Bedouin nomads under threat in Holy Land
Thanks to drought and increasing Israeli security restrictions on where they can wander, their nomadic lifestyle, which predates the birth of Christ, is likely to die out within a generation.
Lack of rainfall over the past three years, thought by some to be due to climate change, is gradually rendering many already sparse grazing lands unusable for their flocks of goats and sheep. At the same time, the steady growth of Jewish towns and settlements in the Israeli Negev desert and the West Bank has left the 280,000 Bedouin of the region with ever fewer options for moving to better pastures, their traditional way of surviving when times are hard.
"This is the worst dry year for the Bedouin," declared Suleiman al-Hathalin, standing among the ramshackle collection of tin shacks and tents that mark his family's land at Khirbet Umm al-Khair, an unrecognised Bedouin village in the West Bank hills south of Hebron. "My father and my uncle had the chance to live a true Bedouin life. But I am being deprived of this and now so are my children. The life of the Bedouin, the freedom of movement – it's finished."
At present, most Bedouin tribes are still stubbornly clinging on, spending what little money they have on artificial feed for their animals rather than succumbing to government pressure to resettle into towns with running water and electricity.
However, the International Committee of the Red Cross warns that a way of life that has survived wars, occupations, famines and calamities stretching back to Biblical times may be finally coming to end.
Read entire article at Telegraph
Lack of rainfall over the past three years, thought by some to be due to climate change, is gradually rendering many already sparse grazing lands unusable for their flocks of goats and sheep. At the same time, the steady growth of Jewish towns and settlements in the Israeli Negev desert and the West Bank has left the 280,000 Bedouin of the region with ever fewer options for moving to better pastures, their traditional way of surviving when times are hard.
"This is the worst dry year for the Bedouin," declared Suleiman al-Hathalin, standing among the ramshackle collection of tin shacks and tents that mark his family's land at Khirbet Umm al-Khair, an unrecognised Bedouin village in the West Bank hills south of Hebron. "My father and my uncle had the chance to live a true Bedouin life. But I am being deprived of this and now so are my children. The life of the Bedouin, the freedom of movement – it's finished."
At present, most Bedouin tribes are still stubbornly clinging on, spending what little money they have on artificial feed for their animals rather than succumbing to government pressure to resettle into towns with running water and electricity.
However, the International Committee of the Red Cross warns that a way of life that has survived wars, occupations, famines and calamities stretching back to Biblical times may be finally coming to end.