Draft:Negev in biblical times

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Borders and History in Brief

{{main|History of the Negev}}

Negev and surrounding regions

For historical purposes, the Negev can roughly be divided into four regions. First, there is the "biblical Negev," referring to the small northeastern Arad-Beersheba Valley. Only this region was called "Negev" in biblical times. The rest of the northern Negev, located to the west (green), was historically inhabited by the Philistines and later by the so-called "Post-Philistines," whose ethnic identity remains a matter of debate. To the south (orange + red), the southwest extending to Egypt, and likely also in the biblical Negev itself, were the nomadic Shasu in the Late Bronze Age and the Early Iron Age.

The Bible recounts that from the 10th century BCE, the legendary biblical King Solomon and subsequent Judaean kings ruled over the Edomites living in the Negev region. Historically, the Shasu likely indeed evolved into the Edomites, who were particularly concentrated in the semi-desert highlands of the central Negev (orange) and around Eilat/Ayla, and later expanded across the Jordan River further east into what is now southwestern Jordan; however, the ancient Israelites probably never ventured further south than the biblical Negev.

After the 6th century BCE, the Edomites, now called "Idumeans," advanced further north into southern Judaea, and from the southeast, the Qedarites, the first Arab tribe, took over the Negev region. Following the Qedarites, the Arab Nabateans arrived. From the Qedarites' advent on, the Negev region culturally belonged to the Arab world until the 20th century:

Although Palestine was conquered several times during and after the Qedarite and Nabatean migrations – first by the Persians, then by the Greeks and finally by the Romans in the late sixth, fourth and first century BCE, they didn't sever the Negev region's connection to the Arab world: The Persians probably didn't conquer "Arabia"; the Greek Alexander didn't and his successors couldn't conquer the Nabataean territories. In Roman times, as in the time of the Shasu, Edomites, and Nabataeans, the Negev region was politically combined with the Sinai Peninsula and parts of present-day Jordan and the Hejaz into the province Arabia Petraea and later, separating most of the Hejaz, into the province "Palaestina Salutaris".

For a short period between the 5th and 8th centuries, Christians fom northern Palastine dominated the region and mingled with the Nabateans in the Negev region, thereby politically reconnecting the Negev region more closely with the northern regions of Palestine, but they either moved back to Europe or to central Palestine after Arab Bedouins followed the Romans, some settling in the Negev starting from the 6th century and some conquering the rest of Palestine in the 7th century. Thereafter, once again, the Negev was politically part of the Arab world.

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: During the Crusader period, the Negev was alternately divided into several Christian feudatories and governed by the Arab sultan Saladin, until Palestine was conquered by the Mamluk in the 13th century. Before and after the politically turbulent century of the Crusaders and Saladin, the Negev and the Sinai Peninsula formed one political region: in the early Islamic period as two regions of "Filastin", and during the Mamluk era together with southwestern Jordan as the "Kingdom Karak".

From the 16th century, the Ottomans replaced the Mamluks as rulers of the region. Most of the Negev was typically again combined with the Sinai Peninsula and again also with parts of Jordan and the Hejaz into the political province "Hijjaz". However, parts of this area were at times instead included within the frequently shifting boundaries of the independently governed Gaza District, which at times extended even down to Nakhl.

Throughout this entire period from the Late Bronze Age to the 18th century, the Sinai Peninsula, Negev region, southwestern Jordan, and northwestern Hejaz were primarily populated by Bedouins, as mentioned. The territories of individual tribes often shifted, with frequent migrations between the different regions, and the tribes themselves often disintegrated or reconfigured into new tribal alliances. However, only immediately before the British Mandate period in the 20th century, as part of the territorial reorganization of 1840, 1871-1874, and 1906 by the Ottomans, the Negev was separated from the rest of its cultural area with arbitrarily drawn national borders that cut through the territories of individual Bedouin tribes (Galilee reports that as of 2019, Bedouins still regarded the regions on both sides of Israel's southern national border as a single region) and were definitively fixed only in 1947.

After the Ottoman era, the Negev region underwent significant political and cultural changes, largely influenced by European movements and governance. This began with the immigration of European Jews to Palestine, followed by the British Mandate for Palestine. Post-Mandate, the period saw the displacement of many Bedouin inhabitants, linked to the broader events of the 1948 Palestinian exodus, and the establishment of [[Israeli Declaration of Independence|Israeli sovereignty]. Subsequent decades have seen the establishment of planned townships where Bedouins were resettled, often under compulsory measures. These developments have been marked by ongoing legal disputes and controversies over land rights and the impact on the Bedouin community.

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History of the Negev

The Negev is a region in southern Palestine. It has a complex history and has almost always been part of larger political or cultural regions alongside neighboring areas. Notably, only between 1906 and 1947 was the Negev definitively politically divided from the Sinai Peninsula to the west. Although mostly a semi-desert or desert, it has historically served almost continuously as farmland, pastureland, and an economically important transit area.

The international community almost unanimously recognizes the Bedouins as the indigenous people of the Negev, as they have lived there for nearly 1,600 years; for almost 1,000 of those years, almost exclusively. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the Negev region transitioned from being a traditional habitat for Bedouins to a strategically important territorial region of Palestine. During this period, the Negev became significant for several reasons: England had colonized the region under the mandate system. The region connected Egypt with other Arab countries through key trade routes and a Hajj route. Additionally, (Trans)Jordan hoped to annex the Negev to establish a land bridge to the Mediterranean Sea, while Israel sought to include it within its Jewish state to gain access to the Gulf of Aqaba.

In 1948–1951, Bedouin inhabitants, linked to the broader events of the 1948 Palestinian exodus, were resettled by Israelis. Consequently, the later chapters of the Negev's history is an ideologically charged and highly contested field, with several conflicting narratives in circulation.

Biblical

Extent of biblical Negev

Negev and surrounding regions

For historical purposes, the Negev can roughly be divided into four subregions. First, there is the "biblical Negev" (yellow), referring to the small, semi-arid northeastern Arad-Beersheba Valley. Only this region was called "Negev" in biblical times. The rest of the northern Negev, located to the west (green), was historically inhabited by the Philistines and later by the so-called "Post-Philistines," whose ethnic identity remains a matter of debate. The highland area in the actual central Negev (orange) was called "Desert of Zin" and probably also "Mount Seir" (which older research placed east of the Jordan, because this area was believed to be the heartland of the Edomites. See below). Finally, the most arid southern Negev (red) has no special name in the Bible.

Biblical reference

The Promised Land

The Bible contains several traditions about the Beersheba-Arad Valley and the Negev Highlands: (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.

(4) Conversely, according to Numbers 1–2, the area is revoked from the Israelites by God because everyone has sinned. (5) According to Genesis 32:3; 33:12–16, it is not Jacob, the ancestor of the Israelites, who lives there, but his brother Esau, the ancestor of the Edomites, and these two grandchilds 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 then, with varied extension to the south, part of the Kingdom of Judah. But the Edomites are able to successfully 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.

Archaeology suggests that these traditions (4)-(6) are likely intended to explain why the area was seen as part of the promised land, but in fact, it was continually not inhabited by Israelites, but by another ethnic group:

Iron Age

The copper miners of the Negev Highlands

Main article: Edom § Edom

See also: History of Palestine § Egyptian dominance

Negev and surroundings in the Iron Age I-IIa

In the Bronze Age (up to the 13th century BCE), the Egyptians operated a copper mine in the Timna Valley, as evidenced by a Hathor temple from that period. After the Egyptians withdrew, it appears that another ethnic group took over the copper mine. Geographically, this ethnic group is believed to be identical to the "Shasu nomads," as several Egyptian texts from this period attest to their presence in this region. It is suggested that from this ethnic group, the Edomites emerged later, and even later, the Idumeans (see below). 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 (which are called "Negev fortresses" because of the casemate construction method) 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. The excavated pottery also shows that trade relations flourished, connecting the Negevites with Judeans, Philistines, Phoenicians, and even Arabs from the southern Arabian Peninsula.

Desert agriculture in the Iron Age?

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. Thus, already Evenari distinguished between two different types of ancient terraces: those roughly built with large stones, which he dates to the Iron Age, and those more finely constructed with smaller stones and rubble infill, which he believes were built starting from the Roman period.

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.

Superpowers in the Negev and the end of the mining era

Main article: History of Palestine

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

• In the 10th century BCE, Pharaoh Shoshenq I conquered large parts of Palestine, including the Negev region, briefly bringing the Negevites back under Egyptian influence.
• With Hazael's conquest of Palestine in the 9th century, the Judeans in the north strengthened and also expanded into the Beersheba-Arad Valley, as evidenced by the ceramics found in Arad and Aroer and ostraca found in Arad.

At this time, the end of copper mining in the Negev region appears to have been caused by deforestation. 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 23,000 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.

• 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. The Negev highlands and the region east of the Jordan were abandoned; subsequent survey results show that only 11 sites can be identified in the highlands from the following period.

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."

Nabateans, Maccabees, and Romans

Nabataeans

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

Southern Palestine, ~4th / 3rd century BC

Archaeological ruins in the Negev

During this period, 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. Soon after, 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 desert agriculture?

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 aqueducts: The Nabateans appear to have been the first to build 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.

Maccabees and Romans

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 Ituraeans, 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

Byzantine population growth

Main article: History of Palestine § Byzantine period

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.

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.

One of the three additional clusters of Christian settlements were the Nabatean desert towns: Tamar, Mampsis, Avdat, Shivta, Rehovot and Nessana. The last five 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. Also, Eilat ("Ayla") at the Gulf of Aqaba grew from a village to an important Roman port city with its own bishopric.

Islamic Expansion

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

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 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.

Unlike in the case of the Christians, who, for instance, forcibly converted the hellenized pagans of Post-Philistia during Byzantine times, there are also no clear signs of religious wars and forced conversions in the case of the Muslim invasion. 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."

Deurbanization and desert agriculture

Deurbanization and 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 terrace architecture and incorporated agriculture into their now semi-nomadic lifestyle. 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 hectares, which would correspond to nearly 14% of the area.

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.

The end of the desert towns

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.

Negev Bedouin

Main article: Negev Bedouin

The penultimate major section deals with the Negev Bedouins, who are almost universally regarded as the indigenous people of the Negev. The majority of them were displaced by the Israeli army in 1948 as part of the Nakba and turned into refugees. Most of them are still refugees today in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, and surrounding countries. Those who remained or were allowed to return have been oppressed for several decades, ghettoized in the biblical Negev, and forcibly prevented from resettling in their former tribal areas.

As a result, the recent history of the Negev is highly charged ideologically. Alongside the historically most probable construction, there are a number of Zionist narratives and Palestinian counter-narratives in circulation, and it is not always easy to differentiate between the three. The main narratives are as follows:

• Most Bedouins only came to "this region" from the 18th century onwards (Zionist).
• Before 1948, most Bedouins in "this region" were already settled (Palestinian).
• Although Bedouins were taught sedentarism by the Ottomans and the British, they were still mostly rootless roaming nomads before 1948 and therefore cannot be considered "settled" (Zionist).
• Bedouins were not only not settled, but also did not cultivate the area, and therefore cannot claim ownership of the land (Zionist).

