User:DaWalda/Agricultural history of the Negev

For reviewers: I see two possible problems with this draft:

• (1) It has become very long (~9100 words of readable prose); I am therefore considering whether it would be better to split it (this is noted below).
• (2) The last section is a history of regional development since 1949. Aspects such as Bedouin educational institutions, etc., are therefore not mentioned. This has resulted in expropriations of Bedouins being given considerable attention. Alaexis thinks this might be an NPOV issue, and he might be right.

Note that the page's title is outdated; see the Talk page.
DaWalda (talk) 12:53, 25 June 2024 (UTC)

The Negev is a region in southern Palestine with a complex history, typically part of larger political or cultural entities along with neighboring areas. Notably, only around 1906 or 1947, the Negev was politically separated from the Sinai Peninsula to the west. Despite being predominantly a semi-desert or desert, it has historically almost continually been used as farmland, pastureland, and an economically significant transit area.

The international community widely recognizes the Bedouins as the indigenous people of the Negev, having inhabited the region for about 1,600 years, and for much of that time, almost exclusively. Between 1948 and 1951, during the events of the 1948 Palestinian exodus, many Bedouin inhabitants were resettled by Israelis. Consequently, the later chapters of the Negev's history are marked by ideological debates and are a hotly contested field, with several conflicting narratives. Discussion of these narratives, where necessary, largely takes place in notes.

Historical regions of the Negev

Main article: Negev § Geography

The Negev and surrounding regions

For historical purposes, the Negev can roughly be divided into four subregions:

• The biblical Negev (yellow), referring to the small, semi-arid northeastern Arad-Beersheba Valley. Only this area is referred to as the "Negev" in the Bible, as according to biblical historiography, the holdings of the Judeans in the Negev were confined to this region.
• The northern Negev (green). In biblical times, it was inhabited by the Philistines and from the 6th century B.C. by Idumeans and the so-called "Post-Philistines," whose ethnic identity remains a matter of debate. This region is also predominantly semi-desert, but it was already intensively used for agriculture during biblical times and developed, especially in the post-biblical period, into one of the most important agricultural regions of Palestine. The northern boundary is indistinct and defined differently by various scholars across disciplines. The border shown on the map corresponds to the modern Beersheba District, which is both one of the northernmost and one of the most commonly used boundaries in historical accounts.
• The central Negev (orange) is even drier; in the Bible, this area was therefore called the "Desert of Zin". In the west, it mainly consists of sand dunes; in the east lie the Negev Highlands, which, as recent research suggests, were probably called "Mount Seir" in the Bible, previously thought to be located east of the Jordan River.
• Finally, the southern Negev (red) has no special name in the Bible. It is the driest region of Palestine, with consistently less than 100 mm of rainfall per year. Originally, it was important mainly for its mineral resources, but starting from the time of the Nabateans, it was also used for agriculture.

The Negev region in the Bible

The Promised Land

The Bible contains several traditions about the Beersheba-Arad Valley and the Negev Highlands. They can roughly be clustered into two groups. From the first group, older biblical scholarship inferred that the Negev was inhabited by the ancient Israelites during biblical times. According to the second group, a different people lived here; this group aligns more with the findings of more recent archaeology (see below).

(1) According to the Book of Genesis, already Abraham lived for a while in the central and biblical Negev after being banished from Egypt. Notably, he spent a brief period living in Kadesh [Barnea] and subsequently resided as a guest in Beersheba, which at that time was purportedly part of the kingdom of the Philistine king of Gerar. (2) Accordingly, Numbers 34:1–7 and Joshua 15:1–3 are generally understood to mean that the biblical and central Negev actually belonged to God's Promised Land at least down to Kadesh Barnea at the southwestern fringes of the central Negev (but see below). This area is assigned to the Tribe of Judah together with other more northerly areas; at the same time, the biblical and central Negev is assigned elsewhere to the Tribe of Simeon and lies within the territory of the tribe of Judah. (3) Hence, when the Israelites came from Egypt to Israel, according to Numbers 20:1–21:3, only Aaron is not allowed to enter this land because he has sinned — the rest of the Israelites, however, can conquer the area.

Ancient Israel according to the Bible (9th century BCE, approximate)

(4) Conversely, according to Deuteronomy 1–2, the area is revoked from the Israelites by God because everyone has sinned and God has also destined the land for the Edomites. (5) The background for this is found in Genesis 32:3; 33:12–16, where it is not Jacob, the ancestor of the Israelites, who lives there, but his brother Esau, the ancestor of the Edomites. These two grandsons of Abraham divide the promised land between them in Genesis 36:6–8 so that this "Edomite land" will continue to be inhabited by Edomites. (6) According to the Books of Kings, the Edomites also live here. They are sometimes ruled by Israelite kings, as the Negev was purportedly part of the kingdom of the legendary king Solomon (in its entirety, all the way to the Red Sea), and from the 9th century, with varied extension to the south, part of the Kingdom of Judah. But the Edomites fight against them multiple times and regain their freedom. (7) The most common expression used in the Bible to refer to Israel as a whole is "from Dan to Beersheba." Once again, this excludes at least the central and southern Negev regions from "Israel". (8) Accordingly, it is not at all certain whether the border descriptions in Numbers 34 and Joshua 15 really include the Negev as part of the promised land, as Numbers 34 also presupposes an area of Edom west of the Jordan (which, according to Numbers 20:14-16, begins at Kadesh as one of its southernmost locations). For that reason, it has recently occasionally been suggested that "Your southern border shall be from the Wilderness of Zin along the border of Edom" (Numbers 34:3) is to be understood as excluding the territory of the Edomites, and therefore at least the central and southern Negev, from the Promised Land. However, as of yet, this is still a minority opinion.

Bronze Age and early Iron Age: The copper miners of the Negev Highlands

Bronze Age and early Iron Age: Regional History

Main article: Edom § Edom

See also: History of Palestine § Egyptian dominance

Negev and surroundings in the Iron Age I-IIa

According to Egyptian written records, during the Bronze Age (up to the 13th century BCE) and the early Iron Age, it was the Shasu nomads who lived in the Negev and the Sinai Peninsula under Egyptian rule. Since these are referred to, among others, as the "tribes of the Shasu of Edom," is assumed that from this ethnic group, the Edomites emerged later, and even later, the Idumeans (see below). The Egyptians operated a copper mine in the Timna Valley, as evidenced by a Hathor temple from that period. After the Egyptians withdrew, another group took over the copper mine. This group also built a fortress-like road station at the Yotvata oasis, which was notably constructed using the casemate building technique, and established another copper mine at Khirbet en-Nahas.

In the Beersheba–Arad Valley, a complex of several casemate buildings also emerged in the 12th century BCE, known as Tel Masos, the region′s first capital (until it was replaced by nearby Tel Malhata as the new capital from the 10th to the 8th century BCE.). From Tel Masos and Yotvata, this architectural style spread throughout the Negev region between the 11th to 8th centuries BCE, with sites like Tel Esdar, Khirbet en-Nahas, Beersheba and Arad adopting similar structures. Additionally, during this time, many more farms, known as "haserim" ("enclosed homesteads"), developed, especially along the streams and brooks up to the vicinity of the Philistine locations Nahal Patish and Tell el-Far'ah (South). Gazit notes that there were 36 Haserim of at least 0.25 hectares in size in the 11th century alone in the region, along with many smaller farms. Moreover, in the same period, about 60 small casemate buildings appeared in the Negev Highlands. Many of these sites also had additional smaller buildings, totaling several hundred. These settlements were likely involved in operating the copper mines, which is supported by the presence of copper slags from the Arabah in Negevite pottery.

These archaeological finds are primarily interpreted in two different ways. Initially, biblical archaeologists, drawing on the biblical passage 2 Samuel 8:14 — which states that King David built garrisons "throughout all Edom" — interpreted the casemate buildings in the highlands as these garrisons, which is why they are still referred to as "fortresses" today. This interpretation was gradually abandoned in the early 1990s: Archaeologists, noting that Yotvata, Tel Masos, and the copper mines were built and operated more than 100 years before David's time, emphasizing that the buildings in the Negev were clearly no "fortresses," and showcasing distinct architectural styles and ceramics different from those in the Judean settlement area, proposed alternative theories. They suggested that either the ancestors of the Edomites built the Negev localities and operated the copper mines, governed by the "Tel Masos chiefdom", or that alongside these nomadic people, a third, unknown sedentary people also lived there, with one of these two groups controlling the copper mines. However, in 2023, Tali Erickson-Gini, responding to the 7 October attacks, once again advocated the older "Israel hypothesis," claiming that this interpretation had been consciously "swept under the rug" by archaeologists. As of 2024, it remains to be seen whether this interpretation will resurface.

Bronze Age and early Iron Age: Agricultural History

A Negevite cistern

External images
Layout of a Negev farm.
Terraces with dammed water.
Terraces with growing grain.

The sheer number of Early Iron Age buildings in the Negev Highlands (surveys have registered nearly 450 in total) is surprising given the area's low rainfall (typically less than 200 mm/year). However, the Negevites seem to have developed innovative agricultural techniques to cope with these conditions:

• They built their buildings near the small wadis of the Negev Highlands, where they carved cisterns into the rock to capture and store winter rainwater.
• They also constructed terraced fields along these wadis, designed to channel flowing water from the wadis and running water from the wadi slopes to plants and slow drainage, thus maximizing moisture retention and minimizing soil erosion.

Michael Evenari demonstrated at his experimental Avdat farm that this farming method could successfully grow even grapes with less than 100 mm/year of rainfall.

However, interpretations differ regarding the timing of terrace construction. It is clear that the majority of the millions of wadi terraces still found in the Negev today originated in the Byzantine and Early Islamic periods (see below). But excavated blades, silos and threshing floors from the Iron Age combined with new Radiocarbon and OSL datings suggest that some terraces were built as early as the Iron Age or even earlier.

