Echoes of Legal Pasts: The Social-Legal History of Landed Property Relations in Southern
Palestine, 1858–1948 (Ahmad Amara)
Attempts to incorporate southern Palestine, as a frontier and peripheral region of the Ottoman
imperial domain, under more direct governance began in the late nineteenth century and continued since
then. The incorporation process involved a number of dialectics, many times conflictual, around the
scope, meaning, and nature of the new governance order. The new administration, the legal system,
taxation and redefinition of property rights, were in constant negotiation and reconfiguration, and they
had differed from one regime to another. We may rightly state that such contestation continues until the
present day in Israel, especially in the area of land rights and housing. In my view, despite the
particularities of Israel’s Zionist land policies, they should be read in part against the original major
Ottoman reforms beginning in the late nineteenth century, as part of the art of modern-state making.
The current draft is a work in progress that seeks to target the interrelationships between the social
and geographic categorizations of a particular region (Negev) and of a social group (Bedouin), and how
such categorizations and imaginations had impacted the produced state-social relations and the legal
system around landed property. As an agrarian empire, landed property rights in the Ottoman Empire
revolved largely around agriculture, and thus property rights stemmed largely from cultivation. In such
case, the categorization of the Bedouin as nomads, and as a community that subsisted from animal-related
economy is significant. As the research shows, the exceptional approach that the Ottoman have
undertaken towards Beersheba, began a state of “exceptionalism” that continues until the presence,
including in scholarship. The Ottomans allowed a higher number of members in the local council,
allowed the council to serve as a tribal court, allowed the native property system to operate with high
autonomy, and utilized a discourse of “civilizing the Savage” Bedouin.
On the other hand, on the ground things developed in a more mutual as well as contested manner. The
Ottoman government sought to register Bedouin-held lands since the 1880s, with no particular success.
On the other hand, the Bedouin themselves sought to register their lands in order to be able to get loans.
Further, the special legal zone that the Ottomans had constructed, especially around land disputes, led to a
situation of jurisdictional tensions vis-à-vis the civil Nizamiye courts in Gaza, where Bedouin and nonBedouin, who were ignored in producing this space, had conducted forum shopping, and sold and
mortgaged lands frequently. Finally, the Ottoman archival resources demonstrate a highly integrated
community into the ‘state apparatus.’ Sheikhs served in administrative and judicial positions, and were
active in protesting appointments of the qaimakam, writing petitions to the Sultan, requesting assistance
in years of aridity, and sending their kids to study in Istanbul.
1
The project, in broader terms, explores and conceptualizes state-society and center-periphery
relationships by exploring the frequent reconfigurations of landed property relations and spatial
transformations in the Beersheba region through the mutual constitution of law and space. In the shadow
of major Ottoman administrative reforms and governance incorporation of peripheries, the late-nineteenth
century marked a significant socio-political conjuncture in the history of the Ottoman Empire and of
modern Palestine. This coincided with changing notions of authority and sovereignty, based on direct
rule, power centralization, subjecthood, and defined territoriality. Alongside such transformations,
fluctuating’
notions
of
modernization and
ongoing capitalist
development, including land
commoditization, had impacted the spatial-legal order and attendant social sphere of southern Palestine.
The research utilizes archival resources from Israeli, Ottoman, and British archive, as well as personal
papers and interviews.
The draft includes a high number of maps. Nevertheless, here is a suggestion for the most relevant pages:
2-5; 11-19; 22-35.
Southern Palestine and the Making of the “Negev”: Governance Incorporation and Geographic
Transformation
This chapter outlines the Ottoman and British’ developed administrative apparatus starting from the
major Ottoman governance reform in the Beersheba region by founding the Beersheba town as a center of
a new kaza (district), which was designed as a ‘Bedouin kaza.’ Among the then-new Ottoman
developments in the Beersheba region were the founding of administrative and municipal councils,
furnished largely by Bedouin sheikhs; the founding of a tribal court; attempts to settle the Bedouin and
increase agricultural activity, and thus taxation; development and infrastructure projects including
schools, clinics, roads, and railroads; and the founding of police and military forces. The British,
occupying Beersheba from the Ottomans in 1917, had continued to large extent a similar line of policies.
Both the Ottoman and the British had constructed an administrative apparatus that maintained, at times
through formal incorporation, much of the existing local customs and practices. Addressing the major
social and economic transformations, such as property formalization, agriculture, sedentarization, and
development in the following chapters, this chapter focuses on the administrative and political processes
that led to the formation of what is known today as the “Negev.” Consequently, the chapter goes beyond
this spatial formation to investigate the scholarly implications and shortfalls resulting from utilizing the
“Negev” as a research category, without sensitivity to its historical-political formation.
2
Whenever the word “Negev” is heard, it is usually associated with notions like “desert,” “tribal area,”
and “Bedouin nomadism.” The “Negev” has become not only a self-contained term that needs no further
unpacking, but has created its own imagined social and geographic reality. I argue that the simple
adoption of the “Negev” category together with the “Bedouin,” led many scholars to conduct a flat and
homogenizing social and spatial reading of the region, framed within a modernization discourse. In this
chapter, I refer to such scholarly approaches as the “Negev Paradigm.” Under this paradigm scholars are
not careful in identifying the different sub-ecological and geographical zones of southern Palestine, their
respective populations and the resulting socio-economic realities. Such approach led to a state of isolation
and siege to the scholarly prospects; the scope of the region’s history is limited and studied in isolation
from nearby regions and communities. Looking at the region and its population as homogeneous coupled
with presumption on nomadism, led to undermining the presence of other non-Bedouin communities, as
well as the resulting economic and agricultural activities. Nearby geographic areas and populations, such
as the towns of Gaza, Khan-Yunis, Hebron, and al-Majdal, constituted a significant part in the orbit of the
Bedouin population, and their inhabitants had socio-economic, familial and other relationships with the
Bedouin population. Further, in many cases the study of southern Palestinian does not take into account
the pre-nation states’ natural geographic and communal’ extensions of southern Palestinian and its
inhabitants into the Sinai, Hijaz, and Transjordan. The extensive agricultural activity and the intercommunal interactions created complex and various networks that should be explored.
The “Negev Paradigm” represented a similar line like that of Zionist propagandists, who hoped that
an all-encompassing term for southern Palestine as a desert would justify its allocation for Jewish
settlement and control. As I will show, the earliest Ottoman development efforts of this space involved a
diverse array of nomadic, settled and semi-settled/nomadic peoples and merchants. In the next chapter, I
discuss Bedouin agricultural activities, including the growing of barley, which was mostly exported to
European beermakers. An image far removed indeed from the idea of a vast desert populated by a few
wandering pastoralists.
Scholarship on the Beersheba region and its inhabitants expanded in recent years, and the field came
to be known as the “Negev/Naqab Bedouin Studies.” The most recent development in this field is a body
of scholarship produced mostly by native Palestinians. It came to challenge older scholarly paradigms and
resituate the Bedouin community within the broader Palestinian community and the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict, by stressing the marginality and discriminatory Israeli practices against the community. This
scholarship, recently termed the ‘third paradigm,’ was summarized as follows:
“The third paradigm has seen a surge in efforts to… re-Arabize (and Palestinianize) both place and
community. The ‘Negev Bedouin’ has been increasingly challenged as a conceptual framing. In some
3
ways this has been pioneered by the terminology of the NGO advocacy, where the ‘Naqab’ has
become central to Palestinian iconography… In academic writing, too, there has been a similar shift
towards the use of ‘Naqab’ and Naqab Bedouin (in place of ‘Negev’), and towards adding clarifying
epithets, such as ‘Palestinian Bedouin’ or ‘Arab Bedouin’, or ‘indigenous Palestinian Bedouin’. It is
in the past decade or two that we can begin to speak of ‘Naqab Bedouin studies’, rather than ‘Negev
Bedouin studies.’”1
The ‘third paradigm’ made a significant contribution to remedy the shortfalls of scholarship on the
“Negev/Naqab Bedouin.” Nevertheless, despite its critical underpinning, there remain serious flaws in
this paradigm that need to be addressed, mainly in the conceptual approach. For example, beyond the
addition of the epithets of ‘Palestinian’ and/or ‘Arab’ before or after the term ‘Bedouin,’ there has been
no serious scrutiny to deconstruct these identities or to study the interconnections among them, or how
have their meanings changed throughout the years.2 More importantly, the utility of the analytic category
‘Bedouin,’ and that of the Naqab/Negev, and the implications of their use in our particular case were
never deeply investigated. What makes the Negev/Naqab inhabitants distinctive, and in relation to what
communities? Who is a Bedouin? What are the Naqab/Negev boundaries and when did it emerge as a
distinct geographic unit, and what makes it distinctive? How did the “Negev” and “Bedouin” come to
dominate the constructed’ study field? A historical outlook into the administration of the region enhances
our imagination and provides us with a larger spectrum of options to approach the field, and to utilize a
range of alternative concepts, categories, and areas for research.
Let us highlight a major flaw, or rather paradox, in the existing scholarship with the following. The
vast majority of scholars of the ‘Naqab Bedouin studies,’ in telling the pre-Israeli history of the
community, cite and rely on Arif al-Arif’s famous book Bir al-Sabia’ wa Qaba’iluha (Beersheba and its
tribes). Al-Arif, a historian and the Ex-governor of the Beersheba sub-district, did not use the term
“Negev” or the equivalent Arabic term “Naqab,” simply because the region of southern Palestine was not
historically known as such. It never constituted a defined geographic or an administrative unit known as
the “Negev” or “Naqab.” Rather, different parts of southern Palestine were associated with several nearby
geographic regions and towns. The northern parts around Beersheba were mostly known as bilad Ghazza
(Gaza region) or Dirat Bir al-Sabia’ (Beersheba area), whereas the further southern parts were associated,
depends on their geographic proximity and social composition, with the Sinai, the Hijaz, and Transjordan.
Al-Arif did not use the term ‘Naqab’ throughout his book to refer to the region.
This chapter will explore the various definitions to the “Negev” based on numerous primary sources.
The genealogical production of the currently-studied “Negev” as a defined, or rather undefined,
Mansour Nasasra et. al., “Introduction,” in Mansour Nasasra et. al., (eds.,), The Naqab Bedouin and Colonialism- New
Perspective, (Routledge, 2015), 13.
2 See more in the introduction
1
4
geographic unit, will illustrate that there were a number of understandings, maps, and various definitions
of what constituted the “Negev,” as well as a diversity of ecological zones (desert, semi-desert, mountain,
valley, and cultivable zones) within it. Further, the discussion will show how the Bir al-Sabia’ region was
reconfigured from being part of a broader, lively, and more dynamic space which extended into the Sinai
and Gaza into an isolated, defined, and arid space delineated by modern political lines. The “Negev,” as
other geographic units, was constructed in a specific historical political conjuncture and should be treated
critically together with other inter-related terms and categories such as “Bedouin,” “desert,” “tribal
space,” or “nomadism.”
As will be shown below, the “Negev” was introduced more forcefully as a political-geographic term
by the Zionist movement during the 1930s, with the surface of the political proposal of partitioning of
Palestine into Jewish and Arab states. The “Negev,” geographically and figuratively, became a site of
political and nationalist contest over the region’s political future, its economic potentialities, and overall
concerning the future of Palestine. It is within this context that it came into being. The use of Negev or
Naqab, in my view, does not only represent one form of Israeli-Zionist geographic hegemony and
reconstruction of the Palestinian space, but further, is a form of communal reconstruction and discursive
representation. Such geographic and social reconfiguration is a significant prism through which to study
modern state-making processes, state-society interactions, as well as the political upheavals that Palestine
went through since the early nineteenth century.
Rejecting the use of the “Negev” category and its commonly-accepted geographic boundaries, the
following will start with a brief discussion of the no-less important twin term; ‘Bedouin,’ which will be
discussed in depth in the next chapter. Then, the chapter goes on to investigate the origins of the term
“Negev” and what it referred to, followed by the Ottoman views towards southern Palestine and their
significant administrative reform. After that, I will move to discussing briefly the British general
administrative approach to the same region. It was in this period that Anglo-Zionist political debate
around southern Palestine generated a number of attempts and definitions to the then-revived term; the
“Negev” as referred to by the Zionists and the “Negeb” as was referred to by the British. While the use of
the “Negev” is rejected, the chapter does not propose an alternative geographic unit or name, but rather
suggests a sensitive and pluralistic approach to multiple sub-categories, zones, and networks that could
have existed in the past. It suffices to say at this point, however, that often what purports to study the
“Negev/Naqab Bedouin” is in fact studying a smaller geographic area of southern Palestine and the
population that inhabited that area. This area extends southeastward from the line connecting Gaza and
5
Rafah towards Beersheba, and is estimated at about 3 million dunam,3 its soil is cultivable, and it was
inhabited by particular tribes who consisted the majority of the Bedouin who lived in southern Palestine.
I.
Southern Palestine and its Population:
i.
The Naming: As was outlined in the introduction of the dissertation, many of the commonly-
used terms (Bedouin, Negev/Naqab, Palestinian/Arab, tribal) are historically and socially constructed
terms that should be de-constructed and analyzed within each particular case. How should we refer to the
Arab population that historically inhabited the region of southern Palestine together with the nearby Sinai,
Hijaz, and Transjordan areas, and whose seasonal mobility depending on pasture and rain was a
significant component of its lifestyle? The easy answer would be “Bedouin” if they were still undertaking
a lifestyle of transhumant pastoralism typically associated with the term. However, in the Palestinian
context, these inhabitants are Israeli citizens and now consist of mostly sedentarized laborers and
agriculturists, which makes it inaccurate or rather mistaken to simply refer to them as Bedouin. Moreover,
since the late nineteenth century, this population relied heavily on agriculture in addition to livestock
rearing. As a result, it is more accurate to refer to them as agriculturalists-pastoralists or a settled/semisettled (semi-nomadic) community, or a combination thereof. It is more problematic when “Bedouin” is
utilized as a research category and not simply as a descriptive qualifying term.
William Young has discussed the discursive political and ideological construct of the term
“Bedouin,” and its various usages and meanings in different regions and of communities in Jordan.
Young suggested that the term ought to be approached with much caution and perhaps even discarded
altogether. Young proposed instead utilizing alternative categories including “nomadic pastoralists” or
“migrant laborers” as the particular case requires. As he correctly noted, the use of the term “Bedouin”
distorts the complex reality of interrelations between different groups—whether nomadic or sedentary—
and eventually creates a misleading signifier, lacking neutrality and replete with ideological baggage.4 In
the same line of critique, the use of “tribe” as an analytic category and its various definitions was
criticized by scholars as failing to represent the complex reality of the studied groups. The common use of
it failed to consider the fact that tribes could be nomadic or sedentarized, and could have different ethnic
origins.5
Moreover, the use of “Bedouin” within the Israeli-Palestinian context bears further ideological and
political implications. In denying the nationalist identity of the Palestinian people, including the
3
Four dunams equal one acre.
See William C. Young, ‘‘‘The Bedouin’: Discursive Identity or Sociological Category? A Case Study from Jordan,’’ Journal of
Mediterranean Studies 9:2 (1999), pp.275–99.
5 Philip Khoury and Joseph Kostiner eds., Tribes and State Formation in the Middle East (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1990).
4
6
Palestinian citizens of Israel, and in undertaking a ‘divide and conquer’ approach, the Zionist leaders and
later the Israeli government viewed the Palestinians as a group of religious and cultural minorities,
including Muslims, Christians, Circassians, Maronite, Bedouins, and Druze. Thus, the term ‘‘Bedouin’’ is
criticized as denationalizing and divisive to the Palestinian collective.6 Yet, while further research on this
question is needed, including an investigation to the terms “Arab” and “Palestinian” and the relation to
them, the following chapters will tackle the “Bedouin” identification within the context of agriculturaleconomic activity and settled lifestyle.
ii. What is the Negev?
The “Negev” never existed as an administrative district or sub-district under the Ottoman, the British,
or even the Israeli rules. Before the modern boundaries of Palestine were drawn in the 1920s, southern
Palestine was perceived as part of a unified spatial unit that included what are today southern Jordan, the
Sinai Peninsula, and northern Arabia. In most of the 18th and 19th-century surveys and maps, southern
Palestine was associated in particular with the Sinai Peninsula.7 At the administrative level, until 1900
most of Southern Palestine and its inhabitants were under the jurisdiction of the Gaza kaza, whereas in
1900, the Ottoman government built the new town and kaza of Beersheba, in order to separate the
Bedouin from Gaza. In 1908 the Ottomans established another kaza, the Auja-Hafir, near the Egyptian
borderline in southern Palestine and placed it under the jurisdiction of Beersheba, whose status was
promoted. This Ottoman reform marked the beginning of the governance incorporation of southern
Palestine and its inhabitants under the direct rule of the government. The British, after 1917, cancelled the
kaza of Auja-Hafir and maintained the Beersheba sub-district as one administrative unit, the borders of
which became defined in the 1920s as Palestine’s international borders were finally drawn. The Ottoman
Beersheba kaza was smaller than the British one and its boundaries were less clear. The British Beersheba
sub-district’s area was estimated at 12,576,000 dunam. Currently, there is in Israel the Southern District
(comprising 14,185,000 dunam) and its Beersheba sub-district (12,918,000 dunam).8 Clearly, the
definition of what constituted this space fluctuated according to the exigencies of various ruling regimes.
The term “Negev” appears in both the Jewish bible (Tanak”h) and in the ancient commentaries of
Jewish sages. Linguistically, the noun “Negev” in Hebrew comes from the root n.g.v. ‫ב‬-‫ג‬-‫נ‬, which means
“to dry,” and is also used as a synonym for “south.” In the Book of Genesis, the “Negev” appears for the
6
Hillel Cohen, Army of Shadows: Palestinian Collaboration with Zionism 1917-1948 (Berkeley: University of California Press,
2008).
7 Noam Levin, Ruth Kark and Emir Galilee, “Maps and the Settlement of Southern Palestine, 1799–1948: An Historical/GIS
Analysis” (Journal of Historical Geography 36 (2010): 3.
8 Map available in the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics, available at http://www.cbs.gov.il/shnaton62/map/01_01.pdf
7
first time referring to a section of land, with connection to Abraham’s journeys.9 The Negev boundaries
are mentioned in different locations in the Bible, through references to a number of historic sites of cities
and regions.10 Although not all of those sites’ locations are known, scholars used descriptions to draw the
southern boundary of the Negev, and thus of biblical Eretz Israel, on the south-eastern edge of the Dead
Sea. From there the Negev’s boundary extends westward to Egypt’s Wadi, identified by religious
commentators as Wadi al-Arish. As for the northern border, it is not clearly defined in the Bible.
Nevertheless, Arad city is mentioned as being in the Negev, while Hebron as situated within the Judaean
Mountains; thus, the northern boundary passes between Arad and Hebron. The biblical definition of the
Negev, then, excludes a vast area of southern Palestine.11 Further, there appeared sub-divisions to
southern Palestine which also used the term Negev such as “Negev Yehuda,” “Negev Hakini,” “Negev
Hakriti,” “Negev Kelev,” and others.12
The parallel term to the “Negev” in Arabic is “Naqab” (‫ )نقب‬or ‘Najab’ (‫)نجب‬. Naqab literally
means the creek in between two mountains which served as a passage area, mainly existent in the Wadi
Araba mountain chain between Palestine and Transjordan. The plural form of Naqaba would have
perhaps been a more appropriate name, as 30 different naqabs crossed this area according to al-Arif.13
Whereas Najab, as mentioned by Mustafa Aldabagh in his famous encyclopedia Biladuna Falastin
(Palestine, our land) is the area located roughly south of Beersheba to Ein Qiddis in Egypt (about 82 km.
from Beersheba). The term is very old as it appeared in old Egyptian inscriptions and, as with the Hebrew
term, it commonly used to mean the south.14
In addition to the two common names of bilad Ghazze and dirat Bir al-Sabia’ referring to the
northern parts of the region, the more southern parts were at times referred to as the Palestine Desert.
According to Aldabagh, the Palestine Desert is an area of more than 10.5 million dunams, and lies below
the line passing from Auja, to Asluj, to Kurnub, inhabiting the Bedouin confederations of Azazma,
Sa’idiyeen, and Ahewat.15 The area of the Palestine Desert and its inhabitants is the area that is
understudied and usually not included in the “Negev/Naqab Bedouin studies” (except for part of the
Azazma). The approximate area of the Palestine desert was also known as the “Negeb Desert,” and more
famously as the “Wilderness of Zin.” In 1913 a Royal Engineers team, under an archeological
‫ ג‬,‫ יג‬,‫)וילך למסעיו מנגב ועד בית אל” (בראשית‬.”; Ruth Peleg ed., The Negev- Human and Environment over Generations, (The
Ministry of Education and Yad Ben-Zvi, 2004), 17-20. (Hebrew).
10 Peleg, The Negev, 17.
11 Peleg, The Negev, 18. Defined in Joshua’s Book, note also the saying “Dan to Beersheba.”
12 See, Arnon Sofer, “The Negev”- Geographical Definition, in Shmueli and Gradus (eds.,), Eretz Hanegev, Adam W-Midbar
(Hebrew, “The Negev Land”- Man and Desert), (1979): 3-8.
13 Al-Arif, Beersheba and its Tribes, p.159.
14 Mustafa Aldabagh, biladuna Falastin, Vol.II. p.459, reprinted by Dar El-Huda, (1965) (in Arabic).
15 Mustafa Aldabagh, p.129, Vol.I.
9
8
smokescreen of the Palestine Exploration Fund, visited the Wilderness of Zin, led by two famous PEF
archeologists, Leonard Woolley and T. E. Lawrence- Lawrence of Arabia.16 Moreover, there have been
other terms referring to the northern desert parts of southern Palestine, as Badiyat Al-Tih, and to the
further southern hilly parts as Jabal Al-Tur.17 According to al-Arif, as one of the stories goes, the Tayaha
confederation gained their own name from being the first tribes to have lived in the Tih desert.18
The only official Israeli definition of the Negev is in the Israeli “Negev Development Authority
Act” of 1991, in which it is defined as the Israeli area south of line 115 in the Israeli old survey grid.19
(see map X) This Act replaced the Negev Act of 1986, which defined the Negev as synonym to the
Beersheba sub-district,20 an equation that was also followed at times by the British.
Map X: The Israeli defined “Negev” (light brown, prepared by Rani Mandelbaum)
16
Leonard Woolley and T. E. Lawrence Wilderness of Zin, Stacey International Publishers; 2nd edition 2003
Sofer, “The Negev,” 1979, 3-8.
18 al-Arif, 103.
19 See, text in Hebrew available at, http://www.negev.co.il/?page_id=86. The ICS, Cassini Soldner, is the old geographic
coordinate system. The new system is, Israeli Transverse Mercator (ITM).
20 Available at http://www.dinimveod.co.il/hashavimcmsfiles/Pdf/sh1185.pdf, Sefer-Hahokim, 1185.
17
9
Scholars have generally followed a commonly accepted definition of the Negev as constituting
about 12.5 million dunams, or about 60 percent of Israel. Emanuel Marx, among the first Israelis to study
the "Bedouin of the Negev," provided the following definition in 1967:
Geographically the Negev may be defined as the area lying to the south of the Judean mountains
and west of the Dead Sea and the A’rabah, that part of the Great Rift extending from the Dead
Sea to Elath (Aqabah) ... extends over 12,500 sq km ... This region is roughly co-extensive with
the administrative district of Beersheba during the British Mandatory period, but it also includes a
small enclave of the former Hebron sub-district.21
Since Palestine's southern boundaries are now defined internationally, it is the northern boundary
of the Negev that poses the challenge and leads to gaps in definitions. It is normally referred to through
flexible geographic reference points; the Judaean Mountains or Beersheba’s plains. Other scholars,
including myself, have followed this definition, sometimes with less-detailed description of the
boundaries.22
The few scholars who have tackled the challenge of defining the Negev boundaries have in fact
pointed out different approaches undertaken by scholars to explain boundaries of this region. In this
regard, Amnon Sofer outlined the different undertaken approaches, such as the ‘historic approach’ which
seeks to define the Negev based on historical sources; the ‘natural region approach’ which seeks to define
the Negev based on topographic and climatic elements; the ‘core and periphery approach’; the
‘administrative approach’ and other approaches. In sum, Sofer argued that different scholars adopted
different definitions of the space as fit with their own research, and concluded that any attempt to define
the Negev is in fact a major challenge.23
A more recent study looked into a large volume of historical maps to trace the settlement of
southern Palestine and demonstrate the “shifting boundaries of the Negev.” While the authors use
“Southern Palestine” in their title, they use it interchangeably with the “Negev” and the “Negev Desert.”
Only in their footnotes do they refer to the fact that the “Definitions of the Negev varied with time,” and
specifically that its northern boundary “is more fuzzy and may represent the boundary between the ‘desert
and the sown’ land… or a definition of where Desert and Mediterranean climate and biogeographic
regions meet.”24 This suggestion is relevant for a climatic definition of the region. But it does not always
match up with the Negev as a political-geographic unit. After all, the distinction between desert and sown
carries with it a distinction between nomadism and sedentary lifestyles which were historically practiced
21
Marx (1967), p.7.
Ismael Abu-Saad and Ahmad Amara, Introduction, in Amara (2013), pp. 1-16, at 15; Abu Hussein and McKay (2003), p.115,
137.
23 Sofer, “The Negev,” 1979, 3-8.
24 Levin et. al.,(2010), p.3.
22
10
by the same people. This is even more problematic today since nomadism no longer exists in the areas,
not to mention climatic changes throughout the years. Hence, the process itself of how the Negev came
into being as a commonly-used geographic unit, especially within what the “Negev/Naqab Bedouin
studies,” remains unexplored.
II.
Extending Governance and Spatial (re)Construction:
Deserts and mountains have often been imagined and categorized by government agents as places
where natural features have suspended time and blocked the penetration of “civilization.” Similarly, the
inhabitants of these regions were mostly characterized as “barbarian,” “tribal,” or “primitive.” Such
imagination and categorizations have strongly materialized in the shadow of governmental attempts to
bring these regions and their inhabitants under the government arm. Seen as beyond the state reach, and
perceived as fertile grounds for social engineering, these areas constituted a significant test case for
effective modern governance. As Lauren Benton notes, such categorizations are rarely unpacked by
scholars. Both, the categorization of a space as a “desert” and relatedly as “uncivilized” or “barbarian,”
need be deconstructed within their historical-political context.
Similarly, in his book The Art of Not Being Governed, James Scott notes how civilizational
discourses of “tribalism,” and “primitivism” targeted those self-governing groups whose incorporation to
the nation-state was incomplete. Such discourses, according to him, “begin exactly where taxes and
sovereignty end.”25 Law, in this context, was also a civilizing tool. Thus, the categorization of mountains
and deserts as distinctive political and cultural spaces by imperial agents informed the development of
particular legal orders. Such spaces, regulated by a native legal system and particular ethical codes, were
associated with legal primitivism and their inhabitants were treated as people who deserved special
treatment so that “[T]hey might attain, and will be rewarded with, only the kind and amount of law that
matched their level of development.”26 Thus, the process of expanding the reach of the centralizing
authority included an intertwined discursive and structural processes, and fraught dialectical interactions
vis-à-vis the relevant regions and their inhabitants. The “incorporation” was far from a unified linear
process of imposition. Rather, there were constant reconfigurations of power dynamics, local knowledge,
and alternative and adapted frameworks in these regions. The Beersheba region and its inhabitants were
of no exception. They were often treated in this vein, as distinctive and thus requiring exceptional legal
and governance policies. However, the Ottomans and the British were mostly careful in seeking
consensual arrangements, and their policies had to be localized and adapted.
25
James Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia. (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 2009): xi.
26 (Benton, 2010:225).
11
Southern Palestine during the Ottoman Reform Period:
Until the mid-nineteenth century, the relationships between the Ottoman center and its provinces
were ordered and administered mainly through intermediaries and notables. The intermediaries (powerful
leaders, tribal sheikhs, and village and town notables), took over and performed certain duties such as tax
collection and soldiers’ recruitment. However, by the mid-nineteenth century, the Ottoman government
embarked on a new governance form of centralization and direct rule, formulated within a major reform
known as the Tanzimat (ordering). The reform re-ordered a number of fields, such as local and regional
representation, tax collection, property rights, and settlement and sedentarization of tribes.
As an agrarian Empire, land, or rather productive cultivable lands, served as a central resource for
both Ottoman society and state. Throughout the 19th century, the Empire lost a number of territories, and
thus major source of income, seeking to improve and increase tax collection, alongside better hold over
the remaining areas and military conscription. Further, such agrarian system created “a distinction, hence
a dialectic, between a settled, state-governed population and a frontier penumbra of less governed or
virtually autonomous peoples.”27 We may add, also of productive and of unproductive peoples in the eye
of government agents. Enactment of new laws, codifications, individuation of property rights, land title
registration, infra-structures and discourse of civilizing particular communities within the empire, were all
part of the new imperial order. Such projects of standardization and control were part of a new
governance system, characterized by “internal colonialism,” and part of the modern state-making.28 These
policies and discourses are much evident in southern Palestine and against the Bedouin tribes.
Civilizing the tribes: In his A Movable Empire: Ottoman Nomads, Migrants & Refugees (2009), Resat
Kasaba argues that the Ottoman initiated their first significant push towards nomadic sedentarization
during the last two decades of the seventeenth century. The peak of Ottoman settlement and
sedentrization efforts were in the mid-nineteenth century, in conjunction with wider processes of
reordering state-society relationships.29 Notwithstanding these efforts of expanding the imperial reach,
this Ottoman settlement and sedenterizaton project encountered difficulties and resistance to such degree
that by the time of the Empire's collapse in the early 20th century it was far from being completed.30
Nomadic and semi-nomadic communities played a major role in the Empire’s economic network,
providing animals, meat, labor force and transport of products (on their animals), and maintained a web of
27
Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed, 2009, 3-4.
Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed, 2009,
29 Resat Kasaba, A Movable Empire: Ottoman Nomads, Migrants & Refugees, University of Washington Press, 2009, p.54
30 Resat Kasaba, A Movable Empire: Ottoman Nomads, Migrants & Refugees, University of Washington Press, 2009, p.54
28
12
relations with the sedentary population.31 Thus, it is very important to study these encounters and relations
as part of the new imperial making, and the transformation of southern Palestine. Nevertheless, whereas
mobility and nomadism were administrative categories constitutive of the empire itself, they became an
obstacle to the new extension of rule and new notions of sovereignty. Scott argues that dispersion,
mobility, and tribal composition, were “strategic positionings designed to keep the state at arm’s length,”
and should be read largely as political choices, and not only ecologically or culturally. 32
The incorporation process has always been “culturally styled as development, economic progress,
literacy, and social integration.”33 This was also evident in the Ottoman case, particularly of the Sultan
Abdu al-Hamid II, who had an interest to show the empire as a modernizing Muslim power, with a
civilizing mission, part of which, to “correcting the beliefs and habits” of the tribes and frontiers.34 The
Ottoman “project of modernity”35 of the late nineteenth century, particularly in the periphery and over
tribal societies, shared a lot in common with European colonialism and orientalism, termed by Selim
Deringil as “borrowed colonialism.”36 Makdisi looked more particularly at the representation of the Arabs
by the Ottomans as part of their own version of orientalism. He argues that the 19th century saw a shift in
the imperial paradigm into a view suffused with nationalist modernization ideology, rooted in a discourse
of progress.37 Tribal communities were perfect fit for “modernization” projects and social re-engineering.
In her important study of Beersheba, Yasemin Avci draws three different phases of OttomanBedouin relationships since the mid-nineteenth century. First, the period between 1845 and 1865 was one
of struggle between Bedouin sheikhs and the Ottomans government of who will control the area, where
the government relied heavily on military coercion. Whereas from the 1860s onwards there are two
additional phases, where in the first there was Ottoman restructuring of the administrative apparatus to
better control the Bedouin, and in the second phase, the Ottomans utilized the newly created apparatus to
penetrate the local life by establishing consensus among the leaders, thus moving more towards
persuasion.38 Obviously, the typology of the relationship and its transformation was more complex.
Within the colonial context of establishing dominance through coercion or persuasion, Ranjit
Guha argues that the metropolitan state was different than its own colonial state. Whereas the first was
31
Amy Singer, Palestinian peasants, p.114)
Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed, 2009, preface, x-xi.
33 Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed, 2009, 4-5.
34 Deringil, the well protected domains.
32
35
Selim, Deringil, "They live in a state of nomadism and savagery" the late Ottoman Empire and the post-colonial state.
Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 45, No. 2 (Apr., 2003), pp. 311-342, at 311.
36 Deringil, state of nomadism.
37 Ussama Makdisi "Ottoman Orientalism" American Historical Review, June 2002, 768-796, pp.768-9.
38 Avci, ‘‘The Application of Tanzimat in the Desert.” 981.
13
hegemonic and relied much on persuasion to establish its dominance, the colonial state was nonhegemonic but utilized coercion to establish its dominance.39 However, Benton criticizes Guha’s account
on two grounds: 1) First, for undermining the responses of the community and the interactional aspects of
the colonial relationships; 2) Second, for emphasizing only one moment of shift, namely “conquest,” as
establishing a relation of dominance and subordination. According to Benton, such emphasis also ignores
the earlier imperial forms that preceded the “state hegemony,” which, without undermining its oppressive
forms, it proposed a more accommodating framework than later forms of colonialism.40 In the Ottoman
case of southern Palestine, we notice a shift from coercion towards persuasion, and we learn that even the
latter imperial form of “state hegemony” remained characterized by its earlier accommodative nature.
The adjacent Egyptian border and the British presence in Egypt since 1882 had increased the
strategic importance of southern Palestine. The Ottomans began to conduct military campaigns against the
Bedouin in conjunction with plans to demarcate tribal areas, settle the Bedouin, and as Ottoman archival
evidence shows, register and tax Bedouin-owned lands. In the eyes of Ottoman officials, land registration
would not only increase tax revenues, but it would contribute to the elimination of tribal disputes over
boundaries and assist in settling the Bedouin, and bring “civilization” to them.41 However, the most
notable Ottoman achievement in southern Palestine was the establishment of the new town and kaza of
Bir al-Sabia’.42
ii.
A New Bedouin Kaza: Seeking to separate the Bedouin from the Gaza and Hebron sub-
district and to establish an exclusive kaza for Bedouins, Sultan Abd al-Hamid II issued his imperial edict,
in June 1899, approving a plan to build Bir al-Sabia` to become the administrative center of the newlycreated kaza. At that time, the Ottomans estimated that the Bedouin of the five main tribal confederations,
namely the Tayaha, Azazma, Tarabin, Jbarat, and Hanajrih, numbered 70,000-80,000 persons.43 The
Ottoman outlined the boundaries of the kaza in order to encompass all of these five confederations,
whereas the nearby Hebron and Gaza kazas were outlined to include peasants’ villages. It was estimated
that there were only 530 Bedouin living within the Gaza kaza. 44 For Beersheba town, the Ottoman
government purchased 2,000 (Ottoman) dunams (each Ottoman dunam is about 919 sq. m.) from the
Azazma confederation and embarked on building government and public buildings. The 2,000 dunams
were assigned to the municipality, and it started to market one-dunam plots for persons desiring to live
39
Ranjit Guha, Dominance without Hegemony: Dominance and Power in Colonial India, Harvard University Press, 1998.
Lauren Benton, Colonial Cultures, 257-258.
41 See, Ottoman State Archives, DH-MUI, 1327.N.4; Response from Daftar Hakani (Land registry) Director to the Dahilye
Nazareti (Ministry of interior), dated 9 Shaaban, 1327. See also, Ahmad Amara, The Negev Land Question: Between Denial and
Recognition, The Journal of Palestine Studies, vol. 42:4, 2013, pp. 27-47.]
42 See Yasemin Avci, See also section X below.
43 Avci, ‘‘The Application of Tanzimat in the Desert,” 973.
44 Yosef Barsilavsky, Eretz Hanegev: Have you known the land, Hakibutz Hameaauhad Press, 1946 (in Hebrew).246.
40
14
and/or build businesses in town. For Bedouins, these lands were to be allocated free of charge as a way to
encourage their settlement.45
In addition to fending off British encroachment from outside of the Ottoman domains and
attracting tax revenues from within the Empire, the Ottomans also hoped the establishment of Bir alSabia’ would more generally strengthen the southern borders of the Jerusalem Mutassarefligi.46 Most of
southern Palestine was under the Jerusalem Mutassarefligi, which until 1900 included both the Gaza and
Hebron kazas. With the founding of the Bir al-Sabia` kaza most of the southern Palestine areas became
under its administration. Later in 1908, the Ottomans established the new kaza of Hafir, put under Bir alSabia`'s jurisdiction, whose qaimaqam (governor) was promoted to acting Mutassaref.47
However, the exact administrative boundaries of the kaza are not clearly identified and scholars
have reached no consensus regarding the south-eastern limits of the Jerusalem Mutassarefligi. According
to Yitzhak Gil-Har, based on British sources, the south-eastern limits are described “as starting at the
southern end of the Dead Sea, thence to intersect with the Ottoman-Egyptian boundary of 1906 near G.
Maghara.”48 However, “British geographers and sources were not up-to-date about Ottoman policy in
southern Palestine and they thus misled modern students about the historical geography of pre-war
Palestine.”49 Since the region was an Ottoman periphery and the boundaries are internal administrative
ones, they were not clearly demarcated, as was the case with its western border with Egypt. When the
eastern border was later defined under the British Mandate, it is the northern boundary that remained as
an internal administrative one.
45
BOA, I.DH 1380/1318.N/18, 7 Teshrinisani 1316/20 November 1900.
Yasemin Avci, ‘‘The Application of Tanzimat in the Desert: The Bedouins and the Creation of a New Town in Southern
Palestine(1860–1914),’’ Middle Eastern Studies 45:6(2009), p.972.
47 Yitzhak Gil-Har, The South-Eastern Limits of Palestine at the End of Ottoman Rule, Middle Eastern Studies, 28:3, (1992), pp.
559-564, at 560.
48 Gil-Har (1992), p.559. According to Gil-Har, “The separation line between Beer-Sheba Kaza and Kerak Sanjak passed along
the eastern escarpment of the Wadi Araba Valley.”
49 Gil-Har, 563.
46
15
The imperial making of the governmental machinery of Bir al-Sabia’ involved various interactions,
moving between coercion and persuasion, imposition and incorporation, over the boundaries and nature
of the new political, legal, and administrative order. From the outset, the Ottomans worked on gaining the
consent of the inhabitants and in integrating them in the making and operation of the new administrative
apparatus. For example, the Ottomans established an Administrative Council in accordance with the 1871
Provincial Law to deal with important, though limited, jurisdiction over infrastructural projects, budget,
tax collection and the land registry. Yet instead of four members, as was usual, the Council of Beersheba
included five members, one for each of the five Bedouin tribal confederations in the Beersheba area. 50
Second, according to the 1871 law, councils were split into an administrative and a judicial body.51 In
1903, the Council was authorized to sit as a Court of First Instance (bidayet mahkemesi) which served
mainly as a tribal court in land cases, ruling according to Bedouin custom.52
50
BOA, I.DH., 1385/13, 14 Nisan 1317/27 April 1901.
Martha Mundy and Richard Saumarez Smith, Governing Property, Making the Modern State: Law, Administration and
Production in Ottoman Syria, I. B. Tauris, 2007, pp. 50-51.
52 See, OBA, I.ZAN. 108/17, 21 October 1912. See also on the court, Gideon Kressel, Joseph Ben-David, and Khalil Abu Rabi`a,
“Changes in the Land Usage by the Negev Bedouin since the Mid-19th Century: The Intra-Tribal Perspective,” Nomadic Peoples
28 (1991), pp. 28–55, at pp. 29–30; Marx (1967: 32); Yasemin Avci, “The Application of Tanzimat in the Desert: The Bedouins
and the Creation of a New Town in Southern Palestine (1860–1914),” Middle Eastern Studies 45: 6 (2009): 976.
51
16
The very decision of where to place the town also owed much to an already existing market and
trade activity there. In addition to being the site of several important wells, the site was located on the
intersecting boundaries of the tribal lands of the Bedouin confederations of Jbarat, Tayaha, and Tarabin.
This intersection abetted considerable market activity, especially on Tuesdays, when people bought and
sold livestock and barley, in addition to other crops and products such as clothing, sugar, tea, and coffee.
Gaza’s Thursday markets also attracted the Bedouin and non-Bedouin traders of the region.53 These
included Jewish and Arab traders from Gaza, Hebron, Yaffa, and Tel-Aviv whose main trade was in
Bedouin barley which was exported from Gaza to the beer industry mainly in Britain and Scotland, and in
exporting Handhal (Citrullus colocynthis) to Germany, used in the medicine industry.54
The already existing agricultural activity in southern Palestine became an important economic and
social target for the Ottoman government to increase taxes and eventually to transform the Bedouin
community. Barley was the main grown crop in southern Palestine, and together with the Gaza subdistrict, the Beersheba sub-district made up about 70% of Ottoman Palestine’s barley, and it was famous
for its great quality. The exports reached 40,000-60,000 tons in the years preceding WWI. Following the
war, and due to the increase of barley cultivation in California and Britain, as well as the rise of transfer
prices, the barley export dropped and became traded more domestically.55 The barley was mainly traded
in the Beersheba market, and then in the nearby markets of Gaza, Khan-Yunis, al-Majdal, and al-Faluja,
where the Bedouin purchased necessities like coffee, sugar, rice, and garments.56 According to
Barselavsky, there were, in the 1940s, 150,000 dunam in the Gaza sub-district and 1,500,000 dunam of
barley land in the Beersheba sub-district.57 Other crops such as wheat, lentils, watermelon, dhura, were
grown in the region. The estimates of overall Bedouin cultivated lands ranged between 2-3.5 million
dunams, due to different patterns and intervals in Bedouin cultivation which is dictated by the soil and
rainfall, leading to annual alternate cultivation (see Chapter II).58 Thus, the cultivation and economic
activities in this “periphery” had existed but the reform aimed to bring it under better control and taxation.
Further, such activities challenge the categorization of the community as nomadic and pastoral. It should
be noted, that, as previous research had already shown, nomadism and settled agriculture are not
successive stages in social evolution, since some pastoral nomads were previously settled agriculturists.59
53
See al-Arif; see also, Murdakhay Elkiyam, Forty years of Jewish Settlement in Gaza, p.76. (in Hebrew)
Elkiyam, pp.43-49.
55 Alexander Scholch, Palestine in Transformation, 1856-1882: Studies in Social, Economic and Political Development; Yosef
Barsilavsky, Eretz Hanegev: Have you known the land, Hakibutz Hameaauhad Press, 1946 (in Hebrew), 279.
56 Al-Arif, Biruaslabia wa qabailha, p. 271-2.
57 Yosef Barsilavsky, Eretz Hanegev: Have you known the land, Hakibutz Hameaauhad Press, 1946 (in Hebrew), 279.
54
58
Central Zionist Archives files.
59
Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed, 2009, 29.
17
The cultivated areas were mainly, but not exclusively, controlled by Bedouin, primarily in the
area extending from Gaza south to Rafah, and then between both cities to the east towards Beersheba.
This area inhabited most of the tribes who were semi-settled (semi-nomadic), and were the first to settle
permanently, the Tayaha, Tarabin, Hanajrih, and Jbarat. Without delving in details into the socioeconomic habits and patterns of each tribe and its relation with the ecological and historical conditions of
their habitation area, it suffices to say that the Bedouin-cultivated areas fall within the currently-used
definition of the Negev. This particular area was, and remains, different in several accounts from the more
southern zones which were less productive, had less rain-fall and were less inhabited. As will be shown
below, many parties distinguished, for different reasons, between different zones of southern Palestine.
Map: Bedouin and Fellah Cultivations.60
Alongside the administrative legal reform, there was a property reform, including redefinition of
rights and access to property, and individual title formalization. Despite the Ottoman land reform of the
mid-nineteenth century and the enactment of the 1858 Ottoman Land Code and the 1860 Tapu Law,
property relations in Beersheba remained more complex in practice. Bedouin land rights were formed and
recognized according to land use, which was intertwined with local ecologies. Hence, cultivated lands,
pasture lands, and empty lands led to different sets of rights. The Ottoman and later the British authorities
recognized Bedouin rights over the cultivated lands, and had registered some of these lands under
Bedouin names (as well as other non-Bedouin Palestinians or Zionists) in the Tapu land registry.
60
CO, WO 303/204
18
Nevertheless, landed property relations and rights in the region were predominantly administered in
accordance with Bedouin customary law. Despite the Ottoman attempt to create a modern system of land
registration since 1858, until the end of the Ottoman period only about 5 percent of the land in Palestine
was registered under the new registration system, with most Bedouin lands remaining unregistered. 61
Nevertheless, as will be shown below, looking into the available records of taxation and registration of
land rights in the Beersheba region under both the Ottoman and British regimes, we see a more pluralistic
legal order which integrated both local and state practices and laws.
All of these policies shifted the geographic and administrative map of southern Palestine on the
eve of the British occupation. Moreover, when the need for defining the geographic borders of the
“Negev” arose in the 1930s, it was in fact mainly those cultivable lands, referred to by the British as the
“Bedouin Barley Lands,” and thus Bedouin land rights, which determined the Negev’s boundaries.
iii.
The British Policy towards the Beersheba Sub-District: The British cancelled the
Hafir kaza and placed its area under the Beersheba sub-district which became of an area of 12,576,000
dunam. Despite further incorporation and increased British administrative power in the Beersheba area,
the governance order continued to encompass a large degree of autonomy of the Arab inhabitants. The
British maintained the working of the tribal courts, continued to apply the tithe-tax system despite its
cessation in the rest of Palestine, and permitted the holding of weapons in the southern half of the
southern Palestine.62 On 29 March 1921, Secretary of State for the Colonies Winston Churchill
“reaffirmed the assurances already given at Beersheba by the High Commissioner to the Sheikhs that the
special rights and customs of the Bedouin Tribes of Beersheba will not be interfered with.”63 The political
and legal spaces granted to parts of the customary indigenous law within the state legal and administrative
system should not be read only within the discourse of state power. Instead, it is the processes and the
politics, at times hard to grasp, leading to such recognition that are important to better understand the
colonial dynamics and relations.
Despite partial tribal autonomy and application of customary law in the region, the region was far
from unchanging in the course of the British Mandate. First, the Bedouin Arab community included
various groups with different lifestyles which included various combinations of mobility, agricultural
activity, and pastoralism. Second, there were other Palestinian and non-Palestinian communities who
lived or interacted in different ways with the region. Third, the British had their own understandings and
visions of the region and its inhabitants, and thus of its administration within the broader British policy in
61
Martin Bunton, Colonial Land Policies in Palestine, 1917–1936 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 49. See also
Kedar, “Legal Transformation,” p. 933.
62 al-Arif, Bi’r al-Saba` wa qabailha, p. 271–72; Amara, “The Negev Land Question,” 27-47.
63 Official Report, Colonial Office documents, 733/2, Government House, Jerusalem.
19
Palestine. For example, the British initiated special projects and legislation concerning southern Palestine,
including agricultural stations, a special ordinance regarding Bedouin nomadism, a special police force
(the Camelry/Hajjana), and the appointment of a non-Bedouin district officer for the Beersheba district.
All of that created an integrated system of custom and state-laws and practices in different geographic
areas and various fields of the local affairs, such as in the field of landed property relations.
As for landed-property relations, the British had undertaken a major reform in reconstructing the
Palestinian space and landed-property relations through amending the Ottoman land laws, enacting new
legislation, and, more importantly, undertaking a land title settlement process. Established in 1928, the
land settlement process aimed to identify the owners of every parcel of land in the country, mainly
through a quasi-judicial procedure. It relied entirely upon cadastral and topographical surveys, which
divided lands into clearly demarcated blocks and parcels.64 Again, looking into the workings and
implementation of these reforms we read different colonial narrative of Mandate Palestine beyond British
imposition of power, western notions of property, and facilitating Palestinian dispossession. The constant
reconfiguration of the colonial relationships together with the evolution of land market, alongside the
British political commitment for a Jewish national home in Palestine, transformed the access to property
and redefining land rights. Despite the legal reform and the obligation to register land transactions, these
British laws were not enforced in the Beersheba sub-district, and there was no state-initiated land title
settlement.65 As was mentioned, the British had maintained the work of the tribal court and later
established a tribal court of appeals for the Beersheba sub-district. The British allowed these courts to
apply tribal custom “so far as it is not repugnant to natural justice or morality.”66 Land holding cases were
subject to the jurisdiction of the tribal court.
Nevertheless, jurisdictional tensions on land rights arose, and the communities also sought to
reach better results for their cases through different mechanisms. Land disputes, for example, from the
Beersheba sub-district also came before the state land court and were appealed before the Palestine
Supreme Court. The case law illustrates that Bedouin, and non-Bedouin, landholders were treated as
owners, that formal land law had limited application in the sub-district, and that courts relied on Bedouin
customary documentation, such as sanad baya’ and sanad rahn.67 However, despite the prevalence of
Dov Gavish and Ruth Kark, “The Cadastral Mapping of Palestine, 1858–1928,” Geographical Journal 159, no. 1 (March
1993), pp. 70–80. See also Geremy Forman, “Settlement of Title in the Galilee: Dowson’s Colonial Guiding Principles,” Israel
Studies 7, no. 3 (2002), pp. 61–83.
65 `Arif, Beersheba and its tribes, p. 267.
66 The Palestine Order in Council 1922.
67 Land Appeal (LA) no. 89 of 1929, Ashour Ghandour v. Abdullah Abou Ghaban (Supreme Court of Palestine, decisions
delivered 16 April 1930): “in view of the absence of title deeds to land in the Beersheba area . . . a case such as this appears to be
one of those for which the application of tribal custom under Article 45 of the Palestine Order-in-Council is specially intended.”
The case is in the Palestine Law Report (hereafter PLR). These reports include decisions collected and edited by the Chief Justice
of the Supreme Court of Palestine for the entire Mandate period. They are available online at www.llmc-digital.org.
64
20
custom and non-registration of land titles and transactions in the Beersheba sub-district, some Bedouin
and non-Bedouin landholders did register their lands. The registration process, as the archival evidence
shows, involved the integration of state law with local knowledge and practice. Usually, the person
requesting the registration of a specific piece of land would either approach the main registry office in
Gaza or the sub-office in Beersheba. The registrar, after ensuring that the relevant forms were complete
and the taxes and fees were paid, would ask for a statement signed by the sheikhs within whose tribal area
the land was located, confirming the applicant’s rights over the specific land and that there were no
conflicting claims to it. Then, the registrar would send the agricultural inspector to confirm that the land
was under cultivation. When completed, the file would have to go through the Director of Lands in
Jerusalem for approval, and then would be registered in the land registry under the name of the applicant,
who would be granted a certificate of registration. Land registrations involved Bedouin, non-Bedouins
from Gaza, Hebron, Jerusalem, and Jewish individuals and organizations.68
The various mechanisms of registration and dispute resolution testified to the complexity of
landed-property relations in Beersheba, all of which contradict the overwhelming tendency to view the
“Negev” as a homogenized tribal desert space. The land cases and registration files illustrate the
continuing incorporation of southern Palestine as a periphery into the new civic life and bureaucratic
reform and the encroachment of this new order into the agrarian and civil relations in the region. Yet even
alongside this policy, British control and understanding of the Beersheba sub-district remained limited.
