Liberal Western democracies tend to have a hard time with the customs and rules of conservative communities. This is true in France, particularly when it comes to issues like veils and burkinis, and of the United States with abortion. It is certainly true of Israel, where there are several religious and ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities. Israel’s Arab community has many conservative features of its own.

It has been just a month and a half since the first swimming pool for the Bedouin community — a third of the country’s entire Arab population — opened Aug. 28 in the town of Rahat. Rahat is the biggest Bedouin town in Israel, with a 2016 population of 65,000 in the city proper and tens of thousands more in the surrounding Bedouin communities. Though the Bedouin are Muslim, for the most part they live separately from the rest of Israel’s Arab sector. They are a very conservative community, particularly when it comes to women’s rights. Polygamy is common despite being illegal under Israeli law.

Pools in nearby Jewish localities either kept separate hours for Jews and Bedouin or, in some instances, barred Bedouin swimmers altogether, citing complaints about rude behavior by young Bedouin men toward women and girls.

Rahat resident Fares al-Hozeil supports separate hours for Jews and Bedouin at local pools. He told Al-Monitor that men and women swimming together is against their tradition as well as religion.