East. Traditionally, they have looked down on other Arabs just as other Arabs look down on them. Thus they have never considered themselves Palestinians—the Palestinians were in any case from the mountain country to the north of the desert—and they have taken no part in the rising enthusiasm for the Palestinian cause among other Israeli Arabs. On the contrary, they were considered for a long time the most loyal part of Israel's Arab population. Hundreds of Bedouin men still serve as scouts and trackers in the Israel Defense Forces.
Feature, 3396 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |