For his first trip away from the office, Israel's new Minister of Communication Yoaz Hendel decided to visit the Bedouin town of Tel Sheva, near Beersheba in the south of Israel. He told Al-Monitor that this was not by chance. What he wanted to show the public and himself was that one of the main goals of his tenure would be to provide rapid internet service to every person in the country, regardless of what community they belong to or where they live. This includes the Bedouin.

Infrastructure in general and internet services in particular are especially poor in the Bedouin communities of the Negev and in Israel’s Arab sector overall. A study by professor Amit Schechter of the Department of Communications at Ben Gurion University found that just 34% of homes in Bedouin towns and villages are connected to the internet, compared to 70% of Israeli society in general. In the town of Tel Sheva, which Hendel visited, the number of homes connected to the internet comes to just 10%.

Israel’s education system switched to distance learning during the coronavirus pandemic, with Zoom being the app of choice. Disparities in communication capacities between the Jewish and Arab societies were especially apparent at this time. Al-Monitor has already written about the problem facing some 100,000 elementary- to high school-age Bedouin students and another 2,000 university Bedouin students, who were effectively cut off from their studies because of inadequate communications infrastructures. These include above-ground infrastructures, fiber optics and communication cables, as well as cellular communications. A report by Asma Genaim of the Israel Internet Association found that 90% of Arab citizens access the internet through their cell phones. With most of the population currently under lockdown, internet usage has intensified, straining the already weak infrastructures servicing Arab settlements.

The various ministries dealing with this problem acted slowly in responding to this need. While the Ministry of Education increased the volume of digital instructional materials available in Arabic, it could find no immediate solution to the problem facing students in the Negev. The most interesting response came from the pre-Hendel Ministry of Communications, which said that a solution to the infrastructure problem cannot be implemented in the near future.