At a first glance, dazzled by the strong sunlight, almost only the desert is visible (fig. 1). However, the large valley-shaped region, located below the southern border of the West-Bank and surrounded by higher planes, contains the largest Bedouin population in Israel – some 170,000 people. Above all, the Arad Valley is home to a variety of clashing ideologies, realities and evolutions of political approaches.

Prior to Israel’s independence in 1948, this region was not specifically preferred by the Bedouin. Their movement was more or less ungoverned, even though traditional and tribal divisions had existed for centuries. The period of the British Mandate in Palestine initiated a change, as the Bedouin were asked by law to formally declare a specific plot as their own. The foundation of the State of Israel led to further advancement of this process. Several decades later, Israel’s 1979 peace-agreement with Egypt dictated the demolition and evacuation of its air-force bases in the Sinai peninsula, resulting in the need of their relocation. Thus, in 1983, ‘Nevatim’ base was built, centered in a  triangularly shaped invisible boundary, stretched between Be’er Sheva, Dimona and Arad, and defining the limits of possible settling areas for the Bedouin. Combined with inner-state reorganization and other territorial decisions, this process began the formation of a new layer of control and bureaucracy that remains in place today.

It might be just to say, conclusively, that the past century had restricted the Bedouin mode of living to the point of rendering it impossible. Interestingly enough, the concentrational method used by Israel to eliminate the development of this society results in an informal version of spatial control that can best be described by an opposite term: an improvised diaspora (fig. 2).

Like a galaxy, the scattered settlements of the Bedouin exist in a stark contradiction specifically to the urbanizing solutions that were used by the israeli government (figs. 3, 4). Arad, the only city in the region, was located upon an elevated area, when compared to its surroundings. Its urban layout, beginning with a garden-city plan division, was designed to contain a population of fifty thousand capita. After a promising start as a modern desert city, Arad has become one of many “development towns” in Israel, with no historical, natural or cultural character of its own. It was the desire for a hybrid organism, a city combined with a natural resort of leisure, that turned out hopeless in the end, making Arad the shrinking,  fading city that it is today. It is a fortress, shaped both by architectural typology and by political ideology, unwilling to rethink and rewrite its future’s agenda.

At the entrance to a small group of houses called “Al’Sira Village” stands a sign, stating it was founded in the Ottoman-empire period. Yet the houses, built of simple concrete blocks and tin roofs seem relatively new and lack a sense of age. Next to the sign of foundation stands a second one, warning the passerby of tractors at work. Similar to Al’Sira, the majority of the Bedouin settlements are unrecognized by government. An everyday reality of fear is no exaggeration, when one’s home can be destroyed at any time of day. Demolition warning signs are a decoration to each entrance door. And yet, a much stronger stability is felt here in comparison to the living blocks and projects of Arad. Over a period of three decades, attempts of urbanizing the Bedouin have taken place, some more successful than others. In all of these attempts, a resentment toward the oppressive grid town format is visible and seems in itself to be rooted in tradition: contrary to the Western wish to own land and settle, to this day, the Bedouin consider nomadity the highest socio-economic status to be held.

As millions of shekels annually support the development of Arad, it is needless to say that unrecognized settlements receive none of the like. Little aid comes mostly from few international human rights and non-governmental organizations such as ‘Oxfam’ and ‘Amnesty International’. This economically unbalanced situation is a fact that has little chance to change, regarding the priorities of Israeli government. It is frightful to think that Israeli people have forgotten its former existence as a diaspora: the ‘magical’ survival of the internationally spread Jewish population during pre-Israel times is considered a value of pride. Yet by the neglect and oppression of the Bedouin society, the state is rapidly creating a similarly semi-national and underground autonomy. Having no reliance on their ownership of the land, no public funding and very little connection to the national identity of Israel, a reversing cycle begins in the Bedouin society. In twenty years, when their population will reach half a million, the roots of its contemporary evolution would be very difficult to move and the rage against its oppressing governor hard to overcome.

It seems that material concerns have already very little importance in our lives today. We’re led by media, by invisible threads of global communication networks and projections. Nonetheless, our growing reliance on the production of our everyday needs in far away, retrograded areas of the world turn us into weak and dependent societies. In this sense, a point worth stressing is the fractal spread of the Bedouin settlements’ locations. The desert dictates an uncompromising land use, especially in low budget and low tech conditions. The scattered settlements, still distanced from one another today, have no choice but joining over time, creating a vast carpet city structure. The layout of this structure, still too faint to trace and determine at this point, is formed directly by geographical factors.

We look today carelessly at the unwanted results of our experiment. Our rigid laws and minimal support are building up the effect of a future bomb. To us, it is an uncanny threat, under-researched and undefined. And yet, it is rapidly evolving on its own, becoming a new form of structuralism, flexible and strict and narrow-minded.

Daniel Rauchwerger serves as the art-news correspondent at Haaretz newspaper and is engaged in the designing of various scenographic projects. He is a fourth-year student at the Architecture department of the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design. He lives in Tel Aviv.