The Naqab Bedouins

A Century of Politics and Resistance

Mansour Nasasra

• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Year: 2017
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• eBook ISBN:
  9780231543873
• Subtopic: Middle Eastern History
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Conventional wisdom positions the Bedouins in southern Palestine and under Israeli military rule as victims or passive recipients. In The Naqab Bedouins, Mansour Nasasra rewrites this narrative, presenting them as active agents who, in defending their community and culture, have defied attempts at subjugation and control. The book challenges the notion of Bedouin docility under Israeli military rule and today, showing how they have contributed to shaping their own destiny.

The Naqab Bedouins represents the first attempt to chronicle Bedouin history and politics across the last century, including the Ottoman era, the British Mandate, Israeli military rule, and the contemporary schema, and document its broader relevance to understanding state-minority relations in the region and beyond. Nasasra recounts the Naqab Bedouin history of political struggle and resistance to central authority. Nonviolent action and the strength of kin-based tribal organization helped the Bedouins assert land claims and call for the right of return to their historical villages. Through primary sources and oral history, including detailed interviews with local indigenous Bedouins and with Israeli and British officials, Nasasra shows how this Bedouin community survived strict state policies and military control and positioned itself as a political actor in the region.

ONE

Understanding the State Project

Power, Resistance, and Indigeneity

THE EXISTING LITERATURE clarifies a wide spectrum of state-society relations and deepens our perception of state actions, roles, and behavior (Barkey and Parikh 1991, 532). Joel Migdal (1988) highlights the way that society plays a crucial role in shaping the state and identifies the importance of the state in influencing the society. It is difficult to realize the separation of state-society relations since states need society for their developmental aims (Migdal 1988, 181; see also Ayubi 1995).

It remains difficult to define the concept of the “state” in a perfect manner (Mitchell 1991, 77). Until recently, the notion of the state was of little interest to social scientists and ignored in the academic literature from the late 1950s until the mid-1970s; only in the 1970s and 1980s did a sudden upsurge of interest in the study of the state begin to appear in academic debates.¹ Until then scholars had written about government, leadership, voting, and political development, among other political matters, but the “state” concept was not in use (Krasner et al. 1984, 234). However, in the study of political science the state is a core institution and is widely discussed by scholars. It is also critically important in the international arena and in world politics. States have sovereignty over a population in a certain territory and exercise power within a society (Ayubi 1995, 30).

Max Weber’s classic definition of the modern state and how it works is helpful in this respect: it is “a compulsory political association with continuous organization [whose] administrative staff successfully uphold a claim to the monopoly of legitimate use of force in the enforcement of its order…within a given territorial area” (Weber 1947, 154). He provides certain indicators that can be used to qualify the state, including the need for a bureaucratic structure, legal extractive power, a coercive organization (i.e., monopoly that legitimizes the use of physical violence), and a financial and tax system; he also addresses the uncontested area of rational legal authority in a given demarcated territory. There are numerous states that fit Weber’s classic definition, especially in the Middle East. My focus is more on settler, ethnocratic, and colonial states in relation to minorities in the Middle East.

Migdal (1988, 19) introduced another important definition of the state (which applies to some Middle Eastern countries), describing it as

an organization, composed of numerous agencies led and coordinated by the state’s leadership (executive authority) that has the ability or authority to make and implement the binding rules for all the people as well as the parameters of rule-making for other social organizations in a given territory, using force, if necessary, to have its way.

According to Migdal (1988, 6), the state is a necessary institution that exercises its sovereignty over people and territory by employing rules and the use of power, and it may behave with two different faces, being repressive for some groups and supportive of others. Other scholars treat the state as a body that works to formulate its aims and strategies according to its economic, political, and social goals. However, state goals do not necessarily reflect society’s needs. Power is necessarily imposed by the state to enable it to accomplish its will on society (Barkey and Parikh 1991). The numerous goals of the state as an autonomous unit include its strategies for using internal resources, affecting social processes, and shaping ethnic identity (Gurr 1993, 3). Colonial and settler states face problems in dominating native and indigenous groups that inhabited their territory before any state was established. This can be true of the Ottoman regime in southern Palestine, the British Mandate, and Israeli military rule.

