Township - Israel

Israel

In the early 1950s the Israeli army relocated the majority of the Bedouin living in the Negev to an area under Martial Law north of Beersheba know as the Siyah ("the fence" in Arabic and Hebrew). These Bedouin were about 20% of the pre-1948 population who remained in the area after the war and the various expulsions that took place. They numbered between 10,000 and 15,000. From 1967 the Israeli government started a program of urbanisation with the construction of the first bedouin township, tel as Sabi. Over the next 22 years a further six were built, some on the sites of existing villages. The second, started in 1972, was Rahat and is now categorised as a city with a population in 2010 of 53,095. The remaining five have populations of between 7,739 to 17,500. The seven bedouin townships are amongst the 8 poorest localities in Israel.

In the 1990s approximately half the 170,000 Negev bedouin lived in 39 unrecognised villages without connection to the national electricity, water and telephone grids. In 2011 after much debate the government put forward proposals in 2011 to recognise or relocate thirteen of the unrecognised villages as official bedouin townships. The townships are not popular. In 2006 one village, Wadi al-Na'am withdrew from plans to be relocated. One resident of a township told Human Rights Watch that it was like living in a "low-class motel".