(Ha'aretz) Moshe Arens - There were 18,000 Bedouin in the Negev when the State of Israel was established 65 years ago; now there are over 200,000. They are in the midst of a traumatic transition from their age-old nomadic desert lifestyle to living in an urbanized, high-tech society. Assisting Bedouin to make this transition is not basically a legal problem or one involving claims to land ownership, but one of inadequate education. The move away from dispersed unrecognized villages will happen automatically once they acquire the skills needed for integration into Israeli society. The writer served as Israel's Minister of Defense three times and once as Minister of Foreign Affairs.
2013-12-15 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive