ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the alternative systems which are supposed to replace those internal ones that the necessary social certainty and wellbeing. While the Bedouin have been left to their own devices in integrating into the regional wage labor market in the Negev, those alternative social systems have been provided to them by the State of Israel in the form of public educational, health, and community welfare services. The inclination of the Bedouin to utilize formal educational services began to develop during the Ottoman and British Mandate periods. In general, the nature, structure and methods of provision and utilization of health services differ from those of educational services. On a community-individual continuum of applicability of public services, welfare services may be located close to the individual’s end. Several processes that followed sedentarization and semiurbanization have brought the Negev Bedouin to a unique juncture where public services have began to play a major role in their affairs.