The discussion of these narratives, where necessary, largely takes place in the footnotes.

The cultural region of the Negev Bedouin

Traditionally, the Negev has not been considered a distinct region. Overall, from the Late Bronze Age until the mid-20th century, the Negev almost always formed part of a single territory together with the Sinai Peninsula, and most of the time, also with West Jordanian areas and parts of the Hejaz.

Territorial divisions up to the time of the Mamluks

Negev and surrounding regions

Throughout history, from the Late Bronze Age to the 20th century, the Negev was part of a larger cultural and geographic area characterized by fluid and frequently changing borders. This area was managed under various administrative divisions by different powers, starting with Shasu/Edomite and Nabataean territories encompassing the Sinai, the Negev, southwestern Jordan, and northwestern Hejaz (see above).

Similarly, the Romans grouped these territories into the province Arabia Petraea, and later, separating most of the Hejaz, into the province "Palaestina Salutaris".

During the Early Islamic Period, Arabs made a biblical 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".

Crusader period: Couldn't find anything. Did nobody care about the Negev? But the crusaders were at Gaza... Still open.

During the Mamluk period, Al-Dimashqi reports that the entire region from the Gulf of Suez ("Qulzum") in the west of Sinai to the south of Jordan including Ma'an was consolidated as the "kingdom Karak" (after its capital Al-Karak). Following the time of Al-Dimashqi, textual sources fall silent for two centuries, but since the Ottomans also structured the area politically in a similar way, this division likely persisted:

Ottoman territorial division

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.

During the Ottoman period, the southern territorial boundaries of Palestine were often unclear, even to the Ottomans themselves. Maps from the 15th century onward frequently depict Egypt bordered to the east by the Gulf of Suez, with Palestine ending to the south approximately along a line from Rafah to Beersheba (→ Cartography of Palestine), again often regarding the Negev, the Sinai Peninsula to the west and parts of southwestern Jordan and the Hejaz to the east 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. Displayed is a snapshot from 1835, just before the territorial reorganizations of 1840, 1871-1874, and 1906. Only with the last reorganization was the Palestinian Negev definitively separated from the rest of its cultural region under Ottoman rule. Also, only at this time did the Ottomans begin to interfere more in the affairs of the Negev, which was heralded by the establishment of the city of Beersheba as a new administrative center for the Bedouins in 1900.

Finally, it was only during this time that the words "Negev" and "Negeb" entered the vocabulary as toponyms in languages such as English, German, and French. Earlier, even the biblical Hebrew word was not recognized in Bible translations as toponym and instead translated as "southwards" or "the South." Even in 1948, Bedouin didn't refer to themselves as "Negev Bedouins", but as "Arabs of Beersheba".

I believe that Masalha is wrong here. Will have to check.
{In modern Hebrew, it was used as toponym mainly starting with the late 1940s, largely due to a planned Hebraization of Palestinian place names.}

British territorial division

With the territorial reorganization of 1906, the final word on the boundaries of the Negev had still not been spoken. To avoid losing their growing influence on the Asian territories of the Ottoman Empire, England made three secret agreements at the beginning of the 20th century:

Sykes-Picot Agreement

1. In the McMahon–Hussein Correspondence between 1915 and 1916, Sherif Hussein, King of Hejaz, was promised an independent Arab state, with the exception of the districts lying west of "Damascus, Homs, Hama, and Aleppo," as these were not purely Arab (which referred most naturally to present-day Lebanon due to the many Druze and Christian Maronites in this area).
2. In the secret Sykes–Picot Agreement of 1916, it was agreed with France that such an Arab state would be established mainly east of the Jordan River under joint British and French control. However, west of the Jordan, the Negev was also included, so that ultimately, 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.
3. The third agreement – the 1917 Balfour Declaration, which was to have the most significant political consequences for the geopolitical region – is less relevant in this context: Here, England had agreed with Zionists to "use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement [... of the establishment] of a national home for the Jewish people [...] in Palestine [...]." Since England officially repeatedly declared that by "national home" they did not mean a "Jewish state," there was, on the surface, no contradiction between this and the other two agreements; under this arrangement as well, the Negev could have politically been assigned to the east Jordan territories.

During this time, England considered various options for alternative border demarcations in the south of Palestine, of which the maintenance of the 1906 boundaries allocated the largest area in the south to Palestine and was the only one that did not take Bedouin territorial arrangements into account. It was not until 1919, in the wake of the Egyptian Revolution, that it was provisionally decided to disregard Bedouin territories and retain the 1906 boundaries, and not until 1947 that it was definitively decided that the Sinai Peninsula would be separated from the Negev and assigned to Egypt. Galilee reports that as of 2019, Bedouins still regarded the regions on both sides of the arbitrarily drawn national border as a single region.

Historical and Legal Dynamics of Bedouin Tribes in the Negev

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 land use from the 12th to early 19th centuries

Two assumptions about Bedouin land use after 1100 AD are still quite widespread in research: Firstly, that also the agricultural terraces were abandoned concurrently with the decline of Negev towns and villages around the 10th / 11th century. A second assumption, quite common in academic discourse, is 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, and later continued by British and even Israeli policies.

There are indeed travel descriptions from this time that suggest this. However, newer archaeological excavations and historiographical studies indicate 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.

Travel reports from the early 19th century

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. Since these travelogues would soon play a crucial role in legal disputes over the legal status of the Negev, it is worth pausing to consider them briefly. Many travel reports report having encountered a dead desert.

However, Avi Oppenheimer 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. A particularly notable account from William Montgomerie Thomson in 1856, two years before the Ottoman Land Law was enacted, describes the northern Negev as "wheat, wheat, a very ocean of wheat [...], but there is not a village along the entire route, and all the grain belonged to tent-dwelling Arabs." Constantin von Tischendorf listed some other species that were cultivated in the northern Negev in 1844. 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 for any other mode of subsistence. Most of them were still semi-nomadic in 1948.

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 made it possible for the British to import also barley from Palestine. Thus, from the 1850s, Gaza developed into a hub for trading "Gaza barley," alternatively called "badawi abyad" ("Bedouin White"). Halevy illustrates how this trade grew in importance: in 1852, a single ship carried 18 tons of barley to Ireland; by 1863, there were already 10 ships involved, which over time could transport increasingly larger quantities in a single voyage. For instance, in 1867, a steamship carried 400 tons at once. It is unclear how much of this barley was a result of the expansion of Bedouin agriculture and how much was surplus barley that was no longer needed on the Hajj route. However, it is clear that Bedouin agriculture generally expanded as a result of the Gaza trade even before the Ottoman Land Code. 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 (some of which was fallow during fallow years, as mentioned above). The entire area in the Beersheba District with rainfall over 100 mm/year measures 450,000 ha, not all of which were suitable for agriculture. This suggests that, after the barley trade had prompted the Bedouins to expand their agricultural activities, almost the entire northern, biblical, and central Negev was used as farmland. It also implies that the Azazima used the Negev Highlands for agriculture during the Mandate period far more intensively than even the Nabateans did in the Byzantine era (see above: up to 14% = 30,000 ha). Correspondingly, in 1941, Jacob Verman and Daniel Zohary had explored the Negev mountains. According to this survey, barley was cultivated by Bedouins 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

The Negev under Israeli rule

Prehistory: Zionist settlement of the Negev

Early Jewish Settlements in Southern Palestine.

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. Nevertheless, the Zionist colonization of the Palestinian desert began late due to Ottoman and British settlement policies: the former had declared Jewish immigration illegal most of the time in all of Palestine, while the latter repeatedly restricted Jewish immigration in response to Palestinian uprisings and almost consistently prohibited Jewish land purchases in the Beersheba Subdistrict. The settlement dynamics in North and Central Palestine were therefore starkly different from those in South Palestine: Ottoman and British tax policies had left the Palestinians impoverished; additionally, British land policies led to Effendis and foreign speculators not longer accumulating land, but rather being inclined to sell it due to rising land prices. Since the impoverished Palestinians could not compete with the Zionists, who had access to European and American financial resources and heavily immigrated into North and Central Palestine, by 1930, 29.4% of North Palestinians no longer owned any own land. The same fate largely bypassed the Bedouins from the 1880s to the 1930s: Until the end of the 1930s, the southernmost Zionist settlement was Kfar Menahem, established in 1935. The only exception was Ruhama, founded in 1911, which, however, was soon taken from the Jewish settlers by the British and used as a military base. In 1936, the Jewish National Fund (JNF) held only 800 ha in the Negev.

Thus, when in response to the Great Arab Revolt of 1936–1939 the British began to seriously consider dividing Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state, it was clear in both the 1937 Peel Commission partition plan and the considerations of the 1938 Woodhead Commission that the Negev would not be part of a Jewish state: The Peel partition plan assigned the Negev to the Arab state; the hastily convened Woodhead Commission, which was partly intended to prevent the loss of the Negev suggested by the Peel plan, instead recommended continuing the Mandate in the Negev for at least another 10 years, maintaining the prohibition of Zionist settlements, but forcing the Bedouins to settle or expelling them from the country for the purpose of untertaking agricultural experiments. They did "not think that the Government should allow their policy to be frustrated [...] by the unreasonable opposition of backward tribes, occupying an area which, if the experiments should indicate that a higher standard of cultivation is possible, will be in excess of their reasonable requirements."

In response, the Jewish National Fund (JNF) intensified its land purchases in the Negev (which was possible due to a loophole in the British regulations) and a few additional Zionist settlements were established in the Gaza District, starting in 1939 with Kfar Warburg and a kibbutz programmatically named "Negba" ("toward the Negev"). 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.

Since only three of these ten Outlook Posts materialized, these Zionist efforts in the early 1940s did little to change the situation in the Negev. Thus, when in 1946 the British and now also the Americans once again contemplated the partition of Palestine, the result was the Morrison–Grady Plan, which again for obvious reasons excluded the Negev from a Jewish province. 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." The few settlements established afterwards around 1947 were already "stronghold settlements," constructed purely for military reasons in preparation for the Palestine war between 1947 and 1948, to reinforce the wedge that had been driven by earlier settlements between the two Palestinian settlement areas in the Gaza District and the Hebron District and to hinder Egyptian incursions into Palestine. However, this also did little to shift the demographic situation in the Negev: Even in 1947, Zionists held only either 5,596 ha (=0,44% of the Beersheba Subdistrict) or 15,800 ha (=1,26%) of land in the Negev and made up less than 1% in the Hebron and Beersheba Districts and 2% of the population 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 1949 propaganda pamphlet by Keren Hayesod, as "veritable oases amid the bleak expanse of the Negev."