Conversely, research teams led by Israel Finkelstein investigated ancient dung heaps in the Negev mountains and at the Timna mines and discovered that in the central Negev, small livestock primarily grazed on wild-growing winter and spring plants, while in the Timna area, they were mainly fed hay and grape pomace. Accordingly, they suggest that the practice of crop cultivation in the Negev mountains during the rainy season might have started later. If this is true, the Iron Age Negevites seem to have lived in the Negev mountains during the rainy season, but they only practiced livestock farming there. During the summer time, they moved south to mine copper and imported grain and grape pomace from the Philistines and Judeans in the north. If one agrees with the early dating of the agricultural terraces instead, it appears that the Negevites´ society was structured such that they lived in the Negev mountains during the rainy season, engaging in crop and vine cultivation to stockpile supplies; during the summer, they moved down to the copper mines, mined copper, and fed their animals with the stored hay and grape pomace.

Later Iron Age: Regional and economic history

The political situation of the Negevites and their neighboring peoples as well as territorial fluctuations at this time largely depended on the surrounding political superpowers:

• With Hazael's conquest of the region of Palestine in the 9th century, the Judeans in the north strengthened and expanded into the Beersheba-Arad Valley, as evidenced by the ceramics found in Arad and Aroer and ostraca found in Arad.
• The subsequent conquest of Palestine by the Assyrians in the 8th century meant a political and economic upswing for the Negevites (like the Philistines and in contrast to the Judeans). Following this, they expanded further east in the Beersheba-Arad Valley, beyond the borders shown on the map above, to places such as Horvat Qitmit, Horvat Uza, Horvat Radum, Mizpe Zohar, and the Gorer Tower.
• However, it was the conquest of Palestine by the Babylonians in the 6th century BCE that had the most significant impact on regional history. The Judean region north of the Negevites was almost completely destroyed, after which the Negevites advanced north into the more fertile Central Palestine. It is likely this invasion that the pronounced hatred for "Edom" in the later biblical texts originates from. This regional situation remained for the next few centuries: According to Diodorus Siculus and Josephus, even in the 1st century BCE and CE, the border between Judea and the Negevites ("Idumaea") was at the same level, namely "between Beth-zur and Hebron" or "near Gaza."

The economic background of this relocation appears to have been that deforestation had made further copper mining impossible: From the 12th to the 9th century BCE, copper mining was gradually intensified to such an extent that by the 9th century, a total of 460 tons per year were being extracted solely at Khirbet en-Nahas. This, however, led to an overexploitation of natural resources, which eventually brought copper production to a complete halt, as indicated by the analysis of charcoal remains.

Following the decline of copper mining, the Negevites appear to have increasingly focused on trade to the east. Camels seem to have been regularly used for trade starting from this period, as excavated camel and dromedary bones from the late 10th and early 9th centuries BCE suggest. It was also only from this time on that they expanded to the east of the Jordan river and founded Bozra and subsequently other towns along the King's Highway, which until recently were considered the "core territory" of Edom. The pottery found in these areas suggests that the same ethnic groups lived here as in the central Negev and (temporarily alongside Judeans) in the Beersheba-Arad Valley. Thus, when the Edomites relocated to Central Palestine, they left the Negev; subsequent survey results show that only 11 sites can be identified in the highlands from the following period (see below).

Hellenistic Period: Nabataeans

See also: Qedarites § Neo-Babylonian period, and Nabataeans

Early Nabataean period: Regional history

Southern Palestine, ~4th / 3rd century BC

Soon after, also the Idumeans living in ancient Edom east of the Jordan river were displaced by invading Arabian Qedarites and moved to join their kin in southern Judah. Subsequently, sometimes between the late 4th and early 2th century BC, these Qedarites were themselves pushed northwestward by the invading Nabateans. As a result, the Idumeans and Qedarites intermingled in southern Judah, while the Nabateans settled in the former territories of Edom east of the river Jordan, the Negev, and Sinai, taking control of these areas and the ancient trade routes. They established the so-called "desert towns" located along the Negev incense route at Avdat, Mampsis, Rehovot, Shivta, Nessana, and especially Elusa, which was to become the new capital and the only polis of the Negev.

Early Nabataean period: Agricultural history

Previously, it was believed that the early Nabateans were responsible for the terraced fields in the Negev Highlands, but archaeological evidence does not support this claim. Instead, the Nabateans are rightly famous for two other innovations in the arid desert landscape. First, they developed characteristic arched cisterns. More importantly, second, they constructed long water channels from perennial springs to their cities and villages (as in En Erga, En Ziq, and Qasr Ruheibeh in the central Negev, and En Rahel and Moyat Awad in the Arabah), which functioned in their early time mainly not as agricultural farms but as caravan stops and trade stations.

Maccabean period: Regional history

See also: Maccabees and Syria Palaestina

Josephus reports that the Maccabees conquered the Idumean border towns of Maresha and Adoraim and presented the Idumaeans with a choice: either be circumcised and adopt Jewish customs or leave the area. Since the Idumaeans were already practicing circumcision and several other customs that would gradually come to be seen as "Jewish" after the time of the Maccabees even before the Judeans, it is sometimes assumed that this report is more etiological than historical, intended to explain why the Idumaeans and Judeans had similar customs. However, unlike a corresponding report about the forced conversion of the Itureans, Josephus might be telling the truth in this case: Archaeology shows that during the Maccabean era, almost the entire region was depopulated, mostly without signs of conflict. Following the Roman replacement of the Maccabees as rulers of Palestine it was again repopulated between the 1st century BC and the 1st century AD up to Hebron and Mamre by people that, however, were not judaized, but either continued to adhere to the Edomite belief in Qos or practiced a syncretistic religion with strong hellenistic-pagan and hellenized Edomite influences at least until the mid-fifth century.

According to the Books of the Maccabees and Josephus, the Maccabees did not advance into the central and southern Negev. Hence, archaeological excavations in these areas reveal that the Nabataean religion was practiced there without interruption until the beginning of the Islamic period in the 7th century. Nabatean political control of the Negev only ended when the Roman empire annexed their lands in 106 CE.

Byzantine and early Islamic Period

Main articles: History of Palestine § Byzantine period, Muslim conquest of the Levant, and History of Palestine § Early Muslim period

Byzantine period: Regional history

During the 4th century, Byzantine rule brought Christianity to the region. This, coupled with a stable political climate, led to a substantial population growth throughout the whole region. Immigrating Christians most frequently settled in the area of today's West Bank down to the Beersheba Valley, which had been most thoroughly ethnically cleansed of Judeans by the Romans. In the Beersheba Valley alone, the number of settlements surged from 47 in the Roman period (up to the 4th century) to 321 during the Byzantine era (4th - early 7th centuries); Beersheba expanded to an area of 90–140 ha, making it even larger than nearby Gaza and Anthedon, each covering about 90 ha.

Byzantine period: Agricultural history

Registered sites in the Negev Highlands.
Iron Age: Era of the copper miners.
Persian Period: Copper miners relocate to Judaea.
Hellenistic/Roman: Nabataeans migrate to the Negev Highlands.
Byzantine/Early Islamic: Christian settlement wave and Arab expansion.

One of the three additional clusters of Christian settlements were the Nabatean desert towns. Most of these evolved into large agricultural villages with many smaller farms and villages around them. Ultimately, the whole central Negev, extending down roughly to the Ramon Crater, was dotted with hundreds of small agricultural villages and farms. These were likely operated by Nabataeans assimilated to the Byzantine Empire, after Nabatean trade had declined starting from late Roman times. On the character of Byzantine (and early Islamic) agriculture in the Negev, see below.

Early Islamic period: Regional History

From 602 to 628, the Byzantine military was severely depleted during the Byzantine-Sassanian War and regained control over Palestine only with great difficulty. After that, despite forming alliances with several Bedouin tribes, such as the Banu Amilah, the Banu Ghassan, the Banu Judham, and the Banu Lakhm, who were migrating from the Arabian Peninsula to the southern Negev during this period, the Arab forces encountered little resistance in their Islamic expansion into Palestine beginning in AD 634. By around AD 636, with the decisive Battle of the Yarmuk, the war was largely decided.

As mostly in the rest of the region of Palestine, the Islamic expansion left no archaeological trace in the Negev:

[...N]ot even one of the Negev towns was affected by the Islamic conquest. No hint of a violent invasion or destruction, or even a slight change in the material culture is found in the large-scale excavations of the sites. The archaeological findings point to an uninterrupted pattern of settlement which continued from the Byzantine period into the later stages of the early Islamic period.

— Gideon Avni, 2008

External image
Nahal Oded: Mosque with pagan Matzevot.

There are also no clear signs of religious wars and forced conversions. In Nessana, it even appears that the same building was used simultaneously as both a church and a mosque. Similarly, in Nahal Oded (on the southwestern slope of the Ramon Crater), the same building seems to have served as a pagan cult place and a mosque at the same time. Related to this phenomenon is the fact that the early Palestinian Muslims even integrated the Christian festivals of Easter, Pentecost, Christmas, and Saint Barbara into the Muslim calendar. Therefore, on the eve of the Crusades, Palestine was still predominantly Christian. Hence, Ibn al-Arabi, who visited Palestine at the end of the 11th century, could still write: "The country is theirs [the Christians'] because it is they who work its soil, nurture its monasteries and maintain its churches."