Their attention to the sub-district varied depending on their various interests, which involved, among
other things, archeology, military, oil, and political considerations. However, in the 1930s, the British had
to respond to different Zionist requests and claims concerning the Negeb, which necessitated the study of
the region. More importantly this was the beginning of the “Negeb” formation as a political-geographic
region.
III.
Zionist-British Political Interaction around the “Negeb”
The last official British view(s) on southern Palestine appear in the Survey of Palestine.
Administratively, “The Gaza District 13,689 square kms., [is] divided into the Gaza sub-district 1,113
square kms. and the Beersheba sub-district of 12,576 square kms.”69 Geographically, “The district of
Beersheba [is] an immense triangle with its apex at the gulf of Aqaba which contains nearly half the land
of Palestine (approximately 12,576 square kms.)”70 Climatically, the Survey referred to the “Negeb” as
68
Israel State Archives, M 5018, British Land Registries of Beersheba and Gaza.
The Survey of Palestine, p. 104.
70 The Survey, p. 103.
69
21
one of four weather regions in Palestine, being the “desert of the south from Beersheba to Aqaba. Hot and
dry in summer; cold and dry in winter…”71 Accordingly, in 1945 the British used the term “Negeb” only
to refer to the region as a climatic unit.
Following the approval of the Mandate terms, the classification of the Negeb’s land became
central to Zionist-British political debate, since it was seen as “waste” lands. Waste was a geographicclimatic category of unproductive land awaiting redemption and revival by the Zionist movement as well
as a significant “legal” category. Article 6 of the Mandate required the British mandatory government to
work closely with the Jewish Agency to make waste and state lands available for Jewish settlement.
Waste and state lands were conflated under the British law as one “legal” category of state land. “Waste”
land corresponded with the Ottoman legal category of “mewat” lands (discussed below), which, while
under the Ottoman was open for public use, it became a state land and its cultivation without
governmental permit constituted trespassing. Article 6 of the Mandate and the issue of state land provided
the Zionists with “a convenient stick with which to beat the British dog.”72 As a result of developments in
Palestine and Europe beginning in the mid-1930s, political interest in southern Palestine increased,
mainly for its political future, thus leading to a debate on, inter alia, its climatic nature and legal status. In
this case, the formation of the Negeb as a defined space was not part of new state craft of demarcated
territories, or to make it legible for better taxation and control, but more the result of political bargain over
the future status of Palestine.
The political developments in the mid-1930s were many. First, there was the Great Arab Revolt
and the resulting British White Paper, which called for limiting the number of Jewish immigrants to
75,000; second, there was the emergence of the partition of Palestine as a possible solution to the
intensifying communal conflict; third, there was the emergence of what came to be known as the “Jewish
Refugee Problem” in Europe, following the Nazi rise to power. There were different groups in London
and in Palestine with varying interests and demands regarding southern Palestine. The Zionist movement,
represented mainly by the Jewish Agency, which had no real interest or investment in southern Palestine
until the mid-1930s, began to request land grants from the British Government for Jewish settlement and
development. It also requested the government to undertake and support water borings, hoping for the
eventual inclusion of the Negeb in the future Jewish State.
Meanwhile in London, a group of Jewish (Zionist and non-Zionist) and British politicians, was
advocating before the British Colonial Office for the opening up of the Negeb for Jewish refugees from
71
The Survey, p. 105.
Warwick P. N. Tyler, State Lands and Rural Development in Rural Palestine, 1920-1948, Brighton: Sussex Academic Press,
2001, p.48.
72
22
Europe, for settling and developing the Negeb. Their political program became known as the ‘Negeb
Scheme.’ This group included British MPs led by MP Sir Frank Sanderson, who held several meetings in
the House of Commons with Secretary of State for the Colonies Malcolm MacDonald in July 1939, and
published editorial opinions in British newspapers advocating the Negeb Scheme.73 In addition, there
were two main Jewish actors behind the plan: Theodor Abraham Leib Zissu and John Gwyer. Their
names and memoranda on the Negeb were cited in, and attached to almost every letter and debate
concerning the Negeb in this period.74
To support their scheme, the supporters advanced a number of reasons, formulated in memoranda
prepared by Zissu and Gwyer. First, they advocated for the separation of the Negeb from Palestine’s
Policy, which would mean the region would not be subject to Jewish immigration restrictions stipulated
in the British White Paper. According to MP Sanderson, “indeed the Negeb has never been considered by
the Arabs of Palestine as part of their land. It can properly be said that the limit of Palestine in every sense
of the word was just on Beersheba.”75 Second, arguing for the untapped potential of the Negeb, the
supporters referred extensively to the ancient prosperity of the Negeb under the Byzantines with a
‘conservative estimate’ of its former population to be between 300,000 and 500,000 inhabitants, with an
efficient irrigation system of canals and conservation of rainfall.76 Third, the supporters noted the special
Jewish attachment to the Negeb. According to Zissu, “[i]t was in the Negeb that the Jews first emerged as
a distinct people” and, furthermore, “Just as independent Jewish history had begun in the Negeb it also
ended there- at Massada, the last place to have been under Jewish sovereignty...”.77 Hence, the Jewish
historic connection also remained limited to the geographic area around Beersheba. Fourth, the supporters
added that having the region in Jewish and British hands would serve British imperial interests.
In the Colonial Office, they had realized that it was impossible to advance the Negeb Scheme due
to Arab opposition generally and Egyptian opposition specifically, as well as the undeniable fact that it
73
CO 733/404/15; see also, CO 733/424/10, Irrigation and Settlement in Southern Palestine (Negeb).
Referring to them as well known in the colonial office, Luke (of the Colonial Office) described their interest and position: “Mr.
Zissu and Mr. Gwyer are two young men, the former a rich Roumanian Jew, and the latter the son of the Chief Justice of India,
who have for some time been investigating the possibilities of settlement for Jewish refugees in the Negeb. They are not
concerned with the Zionist Organisation, who have not, I understand, given them much encouragement. They have a first-hand
knowledge of the Negeb, but their hopes are largely built up on somewhat dubious archeological date.” CO 733/404/16, Minute
by Luke, 8/3/1940
75 CO 733/404/15, letter from Sanderson to MacDonald on June 2 nd, 1939.
76. CO 733/404/15, report attached to letter by Zissu to Captain Crookshank, 13/3/1939. For this argument Zissu relied on an
archeological report by Leonard Woolley and T. E. Lawrence title ‘The Wilderness of Zin,’ published in the Palestine
Exploration Fund, 1914. This article also related to the non-cultivable areas south of Beersheba, and was criticized by Luke who
noted that the report must “be taken with some reserve. It should be remembered that their survey was a comparatively hurried
affair, carried out in 1913 as a façade for a strategic survey.” Thus it cannot be regarded as “wholly authoritative” in particular
since a later archeological expedition from 1933 (the Colt Archeological Expedition) expressed considerable disagreements with
the ‘Wilderness of Zin.’ See, CO 733/404/15, ‘The Negeb,’ a memorandum by Luke, 28 June 1939.
77 CO 733/404/15, ‘The Negeb,’ unsigned and undated report, which seems to have been written by Zissu and Gwyer, p.2.
74
23
was, to say the least, a “very speculative enterprise.”78 However, the British stated in their responses that
they were undertaking water borings, and that they would not object to other hydrological projects, and
try and support a study of the Negeb potentialities. Nevertheless, the British saw the need to define the
land rights of the Bedouin, to conduct surveys, and they made it clear that “If any Jews go to the Negeb
they must be counted against the White Paper maximum.” 79 During the same period, the question of the
Negeb was addressed by a number of British Commissions, such as Peel (Royal Commission) and the
Woodhead Commissions (Palestine Partition Commission), and later the War Cabinet Committee. At the
center of each of these inquiries was the question of “what constituted the Negeb?” In keeping with a
theme of this chapter, a number of definitions were discussed.
i.
Defining the Negeb/Negev: According to the Negeb Scheme supporters, the northern
boundary of the Negeb was “The boundary which divides it from Palestine proper should be taken as a
line running from the Mediterranean to the Dead Sea and passing south of Khan Yunis and Beersheba in
such a manner that all settled population is excluded from the district.” Referring to its “present
population” they stated; “The Negeb contains no settled population whatever. With the exception of
some 3,000 to 4,000 semi-nomads in the district immediately bordering the Mediterranean, it contains
according to Major Jarvis, late Governor of Sinai, only approximately 1,000 nomads, consisting of about
500 persons from Transjordan, 400 from Palestine, and 100 from Sinai.”80 (emphasis added) Under this
definition the Negeb made up 11.5 million dunam. Zissu and the Negeb Scheme supporters, considering
the majority of the Bedouin population as “settled population,” sought to exclude them and their
cultivable lands around Beersheba from their definition of the Negeb. Thus, for advocates of this scheme,
the definition of the Negeb carried with it partial dispossession of the rights of the regions inhabitants.
78
CO 733/404/16, Minute by Luke from 30/9/39.
CO 733/404/15
80 CO 733/404/15, ‘The Negeb,’ unsigned and undated report, which seems to have been written by Zissu and Gwyer, p.1.
79
24
Map: The Negeb of the “Negeb Scheme”81
The advocates of the Negeb Scheme counted some success as can be seen in the recommendation
of the Woodhead Commission. From the heaps of letters received, it seems that “Zissu was the last
witness they (the Commission) called in September 1938, and the scheme they recommend in paragraph
255 is word for word what he put before them.”82 Paragraph 255 reads,
“The Unoccupied area (of the Negeb) has no settled inhabitants, though occasionally a few
wandering Bedouin pass over it. It is desert, and desert it is likely to remain, unless Jewish
enterprise and capital can develop it. This area, or any part of it which the Government are
satisfied that the Jews have a serious intention of developing, would be declared by the
Government to be public domain.”83
According to the Commission the land would be leased to a Jewish company for free, except for
taxes and royalties, and any Government expenditure, including “payment of compensation for ownership
or occupancy rights in the area covered by the lease.”84 The Commission did not deal with defining the
Negeb, and thus took the Beersheba sub-district’s boundaries as the Negeb, and divided it into “occupied”
and “unoccupied” areas. By addressing only the “unoccupied area,” the Commission shared some similar
CO 733/404/15, ‘Notes on the Negeb,’ report attached to a letter by Zissu dated 10th January 1939.
