ABSTRACT
Jahalin Bedouin life has an allure for this people whose claim to the land is based upon a narrative of forced migration. Many Israelis, in fact, have had something of a romance with Bedouin life even as their government seeks to gradually destroy it. Although its Bedouin history seemed to interest a few Israeli investigators, Israel Finkelstein was intrigued by Arad as "an excellent location for the study of the interface of the desert and the sown". Disputes over rights to grazing lands have been frequent but each tribe has established legal mechanisms to deal with them that seldom come to the attention of governmental officials. Although Bedouin have been rarely engaged in any long-term active revolts, they have been historically resistant to attempts to incorporate them into an established political apparatus. At the very least, they have refused to be taxed.