Early Islamic period: Ruralization

The Arabic invasion, however, accelerated a trend toward deurbanization and ruralization, especially in the Negev, which had already started in Byzantine times, to which a number of factors contributed:

1. By the end of the Byzantine period, Christianity had become widespread in Palestine; however, within Christianity, the characteristic aspects of Roman-Byzantine urban culture were viewed as promoting unchristian frivolity. Consequently, urban institutions such as Roman baths and theaters began to be dismantled or destroyed from this time onward, reducing the appeal and hence the pull factors of cities.
2. Many monks, whose monasteries often served as the Christian centers of smaller towns (as in Avdat and Nessana) left Palestine after the Arab invasion, diminishing another pull factor of these towns.
3. A drought during the Late Antique Little Ice Age in the early sixth century, the Plague of Justinian that broke out in the densely populated cities of southern Palestine in the mid-sixth century, and a severe earthquake in the Negev toward the start of the early Islamic period drove urban populations to the countryside, where they now had to fend for themselves.
4. In Southern Palestine, a new economic sector emerged due to the strong international demand for "Gaza wine," which was primarily produced in Yavneh, Ashkelon, and Gaza. To capitalize on this, some inhabitants of the Negev towns took up viticulture in the countryside. Curiously, viticulture and trade with Gaza wine continued unabated in the first Islamic century and even the Arabs themselves praised the quality of Palestinian wine. After the wine trade collapsed, it seems that the vineyards were instead continued to be used for olive cultivation.
5. The Arab conquest and the Muslim imposition of two new taxes called Jizya and Kharaj on non-Muslims and non-Bedouins led to the cessation of the flow of Christian immigrants. The absence of Christian pilgrims also dried up financial flows, prompting even more Palestinians to turn back to subsistence farming.

Already in the Byzantine period, 90% of the settlements in the Negev were agricultural farms and villages. Following the decline of the towns during the early Islamic period, the total number of settlements gradually decreased, yet the proportion of agricultural villages among these settlements further increased. According to Rosen, this shift of life from cities to rural areas is the reason why most Byzantine churches are found in the desert towns, whereas most early mosques are found in rural areas. Also, further to the south, around the Ramon Crater at the southern fringes of the Negev highlands, the Negev Bedouin replicated the northern terrace architecture. Haiman estimates that during the early Islamic period, there would have been about 300 individual farming villages, each with 80–100 residents, cultivating a total of approximately 6,500 hectares of agricultural land (nearly 3% of the total area of the Negev Highlands). Newer surveys suggest that they might have cultivated even up to 30,000 – 50,000 hectares, which would correspond to nearly 14 – 23% of the area.

Meanwhile, the desert towns gradually died a quiet death: Elusa collapsed already towards the end of the Byzantine period, likely due to the Justinianic Plague and the Late Antique Little Ice Age. Mampsis was abandoned either by the 7th or 8th century, Rehovot by the 8th century. The abandonment of Avdat, seemingly due to an earthquake, is now also dated to the 8th century. The archaeologically poorly preserved Beersheba and its surroundings, including the revitalized towns Tel Masos, Tel Malhata and Tel Ira may also have been abandoned by the 8th or 9th century. However, Shivta, Nessana, and the large Khirbet Futais (in the area of the former Philistine Nahal Patish) continued to exist at least until the 10th century. In Ayla, where the new inhabitants of the region resumed mining copper and started to mine gold, there can even be observed further growth; the towns were only abandoned in the 11th century.

From the 12th century onwards, as the Crusaders and then the Mamluks ravaged central and northern Palestine, most of the villagers and townspeople of the Negev had already migrated to these regions or to Europe. This, the war waged by the Crusaders against Southern Palestine as well, and the (not certain but likely) fact that the Mamluks prohibited permanent settlements in the Negev, led to the transformation of the Negev into a region inhabited solely by semi-nomadic and predominantly Muslim Bedouins.

Byzantine and early Islamic desert agriculture

If agriculture was already practiced on terraces during the Iron Age, this system was certainly further developed from the Byzantine period onwards:

• Starting with the Byzantine period the Negevites stacked stone heaps, called Tuleilat el-Anab ("grape mounds"), to further facilitate the flow of rainwater into the wadis and probably also to reduce evaporation in the soil beneath these heaps for growing grape vines.
• They also constructed artificial dovecotes alongside the terraces, so that the pigeons could fertilize the agriculturally used soil with their droppings.
• Finally, the most sophisticated irrigation system dates back to the early Islamic period: The inhabitants of the arid area around Yotvata in the southern Negev constructed tunnel systems known as "qanat," spanning several kilometers. These tunnels served as irrigation channels, directly connecting groundwater reservoirs to agricultural fields covering several hundred hectares. Uzi Avner writes that according to radiocarbon data, after the destruction of Ayla in the 11th century, "only small-scale cultivation was continued by Bedouins;" however, he does not specify how this "only small-scale" cultivation is identified. New research suggests instead that agriculture near Eilat was later expanded (see below).

split here? (1) Ancient History of the Negev, (2) History of the Negev Bedouins
Outsource "The cultural region of the Negev Bedouin" as "Timeline: Territorial History of the Negev."?

Bedouin period

Main article: Negev Bedouin

After the Christians gradually had migrated back to Europe or central Palestine until the 11th century, Bedouins constituted almost the entire population of the Negev until the 20th century. After the 6th century, only the political boundaries changed, not the cultural ones:

The cultural region of the Negev Bedouin

Negev and surrounding regions

The Negev, Sinai, southwestern Jordan, and northwestern Hejaz were part of a unified territory for most of the Bedouin period. This was also the case during the times of the Shasu, Edomites, and Nabataeans (see above), as well as during the Roman period, when these four regions were initially combined into the province of Arabia Petraea and later, excluding the Hejaz, into the province of Palaestina Salutaris.

• During the Early Islamic Period, Arabs made a biblical and quranic distinction between the "Fahs al Tih" (the "Area of the Wanderings [of the Israelites in Moses' time]") which roughly extended from Rafah down to Jabal Musa as the assumed Mount Sinai, and the adjacent western area "Al Jifâr," bordered to the west by a line from the Lake of Tinnis to the Gulf of Suez. However, politically, both areas were usually considered part of "Filastin". In mental geography, this part of Filastin was seen by the sedentary population as a transit area: for Christians, a transit area with a north-south axis from Palestine along the Arabah valley on the Negev's eastern fringes to Saint Catherine's Monastery on Mount Sinai; for early Muslims, a transit area with a west-east axis from Suez ("Qulzum") via Nakhl (and smaller waystations) to Aqaba and from there further to Medina and Mecca, and another west-east axis along the Via Maris on the Mediterranean coast, facilitating trade between Egypt and Palestine.
• Not much is known about the territorial affiliation of the Negev during the time of the Crusaders. It is certain that west of the Jordan river, the line from Deir al-Balah ("Darom") to Al-Karmil was the southern boundary of the area settled by Europeans. Beyond this boundary lay "La Grande Berrie," the "Great Desert." However, whether this area was entirely outside the European domain or should be considered a vast border region remains unclear. It is certain, at least, that the Crusader castles east of the Jordan River, which stretched further south along the Christian pilgrimage route and were known as Oultrejordain, served as a wedge between the western and eastern Muslim settlement areas, from where, among other things, the west-east Hajj route was obstructed by raiding the Muslim pilgrims. Thus, during the 12th century, at least the Sinai and Negev on one side, and Jordan and Hejaz on the other, were somewhat separated. Accordingly, towards the end of the first Christian Crusader period (1171), Theoderich of Würzburg distinguishes between "Arabia" to the east of the Jordan river and the desert "between Arabia and Egypt" to the west.
• During the Mamluk period, Al-Dimashqi reports that, after the area around Oultrejordain had been reconquered, the entire region from the Gulf of Suez ("Qulzum") in the west of Sinai to the south of Jordan, including Ma'an, was again consolidated as the "kingdom of Karak" (after its capital Al-Karak). The Egyptian Hajj route through the Sinai to Aqaba was fortified by expanding the waystations and later upgrading them to small fortresses. Following the time of Al-Dimashqi, textual sources fall silent for two centuries. However, since the Ottomans, as usual, structured the area politically in a similar way to the Mamluks, this division likely persisted:

Map, late 16th century. The province of Hejaz is called "Arabia Petraea", as usual on Europeans maps.

• During the Ottoman period, the southern territorial boundaries of Palestine were often unclear, even to the Ottomans themselves. Most of the time, the Negev, the Sinai Peninsula to the west and parts of southwestern Jordan and the Hejaz to the east was again regarded as one unified region; this time under the name "Province of Hijjaz". However, parts of this area were at times instead included within the frequently shifting boundaries of the Gaza District. In the next section, a snapshot from 1835 is displayed, just before the territorial reorganizations of 1840, 1871-1874, and 1906.
• Only during the border dispute from 1892 to 1906 towards the end of the Ottoman period (see below) was the Negev gradually separated as a distinct area from the rest of this cultural region.

Bedouin territorial history

Bedouin tribal territories, 20th century.
The territories of the Tarabin and the Aheiwat extended far into the Sinai Peninsula; however, the boundaries of their areas in this region are less well-known.

The history of the Arabs of Beersheba remains poorly researched. It is certain that the names of many tribes residing in the Negev area in the early 20th century are not attested in earlier times. This doesn't tell us much; of the dozens of Bedouin tribes that lived in the Negev during this time or had once lived there, only a very few are documented in texts. More importantly, it is often mentioned in Bedouin oral history that individual tribes have only been living in the Negev for a few centuries.

However, this does not necessarily mean that these tribes were newcomers. All major Bedouin tribes in Palestine are actually tribal confederations. For the regional history of a tribal confederation, it is more accurate to consider the history of its sub-tribes. For instance, the Bilī and the Jerawin arrived in the Negev already before the Islamic era and are now sub-tribes of the Tarabin and the Tiyaha, which indeed arrived only in the 18th century. Similarly, the Jarm lived in the Negev already during the Crusader period, were the ruling tribe during the Mamluk period, and eventually split and joined the same tribes. The Wuhajdat, the ruling tribe during the early Ottoman period, collapsed and joined the Tarabin, the Tiyaha, and the Jabarat. Other sub-tribes of the Bedouins trace their origins back to former Palestinian villagers who became semi-nomadic only late and joined the major tribal confederations. The Amarīn, for example, now a sub-tribe of the Jabarat, were originally inhabitants of a village near Ramle. Thus, over the centuries, many migrations and reconfigurations among the Bedouin tribes can be traced; however, the example of the Bilī, the Jerawin, and the Amarīn shows that, due to these reconfigurations, even tribes that migrated more recently can have roots in the Negev dating back many centuries.

