Les Bédouins en Cisjordanie : transformations socio-économiques entre contextes colonial et global

Bedouins in the West Bank : socio-economical transformations between colonial and global contexts

• Auteur / Autrice : Ahmed Heneiti
• Direction : Barbara Casciarri
• Type : Projet de thèse
• Discipline(s) : Anthropologie
• Date : Inscription en doctorat le 03/10/2024
• Etablissement(s) : Paris 8
• Ecole(s) doctorale(s) : 401 ''Sciences sociales''
• Partenaire(s) de recherche : Equipe de recherche : Laboratoire sur l'architecture, la ville, l'urbanisme et l'environnement - GERPHAU

Mots clés

Mots clés libres

Bédouins

Le colonialisme de peuplement

Cisjordanie – Palestine

Mondial

RéférenceNalzt

En tant qu'employés

Disrupt s'est retrouvé dans une embuscade

Bedouin

Settler Colonial

West Bank - Palestine

Global

Marginalization

Commodification

Forced displacement

Résumé

Bedouins in the West Bank: Socio-economical transformations between colonial and global contexts Introduction Research and academic interest in the Bedouin community in Palestine has been closely linked to the political context. We find that Palestinian research interest in the period before 1990 was very limited, largely confined to the writings of Ghazi Falah, who focused on studying Israeli policies towards the Bedouin community in the Negev and Galilee, especially aspects of sedentarization (Falah 1989; 1985). While Palestinian research has been marginalized, many research works on the Bedouin community emerged from Israeli and foreign researchers and academics (Nasasra and other 2014), thus academia has been associated with Israeli colonial policies to justify the Israeli policy that targets Bedouins. Yet, after 1990, Palestinian research on the Bedouin community in the Negev became more prominent and covered most disciplines. The Bedouin community transitioned from marginalization to being at the center of attention as it clearly reflects the discriminatory policies Palestinians face in Israel and yet their insistence on their land ownership rights (Nasasra and other 2014). However, the Bedouin community in the West Bank continues to face academic marginalization, despite increasing interest from local and international development institutions. This makes the Bedouin community in the West Bank rich for academic studies. Literature Review A lot of research (academic and quasi-academic) has been produced about the Bedouin community in the Negev, in addition to thousands of journalistic and developmental reports. These studies were conducted by Israeli researchers for colonial purposes. Nasasra summarized the goal of Israeli policy towards the Bedouin with two objectives: Judaising the Negev and limiting Bedouin land claims (Nasara 2012). After 1990, many research studies were conducted by Palestinian researchers for purposes that counter Israeli policy towards the Bedouin (Nasasra and other 2014). It can be said that the Bedouin community is one of the most studied and researched social groups in Israel (Yahel and Abu -Ajaj 2022). Ben-Gurion University established a special center for studying the Bedouin community in the Negev. Israeli research works were characterized by using analytical frameworks associated with modernization theory. Most of these studies aimed to assist and justify Israeli government actions towards the Bedouin community, especially its efforts in resettling and “civilizing” the Bedouin, claiming that these policies were modernizing a community suffering from backward traditional culture. The Israeli policies in this case are similar to those that has been implemented by nation states in the region, after they claimed their independence, related to the sedentarization of Bedouins. Therefore, these theoretical frameworks were used to justify the difficult living circumstances of the Bedouin community and emphasize the idea that the Bedouin culture is resistant to modernity. Palestinian research, after the 1990s, aimed to provide critical knowledge by using analytical frameworks associated with various theories to analyze the Bedouin community's reality and Israeli policy towards them. These studies utilized analytical frameworks related to colonial settlement theory, post-colonial theory, minorities and indigenous peoples’ rights (Elsana 2019), gender studies (Shalhoub -Kevorkian and others 2014), political science, geography, legal studies, and critical studies (Yiftachel 2018). Palestinian research covered a wide range of disciplines, offering critical readings of the analytical frameworks used by Israeli studies (Nasasra and other 2014). Palestinian research attributed the difficult reality of the Bedouin to Israeli policies and practices as colonial and discriminatory policies that resulted in challenging economic and social conditions within the Bedouin community. The Bedouin community in the Negev, comprising approximately 200,000 individuals, is the poorest community in Israel. Forty-five percent of them live in 35-40 unrecognized villages, suffering from a lack of infrastructure and services such as education, healthcare, roads, and more. This poses significant challenges and difficulties for the residents of these communities. While approximately 55% of them live in seven recognized villages where infrastructure and services are available, they still face discriminatory policies from the Israeli government (Nasasra and other 2014). Palestinian research presented the forms of adaptation adopted by the Bedouin towards Israeli policies. Most of these adaptations were considered forms of resistance to the Israeli project in the Negev. Among the forms of Bedouin resistance to Israeli policies mentioned in the research are reframing the Bedouin within a colonial context, meaning that the policies of the Israeli government are not only discriminatory because it’s an ethnic state but because it’s a colonial one, re-Palestinization of the Bedouin community (ARIELI 2019), engagement in political and social movements (Ghanem and Mustafa 2009), their adherence to their lands and their return to them on all occasions, refusal of Israeli displacement policies to planned or recognized villages, and preservation of traditional cultural aspects (Mazarib 2022). Gender studies also discussed women's attempts to improve their conditions and obtain their rights (Shahoub -Kevorkian and others 2014; Abu-Rabia-Queder 2007). There are many commonalities between the reality of the Bedouin community in the Negev and the Bedouin community in the West Bank. Bedouin communities in the Negev and the West Bank share most living conditions, political challenges, and resettlement conditions, except for two issues. Firstly, Bedouins in the Negev live on their lands and demand their rights to ownership, while Bedouins in the West Bank live on lands that are not theirs, weakening their legal status. The second issue relates to settler attacks on Bedouin communities in the West Bank, whereas there are no such attacks on Bedouins in the Negev (Mihlar 2011). In the last ten years, attacks by Israeli settlers on the Bedouins in the West Bank escalated. These settlers establish pastoral outposts near Palestinian Bedouin communities and attack them daily, stripping them of their economic and social means of life. The assaults on the Bedouins are carried out with the support and protection of the Israeli army, as if the Israeli government has delegated the task of displacing the Bedouins to the settlers. As a result, some Israeli non-governmental organizations describe the relationship between the army and the settlers as ''settler violence = army violence.'' These settlers have managed to displace dozens of Bedouin communities, which include hundreds of Bedouin families, and to empty vast areas of land from the Bedouins. This policy is still ongoing. The Bedouin community in the West Bank has not received much academic research attention. However, institutional (local and international) interest has increased due to the significant challenges imposed on their livelihoods by Israeli colonial policies, since they live in Area C, which falls under full Israeli control as occupied territories under international law. A few quasi-academic policy studies have been produced by these institutions, which focused on diagnosing the conditions experienced by Bedouin communities in the West Bank. For example, some studies examined the legal status of Bedouins in the West Bank according to international humanitarian law (Amara and Nasasra 2014). and issues of structural planning that do not meet the needs of Bedouin communities (Zuabi 2017; Heneiti 2014; UNRWA and Bimkom 2016). Some reports also covered demographic and economic aspects, access to services (United Nations Development Programme 2017), as well as documenting Israeli violations against these communities. Therefore, studies that addressed the Bedouin community in the West Bank are quasi-academic studies; they did not provide a theoretical analysis and were not based on ethnographic in-depth fieldwork in the Bedouin community nor did they place it within the context of global knowledge, as is the case with abundant academic studies on the Bedouin community in the Negev. These studies were limited to providing descriptive analysis of the reality experienced by the Bedouin community in the West Bank (Hunaiti 2009; Heneiti 2018), or policy studies serving the purposes of humanitarian interventions and ''development'' provided by local and international civil institutions. They also serve the policies of support and advocacy to maintain the rights of the Bedouin to continue their “traditional” way of life and their pastoral economy. This highlights the importance of academic research presented by this thesis. Research Question and Aim This thesis presents an academic study to analyze the Bedouin socio-cultural and livelihood patterns in the West Bank. The main research question it attempts to answer is: how do Bedouins adapt to the challenges they face in undermining their socio-cultural and livelihood patterns? Challenges here can be seen in two overlapping categories. The first includes challenges specific to the Palestinian Bedouin community, reflected in the Israeli colonial policies targeting their existence and socio-cultural and livelihood patterns, as they aim to force the Bedouin community to resettle in planned villages located on the outskirts of Palestinian towns and cities. The second category encompasses global challenges, such as the impacts of globalization in terms of the reduction of governmental support from the Palestinian Authority, the changes regarding the patterns of production becoming more commoditized, and land grabbing; which affect the socio-economic structure of the Bedouin community. The approach used in this study is a cultural-economic approach, aiming to understand how these two challenges affect the sustainability of the Bedouin's socio-cultural and livelihood patterns, which relies on animal husbandry and pastoral culture as their traditional economic source. Therefore, Palestinian Bedouins experience a double-sided marginalization, the first being the one generally suffered by Bedouins in the Middle East and North Africa, and the second being specific to Palestinian Bedouins targeted under Israeli colonization. Israeli policy justifies modernizing the Bedouin community based on the European concept of centralization, aiming to strip them of their socio-cultural and livelihood patterns to empty the lands they use for Judaization and settlement purposes. Thus, it follows a policy that deprives them of the elements necessary for sustaining their traditional way of life while encouraging them to move to planned villages or the outskirts of Palestinian villages. This policy works in two directions: first, depriving them of choosing their socio-cultural and livelihood patterns according to their culture, depriving them of basic urbanization features such as access to services and infrastructure; second, providing very modest urban amenities in planned villages or allowing them to own them if they move to the outskirts of villages. The colonial context of the Bedouin in the West Bank somewhat works to undermine the urbanization of the Bedouin community, and any Israeli tendencies to urbanize Bedouin society are considered a colonial demand to control and dominate the Bedouins. Also, the deprivation conditions experienced by the Bedouin, especially in terms of livelihoods, limit the effects of globalization. In contrast, the Bedouin demand to be allowed to establish urban communities that meet their cultural and economic needs. This thesis focuses on studying the impact of colonial and global challenges on shaping the cultural structure of the Bedouin in Palestine, particularly from an economic perspective. It examines how the pastoral economy shapes Bedouin culture and their demands for urban communities that suit their culture. The cultural-economic structure of the Bedouin is subject to a balance of power among the Israeli colonial authority, globalization, and the Bedouin's resistance to the influence of the first two powers. It also reposes the question of what is ''Bedouin''? Does the Bedouin still live as a desert dweller whose livelihood depends on pastoralism and a nomadic life? Thus, this thesis seeks to study how the current Bedouin defines their Bedouin identity. Methodology The lab provides a golden opportunity to study the Bedouin community in the West Bank, as the research question intersects directly with a set of scientific topics that the lab specializes in. The geographical area addressed by the research has long been experiencing political tension, associated with the ongoing Israeli colonialism, which intertwines with the policies of globalization. Globalization, as a force of dispossession and dominance, makes the relationship between globalization and colonialism intertwined and mutually reinforcing. These two factors jointly enhance the marginalization and social, economic, and political inequality of the peoples of the Global South, including the Bedouins in the West Bank. The Palestinian case is distinguished by the fact that the forces of dispossession and dominance of globalization, especially in its current phase of ''neoliberal globalization,'' favor the dominant power of Israeli colonialism in Palestine. Israeli colonialism uses globalization to impose hegemony and control over Palestinians, pushing them to live on the margins of their social and economic structure. Social and environmental challenges, including climate change, further enhance this marginalization and social instability. The research question also intersects with the dynamics of urbanization for the Bedouins in a politically tense and unstable environment. Climate change, resulting in reduced availability of natural resources—specifically water and vegetation in pastures—along with Israeli colonial control over all natural resources, contributes to stripping the Palestinian community, including the Bedouins, of their economic, social, and political means of life, thus leading to social and economic changes among the Bedouins in the West