The UN Partition Resolution: The Negev becomes part of Israel

The UN Partition Resolution

Main article: United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine

When England assumed the League of Nations mandate for Palestine, it took on a "dual obligation": (1) to the Palestinians, who were allegedly "not yet able to stand by themselves under the strenuous conditions of the modern world," to provide "administrative advice and assistance [...] until such time as they [were] able to stand alone [...]," 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). Legally speaking, this "dual obligation" was not contradictory; it did not change the fact that the Palestine Mandate was a so-called "Class A mandate," whose primary goal was to guide the Palestinians towards establishing a self-governing state. For England, however, this dual obligation 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.

However, 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

The UN partition resolution specifically recommended dividing Palestine into an Arab (orange) and a Jewish state (blue). Contrary to all older proposals for partitioning Palestine, the Negev was allocated to the Jewish state, not the Arab state. Since the British had only asked the UN Assembly "to make recommendations [...] concerning the future government of Palestine" and the UN, in the Resolution 181 (II) resulting from subsequent deliberations, only "recommend[ed] to the United Kingdom, as the mandatory Power for Palestine [...] the adoption and implementation, with regard to the future government of Palestine, of the Plan of Partition with Economic Union set out below," it is not very clear what legal status this partition plan actually holds: Was it merely a recommendation that was acknowledged by Britain (which abstained in the final vote), or did the resolution create law, since the UN General Assembly was the legal successor of the League of Nations? The prevailing opinion is that Resolution 181 either established law or, alternatively, that while originally just a recommendation, it became law-making because both Israel and Palestine referred to the resolution in their declarations of independence (→ Israeli Declaration of Independence; Palestinian Declaration of Independence) and, moreover, in 1949 many other states regarded the resolution as having legal force and continued to consider the borders defined in Resolution 181 as the legal boundaries.

Reasons for partitioning Palestine

Why the UN General Assembly, unlike the British Mandate authority, opted fundamentally not for a unified state, but recommended a division of Palestine under the (incorrect, see above) assumption that the Palestine Mandate was not a "Class A Mandate" but a "sui generis Mandate," is well researched. Some major factors were:

(1) After World War II, 250,000 "displaced persons" resided in what were known as DP camps. These were primarily illegal immigrants from Eastern Europe, but also included former concentration camp survivors. The majority aspired to relocate to America or to Western European nations; however, these destinations were reluctant to accept them. Although it was clear that not all could be resettled in Palestine, partitioning Palestine offered a solution for part of the DP problem, as already the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry had recognized.

(2) In 1947, the UN had only 56 members. Among these, several were inclined for different reasons to support the establishment of a Jewish state:

• Russia (along with Belarus, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Ukraine) primarily wanted to weaken Western Europe's influence in the Middle East and favored a state aligned with the Eastern Bloc to at least counterbalance the governments of Iraq and Transjordan, closely linked with England, and the governments of Lebanon and Syria, closely connected with France. Arnold Krammer suggests that Joseph Stalin was particularly influenced by politicians from the Israeli Communist Party, Maki, and representatives of the Israeli communist movement Hashomer Hatzair, leading him to believe that a Zionist Israel would be the best candidate for such an Eastern Bloc-friendly state.
• In the USA, President Truman had two Zionist advisors, Clark Clifford and David Niles, and thus had positioned himself pro-Zionist, particularly by advocating the immediate immigration of 100,000 displaced persons to Palestine, a stance appealing to the 5 million Jewish voters in the USA.
• The 20 Latin American countries were economically heavily dependent on the USA; moreover, being predominantly Catholic, they, like the Vatican, who heavily lobbied for the partition, appreciated the idea of partitioning Palestine because it entailed the internationalization of the holy city of Jerusalem.

(3) At the end of the negotiations, it appeared that the partition resolution might not pass. In response, the already powerful American Israel Lobby engaged in significant lobbying, and the USA exerted intense pressure politics to sway undecided nations. This has occasionally been doubted but can now be substantiated primarily through reports from Zionists and documents from the Truman archives. This appears to have influenced the votes of at least France, Haiti, Liberia, New Zealand, and the Philippines.

Reasons for allocating the Negev to the Jewish state

Why, surprisingly, the Negev was specifically allocated to the Jewish state is less well understood. It seems to have had mainly up to four reasons:

(1) Some Palestinian researchers such as Sami Hadawi and Salman Abu Sitta have suggested that the British – who 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. Contrary to the 300,000 – 400,000 ha estimates referenced above, the British conveyed to both the 1946 Partition Commission and the 1947 UN Partition Commission figures that were only half as large, describing the entire arable area as being "in the extreme north-west of the sub-district," and declaring that "every dunum which can be economically sown is [already] cultivated by the Beduin inhabitants."

(2) If the British numbers were indeed inaccurate, they had unintended consequences: 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. Believing that large areas of the Negev were still "capable of development" (see above), though only achievable with significant Zionist investment in irrigation, they recommended including the Negev in the Jewish state.

(3) The dominant USA had originally planned to reallocate the Negev to the Arab state to gain favor with the Arab states and secure their support for the partition plan and the USA. When the Zionists learned of these plans, President Truman's advisor David Niles arranged a meeting with Chaim Weizmann, who 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 by the General Assembly) to slightly enlarge the Palestinian area with the city of Beersheba and a section on the border with Egypt, which mainly consisted of sand dunes.

(4) However, the most crucial factor was undoubtedly this: Initially, only the majority recommendation of the UNSCOP report to partition Palestine was to be further elaborated by a special subcommittee. However, at the behest of an American politician, Herbert Evatt, the chair, enforced also the parallel development of the alternative proposal for a unified state of Palestine. Evatt also decided the composition of the two subcommittees. Into this second subcommittee, he grouped Afghanistan, Egypt, Iraq, Yemen, Colombia, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Syria, thus including all advocates for the Palestinian cause, with the sole exception of Colombia, which was later replaced by Pakistan. Finally, Evatt also rejected a prior request from the second commission to balance the composition more evenly. Consequently, the Arab states, which might have at least ensured some fairness in the partitioning of Palestine, were excluded from the detailed elaboration of the partition plan that subsequently evolved into the all-or-nothing decision depicted above.

