As Israel prepares for the Annapolis summit with the Palestinians, an internal conflict appears to be rapidly approaching boiling point.

 

Some have already named the looming threat a "Bedouin intifada." 

 

Some 160,000 Bedouin live in Israel's southern region in the Negev desert. Almost half of them live in large villages and small, scattered communities that are unrecognized by Israel and are therefore considered illegal. As a result, dozens of houses are demolished each year by the Interior Ministry, while anger among the Bedouin community mounts.

 

"It is really scary. I feel the pulse of the people and the atmosphere is very, very tense," says Hussein Rafai'a, who heads the regional council of the unrecognized villages.

 

Rafai'a says the situation is increasingly deteriorating and the Bedouin leadership is finding it more and more difficult to calm the atmosphere.

 

"The young generation is really edgy; they say 'we won't agree to this anymore,'" Rafai'a warns.

 

On October 28 Interior Minister Ze'ev Boim ordered the establishment of an independent committee entrusted with solving the Bedouin settlement problem. Boim appointed former state comptroller Eli'ezer Goldberg to head the committee and asked him to submit his recommendations within six months.

 

In the meantime Boim asked Attorney-General Menahem Mazuz to freeze all demolishing orders, pending Bedouin commitment to halt all illegal construction until the committee submitted its recommendations. 

 

A few days later anger and frustration among many in the Bedouin community had risen to a dangerous level. The high hopes pinned on the work of the committee were soon dashed at the sight of the Interior Ministry's bulldozers.

 

"When we saw more houses destroyed even after the committee was established, many young people were extremely furious," Rafai'a says.

 

"We are only human beings and there is a limit to what we can absorb. The destruction of houses has repercussions not only on the house-owner himself but on the entire society, which is a tribal society with close interrelations," Rafai'a explains.      

 

 

'Ali Abu Shheita, 46, is a resident of A-Ghrein, a village which was recently recognized by Israel. Nevertheless, his house – as well as houses belonging to a few dozen neighboring families –earlier this year received a demolition order from the Interior Ministry.

 

Abu Shheita explains that Israel only recognizes houses in A-Ghrein, which belong to the A-Sayyid clan, while houses belonging to his clan, Al-'Uqbi, have been left unrecognized.

 

Abu Shheita appealed to court, and in May he managed to receive an order to freeze the demolition until the court reconvenes on January 3, 2008.

 

His family, however, is far from feeling at ease.

 

"My wife and kids are panicked. My wife calls me every hour. If I go to work and I see a contractor passing by with a bulldozer, I accompany him until I see him leaving the village. Only then can I calm down and go to work," Abu Shheita says.

 

Abu Shheita's children share a constant fear of the bulldozers, and the results are evident.

 

"You see the hatred in the house towards the state of Israel. Even when the Israeli national football team plays abroad, my children always cheer for the rival team," he says.

 

On May 18, 2004 the Israeli parliament's Committee on Children's Rights held a meeting. On the agenda was the treatment of children who are traumatized by the destruction of their homes.

 

Following the meeting, head of the committee, MP Michael Melchior, stated that, "the destruction of children's houses in response to illegal construction is a catastrophe."

 

Melchior continued: "There is no doubt that children, who see their homes destroyed in front of their eyes, experience trauma which leaves them with life-long scars."

 

Tamar Rabino, a clinical psychologist in the Health Ministry, was present during the meeting.

 

"As a professional authority in the therapeutic field, I wish to express my shock at the fact that the state is causing trauma [through the act of demolition]… it is the soul that they are destroying here… It seems to me that this trauma is something absurd and highly dangerous, and something must be done to prevent it," Rabino said at the meeting.

 

Abu Shheita's daughter, Hedaya, is 19-years-old. Two months ago she saw her neighbors' house demolished.

 

"The children were left without a home, without anything. I saw how they felt and I wanted to help them, mentally," she says.

 

Although she was accepted to Ben-Gurion University, where she was to study to become a teacher, Hedaya changed her mind. She decided she would not study at the university, which is located only few miles from her village, and instead applied to the University of Amman in Jordan, where she now studies psychology.

 

Talking to The Media Line from Amman, Hedaya expressed her grave concerns for the future.

 

"The children are now small. They see the police come and destroy their homes, so what do you expect will become of them in the future? Will they love Israel or hate it?" Hedaya asks rhetorically.

 

Both Hedaya and her father strongly believe that if nothing changes soon the Bedouin children of today will become easy prey for extremists tomorrow. Hedaya has no doubts that if anyone tries one day to recruit these children to commit terrorist acts, the children would volunteer. In order to help prevent this from happening, Hedaya wants to complete her psychology degree and return home before things get out of hand.

 

"I am not looking for money; I just want to help these traumatized children," she says.

 

But Hedaya will only finish her studies in 2011. Meanwhile, her father fears conflict will blow up.

 

"A year ago I was quoted in a local newspaper as saying that if the state of Israel does not take a sharp turn in its attitude toward the Bedouin, an intifada will erupt,” he says.

 

The term intifada was adopted by the Palestinians to describe their armed popular resistance. Hearing this term in the context of the Bedouin was alarming to the authorities.

 

"I was taken to an investigation by the General Security Organization [Shin Bet]. I made it clear to them that I wasn't threatening; I was merely cautioning," he says.

 

So far, the Bedouin community in the Negev remains quiet. Nevertheless, if ever they decide to change their ways, the Bedouin have the potential to become a major internal threat to Israel.

 

The vicinity of many Bedouin villages to the southern end of the West Bank, combined with relationships by marriage to Palestinian citizens, make it easier for Palestinian terror organizations to attempt to recruit Bedouins. Furthermore, the apprehension of weapons is relatively easy as a result of smuggling activities from across the Egyptian border.

 

Israeli intelligence has, in the past, expressed its concerns regarding cooperation between the Bedouin and the terrorist organizations in the Palestinian territories. Last year a young Bedouin attempted to kidnap an Israeli female military officer. Also, in the past few years, a few Bedouin have been arrested and charged with purchasing weapons and selling them to Hamas.

 

The Shin Bet did not wish to reply to The Media Line's questions regarding the cooperation between the Bedouin and the Palestinian terrorist organizations. A source in the southern district of the Border Police admitted that this kind of cooperation was known to the police, but that no increased activity had been observed recently.