After 1948, the new state of Israel declared 85% of the desert "state land". From this point on, all Bedouin habitation and agriculture on this newly established state land was retroactively considered illegal. Negev lands the Bedouin had inhabited upwards of 500 years (but which they had not registered with the Ottoman or British governments; see
Negev Bedouin) was rendered off-limits to Arab herders and Bedouin in the region were no longer able to fully engage in their sole means of self-subsistence – agriculture and grazing. The government then forcibly concentrated these Bedouin tribes into the
Siyag (
Arabic for 'fence') triangle of Beersheba, Arad and Dimona. Throughout the 1950s the government pushed Bedouin tries into this 'fence,' less than 1% of former Bedouin range. Within this fence, because the Bedouin never registered their holdings on paper, their villages were also considered illegal, and termed "
unrecognized". Throughout the 1950s, like all other Bedouin tribes under Israeli jurisdiction, the
'Azazme were displaced from their land holdings into the
Siyag triangle. The Israeli government settled about half of the tribe in the area now known as Wadi al-Na'am. Today, at least 75,000 citizens live in 40 unrecognized villages, among which Wadi al-Na'am is the largest. In the 1970s, the government began to build urban townships, encouraging the Bedouin to move from dispersed locales through the
Siyag, promising services. About half of the Bedouin moved. However, the towns were unplanned, and the Bedouin who moved to them found that there were no economic opportunities in or around the towns. The townships rapidly turned into ghettos rife with crime and drugs. At the same time, the urbanized Bedouin no longer had access to their former grazing lands. Most became dependent on government 'social security' in order to survive. As the nation developed and extended electricity and water access throughout the Negev, Israeli citizens living in unrecognized villages like Wadi al-Na'am were denied access to national electricity, water, and municipal trash services, The villagers of Wadi al-Na'am came to live under high-voltage electric pylons which provide electricity throughout the northern Negev. Many residents started to use toxic, noisy, expensive generators, out of their own pocket; some use solar power. The Israeli government built the regional water tank and electrical grid station in Wadi al-Na'am, but the residents were denied access.
Ramat Hovav toxic waste facility In 1979,
Ramat Hovav, Israel's
hazardous waste disposal facility, was built on Wadi al-Na'am village grounds. Most of the men of Wadi al-Na'am sought employment within the new Ramat Hovav Industrial Area. Residents began to suffer extreme health concerns as a result of proximity to Ramat Hovav. The village began to endure unusually high rates of miscarriages and children were increasingly born with an array of eye, teeth, joint and respiratory problems, as documented by the Ben Gurion University Center for Women's Health Studies and Promotion as well as by Physicians for Human Rights-Israel.. Key leaders included: BUSTAN founder
Devorah Brous, Bedouin Shaykhs
Labad and Ibrahim Abu Afash, Wadi al-Na'am spokesman Najib Abu-Gharbiyeh, and partners at the
Regional Council of Unrecognized Villages. Following clinic construction, 22 Jewish and Bedouin doctors and 87 professional volunteers from the Eden Association offered daily services until 2006. In 2004, after decades of contamination in the village and advocacy efforts for health services, the government built a clinic on the other side of the village. (Once the project succeeded in bringing regular government health services into the village, the clinic building came to be used by the Bedouin youth organization Ajeec for informal education activities; previously the youth group met in a tin shack unsuitable for the desert climate.) ==Options for action==