
Even before October 7, Wahid al-Huzail was an activist in his Bedouin community. His projects included a program for accompanying and rehabilitating prisoners after their release from prison, a Big Brother project for soldiers after their discharge from the IDF, and lectures sharing the stories of the Bedouin community and its relationship to Israeli society. But since October 7, when 21 Bedouins were killed and seven were taken hostage, his activism has taken on a new urgency.
Like many of Israel’s 200,000 or so Bedouins, al-Huzail had volunteered to serve in the Israeli military, eventually earning the rank of lieutenant colonel. That experience in the military made it all the more shocking for al-Huzail when the events of October 7 unfolded.
Al-Huzail recalled watching the now infamous video of Hamas fighters in a white pickup truck driving through southern Israel. “I couldn’t believe it,” he said. “I know the army. I couldn’t believe such a thing was happening.”
The events shocked al-Huzail, but they didn’t surprise him. Just two and a half months before, he had spoken with the commander of the military’s Bedouin battalion about the possibility of a terrorist incursion into Israel. Despite the security fences and cameras, both he and the commander felt uncertain.
In the late morning of October 7, al-Huzail and his brother began receiving phone calls from other Bedouins unsure about the fate of their loved ones.
“My brother, a reserve lieutenant colonel in the Home Front Command, said to me, ‘The event is large; let’s open a situation room and start coordinating and working together,’” al-Huzail said. “I posted my phone number on Facebook and offered help in locating family members in the area. Then I started receiving a flood of calls from all kinds of people”
At first, they thought the calls would trail off after two or three days. But when the calls kept coming, al-Huzail got in touch with lawmaker Waleed Alhwashla from the United Arab List and officially established the Bedouin civilian situation room.
“Very quickly, the Bedouin community began to organize,” he said. “This is one of the amazing things that happened here.”
The purpose of the situation room is to aggregate all the different Bedouin organizations working to support the community.
In the first 21 days after the October 7 attack, the government did not exist, al-Huzail said. “Then we citizens rose, and each took on a mission and did it,” he said.
The missions taken on by the situation room were diverse.
Days after the attack, one Bedouin family was contacted by their missing son, who said he was hiding inside a pipe. The family gave that information to their local council, who got in touch with al-Huzail. Al-Huzail then got in touch with his nephew in the army, who contact senior tracker Col. Abu Sul. (Bedouin are known for their skill as trackers, and the Bedouin military battalion is devoted to tracking missions.)
“They reached the location and found the boy alive,” al-Huzail said. “What would have happened if we hadn't managed to reach him?”
Other Bedouins were unable to reach the military’s Shura camp, where the remains of victims were collected. The situation room got them there.
In other instances, the situation room connected the military with potential families of unidentified victims.

Dealing with those classified not as killed or kidnapped but “missing” was especially difficult, al-Huzail said. He recounted speaking to the family of Amer Abu Sabila, who was killed while protecting two young girls in Sderot.
“At first we knew he was killed, but they didn’t know where the body was, so we defined him as missing,” al-Huzail said. “The family was constantly being given hope that he was alive. We know he is dead.”
Eventually, representatives from the civilian situation room, run by Brothers and Sisters in Arms, called and said that they wanted to tell the Abu Sabila family that Amer was dead.
Al-Huzail realized that people from the civilian situation room had been afraid to get in touch with families of victims. He sat down with three women from the organization for six hours, mapping out the different Bedouin families that were affected by the attacks.
The organization got a boost after Rotem Shwartz of the Joint saw al-Huzail on television and got in touch. Representatives from the Resilience Center, the Ministry of Education, and the Economic Development Division also gave their support.
One of the most meaningful moments from the past year was meeting Qaid Farhan Al-Qadi, a Bedouin hostage who was rescued by the Israeli military on August 27. When al-Huzail’s brother went to meet the family, Qaid asked for him to come too. The fact that he requested to meet with him gave him strength to continue in the mission, al-Huzail said.

For al-Huzail, the meaning of October 7 is about building a new future, shared among Israel’s Arabs and Jews.
“You have to act because you have a task to do, to care for families, to support families, to do what you need to do for people, for living people,” al-Huzail said. “Unfortunately, in our country, we deal more with the dead than with the living. I believe the story is about life. The dead are a symbol; they give strength, but the focus should be on life. If we know how to deal with life, we can create a different society.”
Tragically, the horrors of October 7 shed light on the shared fate of all Israels. “The rockets didn’t spare any of us,” al-Huzail said. “We saw the mayor of Arad opening the shelters for the Bedouin community, and this needs to be stated as clearly as possible. He didn’t ask anyone, he didn’t say ‘them’ and ‘us.’ Our lives are shared, and if we don’t know how to appreciate that, we are in serious trouble.”
Israel has the opportunity to significantly increase the integration of the Arab sector into society, al-Huzail said.
“There is an amazing opportunity here to take the Arab society and recruit it for national service, to help youth, to help people, to address difficulties within the state of Israel, and there was an opportunity here to see how Arab society integrates,” he said. “The people on the ground are really doing everything to prevent destruction. But unfortunately, a minister came with a destructive agenda that harms the social fabric. There is a problem. We need to do everything to treat society properly, but you cannot do that without providing solutions.”
He was clear in noting that criticism of the Israeli state does not entail lack of identification with the Israeli people. “Arab society knows how to separate between the government and the Jewish citizen,” he said. “I sat with a person who has a lot of criticism of the state, and when we talked about his Jewish friends, I saw the inner pain he was expressing about his Jewish friend, about the Jewish family in Be’eri, in Sufa, in Nir Yitzhak. In the end, Jews and Arabs were killed here.”
Right now, he said, Israel has politicians but lacks leaders. “We have returned to the state we were in before October 7; we are not together,” al-Huzail said. “There is erosion within the state from within, and no one sees it. It’s frightening. I think we have a beautiful country that needs leadership, not politicians.”
Running the situation room has changed the way he’s perceived in the Bedouin community, al-Huzail said. He had been seen as a military man, and the community now recognized him as someone who cares.
“When I get home, I represent the army. When I am with the Jewish community, I represent the Bedouin community,” al-Huzail said. “You are an ambassador of both peoples against your will. The skill is to do this without being a poser. How do you become the ambassador that everyone wants to receive and appreciate what you are doing?”
His work sometimes brings him to the point of breakdown, al-Huzail said. He’s learned how to manage that. “I have half an hour to an hour before going to sleep, my daily summary, where I break down and wake up in the morning with new strength,” he said. “Half an hour before I go to sleep, I stop and think about what I did, what happened, and what should be. It’s heartbreaking, but you need to know how to do it right. And if I need to cry, I cry.”

Recently, al-Huzail has been working on commemorating Samer Talalka, the Bedouin hostage mistakenly killed by the Israeli military in December. “I raised $100,000 and established two digital classrooms in his name,” al-Huzail said. “My goal is to introduce the digital classroom into Bedouin society. I recruited Samer’s mother, who is a teacher.”
Another recent project involves dialogue between Jews and Arabs in Israel. “Many people are engaged in this, but I think it is important at this time to have meetings between people and talk about the issues,” he said. “Learning Hebrew is for the long term. At this moment, I think we need to focus more on dialogue, talking, and listening to each other, disagreeing—it’s okay to disagree.”