Moshe Dayan's vision of the Bedouin

"We should transform the Bedouin into an urban proletariat in industry, services, construction and agriculture … the Bedouin would not live on his land with his herds, but would become an urban person who comes home in the afternoon and puts his slippers on… The children would go to school with their hair properly combed. This would be a revolution, but it may be fixed within two generations ... this phenomenon of the Bedouins will disappear."

—from an interview in Haaretz, 1963

Tragically, this appears to still be the goal of the state of Israel.

It also ends up being the (unintended) outcome of JNF-US's Blueprint Negev, as long as all the money to be funneled towards Bedouin needs goes only to Bedouin in the townships. The solution is not to redirect that money but to increase by several-fold the amount going to Bedouin communities and to make sure that the majority of that is used to sustain the villages, where traditioinal Bedouin culture is still possible.

Design in progress © Rabbi David Mevorach Seidenberg 2006