Food Insecurity among West Bank Bedouins

Thanks to the Zionist ethos, which centred around building a Jewish economy based on farming, agricultural surplus in Israel is reasonably high, and according to the CIA factbook, except for grain, Israel is agriculturally self-reliant. White bread, milk and vegetables are subsidized by the government. Living in a rather poor city, I can testify that basic nutrition, comprised of white bread and fresh vegetables, is available to most if not all city dwellers, although being fed through charities or garbage rummaging does little to one's sense of empowerment and self-worth.

However, as it is true in many other fields, not all subjects of the Israeli state enjoy the benefits it provides to its citizens. Food subsidies do not hold true to the people of the Israeli-controlled West Bank, creating an absurd situation in which it is far more profitable for Israeli farmer to pay the transport fees to ship their produce to the European markets than it is to sell them just 30-40km away, to the people of Gaza, Nabulus, Ramallah and Hebron.

Of a particularly wretched state are the Bedouin herders in the area of Hebron. The Bedouins, like other nomadic and semi-nomadic communities, lead an economy based on livestock, mostly sheep and goats, as they have been doing since time immemorial (check Gen 13:1-5). The success of this lifestyle depends on free access to pasture and water sources, both of which are denied by Israeli goverment. Hebron and the surrounding mountains are at the heart of an Israeli colonizing effort, and the Israeli military, determined to protect the Jewish settlers at all costs, views all unauthorized movement by local population as a potential security risk.

This results in curfews, road blocks, declaring grazing and watering grounds as off-limits for security reasons, and other restrictions on the freedom of movement which make the Bedouins dependent on purchasing fodder and water instead of obtaining them by free-range herding. This makes their livestock farming unprofitable, and drags them into poverty and debt.

(A resident of Southern West Bank, carrying tanks of water. Source: www.haaretz.co.il)


According to a UN report, as of February 2010, these communities face a rate of 80% food insecurity, with nearly 30% of the children suffering from stunted development due to improper nutrition.

Unlike the views commonly held and propagated in this website, famine and food insecurity are not always due to improper growing techniques, distribution methods and climate change. In many cases, the fault can lie at the economic sphere, where free-market economics and free-trade agreements often provide incentive for farmers to sell their produce to the far-away wealthy consumers rather than use it to feed their own communities.

In this case, however, the source of the problem - and therefore the solution - lies not in the technological sphere nor in the economic, but strictly in the political. Food insecurity is used as a tool by the regime to disenfranchise populations it deems hostile or dangerous, slowly pressuring them to vacate the area in favour of Israeli settlers, whose agricultural ventures enjoy land ownership and subsidized running water.

In my opinion, as a political problem, food insecurity in Hebron should be fought back with political means. A combination of coordinated efforts of political protests and party activism in Israel, non-violent civil resistance in the West Bank, and international economic and political sanctions on Binyamin Netanyahu's regime seem to me as the only possible way to alleviate the hunger in Hebron.

Such efforts are currently under way, but are woefully uncoordinated, and in addition are poorly-received by the majority of the Israeli public. What can be done to change public opinion in Israel, Palestine and abroad?

(Children at the well of Hirbath a-Tawna. Source: www.haaretz.co.il)