On the Bedouin Serving in the Israeli Army

By Miri -
 
The other day I randomly got into a conversation with two guys. It turned out that they were Bedouin, working for the Ministry of Defense  and living in Tel Aviv. Soon our discussion turned political when I referred to Israel's Arab population as Palestinians. "They are living in Israel, why do you call them Palestinian?" From there we soon ended up discussing the foundations and the general character of the Israeli state, with them trying to convince me that Israel was a good state, and that also as Bedouin they were much better off in Israel than in other countries. "What about the 30,000 Bedouin living in the unrecognised villages in the Negev and the plans to displace and resettle them against their will?" I asked them. They insisted it was the current government that was to blame, not the Israeli state as a whole. 

Bedouin protesting their displacement in the Negev

I started feeling uncomfortable and patronising in my position as a privileged Ashkenazi, i.e. white Jewish citizen trying to convince them that the State of Israel would never treat them as equal and was in fact using them, so I eventually ended the conversation, suggesting them to discuss the issue with some Palestinian friends of mine in order to see their perspective on those issues. 

And yet, I kept on pondering about our discussion and the way that even some of the most underprivileged people, living the inequalities and experiencing the discrimination against their communities, could be turned into good patriots, ready to enlist in the army, to fight for a country that will never fully accept them because of their ethnic and religious background. 

Although they are still not compelled to enlist in the Israeli army and its subdivisions, some 1,655 Bedouin are in active service according to Israel's Institute for National Security Studies. Like the two guys I met, an estimated two thirds of those serving, stem from the communities living in the north of Israel, a notion which already hints at the fact that the approximately 260,000 Bedouin living in the State of Israel are historically, culturally, politically and socio-economically a very heterogeneous group.

Bedouin Pal-Heib Unit during a military parade in Tel Aviv, 1949

Already before the formation of the Jewish State many Bedouin living in Palestine refrained from joining the emerging Palestinian Arab national movement as they perceived their respective community as their primary focus of identification, rather than a pan- Arab or Palestinian identity. Especially in the north, some Bedouin communities joined the side of the Zionist movement and helped to defend Jewish communities already during some of the clashes preceding the war of 1948. 

In 1946 Sheikh Hussein Muhammad Ali Abu Yussef of the northern al-Heib Bedouin sent more than 60 of his men to fight with the Zionists forces and thereby formed the Pal-Heib Unit of the Haganah, the Jewish paramilitary organisation which would later become the IDF. In 1948 the same unit would form part of those Bedouin defending the Jewish settlements against the invasion by Arab armies. As a consequence many of the Bedouin communities in the north were spared from attacks by the Haganah during the same war. The Bedouin of the Naqab/Negev however, sided mainly with the Arab side and out of the 70,000 who had lived in the area before 1948, only 11,000-18,000 remained. The overwhelming majority of this population was thus forcefully expelled, fled or relocated to surrounding areas. 

In the aftermath of the foundation of the State of Israel the differences between the northern and southern Bedouin communities in Israel continued and even aggravated. As outlined in a different article on this blog, the approximately 160,000 Bedouin living in the Naqab now constitute the most disadvantaged citizens in Israel and are locked in a continuous struggle with the state. Most recently with the controversial Prawer-Begin Plan, the Israeli government is planning to evict 30,000 Bedouin, to demolish their unrecognised villages and to forcefully relocate them in Bedouin towns. It is thus not surprising that a considerably smaller number of the are willing to enlist in the army. 

Monument for Fallen Bedouin Soldiers in Alonim Reserve

Druze and Bedouin are seen as more trustworthy than other Arabs living in Israel and yet, their experience in the Israeli military has always been characterised by "a gap of distrust and a view of Druze and Bedouins as a potential Arab 'Trojan Horse'". For a long time they were therefore placed in segregated units under Jewish officer command, denied participation in Israeli-Arab war combat, and limited in rank. Only in 1991 all units were declared open to them, however the vast majority of the so called minority soldiers continue to serve in segregated units. 

The notion of the Israeli army as a huge melting pot cross-cutting through class and ethnic background does thus clearly only apply to the Jewish population. Rhoda Kanaane argues that the Israeli army is organised along ethnic lines, which is illustrated by vacancies designated exclusively for Bedouin, benefits such as the Bedouin education military track, special memorials for fallen Bedouin and Druze soldiers, as well as the absence of Arabs in the highest ranks of the military. 

Bedouin scouts on track

Bedouin commonly serve in tracker units which are predominantly operating alongside Israel's northern and southern borders. They are supposed to detect infiltrators, ranging from assumed terrorists to drug smugglers. While some take pride in their status as soldiers or border police, or see it as a possibility to integrate themselves better into Israeli society, the vast majority of Bedouin see soldiering as an economic opportunity and a way to improve their living standards. 

The benefits of serving in the army, from which the great majority of Israel's Arab minority is excluded, are considerable and include among others a regular pay check, tax breaks, increased child allowances, easier loans, educational grants, and an early and comfortable pension (for career soldiers).

While the standard of living of the northern communities is much better than that in the south, also the Bedouin in the north are nor spared from discriminatory policies and land expropriation by the state. The feed back that Bedouin soldiers receive from their own communities is therefore very mixed to say the least, and many hold that it is still better to be poor and honorable than to be economically better off and a traitor.

It is indeed more than questionable whether the IDF, as a highly ethnically stratified institution, could possibly be the medium to improve the situation of those "minority soldiers" and make them equal to their Jewish Israeli comrades.  

To learn more about the life of Bedouin communities, join one of our weekly tours to the Naqab and the West Bank. For more infomation click here.

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