When it comes to Middle East reporting, the central narrative has for several decades been Israel-Palestine. But for the past year, since the start of the Arab Spring (Israeli sources prefer to call it the Arab Winter or Arab Tempest), it is the rest of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) from Egypt to Bahrain, from Syria to Libya, that have been in the limelight.
Indeed, of the 17 or so countries which make up the MENA region, almost all – including Israel with its own ‘cottage cheese’ protests – have seen some kind of protests, many of them violent and bloody.
Add to this combustible mixture Iran’s march towards its own nuclear weapons, and Israel-Palestine no longer looks like the core issue (which for as long as I can remember it has been - for both the British and global media).
This is the background against which I travelled to Israel this week as part of a small delegation of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the main elected, representative body of UK Jewry.
For part of the journey we linked up with the UK Task Force, a coalition of foundations, religious leaders, NGOs and Jewish organisations focusing on better understanding and improving the conditions of Israel’s Arab minorities.
In Jerusalem, in meetings with a range of policymakers including senior officials of the ministry of foreign affairs, the mood was remarkably upbeat. Instead of fears of takeover by Islamic fundamentalism, as a result of the Arab world’s revolutions, officials believe an important Rubicon has been crossed.
No longer is Israel the centre of the universe in the debate across the Arab world. Anti-Israel flag burning may have been a part of the reporting at the start of the Egyptian uprising but the tendency within the region to blame Israel for all of the regions woes has faded. Beleaguered regimes such as Bashir Assad’s Syria have built new straw men in the shape of Turkey, Al Qaeda, unnamed outside terrorists and so on.
Arab countries have started to look in on themselves. Domestic issues ranging from food prices to unemployed youth, from human rights to governance and economic development have stolen the agenda. This in turn is seen by Israeli officials as weakening the hands of the Palestinians who can no longer rely on the permanent sympathy of the Arab world to keep their cause centre stage.
In fact many of the same issues which have inspired the uprisings across the Arab world give rise to dissatisfaction with leadership in the West Bank and Gaza – potentially opening the way to an improved dialogue.
Tony Blair’s ‘quartet’ mission on confidence building measures among the parties – from the environment to water and movement of goods and services – currently looks far more relevant to the region’s needs than the old land for peace narrative. Furthermore, the acclaimed author and polemicist Amos Oz, an opponent of occupation, was surprisingly optimistic that out of the disputation between Jew and Palestinian will emerge a viable two state solution.
In an erudite address, delivered over a feast of racks of lamb in Be’er Sheva, Oz argued that the Jewish tendency to debate, discuss and question dated back to the days of Abraham and his bargaining with God over the intention to destroy the ancient city of Sodom.
A longstanding sore for many people seeking to underpin Israel’s security and its place as a genuinely Middle Eastern nation, not a bunch of transplanted Jews from around the world, has been the neglect of its own Arab populations.
The larger Israeli-Arab population is in the North in the Galilee, in range of Hezbollah rockets fired from the Lebanon. But it is the Bedouin minority in the Southern desert of the Negev which was the focus of this Task Force visit.
The 200,000 or so Bedouin, some of whom traditionally served in the Israeli forces, have become increasingly alienated from broader society. In an increasingly prosperous state they are the poorest segment of society held back partly by tribal commitment to barren lands, polygamy and very large families. The most recent data shows that 71.5pc of Bedouin households live under the poverty line against 54.5pc in the Arab sector and 16.2pc among Jews.
The issues are highly complex. Israel’s reluctance to provide basic services, including water and electricity, to so called ‘unrecognised’ villages (those which have grown up over the decades South of Beersheba) have created an enormous and complex social problem.
Israel’s solution is to move these semi-indigenous people (many came from Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia) into modern cities or neighbouring ‘recognised’ villages. Neither, of which is a very attractive option. The new towns are rife with drugs and unemployment, even if they do have running water. The recognised villages, which have undergone economic transformation, are not necessarily sympathetic to absorbing vast numbers of people from different tribes, with different values systems.
Our visit to an ‘unrecognised’ village, Wadi Nam, was dispiriting. Our host a tall Bedouin, with bright white teeth, wore a magnificent yellow robe, trimmed with gold leaf, and handsomely polished brown boots. As the ‘Gucci’ Sheikh growled his complaints about the circumstances in the village in forceful Arabic he and his Praetorian guard would occasionally consult their Blackberrys.
Outside kids played in the dusty sand, rubbish piled up on the sides of the forlorn unmade roads and families dwelled in corrugated tin huts surrounded by emaciated goats and sheep. At the regional school for eight hundred pupils the classrooms had broken windows, cracked floors and filthy latrines which, we were told, were riddled with disease.
Letters delivered to the Wadi are dumped on the roadside because as an address the ‘unrecognised’ towns do not exist.
Israel has earmarked 2.5bn Shekels (£500m) for development but the money has not been released because of an unwillingness of the ‘unrecognised’ villagers to be moved.
In contrast we found sanitary conditions and optimism and a wonderfully well-kept village when we moved on to the recognised community of Hura. Nearby, we heard from a bunch of strong and beautiful Bedouin women who have shaken off the shackles of a deeply patriarchal society to rediscover ancient crafts like weaving, now exported to all corners of the world. Some had acquired university education and others fight for better rights including public transport to their communities and welfare payments for second, third and fourth wives and their families.
The Negev is a puzzling mix of optimism and depression. But as one Bedouin leader sagely pointed out developing the Bedouin economy will help to underpin the prosperity of the region and could only act to improve Israel’s security from within – a win-win situation.
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