The first Bedouin
township in Israel, Tel as-Sabi, was founded in 1967 as part of a government project to settle Bedouins in permanent settlements and became a
local council in 1984. It is one of seven Bedouin townships in the
Negev desert with approved plans and developed infrastructure. The
Negev Bedouin, a semi-nomadic society, has been going through a process of
sedentarization since the latter part of
Ottoman rule in the region.During the
British Mandate period, the administration did not provide a legal framework to justify and preserve land ownership. To settle this issue, Israel's land policy was adapted to a large extent from the Ottoman land regulations of 1858, the only prior legal framework. Thus, Israel nationalized most of the Negev lands using the state's land regulations from 1969. Israel has continued the policy of sedentarization of the Negev Bedouins, first imposed by the Ottoman authorities. Israel's measures at first included regulation and relocation. During the 1950s, Israel relocated two-thirds of the Negev Bedouins into areas administered under martial law. Later on, seven townships were built especially for Bedouins in order to sedentarize and
urbanize them by offering better life conditions, proper infrastructure, and high-quality public services, such as sanitation, health, education, and municipal services. The other six townships built during that time are
Hura,
Lakiya,
Ar'arat an-Naqab (Ar'ara BaNegev),
Shaqib al-Salam (Segev Shalom),
Kuseife (Kseife), and the city of
Rahat, the largest among them. Not all Bedouins agreed to move from tents and structures built on state lands into apartments built specifically for them. About 60% of the Bedouin citizens of Israel live in permanent, planned villages like Tel as-Sabi, while the rest live in illegal homes spread all over the northern Negev region. As Tel as-Sabi was the first Bedouin township in Israel, mistakes were made by planners and government officials. The authorities tried to learn from these mistakes while planning and building other Bedouin villages and towns, creating, for example, more urban than rural environments. In 2000, the town was ranked lowest (1 out of 10) in socio-economic standing, and only 43 percent of twelfth-grade students were eligible to graduate from high school. ==Demography==