Bank. Supervision by Dr. Barbara offers a significant scientific opportunity for the project. Dr. Barbara's expertise in Sudan and Morocco will enrich the methodological and theoretical aspects of the project. Additionally, the project will benefit from the extensive network Dr. Barbara will help me engage with, particularly the international network on pastoral communities of which she is a member, as well as the Comparative Anthropology Research Group on Islamic Societies and Cultures, which organizes an annual symposium. This engagement will provide access to regional (North Africa and Sudan) and global studies and experiences. Joining this lab, specialized in these issues and determinants directly affecting the main question in this project, and having Dr. Barbara supervise it, will create a more suitable scientific and academic environment to support and enrich the thesis. This will allow the thesis to argue its case in similar and different contexts, studying this question from a broader and more comprehensive scientific perspective and placing it within the context of global academic and scientific studies. The study adopts a qualitative ethnographic methodological approach, which relies on participant observations, alongside conducting in-depth interviews with members of the Bedouin community, as well as officials in the Palestinian Ministry of Agriculture and some of the developmental institutions that work with Bedouins, who represent case-studies in this research. Moreover, the statistical data and maps, issued by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics and governmental and development institutions, will be analyzed. The interviews with the members of the Bedouin community will ensure representation of both elderly and youth individuals of both sexes. Therefore, age diversity allows for comparisons regarding the impact of the challenges on the Bedouin culture and how Bedouin culture is passed down and transmitted across generations. Participant observation enables a close examination of the adaptation mechanisms adopted by the Bedouins to confront colonial and global challenges and observe the components of the socio-cultural and livelihood patterns experienced by Bedouins in the West Bank, including the changes and transformations in the Bedouin culture. Participant observation is a suitable methodology for this research since these communities are a non-academic research field frequently targeted by international and local institutions to identify urgent support and development needs and document violations against these communities. Thus, living in these communities is necessary to build trust with the researcher, distinguishing the researcher from field researchers who visit Bedouin communities for development and relief purposes, which establish relationships that are biased and negatively affect the collected data, without neglecting the Bedouins’ interaction with these researchers and institutions as part of the adaptation mechanisms adopted by the Bedouins. The participant observation fieldwork will begin from the first year of the study. I will intermittently live in the Bedouin community and strive to engage with its residents in their daily lives. Dividing the three-year grant period into six months of residence in France and another six months in the West Bank annually gives me the opportunity to engage with the scientific and academic methodological community through gaining theoretical knowledge in anthropology, participating in seminars and scientific conferences, and joining relevant scientific networks. During my time in France, I will focus on enhancing my theoretical and methodological knowledge and skills in anthropology. This will involve intensive study and research to deepen my understanding of key concepts and analytical frameworks relevant to my thesis topic. This opportunity will provide me with a space continuously to discuss preliminary research results in these scientific forums and others, and it will help me publish part of the research findings. The residency in the West Bank will focus on immersing in the Bedouin community, and collecting data through conducting in-depth interviews, as this requires residing in the community. The final year will be dedicated to writing the research. This phase will involve synthesizing and analyzing the data collected during fieldwork, developing theoretical arguments, and crafting a comprehensive and scholarly thesis document. This calendar serves as an initial plan, and I will work closely with my supervisor to develop an advanced and detailed timeline. Bibliography Amara, Ahmad and Mansour Nasasra. 2017. Bedouin Rights under Occupation: International Humanitarian Law and Indigenous Rights for Palestinian Bedouin in the West Bank. Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC). ARIELI, Tamar. 2019. “Negev Bedouins and the state of Israel: social conflict and territorial dispute”. California Western International Law Journal. Vol. 49, No. 1. 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