The literature provides various examples of nation-states including the British state and the French state (Barkey and Parikh 1991), as well as Middle East states, settler states, ethnocratic states, and colonial states (Ayubi 1995; Yiftachel 2003, 2012). Axtmann (2004) discusses the emergence of states such as those of the Middle East established after the Second World War following a prolonged struggle with colonialist states. Charles Tilly, examining the case of European countries, famously argued that “war makes the state, and the state makes the war.” He noted that this could be applied to many cases in Europe where states were established as a result of coercive exploitation or organized crime (Tilly 1985, 169–70).

New states set out to build the state through actions and goals that together constitute a state building project. These projects require the effective use of state authority and the adoption of coercive power to achieve their aims and plans. As James Scott notes, “Many state activities aim at transforming the population, space, and nature under their jurisdiction into…closed systems that offer no surprises and that can best be observed and controlled” (Scott 1998, 82). States aim to establish a stable system by imposing rules and regulations to dominate their societies. They seek predominance over their territory and population through enforcing power and exercising coercive tactics and rules to prevent disobedience and rebellion. The state is also an alien external organization that seeks to penetrate a hostile society. Thus, its capacity to transform the population is restricted: “The ability of the state to impose its schemes on society [is] limited by [its] modest ambitions and its limited capacity” (Scott 1998, 88). Similarly, a state’s ability to ensure stability and achieve its goals might clash with powerful groups within its territory.² It is obvious that by seeking control over people and territory the final aim of states is autonomy.

When discussing state power, Michael Mann (1984) differentiates between two aspects: despotic power and infrastructural power. Despotic power concerns the “power of the state elite, the range of actions which the elite is empowered to undertake without routine, [and] institutionalized negotiation with civil society groups,” and infrastructural power is “the capacity of the state actually to penetrate civil society, and to implement logistically political decisions throughout the realm” (Mann 1984, 113). The state uses power to infiltrate everyday life in society through various means: taxing wealth, accumulating extensive data and information about its citizens, imposing its will on the population, influencing the economy, and controlling subsistence through jobs. In turn, through its functional relationship with its citizens the state should provide internal order and security, military defense, a communications infrastructure, and economic redistribution. Thus, by penetrating social life and making itself essential, the state reinforces its infrastructural power, which in turn strengthens its political power (Mann 1984, 114). Mann considers the territorial centrality of the state the most important component of a state’s power (1984, 122–23).

Modern states strive to build nations and produce national identities, which may override ethnic groups that have similar aims. As a result, a state’s goals can—and generally do—go against those of other groups on their territory, such as ethnic groups and religious organizations (Migdal 1988, 30). States also use power as an instrument to achieve their aims; however, as power can be resisted, this is not always successful.

The rise of most settler states has resulted in conflicts with ethnic and indigenous groups that continue as the state project is imposed on them. Gurr (1993) provides extensive case studies of conflicts between minority groups and nation-states. In many instances the minorities were mobilized in reaction to oppressive methods and strategies used by the state to achieve its goals. Ultimately, many such groups were assimilated or integrated into state life. States also use repressive and coercive methods, such as censorship and multiple restrictions, to reduce or avoid any domestic threat to their authority (Davenport 1995). By using such methods they aim to impose order and authority to ensure the safety of their own citizens.

The way that new settler and ethnocratic states deal with the minorities and indigenous peoples that fall within their newly constructed boundaries is of considerable interest, especially when the struggle of indigenous people is studied through a focus on the state project drive and the particular ideology of the new state. This will help toward understanding the supposed power deficit that such people appear to have in relation to the developing state. To maintain their rights, achieve a kind of cultural freedom, and retain their indigenous way of life on their historical territory, indigenous people must struggle politically against new, settler, and ethnocratic states.