Conquest of the Negev

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 war was essentially decided before it even began: Firstly, the Zionists had begun purchasing weapons from Western arsenals as early as 1945, and furthermore, the USA had imposed an arms embargo on Palestine and the Arab states, which the Zionists circumvented by arranging arms shipments from the Eastern Bloc using American aircraft. Secondly, according to UN regulations, Jewish war veterans were able to immigrate to Palestine from early February 1948, while Arab states could not intervene militarily until four and a half months later, thus providing the Zionists with favorable conditions for the international phase of the war. This also meant, thirdly, that the Zionist/Israeli army was consistently at least twice as large as all Arab forces combined. Finally, King Abdullah of Jordan, with British approval, had entered into a secret non-aggression pact with the Zionists, which was intended to secure him the West Bank and was mostly breached by the Israelis only towards the end of the war.

The Palestine War from July 18, 1948.

By May 15, the Israelis 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. The conquest of the Negev began only after the second UN-enforced ceasefire on July 18. Syria and Lebanon had already been repelled. Galilee was held by the Arab Liberation Army, and the West Bank north of Jerusalem by the Jordanians and Iraqis, who were governed by Abdullah's nephew, Faisal II. The Negev was defended by the Egyptians, who were primarily positioned at five locations north of today's Gaza Strip, in the southern West Bank, and in the northern Negev. The two Egyptian positions in the northern Negev were the only Arab outposts outside the area designated for the Arab state by the UN.

The Egyptian positions near the Gaza Strip and in the southern West Bank had led to a diplomatic stalemate: The Egyptians controlled an east-west axis from Hebron to Majdal that the Israelis had to cross in order to supply their positions in the northern Negev. As part of the second ceasefire, it was therefore agreed that at a junction between the Egyptian-held and the two Israeli areas, the roads would be alternately used by the Egyptians and Israelis during the day, and that the Israelis should supply only those settlements without road access by air using their air force. However, contrary to this agreement, the Israelis continually also supplied other settlements by air (Ben-Gurion: "We found an alternative means of supplying our settlements in the Negev"). As a result, the Egyptians blocked the road and declared they would only reopen it if the Israelis ceased their air force operations. The Israelis, in turn, announced they would only stop their air force operations once the Egyptians reopened the road. In this situation, the UN mediator for Palestine, Count Folke Bernadotte of Sweden, formulated the so-called "Second Bernadotte Plan": Since the Israelis had already taken over Western Galilee, Galilee was to be incorporated into the Jewish state, and the Negev, up to the border of the Egyptian-controlled territory, was to be granted to the Arab state. The British and even the Americans agreed to this plan. In response, Bernadotte was assassinated by a member of Lehi, and the Israelis used the diplomatic stalemate as a pretext to break the ceasefire and promptly conquer the Negev after new arms shipments had arrived:

On 15 October 1948, an Israeli convoy ostensibly bound for the Negev arrived at Karatiya crossroads. This move was intended to provoke the Egyptians to open fire and provide an excuse for the assault. They, indeed, swallowed the bait and shot at the vehicles, which promptly turned back and retreated to their base.
On the same night, the IAF unleashed its preparatory strike against [unprepared] Egyptian ground [and air] forces. Air raids continued the next day. Throughout the operation, the IAF performed 250 bombing sorties, dropping 150 tons of bombs on 21 targets, among them Al-Arish, Gaza, Majdal, Faluja and Birsaba. Land operations commenced on 16 October.

— Yoav Gelber, 2006

This was the start of "Operation Yoav," during which an additional 45 localities were depopulated. By October 22, Egypt was already encircled at three separate positions in the Negev and was effectively defeated at that point. As expected, the Jordanians did not come to the aid of the Egyptians when they were decimated at Faluja, instead focusing on securing Bethlehem and Hebron in the West Bank, areas previously defended by the Egyptians. After the third truce, starting from October 31, it was followed by "Operation Lot," which resulted in the capture of the undefended northeastern central Negev, and "Operation Assaf," during which the Egyptians were only able to defend the Gaza Strip. Subsequently, Egypt and Israel signed a ceasefire agreement. After this, additionally to today's Westbank, only a small section south of the West Bank and the southern Negev remained nominally under Jordanian control. Israel captured it stealthily with the "Operation Uvda" ("Operation fait accompli") during the armistice negotiations with Jordan. This was a clear violation of the Security Council-mandated truce. Jordan's protest was nevertheless almost non-existent: It had already lost its land bridge to and connection with the Mediterranean Sea with Egypt's defeat in Operation Assaf. The loss of the southern Negev was fatal only for Egypt, which was now isolated from the other Arab countries. Furthermore, Jordan was eager to quickly conclude a ceasefire agreement because the Iraqis, outraged over the passivity of the large Iraqi army, threatened to withdraw their troops, which would have given the Israelis the opportunity to also take over the northern West Bank. Internationally, the operation also had no consequences; any discussion in the Security Council would have been blocked by the USA anyway.