Despite frequent migrations and border wars, Bedouin tribes had shifting but well-defined territories. Land ownership was governed by a set of Bedouin laws, which were enforced both at the community and individual levels by the tribes collectively:

• Invading tribes from outside were to be allowed to stay in the tribal territory. If they entered without such permission, they were expelled by a coalition of the native tribes.
• Individuals had land rights only within their tribal territory. Land was acquired by developing unused farmland, through the removal of stones ("stoning"). A field cleared of stones was considered private property. Usually, half of an owner's lands lay fallow each year as part of a crop rotation system. Additionally, an owner could decide not to cultivate fields for several years if there were not enough pasture plants for his animals in the surrounding area due to a drought. If another individual successfully cultivated a field in the owner's absence over several years, the owner was usually informed by neighboring field owners and a property dispute arose. This was adjudicated by a council of judges called "ahl ad-diyār" ("people of the lands"), typically chosen from tribes other than the one to which both parties belonged.

Bedouin period: Agricultural history

Agricultural history: 12th to early 19th centuries

In 1871, the first scientifically accurate map of the Negev by E. H. Palmer was published in conjunction with the Ordnance Survey of Palestine and the Palestine Exploration Fund. The red dotted lines have been overlaid to show the modern borders as of today.

Regarding the Bedouin land use of the Negev after 1100 AD, there are two differing positions in the research. According to the first, even the agricultural terraces were abandoned concurrently with the decline of Negev towns and villages around the 10th / 11th century. Proponents of this position generally also assume that Bedouins only re-learned agriculture from more sedentary cultures in the late 19th or even the 20th century, and only began practicing it themselves due to the sedentarization policies initiated by the Ottoman Land Code of 1858 (see below), and later continued by British and even Israeli policies. There are indeed travel descriptions from the interim period that suggest this. However, since they all evidently reproduce the same set of general world knowledge, it is uncertain how reliable they are.

Evidence from newer archaeological excavations and historiographical studies indicates instead that both assumptions are at least somewhat exaggerated. Instead, corresponding to Bedouin oral history (see above), archaeology suggests that "nomadic [...] tribes, living in the Negev Highlands between the 10th and 18th centuries cultivated some of the best-preserved agricultural plots and primarily grew annual crops, such as cereals, and occasionally also managed small plots of fruit trees," and did not abandon either the northern and biblical Negev or the southern Negev.

For the 19th century, there is another set of evidence from textual documents directly concerning Bedouin culture, suggesting that extensive Bedouin agriculture in the Negev certainly predates the Ottoman and British land policies. Notably, there is a wealth of travel literature from the 19th century that frequently discusses the Negev region, as well as the first ethnological studies. Again, many travel reports report having encountered a dead desert. However, Avi Oppenheim and the authors of "Emptied Lands" have highlighted that many travel accounts also report the opposite. From these, it is particularly clear that Bedouins cultivated wheat throughout the northern Negev. Agriculture in the biblical Negev and the highlands of the central Negev is also well-documented.

Minor sedentarization and land use during the late 19th and 20th centuries

This agriculture was not associated with a sedentarization of bedouins. Starting with the Shasu nomads and their copper mines and Negev fortresses, Palestinian nomads were always semi-nomadic, as the land did not allow "pure" nomadism. Most of them were still semi-nomadic in 1948, although towards the end of the mandate period there was indeed an increasing tendency to build individual permanent houses or storage facilities within larger recurring tent dwelling places.

External image
The Egyptian Hajj route.

At the same time, it is certain that Europeans indirectly contributed to those semi-nomadic Bedouins intensifying their agricultural activities from the late 19th century onwards. Two of the Bedouins' most important economic activities were the transportation of goods (especially grain) and the "protection" of caravans, including the Hajj pilgrims on their way through the desert (sc. the collection of protection money to refrain from attacking them while passing through their tribal territories: → Amir al-hajj). In the 1830s, however, Egypt's Muhammad Ali and Ibrahim Pasha briefly ruled over Palestine and neighboring regions, modernizing and intensifying agriculture in the north. This attracted more Europeans with their newly developed steam boats to Palestine, from where they initially imported primarily olive oil, soap, and cotton. These steam boats over the time made Bedouin transportation irrelevant.

Bedouin barley piles covered with straw and earth. Beersheba, 1920

However, steamship trade enabled the British to also import barley from Palestine. Thus, from the 1850s, even before the enactment of the Ottoman Land Laws, Gaza developed into a hub for trading "Gaza barley," alternatively called "badawi abyad" ("Bedouin White"). During several years of the Ottoman period, Gaza barley was Palestine's economically most important export, with tens of thousands of tons exported annually. Additionally, textiles were exported from Gaza, produced in at least 100 workshops using wool supplied by the Bedouins, and soap, for which the Bedouins provided potash.

From just before the start of the British Mandate (1923) until the end of the Mandate period (1947), there were several surveys of the Negev that showed how much Bedouin agriculture had intensified over time. According to most estimates, the agricultural area gradually increased during the British Mandate period from about 300,000 hectares to 400,000 hectares (a comparable, but significantly larger, growth trend is also evident in the adjacent southern West Bank). This constituted nearly 36% of the agricultural land in the region of Palestine and encompassed almost the entire northern half of the Negev. As parts of this area weren't suitable for agriculture (mainly due to the sand dunes in the western central Negev), this also implies that the Azazima used the Negev Highlands for agriculture during the Mandate period comparably to the Nabateans in the Byzantine era. Correspondingly, in 1941, Jacob Verman and Daniel Zohary had explored the Negev highlands. According to this survey, Bedouins practiced wadi agriculture in practically every region of the Negev highlands except for the Wadi Boker area and the Nahal Ramon area near the Ramon Crater – partly on reused, partly on enhanced and partly on self-built terraces. In the process, the terraces were further developed:

• When raising reused terraces, small "breaker lines" of stones were sometimes built in front of them to reduce the force with which winter floods hit the main terrace.
• Newly built terraces were constructed with a characteristic slope that faced the water, also mitigating the force of the floods.

Thus, British diplomats declared:

The statement, so often made for propaganda purposes, that nearly half of Palestine (Naqab) is still empty and available for settlement is roughly speaking true as regards its emptiness but altogether false and misleading as regards its availability.

— PRO, FO 371/61868

split here?

Border redrawings in the 19th and 20th centuries: The creation of the Negev

Until the mid-19th century, there was no "Negev" as a clearly defined region. What would later become known as the "Negev" had always been part of a region that included the Sinai, and usually also southwestern Jordan and northwestern Hejaz (see above). This changed only after 1840:

Map from 1819: Egypt's "ancient borders" as later restored in the Inheritance Firman. The province of Hejaz is again called "Arabia Petraea" (see above).

After the Egyptian–Ottoman War from 1839 to 1841, in which the Egyptians were pushed back in Palestine and which was ultimately a proxy war between France, supporting the Egyptians, and England, supporting the Ottomans, it was enforced at the Convention of London in 1840 that Egypt largely withdrew from the Sinai but was granted an area within its "ancient borders" northwest of a line from Rafah to Suez. This territory was then assigned to their Egyptian subjects by the Ottomans with the so-called "Inheritance Firman" of 1841. Later, the starting point of the Firman line from Rafah would mark one of the two points crucial for the creation of the Negev.

The French subsequently built the economically vital Suez Canal by 1869, whose southern end still lay in Ottoman territory. However, after England had made Egypt their colony ("protectorate") in 1882, only the British benefited from this, while it economically harmed the Ottomans and made Ottoman troop movements to Palestine and in the Hejaz dependent on whether the British would allow them to pass.

At this time, the Ottomans did not even effectively control the Negev, and even less the Sinai Peninsula, where the Egyptians continued to administer the waystations along the two west-east routes via Nakhl and Aqaba and via el-Arish, as it was also stipulated in the Inheritance Firman. This Egyptian presence in Aqaba, as the easternmost point of Egyptian control, would soon become the second point defining the Negev border line.

External image
Map by the Egyptian Interior Ministry, 1870s, showing Egypt without the Inheritance Firman..

This led to the territorial status of Sinai and the Negev becoming somewhat ambiguous after 1841: The Ottomans initially sometimes produced maps that depicted the Negev as "Egyptian" territory, while the Egyptians produced maps that did not recognize even the area of the Inheritance Firman as part of Egypt. Thus, the Ottomans began efforts to extend their de facto control southwestward. Meanwhile, the British sought to keep the Ottomans away from the Suez Canal and the Gulf of Aqaba, which had the potential to threaten their dominance in the Red Sea through the Suez Canal. This struggle for the Sinai and the Negev is not well-known, but it is actually one of the major chapters of World History, as it almost precipitated the First World War already by 1906. It unfolded roughly in four steps:

1892: Border redefinitions

Borders mentioned in the following sections

Step 1 consisted of two measures that were more symbolic than directly political: When Egypt's ruler, Khedive Tewfik Pasha, died in 1892, the Ottomans had to confirm the rule of his son, Abbas Helmy II. In the renewal of the firman that confirmed Abbas as the ruler of Egypt, however, the passages regarding the Sinai waystations were omitted, and instead, it was only stated by the Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid II in a telegram that Egypt should continue to administer the waystations. This did not initially change the status quo. However, by transferring the mention of these waystations from the firman to a telegram, it emphasized that these areas were still to be considered Ottoman, not Egyptian, territory.

British map of Egypt, 1894, showing Egypt's borders as defined by Lord Cromer in 1892.

