Abu Basma Regional Council

Abu Basma brought together Bedouin towns and villages in the area between Dimona and Arad, with responsibilities extending across education, infrastructure, employment, transportation, agriculture, and other municipal services.[1] Its founding remit encompassed five new Bedouin towns and responsibility for ten Arab villages, six of them Bedouin.[1] By 2011, its appointed administration was responsible for local administration and services in 11 recently recognized Bedouin villages.[3]

The council was one of five Arab municipalities with a local planning and building council, alongside Nazareth, Tayibe, Tira, and Rahat.[2] Recognition of its communities formed part of a broader pattern of state recognition that included fourteen Bedouin communities in northern Israel and seven Bedouin townships in the Negev.[2] Nine localities were recognized as part of Abu Basma in the account documenting that comparison.[2]

Recognition entitled villages to basic state facilities, including water, electricity, primary schools, and health clinics, and offered some protection against demolitions; it did not itself recognize residents’ land or housing rights.[3] Establishing the council also created an opportunity to develop welfare, education, and health services for previously unrecognized villages.[5]

Preparations for Abu Basma overlapped with a study of Bedouin children conducted between July 2003 and July 2005, during which steps were being taken to establish the council and redefine the municipal boundaries of unrecognized villages.[5] The council was officially declared on February 3, 2004.[1]

In 2005, the council was expected to include nine localities after a boundaries committee decided that Al-Sayyid would become an independent locality within it.[6]

A government development initiative launched in July 2005 allocated NIS 470 million to Abu Basma across education, transportation, infrastructure, employment, construction and housing, health, social affairs, and agriculture.[1] Government Resolution 3956 assigned the council responsibilities for addressing Bedouin needs in several of these fields.[1] A related allocation of NIS 387.7 million covered infrastructure and public buildings in Abu Basma and Al Sid localities for 2005–2008.[1] Parts of the plan were delayed because the localities populated slowly and had difficulty repaying a government loan.[1]

Abu Basma was administered by appointed rather than elected officials.[7] Following Supreme Court intervention, elections were scheduled to begin in December 2012.[3] Interior Minister Eli Yishai’s decision to split the council postponed that election.[7] The division into Neve Midbar and Al-Kasum took effect in November 2012, following an Interior Minister decision based on recommendations of the Razin Committee.[4] The stated purpose of the reorganization was to improve services to authorized Bedouin localities formerly administered by Abu Basma.[4]

One account of Abu Basma’s communities estimated their population at approximately 25,000 Bedouin and listed eleven villages: Abu Krinat, Bir Hadaj, Qasr a-Seir, Mar’it, Dreijat, Umm Batin, Molada, Al-Sayyid, Al-Atrash, Makhul, and Trabin al-Sana.[8] An account published in 2016 described the former council as comprising eleven Negev localities with approximately 50,000 residents.[9]

The 2013 population estimate for the eleven recognized villages of the successor councils was approximately 30,000.[10] A 2015 account likewise estimated approximately 30,000 residents in those villages; this figure concerned the successor councils rather than a separately measured historical population of Abu Basma.[11] Reporting in November 2016 put the population of the successor councils’ eleven northern Negev localities at approximately 50,000.[12]

Abu Basma also appeared within broader estimates of the Negev Bedouin population.[13] In 2011, more than half of an estimated 160,000 Bedouin lived in the seven state-planned communities and Abu Basma together, while approximately 60,000 lived in at least 46 unrecognized tent or shack villages.[13] A 2013 estimate placed approximately 60,000 Bedouin in 35 unrecognized villages, separately from the recognized villages of the successor councils.[10]

Employment and agriculture were explicit parts of the council’s development mandate. The July 2005 plan also covered transportation, housing, health, and social affairs, while Government Resolution 3956 included industrial-area planning, employment, and business entrepreneurship.[1] Animal herding, grazing, and agriculture were historically important to Negev Bedouin life, and farming remained culturally important in the communities covered by contemporary reporting.[3]

Government assistance accounted for 98.2% of Abu Basma’s 2011 budget, and the council received close to NIS 180 million in government budgets annually.[9] Property-tax receipts totaled NIS 1.63 million in 2008 and NIS 1.98 million in 2009, mostly from a quarry, with the remainder coming from various facilities.[9] The council obtained a special Interior Ministry budget for a property survey intended to help enable tax collection.[9]