Expulsion of the Negev Bedouins during the war

The expropriation of the southern Bedouin tribes had been minimal before the war began. Also, before October 1948, the war had barely reached the Negev. 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. At the beginning of the civil war, they had officially distanced themselves in a statement to the Arab Higher Committee: "The Bedouin of the Negev constitute an independent segment [...T]he Bedouins themselves will decide about the stand they will adopt regarding the development of events in Palestine, and will not take orders from above." This statement apparently meant that each tribe would decide independently how to position itself: During the war, 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, 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. While this may be true, the specific reasons why the 95 individual sub-tribes left their settlements at that time have not been thoroughly analyzed. From the Israeli side, there is only an analysis by the intelligence agency available until mid-June. The most comprehensive post-analysis by Abu Sitta covers 88 localities in the Beersheba District. This analysis does not directly support Kark and Yahel's assumption. However, it indicates that the displacement of the Bedouins indeed markedly differed from that of the Palestinians living further north: According to the intelligence agency's analysis, 70% of Palestinians were forced to abandon their villages due to military actions, including attacks and the destruction of their settlements or adjacent urban centers by the military, Irgun, or Lehi, and only 2% left due to "evacuation ultimatums." Contrary, data from the Beersheba Subdistrict show that only 34% of the population left their settlements due to military actions, while a significant 60% departed due to evacuation ultimatums.

Displacement and expropriation of the Bedouins after the war

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 – mainly (> 90%) from the Tiyaha, but also including three Tarabin and one large Azazima sub-tribe – remained residing or returned to the Negev. Eleven or twelve of the 18/19 tribes had lived in the Tiyaha territory between Gaza and Beersheba before the war. However, in 1951, these about 5000 northwestern Bedouins were partly ordered and partly forced to move further east into the military security zone known as the "Siyag" ("fence") in the biblical Negev.

Thereafter, in line with Ben-Gurion's view, no land had to be purchased from the Bedouins. In 1949, the Israelis decided that the Bedouins in the Negev, who had already been displaced, had had no land ownership rights, and all their lands were initially declared mawat (dead land). Then, in 1969, with the Land Rights Settlement Ordinance, which abolished the mawat category, all mawat land was declared "state land." The built-up lands of the Bedouins who were displaced into the Siyag in 1951 and were thereby "abandoned" as of 1 April 1952 were appropriated under the Land Acquisition Law of 1953.

The Negev after 1949

The diplacement of the northwestern Bedouins into the Siyag originally was intended, on the one hand, to create a buffer zone between Israel and the West Bank and Jordan. On the other hand, it was designed "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 110,000 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. The Bedouins, who were forced to settle in this small area, spontaneously structured their landscape into "dispersed settlements," with individual homesteads spread throughout the 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 more densely populated. This happened repeatedly in the following years: First, the area and the restricted zone around the now Israeli city of Beersheba were excluded from Bedouin settlement areas. 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." Yeroham (1951), Dimona (1955), and Arad (1961) were three such towns established within the original Siyag area, further restricting Bedouin access to Siyag land (at that time, also Mitzpe Ramon in the central Negev highlands grew to such a development town). This led to a new social stratification in the Israeli state: at the top were now the first Ashkenazi settlers, below them the newly immigrated Sephardim and Mizrahim in the camps and development towns, and at the bottom the Bedouins (along with other Israeli Palestinians).

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. Between 1958 and 1962, outside employment among the Bedouin rose from 3.5% to 13%. Already by the mid-1960s, 23 percent of Bedouin male laborers worked in low-wage work as construction, transport, and services (and 45 percent in agriculture, while 32 percent 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 illegal overnight; from then on, building was only permitted in settlements approved by Israel. 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 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.

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 (such as in Rakhma). 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.

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

Fourth: 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.

This situation has changed little since then. The growing proportion of Bedouins residing in planned towns and working in Israeli localities did not lead to an improvement in their socio-economic situation:

These seven towns consistently rank at the bottom of every socio-economic indicator used by the state, and suffer the highest unemployment rates and lowest income levels in Israel. While these government towns are supplied with some basic urban services, they lack an economic infrastructure – a fundamental point because the Bedouin re-location to these towns entails the loss of their traditional agrarian livelihood.

— Tawfiq S. Rangwala, 2004

In 2003, for example, all seven at the time recognized towns were among the eight poorest places in Israel. In 2018, nearly 73% of the Bedouins living in the recognized towns were below the poverty threshold. The probability that a Negev Bedouin worked in a statistically better-paid job was still negligible in 2017.

Demography of the Beersheba District.

Since the residents of the development towns are also not significantly better off economically, the Negev is 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. One of the newest projects of Israel is therefore the construction 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, which, however, 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."

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 nothing to change the Bedouin's socioeconomic situation, but entailed giving up 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.

Fifth: 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. 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.

Newer legal history of the Negev lands

Tanzimat land reforms

Following their reconquest of Palestine in 1841, the Ottomans tried to transform the region from an unstable, nomadic border region into a settled core area of the empire during the so-called "Tanzimat period." The primary strategy for this was the Land Code of 1858, which introduced laws that privatized and commodified land. The two pivotal regulations were the new rule that land could henceforth be owned only and had to be registered by individuals rather than by villages or tribes, and the mewat rule. According to this rule, lands declared mewat ("dead land") were considered ownerless and could be claimed through agricultural development that automatically transformed them into private property. However, the communal, "underproductive" and hard-to-tax part-time agriculture practiced by (semi-)nomads was not always deemed sufficient to secure land ownership rights. For instance, in northwestern Jordan, Ottoman state officials simply disregarded the land registrations of Bedouins, even when they could prove continuous cultivation and tax payments.