CO 733/404/15, letter from Sir Henry Lawrence to Lord Halifax on Feb. 13 1939. Note that the Woodhead Commission was
appointed in February 1938.
83 Paragraph 255 to the Woodhead Report
84 Paragraph 255 to the Woodhead Report
81
82
25
concerns to those of the Negeb Scheme supporters, by excluding the vast majority of the population.
Nevertheless, the “unoccupied area” of the Commission was smaller than the “Negeb” of the Scheme (see
map), and obviously was not an empty space but hosted few thousand Bedouin Arabs. The map includes
the boundaries of the Beersheba sub-district (Blue solid line in the map), and its division into ‘occupied’
and ‘unoccupied’ (gray dash-line), and Negeb according to the Scheme (red dash-line).85
Map: Beersheba sub-district/Negeb- Occupied and Unoccupied areas
Unlike the Negeb Scheme supporters, the Zionist movement and the Jewish Agency had a
different understanding of what constituted the Negeb and had more interest in the fertile lands of
southern Palestine. Chaim Weizmann, head of the Zionist Organization, raised the issue of developing the
Beersheba area at a private dinner with MacDonald in October 1935, after which the latter asked
Weizmann to send a written proposal on the matter. Weizmann did send a letter and attached a
memorandum, opening as follows:
“A. The Negev: The Beersheba sub-district which comprises the area known as the Negev
extends over an area of 11,872 square kilometres. According to the 1931 Census, the population
85
CO 733/404/15, Memo by Luke on the Negeb, June 1939.
26
of the area totaled 51,082… [T]his population consists for the most part of nomadic and seminomadic Bedouin, who derive a bare existence on the small and very variable rainfall. Left to
itself, the prospects of this region appear to be hopeless.”86
The memorandum87 stressed the need for an “investigation of major character” in the Negev as to
water and development potentialities, emphasizing that it should be carried out by the “Jewish colonising
bodies with the active support of the Government.” More particularly on land allocation, the
memorandum requested that the following lands should be put at the disposal of the Jewish Agency:
approximately 400,000 dunams in the neighborhood of Kurnub; between 200,000-300,000 dunams in the
southern portion of the Wadi Araba, and a third land plot either between Beersheba and Auja or between
Beersheba and Gaza. Then, it requested that the government commence land title settlement and
“establish the nature and extent of existing rights in the areas… arriving at a satisfactory arrangement
with the Bedouin at present wandering over or cultivating them.”88
Only two days prior to Weizmann’s letter to MacDonald (13 October 1935), Ben-Gurion was in
London and met with the Development Officer. Ben-Gurion stressed that the JA “was anxious to develop
certain areas in the Beersheba Sub-district,” for which he requested 1,390,000 dunams. Ben-Gurion
further claimed that “the Arabs had no title to the land and that it really fell in the category of 'Mawat'
(dead) land.”89 Although Ben-Gurion’s position on the mawat question was not mentioned in the JA
memorandum, it deserves further comment, since this is exactly the current position of the Israeli
Government and judiciary to lands claimed by the Bedouin-Arabs in the Beersheba region.
Mawat land was defined under article 6 of the 1858 Ottoman Land Code as “land which is
occupied by no one, and has not been left for the use of the public. It is such as lies at such a distance
from a village or town from which a loud human voice cannot make itself heard at the nearest point where
there are inhabited places, that is a mile and a half, or about half an hour's distance from such.” 90 More
importantly, according to article 103, anyone who had “revived” dead land and cultivated it could acquire
a title deed to it, even if he has done so without a permit from the authorities, in which case he would
have to pay the value of the land before its revival. When revived, mawat land becomes miri, a cultivable
86
CO 733/345/11, p.1
In April 1937, the JA attached the same memorandum to a letter that it had sent to the Royal Commission. In the letter, the JA
stated that “we feel that the time has come when some action might well be taken, rather than as a ground for complaint.” CO
733/345/11, Palestine Royal Commission, Beersheba-Land, 1937. Letter dated, 1st, April, 1937. David Ben-Gurion had also
pressed the issue in a lunch that he had with the Secretary of the Peel Commission, Mr. Martin. CO 733/345/11, 12 March 1937.
88 CO 733/345/11, p.3.
89 CO 733/345/11, Memorandum on points arising out of the submissions of the executive of the Jewish Agency to the Royal
Commission to the effect that Government should facilitate Jewish settlement in and development on the Beersheba area.
12/3/1937.
90 R. C. Tute, The Ottoman Land Laws with a Commentary on the Ottoman Land Code of 7th Ramadan 1274 (Jerusalem: Greek
Convent Press, 1927), p. 97, available through the LLMC digital law library online at www.llmc-digital.org (accessed 1 May
2011).
87
27
land that the formal title of which is in the treasury hands, yet the land-holder holds tassaruf (usufruct)
rights: almost full rights to the use (cultivation), mortgage, transfer, and inheritance of the land. The
Ottoman law, as was decided by the British, remained in force unless changed or amended. In 1921, the
British enacted an ordinance amending the Ottoman law by requiring prior approval to revive mawat
lands, and gave a two-month window to those claiming rights in mawat lands to register them. The
current Israeli position considers lands claimed by the Bedouin as mawat lands since they lie at a greater
distance from towns or villages, and since the Bedouin failed to register those lands in 1921. Such
position is supported by claiming that the Bedouin were nomads with no particular connection to the land
and were not agriculturalist, propositions which this chapter suggests are patently false.91
The British realized that there were a variety of land rights that needed to be defined in the
Beersheba sub-district, which included both grazing and cultivation rights, however they never settled
land title in the Beersheba sub-district. In the meeting with Sir MP Sanderson in July 1939, MacDonald
made the point that should the Negeb Scheme “appear feasible, the grazing rights of Bedouin Arabs
would have to be safeguarded.”92 Further, to the request of the JA on land grants in the Negeb, the British
Government responded that the 1,640,000 cultivable dunams in the sub-district were regarded “as
belonging to the Beduin tribes by virtue of possession from time immemorial: but the Government may
be able… to claim certain areas as 'Mewat' or waste land.”93
In the Colonial Office they were aware that the Zionists and the Jewish Agency had a different
understanding of what constituted the Negeb, at times exceeding even the boundaries of the Beersheba
sub-district, as was noted in a British memorandum:
It is, however, usually found that, when Jews refer to the Negeb, they are speaking not of the
Beersheba sub-district but rather of the heavily populated coastal plain of the Gaza sub-district
south of Isdud, the only portion of the coastal plain which they have not already acquired large
holdings. The position of their recently founded settlement, “Negba”, which is shown on the map,
supports this interpretation.94
Thus, there emerged different understandings of what constituted the “Negeb.” The same issue
arose again more forcefully in the early 1940s before the War Cabinet Committee. This Committee was
established by the War Office in 1943 and was instructed to consider the Palestine long-term policy
including the partition question, and to “take into consideration the possibilities of development in the
91
On mawat see Amara and Miller, unsettling settlement in Amara et. al., indigenous injustice, Harvard.
CO 733/404/15. Minute by Mr. Downie in 10 July 1939
93 CO 733/345/11, Memorandum on points arising out of the submissions of the executive of the Jewish Agency.., p.3. See also,
CO 733/345/11.
94 CO 537/2311, Harris memo, 1947, para 15.
92
28
Negeb.”95 During its deliberations the Committee relied on a number of reports, memoranda, press
articles, and information from other sources, in order to define the Negeb boundaries, all of which are
available in the archival files. These documents shed important light on the nature of Southern Palestine,
as well as on British perception of the region and its population. In the file, there were two important
memoranda on the Negeb (from 1943 and 1947) authored by Sir Douglas Harris, a commissioner charged
with studying the reconstruction and development of Palestine after World War II. 96 Since the
international borders with Egypt and Transjordan were long defined by the 1940s, it is the northern
boundary that remained the challenge in defining the “Negeb.” At the beginning and for a matter of
convenience, the Committee adopted the boundaries of the Beersheba sub-district (12,576 square kms) to
correspond with the boundaries of the Negeb. In his 1943 memorandum on the Negeb, Harris divided the
Negeb –the Beersheba sub-district- into three zones.
Map: The Negeb 1943, Harris Memorandum.
Harris’s map relied mainly on climatic and geographic conditions provided in George Kirk’s
article The Negev, or the Southern Desret of Palestine, in the Palestine Exploration Fund Quarterly
95
File CO 537/2311 The Negeb: Irrigation and Settlement in Southern Palestine (Negeb)- with a sticker note on the file, reading:
“Most Secret-Special care should be taken to maintain the secrecy of the documents on this file. They should be locked in a steel
press overnight and circulated by hand at all times.” (underlined in original)
96 CO 537/2311, the reply itself is not in file, however the memorandum was attached to a Minute of the Committee dated 7
August 1943.
29
(1941).97 According to Harris, citing extensively from Kirk, the hills in Zone 1 “present a bare, pale
aspect, such as one might expect to find in the Moon.” He added that the region was almost rainless, has
no agriculture, and the scanty scrub provides winter pasture for the camels and goats of a “few poor small
tribes.” Its population is “reduced to the absolute minimum.” Zone 2 has “retained a greater depth of soil.
The greater rainfall on this side of the watershed permits pasture on a larger scale, and some agriculture in
the wadis.” As for Zone 3, Harris wrote, “The peneplain of the north-west… is a region of combined
agriculture and pasture.... A block of shifting sand dune covers a part of this comparatively fertile zone.”98
In light of the political unrest in Palestine, the Committee was more concerned with the political
implications of any partition or policy recommendations concerning Palestine. Thus, it was concerned
with the Arab population and their land rights in the Negeb, alongside the climatic, geographic and water
conditions. As it appeared in the Committee’s interim report, Bedouin cultivation and cultivable land was
the driving parameter for drawing the Negeb boundary for the Committee, and they decided to have the
northern boundary coincide with the southern edge of what they called “the Beduin barley lands.”99 The
Negeb was defined in the report as “the triangle of land which extends from the southern edge of the
Beduin barley lands in the north-west of the Beersheba Sub-District to the Aqaba on the gulf bearing that
name.”100 However, since at the time when the Committee was sitting, “no map was available which
showed the limits of the barley lands… the boundary was provisionally assumed to be the same as that
between Zones 2 and 3” in Harris’s 1943 memorandum map. Thus, zones 1 and 2 constituted the Negeb
for the Committee.
Lacking the necessary statistics during its work, the Committee addressed the Palestine
Government with a list of questions concerning the Negeb, including information on the limits of the
barley land. In response, the Palestine Government conducted a “special examination on the ground” to
determine the southern edge of the barley lands, which seemed to have been conducted by Harris.101 To
its answer, the Government of Palestine attached a map which included the Committee’s provisionally
adopted boundary (in black) and the new proposed revisions (in red) to serve as the northern boundary to
the Negeb, based on its findings (see map).
George Kirk’s article The Negev, or the Southern Desret of Palestine, in the Palestine Exploration Fund Quarterly (1941),
pp.57-71.
98 CO 537/2311, Harris, 1943 memo p. 1, 2.
99 CO 537/2311, Extracts and summary of the Palestine’s Government reply to a Questionnaire of the Secretary of State- answer
to Question 1 on the northern boundary of the Negeb- boundary adjustment. The map was attached to the reply. Summary
conducted and signed on 2.6.44; See also, Addendum to Question 1: “Determination of the Northern Boundary of the Negeb.”
100 CO 537/2311, para.20 to its report.
101 Co 537/2311, Extracts and summary of the Palestine’s Government reply to a Questionnaire of the Secretary of State- answer
to Question 1 on the northern boundary of the Negeb- boundary adjustment. The map was attached to the reply. Summary
conducted and signed on 2.6.44; See also, Addendum to Question 1: “Determination of the Northern Boundary of the Negeb.”
97
30
Map: Addendum to Question A: Determination of the Northern Boundary of the Negeb (25/3/1944)102
The map suggested further inclusion into the Negeb on the western end of a “large slice of
desert,"103 whereas it suggested exclusion from the Negeb a portion of land “in the center, north-east of
Asluj” where “the barley lands were found to extend further south than had previously been supposed.”104
The north-east corner where the line drops south alongside the Dead Sea area, the amendment aimed to
excluding the Palestine Potash Company from the Negeb.105 These boundaries appear in the Committee’s
proposed Palestine’s partition scheme, in which the Negeb covers an area of 3,780 sq. miles (9,676 sq.
km.) (see upper left corner of Map V).106
102
Co 537/2311,
This slice of the “desert,” seems to correspond with the “sand dunes” in Kirk’s map of his article in the PEF Quarterly.
104 Co 537/2311
105 Co 537/2311, Extracts and summary of the Palestine’s Government.
106 Co 537/2311, para.62.
103
31
Map V: Appendix to the War Cabinet Committee’s 2nd Report (16.10.1944)107
Thus, making the Negeb involved the blending of climatological data with the extent of the
cultivation of Bedouin barley. It is the Bedouin barley lands which was the main point of reference to
determine the northen boundary and the Negeb limits. In his 1943 memorandum, Harris ruled out Zones 1
and 2 (the Committee’s Negeb) from possible future development based on the climatic and soil
conditions. In examining Zone 3's potential, Harris estimated the Bedouin Arab population at 80,000,
representing some 16,000 families, cultivating all 400,000 acres of the cultivable land in the Zone.”108
Again in his 1947 memorandum, Harris stated that,
“every acre that can be economically sown is already cultivated by its present Beduin owners.
These Beduin are keen farmers and very much alive to the possibility of improving their
agricultural methods. Tractor ploughing has made considerable strides within recent years and an
increasing area is being planted each year with fruit trees.”109
Harris’s word stand in stark contrast to the repeated description of the region as empty and untended,
characterizations of today whose roots stretch to the 1930s. The “Negev Paradigm,” in fact, treats Zones
1, 2, and 3 in Harris’s map with no sensitive distinctions, taking all three zones as one unit, the “Negev,”
despite the stark differences and the various definitions of it, which had mostly excluded Zone 3.
107
CO 733/2311.
CO 537/2311, Harris, 1943 memo p.2.
109 CO 537/2311, Harris memo, 1947, para 10.
108
32
It was at this time that the Zionist movement revived the biblical ‘Negev’ term, politicized it and
expanded its geographic reach to include the rich soil of southern Palestine. With this revival, also began
the discursive construction around the “Negev.” Despite some partial recognition of the Bedouin land
rights and cultivation, it was the desert nature, emptiness, and hopelessness of the region that was
emphasized, which could be redeemed only by Jewish hands and capital. On the other hand, we see a
variety of references and descriptions to the population and its lifestyle. The vast majority was referred to
as settled agriculturists who cultivated the ‘Bedouin barley lands’ and were to be left out of what would
become the ‘Negeb.’ Approximately 5,000 semi-nomadic lived in the farther south (Zone 2) and another
1,000 nomadic bedouin in the most-southern region (Zone 1). Without examining the validity of such
determination and statistics, it is rather interesting to see how the “nomadism” issue was not totalized and
simplified to all ‘Negev Bedouin.’ Finally, the excess barley growing and the intensive agricultural
activity of the population were remarkable and constituted the economic backbone to the region, and were
the main concern of the British. As a result, the various definitions to the Negeb were driven by political
ideological motives and considerations and produced different boundaries (between 9-13 million dunam).
Today’s treatment and assumptions in the “Negev/Naqab Bedouin studies” does a reverse work by
including those populations and lands that were intended to be left out, back within the ‘Negev.’
III.
Conclusion:
On October 15th 1948, the British were still studying the potentialities of the Negeb for
determining its future. The Foreign Office Research Department prepared a ‘Note on the Possibility of
Development in the Negeb,’ which was prepared for Mr. Beeley, who was in Paris, and the note was
needed for the ‘forthcoming discussions on Palestine.’110 Just the day after, October 16th, 1948, the Zionist
military forces were starting their Yoav Campaign to occupy southern Palestine, which its parts south of
Beersheba were assigned for the future Jewish State in the 1947 United Nations Partition Plan. In the end,
despite the long political debate on defining the “Negeb/Negev” and the dozens of maps prepared for this
purpose, it was the force of arms that determined the Negeb destiny and boundaries.
Since the creation of Israel, the term “Negev” became the exclusive term used instead of “Negeb”
or the Bir al-Sabia’ or Gaza region, thus corresponding with the Zionist naming of the region. Hasan abu
Sammur has warned against this naming. He notes that the Israelis try to use only the term “Negev” and
that is to erase the original names, Bir al-Sabia’ and the Palestine Desert.111 Further, “Negev” is now used
to refer to an area of more than 12 million dunams, which encompasses all the heavily cultivated and
FO 371/68700, Palestine- ‘Note on the Possibility of Development in Palestine with Particular Reference to Irrigation in the
Negeb’ (prepared, October 14th 1948)
111 The Story of Beersheba (in Arabic)- Hasan Abu Sammur, the Arab cultural Association- Culture section of the PLO, (no year
mentioned), (in Arabic), p.11.
110
33
inhabited area around Beersheba, which the British and the Negeb Scheme supporters excluded from their
Negeb’ definitions. The Zionist political discourse on southern Palestine as a waste-desert land occupied
by nomads, led to its treatment in scholarship as an isolated arid Bedouin tribal area. Such treatment
further parallels the current Israeli legal position on the Bedouin lands as mawat dead lands.
Nevertheless, and despite the gap in the extent or nature of land rights, both the British and the
Jewish Agency assumed in their debates the existence of Bedouin land rights and saw the need for a land
survey to determine them. Cultivation and individual land rights registration, as well as other
socioeconomic practices in the region were very complex and had integrated, in various degrees, with the
state law and institutions. The integration of the custom and local knowledge with state law and
institutions deserves further investigation, and pose a challenge to the Negev paradigm, and to the Israeli
sweeping denial of Bedouin land ownership. Further, individual ownership and cultivation negates the
abstract all-encompassing qualifications such as “tribal areas” and “nomadism.”
Further, it is important to note that even the more critical scholarship that rejected the Israeli claims of
Bedouin nomadism and lack of land registration, has its own shortfalls. First, it has also treated southern
Palestine in an exceptional and totalizing approach overstating the autonomy of southern Palestine as an
“exceptional” region, as being outside the state space. Further, the current use of the term “Naqab” by
some scholars to counter the Hebrew-used term “Negev,” does not only miss the point that the region is a
relatively recent-invention and was constructed within a particular political process which offered a
number of definitions, but that historically the region was not referred to as the “Naqab.” The fact that
Palestinian refugees of southern Palestine in Jordan, identify themselves as Saba’awiyun or Bir Al-sabi’
people/tribes, and not Naqabawiyun as those remaining in Israel, is a very good example of naming and
identity within and outside the direct matrix of Israeli-Zionist-Palestinian matrix of power relations and
geographic reconstruction. Additionally, it is mostly the area that we may call the Bir al-Sabia’ region
together with its Tayaha, Tarabin, Hanajrih, Jbarat, and part of the Azazma inhabitants that is mostly
studied, and not the entire ‘Negev.’ We still lack much of the knowledge about the less-known tribal
confederation of the Ahewat and Saidiyeen and their habitation in the farther southern parts of southern
Palestine.112
In sum, this chapter tried within the broader context of governance incorporation of a frontier and
periphery region, to demonstrate spatial transformation at two levels. The first is on the broader level of
political-geographic construction of a spatial unit, and the second is on the implications of the use of this
spatial unit in scholarship. The reform and spatial formation demonstrated the complex landed property
112
They were even excluded at the time in the famous study of Arif Alarif.
34
relations, and how the legal and administrative reforms were constantly reconfigured within an
interactional form against the local communities and broader socio-political factors. Though we did not
discuss the Israeli period in depth, we can state that the process of incorporation continues until the
present in Israel. The imposition of Israeli state law and dominance occurred in several arenas which
included new legislation and re-interpretation of imperial and colonial legislation. Further, coercion and
violence was a constant form attached to this imposition.
As was shown, the different ideological motives and political considerations of the concerned
parties impacted the attempt to define the Negeb. Accordingly, there is a need to deconstruct the
geographic unit of the “Negev,” and instead, a more dynamic, regional, and nuanced approach should be
utilized to study southern Palestine, with fresh scholarly approach to reading the various social, economic,
political, and legal networks. The social and legal relationships in Beersheba crossed a number of social
and geographic boundaries, within a broader economic-political framework, that deserves better
understanding than what has been offered thus far.
35