The British Consul General in Cairo, Lord Cromer, did not accept this and responded with a telegram of his own, violently misinterpreting the Sultan's telegram as meaning that Egypt should administer the whole Sinai Peninsula, which he defined as "the territory bounded to the east by a line running in a south-easterly direction from a point a short distance to the east of El Arish[, the easternmost waystation on the coast,] [...] to the head of the Gulf of Akaba.'" Thereafter, the British began to produce maps that even excluded the head of the Gulf of Aqaba from Ottoman territory and presented everything southwest of the thus defined border as "Egyptian." In 1892, there was no response from the Ottomans to this telegram; it was officially rejected only in 1906. For this reason, Cromer's telegram is sometimes regarded as a British–Ottoman "agreement," while others see it as merely a "unilateral declaration" not accepted by the Ottomans or a wrong "interpretation" on the side of the British.

It is possible that the early Zionists also played a role in this matter: The first generation of Zionists had been attempting to settle in Palestine since 1882, but Jewish immigration to Palestine and Jewish land purchases in Palestine had already been prohibited by Ottoman law that same year; partly because, since the 1840s, the British had inserted themselves into Palestine by claiming the status of protector of Jews wishing to immigrate there. As a result, they tried to enter Palestine as illegal immigrants or via indirect routes. One such indirect route was the attempt by Paul Friedmann around 1892, with the consent of the British occupation authorities, to establish a Jewish state called "Midian" on the Gulf of Aqaba's east coast, which Cromer was just about to declare as "Egyptian": Cromer himself reports that it was this attempt that brought the Ottoman Sultan to redraft the Firman. However, since this was but a rather desperate colonization attempt and Cromer's report is quite misleading, it is not certain whether this was indeed a major factor.

1899/1900: Beersheba and the Beersheba District

The second step consisted of a series of Ottoman actions aimed at gaining control over the Negev and Sinai. These began with the so-called "Tanzimat land reforms", which included a package of legislative amendments designed to privatize and commodify land. The goal was to sedentarize the Bedouins in the Ottoman border regions and thereby stabilize these areas. In the second half of the 19th century, the Ottomans still tried to achieve this through coercion.

Since these measures were not successful in the province of Hejaz due to the lack of Ottoman military troops, they shifted their Bedouin policy around the turn of the century, when the border disputes began, aiming "to gain Bedouin support for the government in its endeavors." Thus, in 1892, the Ottomans started to buy the favor of Bedouin sheikhs by bestowing titles upon them. Now, instead of imposing governors upon the Bedouins, they had a say in the appointment of governors and could even dismiss them.

Market of Beersheba, 1901

The culmination of this new policy was the creation of the new Beersheba District in 1899, whose boundaries were drawn in such a way that it was almost exclusively a Bedouin district. As a regional center, the city of Beersheba was built at a point where the tribal territories of three major Negev Bedouin tribes converged. Instead of granting Bedouin land to sedentary refugees for settlement, as had been done before, now the Bedouins were given land in this city for free. The more Bedouin-friendly policy went so far as to allow legal matters relevant only within this new Beersheba district to be adjudicated according to Bedouin customary law by a "management council" of tribal chiefs, unlike in northern regions.

1902: The el-Arish–Rafah affair

Lord Cromer wanted to respond to this by now pushing the boundary he had earlier drawn himself in the north from el-Arish to Rafah; however, the British Foreign Office explicitly rejected this proposal. Nevertheless, around 1902, two measures were undertaken to further shift the northern boundary. First, the two boundary markers at Rafah, which were said to have marked the ancient boundary line between Palestine and Egypt, were either moved or newly established unilaterally by the British and Egyptians in accordance with Lord Cromer's new proposal. The Ottomans would respond only in 1906 (see below); in 1902, however, this British action again had no direct consequences.

Second, some Zionists had already anticipated this boundary-shifting proposal from Cromer and interpreted the creation of the Jerusalem Sanjak in 1887, which reached only down to Rafah at that time, as a cession of Ottoman-Palestinian territories to Egypt. Subsequently, they developed plans to begin the colonization of Palestine in the "Egyptian-Palestine" region between el-Arish and Rafah. This led shortly afterward to Theodor Herzl's attempt from 1902 onwards to negotiate this area from the British for a Jewish state. Since the British were willing to negotiate over all areas "where there were no white people as yet," Lord Cromer was initially indeed willing to cede him territories west of el-Arish, which harmonized well with his own plans to push back the Ottomans. However, soon thereafter, he withdrew the offer again — officially, because Friedmann's attempt near Aqaba had already enraged the Ottomans, and because the Zionist plans to irrigate El-Arish with pumped Nile water were unrealistic; but actually, probably mainly so as not to "'remind' the Ottomans to address the delimitation problem, and to claim that a foreign settlement was not permitted in the province of Hijaz, which included Sinai."

Although these early plans to colonize el-Arish failed, they still had lasting repercussions: later, they prompted the Zionists to claim, at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, a Palestine whose southwestern border extended from el-Arish to Aqaba, closely matching Lord Cromer's earlier proposed border redefinition.

1906: The Aqaba Crisis

With this background, the ground was prepared for the struggle for the Negev to almost escalate into an international war. The trigger was the serious Ottoman preparations made in that year to connect the Gulf of Aqaba or even the Gulf of Suez with the Hejaz Railway. This would have given the Ottoman armies, and through the Berlin–Baghdad railway, which had also been seriously considered since 1903, the armies of their newly allied Germans direct access to the Red Sea. Control over this maritime region, which connected England with British India, was crucial for the British Empire; therefore, the British could not accept these efforts by the Ottomans and the Germans.

Thus, Lieutenant Bramly was sent with some 50 Egyptian policemen to the Gulf of Aqaba, which had been administered solely by the Ottomans for some time, to establish several police stations there. A post was provisionally set up in present-day Eilat but had to be dissolved shortly afterward on orders of the Ottoman commander of Aqaba. Attempts at other planned locations — especially the strategically important Taba on the western shore of the gulf, which the British considered to be within Egyptian territory — were abandoned after it was discovered that the Ottomans already had troops stationed there and were amassing more forces, eventually numbering over 2000 men. The policemen then barricaded themselves on Pharaoh's Island, prompting the British to send the warship Diana to the Gulf, outgunning the Ottoman soldiers. Another destroyer, the warship Minerva, was dispatched to Rafah after discovering that the Ottomans had torn down the boundary markers earlier relocated by the British, gathered several hundred troops there as well, and replaced some British telegraph poles with Ottoman ones to indicate that, in their view, the region southwest of Rafah was Ottoman territory.

The British border claim and the two Ottoman compromise proposals

Attempts to resolve the emerging crisis diplomatically were unsuccessful. The British insisted that the border between Egyptian territory and the Ottoman heartland ran from Rafah to Aqaba — "the invention of a moment [...], it had never been heard of before." The Ottomans, while making two compromise proposals to redefine the borders, which were not accepted by the British, maintained that at least some parts of the Sinai belonged to them instead of the Egyptians. Thereupon, the French and the Russians publicly pledged their support to the British Empire. At the same time, it was feared by the British and claimed by the Ottomans that in the event of war, the Germans would side with the Ottomans, although Germany officially denied this.

When even the support of France and Russia for the British proved ineffective and the Ottomans threatened to put the issue forward for international arbitration, the British quickly issued an ultimatum to the Ottomans in May 1906: either they accept the border from Rafah to Aqaba, or the British would occupy the strategically important Ottoman-Greek islands, including Lemnos and Imbros near the Ottoman capital Constantinople, and block all Ottoman maritime traffic in the Mediterranean.

Hereafter, the Ottomans finally yielded to British pressure and both drew a boundary from Rafah to Aqaba in 1906. This line, however, was legally not an international border, but merely an administrative boundary between two Ottoman territories. This distinction was underscored by a British letter to the Sultan, reaffirming that Egypt was still recognized as an Ottoman province under the sovereignty of the Ottoman Empire.

Ottoman map from 1907 and 1912. The map as a whole is labeled "District of Jerusalem." Egypt is not mentioned; instead, the area west of the Gulf of Suez is referred to as "Ottoman Africa."

Thus, the border question continued to linger even after 1906. For instance, in 1907, the British, once more trying to extend their sphere of influence northward with the help of Zionists, encouraged the Anglo-Palestine Jews Club to establish a "colony of British Jews at Gaza." When this attempt failed, the British consular agent in Gaza launched a similar project, aiming to purchase around 5000 hectares of land at the new Egyptian-Palestinian border near Rafah for another Jewish colony, to at least stabilize the border. This attempt also failed, as the Egyptians did not want a Jewish colony on their land either. Simultaneously, the Ottomans began producing maps that depicted a somewhat fictitious administrative geography by including the entire Sinai Peninsula within the Sanjak of Jerusalem. Nevertheless, the issue remained dormant and truly new developments occurred only from 1919 onwards, when England sought the Mandate for Palestine after World War I.

Inclusion of the area in Mandatory Palestine

See also: Occupation of Ma'an

During World War I, to increase their chances of being granted the Mandate for Palestine after the war, England made three secret agreements: The McMahon–Hussein Correspondence, the Sykes–Picot Agreement and Balfour Declaration. Taken together, these meant that, according to the vision of the French and British, the Negev, Jordan, and Hejaz would once again be politically "united", but this time as part of the externally controlled greater Kingdom of Arabia.

A map considered by the British Cabinet in 1918 suggested that the Negev could be included in either Palestine or Egypt.

Ottoman administrative boundaries before 1917

However, the British did not regard either these agreements or the recently established border agreement as binding. Thus, once the British were indeed granted the mandate, they adopted the Ottoman view that the newly drawn boundaries had merely been administrative borders between two Ottoman territories, and began to consider various options for alternative border demarcations in the south of Palestine anew.

The Negev question was negotiated primarily on two occasions. The border between Egypt and "non-Egypt" was the subject of negotiations from 1917 to 1919. The provisional retention of the 1906 boundary was a British compromise between a Zionist demand for the territory east of a line from the Gulf of Aqaba to el-Arish, and an Egyptian demand that also included Gaza and Beersheba as the two economic centers of the Bedouins for Egypt. The British themselves would have preferred borders that lay between the British-Egyptian demands and the southernmost British proposal for border demarcation by T. E. Lawrence (see the map above), which would have left most of the Negev as part of Egypt. This compromise border only achieved the status of an official international border around 1979 with the Camp David Accords. Galilee reports that as of 2019, Bedouins still regarded the regions on both sides of the arbitrarily drawn national border as a single region.

