Rahat, Israel
Bedouin communities make up a large portion of the
population of Israel. Traditionally, these communities live off the grid and
live simple lives of herding and small-scale agriculture. They would slaughter
their sheep, use every piece of the body for food, reuse, or compost for their
crops and all of their food waste either went to their animals or into the
compost pile for reuse on the fields.
This was before the State decided their way of life needed governmental support. The State, while acting in a selfish manner to control the nomadic groups for population control purposes, began Bedouin development settlements all over the country to “improve the lives of the Bedouin people.” The nomadic tribes were sent to live in Bedouin 'cities' with plumbing, supermarkets, government subsidies, etc. I got a chance to visit the biggest one, Rahat, about a month ago. While the people do have services that we, non-nomadic people, would consider essential (laundry, public transportation, etc.) their livelihoods have been compromised.
The streets are filled with garbage from food packaging and non-essential commodities that would have never been found previously on a Bedouin encampment. The people are being forced to live in close quarters with a little less than half a million other Bedouins, not all from their original tribes. What used to be a free lifestyle, with communities of people working to help each other surviving on their own terms, has been turned into a machine-like system of people thrown into a “traditional” lifestyle of consumerism, confinement, and trash.
Since the government is now subsidizing the food provided to the Bedouins (most often packaged food) they are consuming more processed food and have moved more and more away from their sustainable lifestyle of herding and farming. These subsidies also leak into those marginalized groups that have yet to be condemned to “developments” in the country, and trash is now ravaging the countryside. Additionally, this rubbish is affecting the health of the Bedouins both directly from consumption, and indirectly from bad disposal.
Since there is no public garbage system that extends to the Bedouin encampments, the trash must be burned. There is now, more than ever, higher instances of hypertension and other heart and respiratory diseases in Bedouin female populations since the women are those most often delegated with the job of burning the trash of the community. Therefore, I would not consider development a positive in this instance.
Yes, there are more people in public sector jobs who live under the hand of the government, but the people that have been moved into these developmental cities are now in a worse state than they were before. While the government sees this as 'progress', it is actually a step backward for the lives of the Bedouin people. This is hard to see in the big picture, but visiting a newly developed Bedouin 'city' and learning about the risks faced by these large communities, it becomes apparent that development is not always beneficial to all.
This was before the State decided their way of life needed governmental support. The State, while acting in a selfish manner to control the nomadic groups for population control purposes, began Bedouin development settlements all over the country to “improve the lives of the Bedouin people.” The nomadic tribes were sent to live in Bedouin 'cities' with plumbing, supermarkets, government subsidies, etc. I got a chance to visit the biggest one, Rahat, about a month ago. While the people do have services that we, non-nomadic people, would consider essential (laundry, public transportation, etc.) their livelihoods have been compromised.
The streets are filled with garbage from food packaging and non-essential commodities that would have never been found previously on a Bedouin encampment. The people are being forced to live in close quarters with a little less than half a million other Bedouins, not all from their original tribes. What used to be a free lifestyle, with communities of people working to help each other surviving on their own terms, has been turned into a machine-like system of people thrown into a “traditional” lifestyle of consumerism, confinement, and trash.
Since the government is now subsidizing the food provided to the Bedouins (most often packaged food) they are consuming more processed food and have moved more and more away from their sustainable lifestyle of herding and farming. These subsidies also leak into those marginalized groups that have yet to be condemned to “developments” in the country, and trash is now ravaging the countryside. Additionally, this rubbish is affecting the health of the Bedouins both directly from consumption, and indirectly from bad disposal.
Since there is no public garbage system that extends to the Bedouin encampments, the trash must be burned. There is now, more than ever, higher instances of hypertension and other heart and respiratory diseases in Bedouin female populations since the women are those most often delegated with the job of burning the trash of the community. Therefore, I would not consider development a positive in this instance.
Yes, there are more people in public sector jobs who live under the hand of the government, but the people that have been moved into these developmental cities are now in a worse state than they were before. While the government sees this as 'progress', it is actually a step backward for the lives of the Bedouin people. This is hard to see in the big picture, but visiting a newly developed Bedouin 'city' and learning about the risks faced by these large communities, it becomes apparent that development is not always beneficial to all.
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