Basic infrastructure remained incomplete in villages administered by the council and its successors.[3][11] In 2011, village visits documented deficiencies in the water, electricity, education, and health facilities associated with recognition.[3] An Abu Tlul resident described the nearest hospital or specialist clinic as 15 kilometers away and said ambulances waited on the main road rather than entering the village.[3]

An account of conditions in 2014 found that eleven of thirteen recognized villages had plans defining their areas.[11] In ten recognized villages, residences remained unconnected to the electricity grid, with no sewage connections or paved roads; only six villages had high schools.[11] Residents in ten villages had to provide the infrastructure connecting their properties to a central water line themselves.[11]

Tax administration remained an issue after the division.[9] In January 2016, the Supreme Court ordered the successor councils to send business-property tax assessments by the end of February and submit a timetable for a residential-property survey by the end of March.[9] A search had identified 51 businesses in Neve Midbar, but assessments had been sent to only three; in Al-Kasum, 49 businesses had been identified and none had yet received an assessment.[9] By November 2016, the court was requiring responses about compliance with earlier orders concerning business-tax collection and property surveys.[12]

Planning for Mra’it, whose approved name was Makhol, was advancing in January 2004, when it was designated for inclusion in the new council.[14] It was one of five new Bedouin localities intended for the population dispersed across the southern Negev. A regional planning committee rejected objections to its outline plan and to a detailed plan for a service center.[14]

Tarabin al-Sana was among the first of seven new Bedouin localities established under a government decision and assigned to the recently created authority.[15] Fifty families had moved there at the time of contemporary reporting, while the broader relocation involved approximately 1,500 members of the Tarabin tribe following four years of negotiations between the state’s Bedouin Administration and tribal representatives.[15]

When Abu Basma was divided, seven localities were assigned to Al-Kasum: Tarabin, Um Batin, El Seid, Darijat, Kahla, Makhol (Merit), and Moleda.[4] Four were assigned to Neve Midbar: Abu Krinat, Bir Hadaj, Abu Tlul, and Kasar A-Sir.[4]

The 2005–2008 infrastructure and public-building allocation included provision for 285 school and kindergarten classrooms and NIS 3 million for targeted and specialized education programs.[1] Regional schools were established in council towns and villages to serve the Bedouin population of southern Israel.[1] The transition from elementary to high school had previously been associated with a dropout rate of 50%, mostly involving girls; after the regional schools were established, that transition-related dropout rate was recorded as eliminated.[1] Distance from schools had been a reason some parents did not send their daughters to school.[1]

The council’s listed educational institutions enrolled 19,114 pupils in the 2009 institutional table.[1] Access within individual villages nevertheless remained uneven: visits documented in 2011 found that many had primary schools but none of the villages visited had secondary schools or further-education facilities.[3] A 2007 Supreme Court call for the state to establish a secondary school in Abu Tlul had not been implemented by the time of that account.[3]

Research on Bedouin children was intended to guide service development for children and youth as the new council took shape.[5] Its survey interviewed 1,020 mothers of children aged 0–17, including 606 from recognized localities and 414 from unrecognized villages.[5] The village sample covered ten of the Negev’s 45 unrecognized villages, selected according to size, location, and service levels.[5]

The study’s steering committee included representatives of government ministries, local health, education, and social services, nonprofit organizations, residents, and the research team.[5] Specialized subcommittees addressed welfare, health, education, and children’s age groups.[5] The Ministry of Social Affairs and Social Services and the Mandel Leadership Institute subsequently worked together to develop welfare services in Abu Basma.[5] Council leaders studied the findings and expressed interest in implementing the recommendations.[5]

The postponement of municipal elections drew differing responses among the affected communities.[7] Residents of all but the largest villages supported postponement because they did not want to be governed by more numerous neighbors, while members of unrecognized villages and nongovernmental organizations opposed the delay in democratic elections.[7]

Land claims and service provision also shaped disagreement over settlement policy.[13] Many Bedouin objected that relocation to planned towns would require surrendering land claims held for generations, while the government maintained that providing services to dispersed building clusters outside planning procedures was difficult.[13]

Financial oversight identified recurring deficits of millions of shekels and insufficient efforts to increase the council’s own-source income.[9] The 2011 audit findings included failure to bill residents for residential property tax, absence of a debtor and collection system, and inadequate information about building and property areas.[9] The successor councils cited limited survey funding, missing precise addresses, difficulty identifying occupants, and some owners’ refusal to provide identifying or mailing information.[9] They also pointed to absent or minimal basic infrastructure and services in many localities.[9]