A well-known example of this mewat rule were the Kabara Marshes in the Sharon Plain. These wetlands were not mewat but matruka (public land, as, e.g., communal pastureland), inhabited by about 400 Bedouins of the Kabbara and Ghawarneh tribes who relied on buffalo breeding on this agriculturally unsuitable land during the Ottoman period. During the British Mandate, three Zionist villages were established on the outskirts, prompting the Palestine Jewish Colonization Association to seek to purchase the wetlands for drainage and development. This would not have been possible with matruka land; however, the British declared the land mewat, allowing the PJCA to purchase and drain it. Subsequently, the Bedouins were relocated from their 1,300-hectare area to their 120-hectare winter encampments.

The Ottomans had little success with this tactic in southern Palestine, where (unlike in the more northerly regions) the shift to sedentarism only occurred in the mid-20th century. Even apart from this, for the Negev, both regulations had less direct and primarily long-term consequences: Unlike the British who followed them, the Ottomans had prohibited Zionist endeavors similar to the Kabara affair and later even the immigration of Zionists through various ordinances, as their nationalist-separatist agenda starkly conflicted with the motives behind the Ottoman land policy. However, the Ottomans were unable to effectively prevent illegal immigration. Also, a side effect of the registration regulations was that the privatization system was exploited, with city merchants registering themselves as owners of vast tracts of land they had never cultivated. Other Bedouin lands were legally purchased by Effendis, leading to the development of the so-called "sanad" as a new type of legally binding document. Consequently, by around 1900, six Effendi families owned 23% of the cultivated lands of Palestine, including Bedouin lands. Despite Ottoman prohibitions, Zionists managed to acquire some of these lands (mostly in central and northern Palestine) through local Palestinian Jews, who were still legally able to purchase them, mainly from these Effendis, and thereby gained their first hold on Palestinian land.

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Affirmation "not to interfere with the special rights and customs of the Bedouin Tribes of Beersheba", given during the British land registration process.

The consequences of the mewat regulations became apparent even later. The Negev Bedouins registered almost none of their lands, despite the Ottomans ultimately trying to enforce this with police force. The fact that the Ottomans nonetheless levied land tax on Bedouin agricultural land was "a clear recognition of Bedouin land ownership." Even the non-cultivated lands of the Negev were likely not classified as mewat: The Land Code provided for the possibility that "vacant land [...], such as mountains, rocky places, [...] grazing ground, which is [...] assigned ab antiquo to the use of inhabitants of a town or village" should not be classified as mewat. There is no map that recorded which lands the Ottomans referred to with this ab antiquo regulation and which land they classified as mewat, matruka, or miri (privately owned). However, after the Ottoman era, the British, who had adopted the land classification from the Ottomans, applied this, among other places, to the Negev: The British District Officer of Beersheba considered the uncultivated land in his district in 1926 as "Metruka for pasture by custom"; the British also prohibited Zionist land purchases in the Negev, stating that "the cultivable land in the Beersheba sub-district is regarded as belonging to the Bedouin tribes by virtue of possession from time immemorial", furthermore, they assured that the Bedouin's "special rights and customs" were not affected by newer Ordinances such as the "Mewat Lands Ordinance" of 1921. On this note, the 1931 Palestine Census stated:

In a strict sense most of the land [in the Negev] may be described as mewat, not having been assigned or disposed by deed. Nevertheless, the 'privileges' of the nomads have been confirmed from time to time, and it is, undoubtedly, part of the 'customary' law, as opposed to formal law, to recognize the nomadic traditional cultivation in this area as a normal assignment.

— Census of Palestine 1931, 1933

Also, the facts that firstly, the Ottomans purchased land in the Negev to establish the city of Beersheba, secondly, Zionists also bought nearly 15,000 hectares of land in the Negev from Bedouins, thirdly, Ottoman officials repeatedly resolved disputes over Bedouin land ownership in the Negev strongly suggest this. However, the Ottoman and British mewat regulations had massive impacts after the Negev became part of the Israeli state in 1948:

The al-Uqbi Case and Land use during the British Mandate

As stated above, after 1948, the state of Israel regarded the entire Negev as mewat land, which had not been registered by the Bedouins, and made this the legal basis for all subsequent Negev policy (→ Mawat land doctrine). In 2012, this state practice was discussed in the context of the famous "al-Uqbi Case" before the Beersheba District Court. Oren Yiftachel served as an expert witness for the al-Uqbi tribe and presented roughly the information referenced above; Ruth Kark, as usual acting as the state's expert witness, argued

that the Ottomans did not accept the Bedouins' customary land law, and that the Bedouins did not have an organized land system to determine ownership. She concluded that the 1921 Mandate land ordinance was indeed implemented in the Negev [... and accordingly, the land to which the al-Uqbi tribe claimed ownership was unregistered mewat land and thus belongs to the state.]

— Noa Kram, 2013

As mentioned, the Ottoman administrative division of the Negev is not certain. However, Kark's expert opinion on Bedouin law and the legal conditions under the British was clearly incorrect (see above). The same is likely true for her assessment that the Ottomans did not recognize the customary land laws of the Bedouins (see above). Nevertheless, the district court decided that "in choosing between the two expert opinions, that of Prof. Kark is preferred [... as she] relied in her expert opinion on researchers who came to carry out research works [...]." The evidence of these research works had already been refuted during the trial. Nevertheless, the High Court, where the al-Uqbi tribe filed an appeal, decided in the same way as the District Court in 2014.

The al-Uqbi case sets a significant precedent: It is improbable that the settlement and cultivation by a tribe in a Negev area and the fact that the tribe's land rights were also recognized, will ever be as clearly demonstrated, and the contradictory evidence as thoroughly debunked as in this case. The fact that Israel's highest judicial authority still ruled against the tribe suggests that it is unlikely for any Bedouin tribe to successfully claim land rights through the courts under the current conditions.