The long-standing legal disputes between the state of Israel and the Muslim Arab Bedouin minority regarding landownership in the southern Negev Desert seems to be the usual story of David and Goliath in majority and minority relations in the Middle East. The relationship between Israel and its Bedouin community, however, is more universal and also more particular than most cases. It is universal because it touches on the difficult interactions between a modern welfare state and a patriarchal traditional society that insists on retaining its traditions, and particular because it has to do with very specific Bedouin nomadic tribal traditions of landownership.

The universal idea of liberal multiculturalism speaks to the equal value of traditions and the need to respect them, even when they are vastly different from those of the majority. What should a country do, however, when its laws clash with the traditions of some of its inhabitants? Where should lines be drawn?

Israel, like all countries, has laws regulating proof of ownership for dwellings. The Bedouin, nomadic tribes, have developed their own oral traditions of recording “landownership.” The lands in question were never officially registered or recognized as privately owned during the Ottoman Empire or the British mandate, which controlled the area before the establishment of Israel. They, therefore, were not recognized by Israeli law as privately owned lands after the creation of the state.

Israel has, for decades, tried to negotiate with the Bedouin to reconcile tribes' oral claims of landownership into a recognized modern framework. I, myself, can attest to the impossible complexity of the issue. As a member of the Knesset, serving on its Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, I was often approached by Bedouin constituents to appeal to the state on their behalf. Over the last three years, against the backdrop of the Goldberg report, on the Bedouin land issue, and as the Prawer-Begin bill moved forward in addressing the relocation of Bedouin settlements, I sat with Bedouin in their villages, pouring over maps and trying to understand how to help their cause. The more questions I asked, the more complicated I recognized the situation to be.