ABSTRACT
Shortly after dawn on the morning of March 4, 1991, jeeps and trucks carrying a detachment of three hundred men arrived at the compound of the families of Mitab Al-Qsasa and Salman Mohammed Abu-Kaf. Official Israeli government policy, established in the 1950s, is "to encourage" Bedouin to settle in selected locations. The point, of course, is to remove them from the open desertscape so that military, agricultural and industrial development in the Negev can proceed unimpeded. For several decades this policy was rarely enforced. For millennia, Bedouin tribespeople have roamed the Negev in search of water and vegetation for their flocks. As long as the Bedouin population was relatively low and empty land abundant, their shepherd economy functioned smoothly. The founding of the State of Israel marked the beginning of the end for both of these conditions.
