In the small city of Arad near the northern tip of Israel’s Negev desert, the significant majority of the 28,000 residents are Jews. But less than 10 miles away from Arad lies the unrecognized Bedouin town of Tel Arad, along with numerous other Bedouin villages in the area. While some residents of Arad choose to ignore their Bedouin neighbors, many of whom live in substandard conditions and in constant threat of having their homes demolished by the state, one group of women from Arad has chosen to pursue partnership.
For the past several years, Batya Roded of Arad has been operating a group called Good Neighbors meant to develop relationships between residents of Arad and residents of unrecognized Bedouin villages in the area. The group aims to use those partnerships to fight to improve the conditions in those Bedouin villages.
Her work was inspired by conversations with Yael Agmon of the Negev town of Yeruham, who took part in the campaign for Israel to recognize Rahma, another Bedouin village, and with Ezry Keydar of Mitzpe Ramon, an activist with residents from the Bedouin village of Wadi Aricha. Together, Roded said, the three thought “also about action, but mostly about human relationships.”
Roded emphasized that the group is not a formal organization but rather a women’s collective. Back in 2011, she and a group of women started the Community for Intercultural Sharing in Arad, a group devoted to improving relations between the city’s different populations, which include Ashkenazi Jews, Mizrahi Jews, Black Hebrew Israelites, and a small Bedouin community. “We operated for seven years,” Roded said. “The situation in the city improved and we felt that we did all we could.”
When that project finished, Roded and her friends decided to start working in Tel Arad, the closest Bedouin village to Arad. Together with Tel Arad residents, they started a cycling club and a youth basketball club and ran courses in proper nutrition, CPR, and Hebrew.
Roded also established a women’s group for Jewish and Bedouin women in the area. The group, run by three women from Arad and three from Tel Arad, meets once every month or so, mostly for trips in the area to get to know the region better.
“When someone is knowledgeable about their surroundings, when they have connections with people, with teachers, with principals, that creates a network of connections for them and they accumulate knowledge,” she explained.
What makes Good Neighbors unique is the insistence on working in partnership, rather than through a top-down model. “We don’t judge them, and we don’t try to change them,” Roded said of the Bedouins she works with. “There are many problems in the villages. We meet with them at eye level and try to develop friendships.”
Although the group has been successful at building relationships between Bedouin and Jewish women, many challenges stand in the way of the group’s ultimate goals.
During one conversation with women from the local villages, Roded learned that children from the unrecognized villages of Um Al Badun and Bakiya were not able to attend preschool, since the closest preschool in the village of Al-Furaa was a 40 minute drive away.
“We wanted to do something, to create activities for kids and to work with the moms,” Roded said. “The problem was that the men weren’t willing for us to meet with the women. A woman doesn’t meet with strangers without her husband. They go everywhere together. We didn’t manage to create a women’s group.”
Another attempt to bring a bookmobile to the villages was quashed by budgetary problems. They ended up managing to bring a volunteer to run activities for the children for a day of fun activities, which Roded described as “rather meager considering their needs.”
Since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, the situation in the unrecognized Bedouin villages has deteriorated, with potentially devastating consequences for the 90,000 or so Bedouins living in these villages (about 45% of the total Bedouin population in Israel). Increasing anti-Arab racism has also had its effect on the community.
Today, the biggest problem facing unrecognized Bedouin villages is government demolitions meant to allow the state to develop infrastructure in southern Israel like highways.
In order to avoid mass dispossession, several groups promoting Bedouin rights have proposed combining many unrecognized villages into a single locality. For now, the plan to evict the residents remains, Roded said.
“The residents are hopeless,” she said. “They don’t know what to do.”
As the war continues, Israel’s rate of Bedouin home demolition has picked up. According to data from Israel’s Real Estate Enforcement Division, the number of Bedouin homes demolished between January and June 2024 increased more than 50% compared to that same period in 2022.
“If a house is demolished in Tel Arad, we go to express our condolences, so they know that someone cares,” Roded said. “It’s not a lot.”
She noted that under the current government, it’s been especially hard to promote any positive change for the Bedouin community. She accused National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir of intentionally provoking the Bedouins.
Despite the war, the racism, and the unfriendly government, Roded refuses to give up the work. “The possibility of a future in the Negev,” she said, “lies only in coexistence.”
This article was translated and edited for context by Leah Schwartz.