No place like home for nomad Bedouins of the Negev

The two Muslim women had been fasting since sunrise, in observance of Ramadan.

Now they were cooking furiously, spicy okra and zucchini, against a backdrop of piles of rubble, the remains of their homes flattened by the Israeli authorities.

For years, Naifa and Aali, the wives of village elder Sheik Sayah Abu Mudegem al-Tori - and about 300 other residents of Al Araqib lived on these slopes, between the Bedouin town of Rahat and the Israeli city of Beersheba. Then the bulldozers arrived at dawn on 27 July, with more than 1,000 armed police, to carry out a court order They tore down about 40 "unlicensed" concrete-block homes and shacks and hundreds of trees.

Within hours, the villagers put up tents and shacks to stake their claim to the land. In a test of wills, the Israelis have been back to destroy the structures three more times.

The tug of war has turned Al Araqib into a symbol of a simmering land war which began when Israel was founded in 1948.

"With God's help, we will stay on our land," said Sheik Sayah, wearing a tweed jacket over his cotton thobe, white headdress and sunglasses.

"Anyone who thinks of throwing us out will first have to throw the dead out of the cemetery," he said, referring to the old Tori tribe graveyard near the encampment. Sheik Sayah is aware of the Israeli court rulings stating his people are trespassers on "state land". But, he argues, "there was negligence in the case."

The contest over this patch of desert reflects a clash of cultures and, for many Bedouin, of loyalties and faith.

Part of Israel's Arab minority, the southern Bedouin, who now number more than 170,000 and make up a quarter of the population of the Negev, established good relations with the young Israeli state. Unlike most Arab and Muslim citizens of Israel, many volunteered to serve in the Israeli military.

But none of that has eased the tensions over the Negev. The area lies in Israel proper, not in the occupied West Bank, which the Palestinians want as part of a separate state. Originally nomads, the Negev Bedouin had settled into a largely sedentary lifestyle by the time Israel was founded. It did not recognize their land claims, and about a third to half the Bedouin now live in dozens of unrecognised villages, mostly filled with shanties like those in Al Araqib, without basic services like running water or electricity.The villagers of Al Araqib say that after Israelis took over in 1948, they told them that they needed to use their territory for military training and asked them to leave temporarily. The villagers moved to a nearby valley. Graves suggest they have lived there since the 19th century.

In the early 1950s the state declared the area of the village to be state land, giving title to the Israel Land Administration. The residents say they were never officially notified.

They insist even when some moved to the government-established Bedouin town of Rahat, they continued to farm and graze their herds on ancestral land.

Then in the late 1990s, the villagers built homes in Al Araqib when it became clear that the Jewish National Fund was about to plant a forest there.

Ortal Tzabar, spokeswoman for the Israel Land Administration, contends there is no question about the ownership. The villagers, he said, have no right to build anything in Al Araqib. But Professor Oren Yiftachel, of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, said the Tori have documentary proof of buying land in 1907 and 1926.

"In pure legal terms, the state has a point," said Yiftachel, an advocate for Bedouin rights. "But it is a very technical point, brushing aside tradition and the legal occupation of the land until the 1950s."

State officials say the people of Al Araqib should move to Rahat, one of seven towns established for them. But they suffer high unemployment, poverty and hopelessness.

"They took our freedom, our culture, our life," said Khalil al-Amour, a teacher from a nearby village, Al Sira, also scheduled for demolition. Those who do take houses in the towns, despite their cell-phones and televisions, often continue to graze livestock in the Negev, Amour added:

"We want to progress, but not in the way the state wants."