In 1922, the Negev was again the subject of negotiations, as the borders between Palestine and the territory of the designated Jordanian King Abdullah had to be drawn. His father, Hussein, King of Hejaz, had been promised the Negev by the British, among other things, in the McMahon-Hussein Correspondence. Here too, this (already promised) maximum demand of the Jordanians was met with a maximum demand of the Zionists, who also wanted the fertile highlands east of the Jordan river for their national Jewish homeland. Again, the Zionists did not have to make significant concessions, as a compromise was decided by the British, according to which the border should run along the middle of the Jordan River. The promised Negev land was not relinquished by King Abdullah himself, but by British representative St John Philby "in Trans-Jordan's name". Philby's ability to concede the region to the Zionist Organization was based on the argument that Abdullah had received permission from his father to negotiate the future of the Sanjak of Ma'an (which had previously been a part of the province of Hejaz). Even if this was true, it would have been a blatant breach of word by the British, as this was certainly not the position of Abdullah, who made a request for the Negev to be added to Transjordan in late 1922. However, this was rejected by the British. Thus, despite not having been historically considered part of the region, the Negev was added to the proposed area of Mandatory Palestine on 10 July 1922. In this case too, the final border was only established as international border in 1994 in the peace treaty between Israel and Jordan.

Mandate Period

Main article: Mandatory Palestine

Zionist settlement of the Negev

See also: Aliyah and Concessions in Mandatory Palestine

When England assumed the League of Nations mandate for Palestine, it took on a "dual obligation": (1) to the Palestinians, to guide them towards establishing a self-governing state, and (2) to the Zionists, to "use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement [...] of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people" (→ Balfour Declaration).

Jewish immigration to Mandatory Palestine

For England, this dual obligation mainly served as a pretext to extend the mandate, which effectively only meant a "change of colonial masters" from the Ottomans to the British, for as long as possible, because the "national home for the Jewish people" still needed to be established. Accordingly, the British promoted massive Jewish immigration to North and Central Palestine during the mandate period and redistributed money from Palestinian farmers to Zionist industries through taxes. This was further exacerbated by the Ottoman exploitation of Palestine for World War I, by eight consecutive poor agricultural years, and by various British land concessions to the Zionists. Hence, by 1930, 29.4% of Palestinian farmers had lost their land to banks, wealthy Arabs, or Zionists, while by 1948, the Zionists had legally acquired just under 8.5% of mandatory Palestine.

Early Jewish Settlements in Southern Palestine.

In the Negev, however, Zionists were slow to establish a foothold. The desert played a central role in Zionist mythology: neglected by the Palestinians, the entire Promised Land had become a desert and now had to be saved by its rightful inhabitants. However, due to Ottoman and British settlement policies, Zionist colonization of the Negev predominantly began only in the 1940s: Until the end of the 1930s, the southernmost Zionist settlement was Kfar Menahem, established north of the Negev in 1935.

Ruhama's pumping station

The only exception was the farm Ruhama (1911), built by illegal Russian immigrants on the land of the nearby Bedouin village al-Jammama, where in 1912 the first pumping station in Palestine was constructed. Ruhama, however, was not profitable without external investment: From the beginning, the first generation of settlers did not have enough money to pay the expelled former tenants their compensation and seem to have paid for the appropriated land only in 1913; during World War I, the first owner had to incur massive debts; after the war, the farm was initially scaled back by its second owner for the same reasons and gradually abandoned by its Jewish inhabitants in the 1920s. These difficult economic circumstances may have been additionally exacerbated by the fact that the farm was attacked and destroyed several times by Palestinians; however, none of these destructions are uniformly reported in the secondary literature or corroborated by contemporary newspaper reports.

Thus, in 1936, the Jewish National Fund (JNF) held only 800 ha in the Negev. Additionally, the only concession of direct relevance to the Negev Bedouins was the "Dead Sea Concession." Effectively, however, the Bedouins had already lost the Dead Sea by the time of the Ottomans: Arabs had used the Dead Sea at least since the 18th century to harvest and trade salt and bitumen. However, the Ottomans granted the rights to exploit the Dead Sea to an Ottoman subject so that he could extract bromine. Afterwards, the British contested the validity of this concession and instead granted a concession to the Zionist Moshe Novomeysky to extract potash, along with nearly 1000 hectares of "state land" at the southern end of the Dead Sea.

The Three Lookouts

Main article: Three lookouts

The deteriorating socioeconomic situation of the Palestinians led to the Great Arab Revolt of 1936–1939, which prompted the British to consider partitioning Palestine. The 1937 Peel Commission's proposal and the 1938 Woodhead Commission's considerations both excluded the Negev from the proposed Jewish state due to the minimal Zionist presence there. The latter suggested maintaining the Mandate over the Negev for an additional decade, restricting Zionist settlements and potentially forcibly settling or expelling the Bedouins to facilitate agricultural experiments.

In response, the JNF circumvented British restrictions to increase land purchases in the Negev. Starting in 1939, new Zionist settlements like Kfar Warburg and a kibbutz programmatically named "Negba" ("toward the Negev") emerged in the Gaza District. Important were also the two settlements of Nir Am and Dorot, located between Ruhama and Gaza, as they provided the Zionists with access to the Gaza coastal aquifer, which also supplied groundwater to the Palestinians of the Gaza District: Shortly thereafter, pumping stations were constructed in these two settlements, along with a water pipeline that extended to supply settlements further south. Among the most important of these more southerly settlements were the so-called "Three Lookouts" established in 1943 in the Beersheba Subdistrict, the southernmost and by far the largest of which – Revivim – would soon play a pivotal role in the UN Partition Plan. Officially, these "Lookouts" served the same purpose as the British had intended – conducting agricultural experiments –, indeed carried out such experiments, and thus received advice and support from the British. However, the actual plan was to construct ten fortified and armed mitzpim ("Lookout posts"), serving as military installations and "strongholds on the country's borders", from which further settlement of the Negev was to be conducted.

The 11 Points in the Negev

Main article: 11 points in the Negev

Since only three of the planned ten lookout posts materialized, the Morrison–Grady Plan again excluded the Negev from a envisioned Jewish province when partition was revisited in 1946, due to the sparse Zionist foothold. In response, the Zionists now also rapidly intensified the settlement of the Negev; overnight, eleven additional settlements were established, known as the "11 Points in the Negev," and subsequent "stronghold settlements" constructed around 1947 for military objectives, aimed at consolidating strategic positions and preventing Egyptian incursions. However, even in 1947, Zionists controlled only about 15,800 hectares (=1,26%) in the Negev, comprising less than 1% of the population in the Hebron and Beersheba Districts and 2% in the Gaza District.

For this reason, and because the military nature of the settlements was well-known, intense propaganda efforts were made for the Negev settlements. By the early 20th century, the majority of the northern and central Negev was already being cultivated agriculturally by Bedouins (see above). By 1931, according to the Palestine Census, 89.3% of the Bedouins surveyed indicated that agriculture was their main occupation. Nonetheless, the Negev settlements were marketed, for example in a propaganda pamphlet produced towards the end of the war by Keren Hayesod, as "veritable oases amid the bleak expanse of the Negev," although in most Zionist Negev settlements at that time, agriculture had not even begun.

The UN Partition Resolution

Main article: United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine

Over the course of the mandate, with increasing presence and power in Palestine and growing influence on the international stage, the demands of the Zionists became more comprehensive, until eventually even officially, the establishment of a "national home in Palestine" was no longer the goal, but rather the establishment of "Palestine as a Jewish commonwealth" was demanded (→ Biltmore Conference). Amidst the Palestinians, unrest and uprisings repeatedly broke out, escalating over time. Notable are the Nebi Musa riots of 1920 in Jerusalem, the Jaffa riots of 1921, the Palestine riots of 1929, and the Arab Revolt in Palestine from 1936 to 1939. In response, the British repeatedly declared their intention not to establish a Jewish state (see above) and increasingly restricted Jewish immigration. This culminated in the White Paper of 1939, which, during the time of the Shoah, definitively limited Jewish immigration to a further 75,000 immigrants. Additionally, the report of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, instead of the partition of Palestine and the establishment of a Jewish state, recommended in 1946 the establishment of a unified state in Palestine with two provinces. The Zionists responded by escalating their activities, including terror attacks on the British carried out by Irgun and Lehi, most notably the massive attack on the King David Hotel. Therefore, in the deadlock over the Palestine issue and with Palestinian uprisings and Zionist terror attacks, the British turned to the newly founded United Nations, the successor organization to the League of Nations.

The UN Partition Plan

After the UNSCOP (United Nations Special Committee on Palestine) drafted an initial partition proposal, the UN partition resolution recommended dividing Palestine into an Arab (orange) and a Jewish state (blue). The major geographical innovation was that, contrary to all older proposals for partitioning Palestine, the Negev was allocated to the Jewish state, not the Arab state. This had mainly three reasons:

(1) Some Palestinian researchers have suggested that the British – who were determined not to cede the Negev to the Zionists, as they aimed to provide Jordan access to the Mediterranean and prevent Egypt, both of which were under British influence, from being isolated from other Arab states – may have provided inaccurate information about the land use of the Negev in 1946 and 1947. Specifically, the British reported the agricultural area as 164,000 and 200,000 hectares instead of the estimated 400,000 hectares (see above). Additionally, they portrayed the Negev as largely barren with the exception of an area "in the extreme north-west of the sub-district" that was already firmly in the hands of the Bedouins, the barren remainder being suitable only for Bedouin livestock breeding. Finally, they emphasized the "land rights" of the "Beersheba Bedouin" and their "historic association" with the Negev.

