The New York Times · New York, New York · 5 November 1961

CP-1961-010

Israel’s Nomads

By LAWRENCE FELLOWS

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Transcribed from the clipping

BEERSHEBA, Israel. ISRAEL is nursing a fond hope that she can somehow persuade the 16,000 Bedouin of the Negev Desert to settle down. Only recently, the Government offered to help build stone houses for these nomadic Arabs in Lydda, Ramle and in other towns of the populated interior.

Two families accepted; the others showed not the faintest sign of folding their black, goat-hair tents. Before Israel became a state there were probably close to 70,000 Bedouin scattered over the Negev, a barren, undulating section of Israel, wedged like an arrowhead between Jordan and Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.

Most fled Israel during her war with the Arab states, or have since been driven into Jordan and Sinai. But for those who stayed, things have remained pretty much the same. A few have bought transistor radios and some have taken to fancy shoes instead of sandals. But the Bedouin, with their flowing robes, are still children of the desert.

They have learned to adapt to the desert, rather than to struggle against it. Rain is sparse, and the soil ungrateful. Forced to wander with their flocks and tents in search of pasture, as they have for centuries, they give little cooperation to the Israeli authorities who have been trying to confine them to a 275,000-acre reservation.

… (Continued from Page 69) in Wadi Shegheb, which is very near Beersheba.” “How long would it take to walk to Beersheba from here?” “About the time to smoke two cigarettes.” The Bedouin measure many things in cigarettes, even the height of the scraggly barley, wheat and durra they plant in the spring and fall.

The men do the plowing, for the plow is pulled by camel and no woman handles this noble animal. Anyway, the women already are burdened with drawing water and almost all other routine labor. DESPITE their wanderings the Bedouin now plant about 10,000 acres.

But when the sowing is done they feel freed from any further obligation to the soil and return happily to their flocks and the unending search for pasture. Packing everything, to the last battered cooking pot, they follow the ancient routes the patriarchs took—southward into Sinai, and northward into Judaea and Samaria, returning, finally, in time for the harvest.

Their social culture is deep and their sense of humor is nothing short of magnificent: a group of Bedouin, having noticed that the small water line into the Negev is extended only in election years, has just petitioned the Government to hold elections every year. While the Bedouin stick as much as they can to their nomadic ways, they have more trouble with each passing year.

For one thing, the Jewish settlements in Judaea and Samaria do not exactly welcome these wanderers to their new fields and orchards. For another, part of old Judaea is now Jordanian territory, and the Israeli authorities are no happier about the traffic into Jordan than they are about the traffic into Sinai.

FLOUR, sugar and kerosene flow out of Israel with the Bedouin, and animals, playing cards, demitasse sets and sundry other items are brought back. Families are split and reunited, wives are bought and sold—and the Government just can’t keep up with it all. The Israeli Army says frankly it is unable to stop the crossings.

However, Israel has not given up its desire to see its Bedouin settled and it is now working on a long-range program to entice them into five or six centers in the Negev where they can be watched more easily. Eventually, water will be drawn, roads laid, schools and clinics built. Those tribesmen wishing to build houses anywhere else will be forbidden to do so.

Perhaps the Bedouin will move their tents closer to the amenities. Perhaps, in time, they will live in houses of stone. The desert has taught them not to struggle against their environment. The Israeli Government is counting on this.

How this transcription was made

Read from the scan by a machine looking at the image of the page, not by optical character recognition and not by a person. The clipping carries no masthead or date line, so its date and newspaper rest on the record it arrived with, not on anything visible in the scan. The other part of this article was added on 2 November 2026 from a second clipping (m002_2.png).

Context added by this archive

Date check: DATE CONFIRMED ON THE PAGE. A folio line at the foot of the clipping reads “NOVEMBER 5, 1961”, which matches the slide-label date of 1961-11-05 exactly.

No paper name appears anywhere on the scan; the page furniture (a magazine folio date with no running head, a drop-cap opening and “Continued on Page 72”) is that of a Sunday magazine section.

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