The Arab Bedouins community in Israel , are inhabitants of the Naqab (Negev) desert since the seventh century. With the founding of Israel in 1948 they became a citizens of the new state. Nevertheless, Over the last 60 years the indigenous Arab Bedouin have faced a state policy of displacement, home demolitions and dispossession of their ancestral land.
Today, 70,000 Arab Bedouin citizens live in 35 villages. The State of Israel considers the villages “unrecognized” and the inhabitants “trespassers on State land.” Due to it, they denied access to state infrastructure like water, electricity, sewage, education, health care and roads.
On 24 June 2013, the Israeli Knesset approved the Prawer-Begin Bill, for the mass expulsion of the Arab Bedouin community in the Naqab (Negev) desert in the south of Israel. If fully implemented, the Prawer-Begin Plan will result in the destruction of 35 "unrecognized" Arab Bedouin villages, the forced displacement of up to 70,000 Arab Bedouin citizens of Israel, and the dispossession of their historical lands in the Naqab.
This is project is a journey between this villages. The Unrecognized. A journey in a landscape and life that might change completely soon, for the transparent people we met on the way. And for us.
This photo series is a part of a project about the Bedouins community in Israel, by the Activestills collective.