The scope and goals of a new state’s building projects are in direct opposition to the claims of indigenous people since both make claims over land and territory. As Tully (2000) notes, indigenous peoples present demands, from the right of self-determination to shared jurisdiction over resources, mainly land. Indigenous peoples look for justice in order to achieve their claims; however, because of their insistence in claiming their land and other rights, they may well clash with settler societies, to whom they pose a threat. Settler states tend not to agree to, or even accept, the claims of indigenous and native peoples since this challenges their legitimacy to impose their own will on the rest. James Anaya (2004) also points out that most nation-states do not recognize indigenous peoples. Because they pose a direct challenge to the project of the new state, indigenous and minority peoples are targeted for early and sustained attack. The strategies vary, but all are extreme, focused, and committed to removing the challenge to sovereignty that they represent. Indigenous peoples in white settler societies were sometimes subject to segregation and discrimination and generally threatened in their very physical survival to an extent quite incomparable to anything experienced by most stateless nations.

In addition to aggressive attack, settler-colonial states also ignore indigenous peoples’ rights. Yiftachel notes that leaving indigenous people out of its plans by controlling their lands and resources is “the nature of the settler state” as it seeks territorial expansion (Yiftachel 2003, 23). The Naqab Bedouin, who confounded the state by using the land of their ancestors for purposes different from those conceived in the “state project,” were treated as “invaders” by Israel (Yiftachel 1998). Ted Gurr and Barbara Harff also agree that states use a range of techniques, such as manipulating indigenous land, discriminating against indigenous people on a daily basis, and exploiting their resources in order to subsume them into the state project (Gurr and Harff 2004, 25).

A particularly useful notion for understanding the asymmetrical relationship between a state and its indigenous people is “internal colonialism.” The term was defined by Williams (1977, 273) as “the domination by a racially and culturally different foreign conquering group, imposed in the name of dogmatically asserted racial, ethnic or cultural superiority, on a materially inferior indigenous population.” Noting its use in relation to various global cases, Hind explains that the internal colonialism model was developed historically for the peripheries of European states and describes an ongoing debate about its uses (Hind 1984, 543).

Settler states developed internal colonialism as a system or package of actions, policies, and regulations to control indigenous peoples; they imposed this system on indigenous communities (such as Australia, New Zealand, the United States, Canada, and Israel) who struggled and resisted settler states in order to gain self-government in their land (Tully 2000; Yiftachel 2003). In this regard, Scott remarks that “modern statecraft is largely a project of internal colonization” (1998, 82). The debate on colonialism can, in fact, fit in with Scott’s account of state expansion, where the state is always an alien, external organization that seeks to penetrate a hostile society (Scott 1998).

The concept of internal colonialism as developed by Elia Zureik (1979) proves useful in Palestine/Israel, where Israel practices a system of political domination toward its Palestinian Arab minority, which is culturally distinct and is subject to different political controls. The Arabs are not only excluded from particular sociopolitical positions but also face various discriminatory policies (Zureik 1979). As Yiftachel (2013, 292–95) confirms, the Bedouin in the Naqab also faced internal colonial policies and practices.

In the case of Israeli-Palestinian minority relations, internal colonialism is a threat to indigenous minorities such as the Naqab Bedouins because of the “power deficit”—i.e., the domination by Israel; the Israeli exploitation of Palestinians’ resources, such as land; and the discrimination the Palestinians experience on many levels. One can argue that the Israeli authorities during the period of military rule used internal colonialism toward the Bedouin by exploiting their resources and made attempts to control them through planned sedentarization and urbanization. As a result of internal colonialism practices, the Bedouin lost part of their culture, were forced to live in urban villages against their will, lost almost all their land, were separated from the other Palestinian communities, and were forced to work as cheap labor.