(2) If the British numbers were indeed inaccurate, they had just the opposite effect: Walter C. Lowdermilk, an American Christian Zionist, had written a renowned book that, among other topics, envisioned a water pipeline from the northern Jordan River to the Beersheba District to irrigate the Negev. During the UNSCOP's visit to Revivim in the Negev, the sight of a field of gladioli, freshly irrigated by water from the new Nir Am pipeline, convinced them of the feasibility of Lowdermilk's plans for agricultural development in the Negev. Thus, although the British portrayed the Bedouins as the agricultural innovators in the Negev, UNSCOP believed that large areas of the Negev were still "capable of development", though only achievable with significant Zionist investment in irrigation, and recommended including the Negev in the Jewish state.

(3) The most crucial factor was the fact that, at the behest of an unnamed American politician, Herbert Evatt, the chair of the Special committee, excluded the Arab states from the detailed elaboration of the partition plan, which resulted in the Arab perspective being even less considered during its formulation.

Accordingly, the Arab UN member states commented: Since all other agriculturally and economically important areas of Palestine had already been allocated to the Jewish state and the Bedouin were "responsible for the cultivation of the greater part of the [200,000 hectares] of cereal land" of Beersheba (which still amounted to nearly 22% of the agricultural land in Palestine),

[...] it is certain that the proposed Arab State cannot be viable. It would have no cultivable lands of any importance. Such cultivable lands as it would have would not supply a small fraction of the cereal requirements of its population. It would have no other economic resources, no raw materials, no industries, no trade, and would have to subsist on subsidies or loans.

— Sub-committee 2.

It almost turned out differently: Among the members of the Partition Committee, there was no consensus on whether the Negev should indeed be left to the Zionists. Additionally, the dominant USA had already planned to reallocate the Negev to the Arab state to gain favor with Arab states and secure their support for the partition plan. However, when the Zionists learned of these plans, President Truman's advisor David Niles arranged a meeting with Chaim Weizmann on the day the partition committee's decision on the Negev was due. Weizmann persuaded the President with the vision of a canal running through Jewish territory from the Gulf of Aqaba to Tel Aviv. Following Truman’s direct orders, the Americans abandoned their earlier tactic and only introduced a modification proposal (which was accepted) to slightly enlarge the Palestinian area with the city of Beersheba and a section on the border with Egypt. This, however, did little to change the issue of insufficient arable land, as the northern half of this section consisted of sand dunes northwest of the Negev highlands.

Israeli period

Expulsion of the Negev Bedouins during the war

1947 Survey of Palestine map: "Distribution of Nomad Population of the Beersheba Sub-district", described by Kark and Frantzman as "extraordinarily important". It was produced from aerial photographs.

The Palestine War from July 18, 1948.

Main articles: Nakba and 1948 Palestine war

As expected, following the partition resolution, Palestinian and Israeli assaults, attacks, and counterattacks gradually escalated into a civil war, and from May 15, with the invasion of the Arab states, it also turned into an international war.

The expropriation of the southern Bedouin tribes had been minimal before the war began. Also, before the second UN-enforced ceasefire on 18 July 1948, the war had barely reached the Negev. By the end of May, the Zionists had primarily established territorial continuity between their various settlements. In the process, 199 Palestinian localities had already been depopulated, and nearly 400,000 Palestinians had become refugees. In contrast, according to a report from the Israeli intelligence service, by mid-June 1948, no Negev Bedouins had yet fled or been expelled at all. Hence, the Negev Bedouins were, on the whole, less hostile towards the Zionists compared to the Palestinians living further north. Thus, before and during the war, there was no unified Bedouin political stance towards the Zionists/Israelis on one hand, and the sedentary Palestinians on the other. Some tribes (notably the Azazima and the Tarabin) collaborated with the Arab armies and acted against the inhabitants of the Israelite Negev settlements, particularly through sabotage of the Nir Am water pipeline and attacks on supply convoys. Others (notably the Tiyaha) had allied with the Israelis and supplied the Negev settlements, which were cut off from supply lines, with smuggled deliveries.

Accordingly, the Israelis differentiated between "friendly tribes" and other Bedouins. However, besides that, there was no consensus among the Israelis on how to approach the Bedouins. Some argued for maintaining friendly relations with the "friendly tribes" during the war, to prevent them from allying with the Arab armies. Others were for driving all Bedouins out of the land, just like the rest of the Palestinians. Ben-Gurion was of the opinion that, in any case, Bedouin lands should be transferred entirely into Israeli possession without compensation.

In the end, regardless of the official stance of the Israelis, when the war reached the Negev starting with Operation Yoav on the 15 October 1948, the fate of both the friendly and hostile Bedouin settlements was the same: Remaining Bedouins were prevented from harvesting their fields using military force, in order to drive them out of the land. Others were directly expelled or driven out of the country with military force. The fields of displaced Bedouins were either harvested by Israelis or burned to give Bedouins no reason to return. This is well-documented through oral histories from Bedouins, as well as through complaint letters from Israeli settlers regarding offenses committed against "friendly tribes."

Kark and Yahel suggest that Bedouins were more likely to flee than to be expelled, due to their higher mobility compared to the sedentary population of Palestine. However, the specific reasons why the individual sub-tribes left their settlements at that time have not been thoroughly analyzed. From the Israeli side, only an analysis by the intelligence agency is available until mid-June. The most comprehensive post-analysis by Abu Sitta covers 88 localities in the Beersheba District. This analysis instead suggests that while the Bedouins were indeed more willing to leave their settlements without a fight, Israelis were even more directly involved here than in the villages in the north.

Displacement and expropriation of the Bedouins after the war

Main article: Negev Bedouin § Land ownership issues

Not all Bedouins were expelled or driven out during the Negev operations of 1948 and 1949. During and after the war, some Bedouins from friendly tribes remained in the Negev, while others were allowed to return even during the conflict. These groups were required to register in the newly established Israeli city of Beersheba, after which the able-bodied men among them were conscripted into the minorities unit of the Israeli military. Additionally, a third group re-migrated illegally back into the Negev. This wave of illegal immigration persisted until around 1953, after which it gradually subsided. It also served as a pretext to expel even more Bedouin after the war. For instance, a UN report from September 1950 details the fate of some 4,000 Azazima Bedouins, who, wrongly dubbed as "infiltrators", two years after their initial flight to the southern Negev, were further driven into the Sinai. This continued until 1959.

In the end, of the original 57,000 to 65,000 or 90,000 to 100,000 Negev Bedouins from 95 sub-tribes, some 11,000 Bedouins from 18 or 19 sub-tribes remained residing or returned to the Negev. Most of them (> 90%) were Tiyaha, but there were also three Tarabin and one large Azazima sub-tribe included. Seven of the 18/19 tribes had resided in the biblical Negev and the adjoining northeastern central Negev before the war, eleven or twelve tribes had lived in the Tiyaha territory between Gaza and Beersheba. However, in 1951, these about 5000 northwestern Bedouins were partly ordered and partly forced to relocate to the area of the northeastern tribes, which was subsequently transformed into a military restricted zone named "Siyag" ("fence").

Thereafter, in line with Ben-Gurion's view, no land had to be purchased from the Bedouins. In 1949, the Israeli authorities decided that the Bedouins in the Negev, considered merely nomads, had had no land ownership rights, and all their lands were initially declared as mawat ("dead land"). Then, in 1969, with the Land Rights Settlement Ordinance, which abolished the mawat category, all mawat land was declared "state land." Additionally, about 14,000 hectares of lands belonging to the Bedouins who were displaced into the Siyag in 1951 and thereby "abandoned" as of 1 April 1952 were appropriated under the Land Acquisition Law of 1953. The legitimacy of these laws and Israel's legal views has been confirmed several times by Israeli courts, most notably in the well-known "Umm al-Hiran case" and the even more famous "Al-Araqeeb case." However, the international community does not share this legal assessment; mostly due to the history of Palestinian land law. Additionally, international organizations, human rights organizations, and legal scholars are increasingly also arguing with human rights and indigenous land rights, which are progessively seen as independent of concrete legal histories.

The Negev after 1949

The Siyag

Main article: Siyag

The displacement of the northwestern Bedouins into the Siyag was initially driven by three main reasons: According to the IDF's Operations Branch, it was "to secure land suitable for settling Jews and setting up IDF bases," and as Moshe Dayan stated, "to serve the general policy of expelling the Arabs from the country 'by peaceful means': in the first stage, moving them to an area without adequate living conditions so that they would leave the country of their own free will."

The Siyag area

Originally, the Siyag measured nearly 150,000 hectares. Due to the low rainfall in the biblical Negev, only 40,000 hectares were arable lands, which was not enough for self-sufficient agriculture. Additionally, the land used for agriculture there had to be leased from the state, including by Bedouins who had previously lived there and farmed it, thus further diminishing the profitability of Bedouin agriculture. Finally, even on leased land, Bedouins did not receive the same water allocations as Jewish farmers; moreover, since 1962, over 96% of the Siyag has been excluded from drought relief benefits. This means that from the beginning, the Siyag was indeed "an area without adequate living conditions."

The Bedouins, however, didn't leave the country; instead, they spontaneously structured their landscape into "dispersed settlements," with individual homesteads spread throughout the Siyag region. As a result, almost every construction project in Siyag inevitably leads to the displacement of individual homesteads or entire dispersed settlements, causing the region outside these construction areas to become even more densely populated, thereby further reducing the arable land. This happened repeatedly in the following years for different reasons:

Development towns

Main articles: Ma'abarot and Development town

Ma'abara, 1951

Arad, 2013

First, Beersheba became a restricted area within the restricted zone; until 1959, Bedouins were only allowed to enter the city area once a week. Second, in the 1950s and 1960s, large numbers of immigrants from Arab countries and African countries streamed into Israel or were flown there. The existing Jewish towns and settlements could not accommodate all of them. Even the areas of the 350 Palestinian villages, which were now newly settled by the new immigrants, were insufficient. For this reason, so-called ma'abara transit camps were initially set up to temporarily house the immigrants, later evolving into "development towns." This was further exacerbated by the simultaneous establishment of industries where the new immigrants were expected to work in low-skill jobs. Yeroham (1951, for workers in mineral mines and for construction workers), Dimona (1955, for potash workers), and Arad (1961, as service center for future agricultural settlements and for workers in chemistry based industries) were three such towns established within the original Siyag area, further restricting Bedouin access to Siyag land. This led to a new social stratification in the Israeli state: at the top were now the European settlers, below them the newly immigrated Arab and African Jews in the camps and development towns, and at the bottom the Bedouins (along with other Israeli Palestinians).