Indigenous Peoples vis-à-vis Settler Societies

Scholarly use of the concept of “indigenous peoples” appeared during the 1970s (cf. Kingsbury 1998, 414; Smith 1999, 7). Smith remarks that the term “indigenous” is “problematic” as well as unclear since there are many other terms that have a similar and overlapping meaning: e.g., “first peoples,” “First Nations,” “people of the land,” “Aboriginals,” and “Fourth World peoples” (Smith 1999, 6). These are often used in referring to indigenous communities in New Zealand, Australia, Mexico, and Brazil. Similarly, the concept of “Bedouin” is used to refer to the indigenous Arabs in southern Palestine/Israel. According to scholars of international law, the “indigenous-native” concept was neither fashionable nor even applied before the Second World War but has emerged in international law over the last thirty or so years as a means of classifying a wide range of indigenous communities, including those noted above (Brownlie 1992, 55–57; Tully 2000, 37).

The term indigenous people, according to Kingsbury, “was once a vague rhetorical device that distinguished the original inhabitants of a region from the colonial conquerors” (quoted in Worden 1998, 122), but much has been written about the concept within the United Nations, the International Labor Organization (ILO), and the World Bank. Although there are no collectively agreed definitions of indigenous people and their rights, the explanation proposed in 1986 by the UN special rapporteur Jose Martinez Cobo was adopted: it describes numerous aspects that apply specifically to indigenous peoples:

Indigenous communities, peoples and nations are those which, having a historical continuity with pre-invasion and pre-colonial societies that developed on their territories, consider themselves distinct from other sectors of the societies now prevailing in those territories, or parts of them. They form at present non-dominant sectors of society and are determined to preserve, develop and transmit to future generations their ancestral territories, and their ethnic identity, as the basis of their continued existence as peoples, in accordance with their own cultural patterns, social institutions and legal systems.

(COBO 1986)

According to Cobo’s definition, indigenous people constitute a nation that has lived for generations in a territory invaded and controlled by a settler society. Members of an indigenous people have some important common traits, such as language, culture, land, identity, and historical continuity, and their role in the current society is marginal.

Brownlie (1988) in particular moved the debate forward in his work on the rights of peoples in modern international law. Aware that use of the concept indigenous people and recognition of indigenous claims might be sensitive matters, he preferred to use the term “minority” (Brownlie, 16). He identified claims as a core element of indigenous peoples’ rights, and, noting the importance of sensitivity to “indigenous peoples’ claims,” he developed three characteristic examples: the claim for positive action to maintain the cultural and linguistic identity of communities; the claim for adequate protection of land rights in traditional territories; and the claim for the political and legal principle of self-determination (1988, 3–4). Brownlie prefers the concept of “minority,” rather than “indigenous peoples” since the claims of the latter include being separated and treated differently from minorities, especially regarding self-determination.

However, in his work on the rights of people (particularly indigenous peoples), Richard Falk (1988) recognized the indigenous claim. His analysis supports the use of the term “indigenous people”; furthermore, he acknowledges the legitimacy of their claims, noting that these represent a significant challenge to state authority. He also agrees that “indigenous people’s claims” should be recognized an...

Table of contents

• Cover 
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents 
• List of Illustrations and Tables
• Note on Transliteration
• Acknowledgments
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1. Understanding the State Project: Power, Resistance, and Indigeneity
• 2. Ruling the Desert: Ottoman Policies Toward the Frontiers
• 3. British Colonial Policies for the Southern Palestine and Transjordan Bedouin, 1917–1948
• 4. Envisioning the Jewish State Project
• 5. The Emergence of Military Rule, 1949–1950
• 6. Reshaping the Tribes’ Historical Order, 1950–1952: Border Issues, Land Rights, IDPs, and UN Intervention
• 7. Traditional Leadership, Border Economy, Resistance, and Survival, 1952–1956
• 8. The Second Phase of Military Rule, 1956–1963
• 9. The End of Military Rule and Resistance to Urbanization Plans, 1962–1967
• 10. Postmilitary Rule, the Oslo Era, and the Contemporary Prawer Debate
• 11. The Ongoing Denial of Bedouin Rights and Their Nonviolent Resistance
• Notes
• References
• Index