At that time, also Mitzpe Ramon in the central Negev highlands (for mining workers) grew to such a development town. Additionally, five more development towns were established in the northwestern Negev, from where the remaining western Negev Bedouins had been displaced; most notably Netivot and Ofakim. Furthermore, dozens of agricultural kibbutzim and moshavim were established in the same area to absorb further immigrants.

Planned Bedouin towns

Main article: Negev Bedouin § Israeli-built townships

This further reduction of arable land and grazing areas in the Siyag as well as Israeli movement restrictions had the side effect of rendering many Bedouins unemployed, forcing them into low-paid, unskilled labor in Beersheba and the development towns "due to their having no suitable alternative." Between 1958 and 1962, outside employment among the Bedouin rose from 3.5% to 13%. Already by the mid-1960s, 23% of Bedouin male laborers worked in low-wage work as construction, transport, and services (and 45% in agriculture, while 32% were unemployed).

Consequently, Israel shifted its Bedouin policy, aiming to concentrate the Bedouins into a few economically weak dormitory towns near Beersheba and the development towns, which lacked their own employment opportunities. Hence, the third and decisive measure to curtail the settlement area of the Siyag was the Israeli Law of Planning and Construction of 1965. This law rendered all "spontaneously" established Bedouin settlements in the Siyag retroactively illegal; from then on, building was only permitted in settlements approved by Israel.

Rahat, 2015

The first of these "legal" townships was Tel as-Sabi, established around 1967, built directly adjacent to the administrative area of Israeli Beersheba. This planned town was deemed a planning failure due to its proximity to the city, cramped layout, and houses that were too small for the Bedouin population. As a result, Rahat, the second planned town, was established northwest of Beersheba in 1972. Constructed according to a radically different, more "Bedouin-friendly" plan. Rahat quickly developed into the largest Bedouin city, a status it still holds today. It was followed by Shaqib al-Salam in 1979, Ar'arat an-Naqab and Kuseife around 1982, Lakiya in 1985, and Hura in 1989. Predominantly, the Bedouins who moved to these planned towns were the ones who had not lived in the Siyag area before the war and therefore had no land rights there according to Bedouin law. Thus, the proportion of Bedouins among these town residents who worked in Israeli localities further increased after the 1960s.

Relocating to recognized towns has done little to change the disadvantaged socio-economic status of the Bedouins. In 2003, for example, all seven at the time recognized towns were among the eight poorest places in Israel. The probability that a Negev Bedouin worked in a statistically better-paid job was still negligible in 2017. In 2018, nearly 57% of the Bedouin earned below the minimum wage and 73% of the Bedouins living in the recognized towns were below the poverty threshold.

Unrecognized settlements

Main article: Unrecognized Bedouin villages in Israel

See also: Albeck Committee, Goldberg Commission, and Prawer Plan

Unrecognized village

All other Bedouin settlements could legally be destroyed from then on, and they were, even if the Bedouins living in these settlements had originally been placed there by the Israeli military, as in the well-known cases of Atir, Umm al-Hiran, and Rakhma. The Negev Coexistence Forum for Civil Equality documents these demolitions of unrecognized villages. The most notable example is Al-Araqeeb, which as of 2024 has been destroyed 225 times and subsequently rebuilt by its residents.

An exception are some villages that were legalized under the "Abu Basma Plan" of 2003, as it was recognized that the legal towns were not well received by the Bedouins, partly because they were established as towns rather than villages, and thus were unsuitable for farmers and herders. Most recently, in 2021, the three villages of Hashm al-Zena, Rakhma, and Abde were recognized, but under the condition that 70% of the residents relocate within the newly drawn and smaller boundaries of these villages. As of 2024, discussions regarding this matter were still ongoing.

Unrecognized villages were and still are not connected to Israeli infrastructure such as running water, electricity, sewage, or waste removal services, which further exacerbates the socioeconomic situation of the Bedouins. This is somewhat different in some of the recognized localities. However, since moving to the recognized towns did little to change the Bedouin's socioeconomic situation, but entailed giving up the land they consider as their own, as well as agriculture and livestock farming, as of 2023, some 100,000 Bedouins (around 28%) continue to live in unrecognized villages, despite having to endure a lack of infrastructure and repeated demolitions of their homes.

Beersheba suburbs

Income distribution in three Bedouin towns, three development towns and Beersheba, and the three Jewish Beersheba suburbs Lehavim, Omer, and Meitar.

The establishment of the Bedouin dormitory towns led to an economic upswing for certain population groups. However, since the beneficiaries of this situation – "overwhelmingly [...] the Negev’s executives and researchers, as well as senior officials in both the civil and the military echelons" — moved to their own suburbs of Beersheba in the following years, which took more land from the Bedouins (1983: Lehavim; 1984: Meitar; Omer also developed into such a suburb), Beersheba remained roughly at the same socio-economic level as the development towns, whose residents were and are only marginally better off than the Negev Bedouins.

Countermeasures against the Bedouin "demographic threat"

See also: Blueprint Negev

Demography of the Beersheba District.

Since the Jewish residents of the development towns are also not significantly better off economically than the Bedouins, the Negev became a region of outmigration. Since the 1980s, Jews have been continuously moving away, although Israel's policy from 2005 to 2015 had aimed to encourage 200,000 financially stronger Jews from central Israel to relocate to the Negev (hoping for a trickle-down effect of wealth). At the same time, Bedouins have a much higher birth rate than Jewish Negev settlers. For this reason, it is becoming apparent that the demographic ratio in the Negev will soon reverse.

Since Israeli politics views this as a "demographic threat," this trend has been shaping Israeli housing and zoning policies for several years. Among Israel's latest projects worth mentioning in this regard is the construction of the new city of Kasif, a town planned for 100,000 Haredim (=ultraorthodox Jews with the highest birth rate of all populations groups in Israel) in the west of Arad. This is primarily intended to address the real existing housing crisis in Israel, but will also work against this trend. At the same time, however, it will likely exacerbate rather than alleviate the socio-economic situation in the Negev due to the usual unemployment among Haredim. Additionally, twelve new Jewish "community towns" are planned to be established northwest of Arad and east of Beersheba, again partly on the land of unrecognized villages. Israeli society is divided on how to regard these plans – not primarily because of Bedouin land rights, but due to fears that relocation to the Negev (and to Galilee, for which similar plans exist) would constitute a "poverty trap."

Part-time agriculture, agritourism and Agro-Tech

See also: Agricultural research in Israel

Agricultural Areas in Israel and the Golan Heights, 2017

Another notable policy addressing the "demographic threat" was to provide free land and support to establish new agricultural single-family homesteads or to retroactively recognize those that had already been built illegally in the Azazima's central Negev territory, now called Ramat HaNegev Regional Council. This, however, again had mainly two other backgrounds: Firstly, this was intended to prevent the Azazima from engaging in agriculture, as they continued to move south from the Siyag during planting and harvest seasons to cultivate their fields, which was deemed illegal by Israeli law. The second background is more complex:

In the post-war years, the farming villages were massively supported by the state. However, the neoliberalization of Israel from the 1980s plunged agriculture into a crisis: some subsidies were cut, and with the lifting of import restrictions, cheap products from Southern Europe flooded the market, making it even harder for Israeli farmers, whose farms' "locations and farming plans were based on ideological and territorial priorities more than their ecological fit," to compete. This was exacerbated by inflation and a debt crisis, also resulting from neoliberalization. As a result,

• farms were abandoned en masse: from 1981 to 1995, the number of Israeli farms shrank from over 43,000 to just under 26,000.
• some former farmers turned to other economic sectors, but many turned to related agritourism, often with part-time agriculture. The homesteads in the Negev highlands are among those established during this period; many of them are small vineyards along the enotouristic Ramat HaNegev Wine Route. This process has not yet concluded; several small kibbutzim, moshavim, and individual homesteads settled by part-time farmers were still being established in the Central Negev and further south during the 2000s and 2010s, often starting as a new type of illegal settlement outposts organized by the Or Movement.
• the abandoned fields that were not converted into residential or industrial areas were concentrated in the hands of a few larger agricultural enterprises.
• Israeli policy invested massive amounts of money in agricultural research and development (instead of, as before, in traditional agriculture) to make Israeli agriculture more competitive in the medium term. Gulati et al. counted "close to 500 active Israeli companies working in the agro-tech field" in 2021. Thanks to the favorable structuring of the agricultural system, agricultural innovations resulting from this investment could quickly be adopted by larger enterprises.

These processes also have led to the emergence of four clearly distinct agricultural areas in the Negev today: a modern Jewish agricultural area in the northwest Negev, a poorer Bedouin agricultural area in the northeast Negev, a homestead area in the central Negev Highlands, and the southern Arava Valley near Eilat, which was branded as the "Silicon Valley of Israeli agriculture" and as such was also integrated into Israel's new agritourism system.

Military building projects

Further sections of the Siyag were designated as restricted military zones, notably the Nevatim Airbase, established in 1983 right in the center of the Siyag, or a planned military training area near Arad. Finally, since 2019, there have been plans to build military industries in the new Ramat Beka industrial zone. Further plans to reduce and segment the Siyag area even more are already underway. Notably, these include building several roads and railways through unrecognized villages.