KEREM SHALOM, Israel – Just miles from where Israel meets Gaza and Egypt, the Arab descendants of nomadic tribes are defending their land. At the Kerem Shalom military base – headquarters of the Israeli army’s desert search unit, also known as the ‘Bedouin Battalion’ – these soldiers, most of them Muslims, feel a strong sense of national pride and purpose in the wake of the October Revolution from Hamas. 7 attack.
“I saw a woman shot in the head on October 7. Normally it is army against army, but here is a terrorist organization killing an innocent civilian,” said Lt. Col. Nader Idat, the battalion’s Bedouin commander. “I am a Muslim myself and there is no religion, including Islam, that says it is okay to kill. That is what sets Hamas apart. Their goal is to kill.”
And on that day, Hamas’s killing squads made no distinction between fighters and civilians, Israelis and foreigners, Jews and non-Jews. The invaders killed dozens of Bedouins – fellow Muslims and Arabs – and are believed to have abducted six others to the Gaza Strip, where three remain. Since then, there has been a sharp increase in voluntary military use within Israel’s Bedouin community, some 400,000 people – roughly 4 percent of the country’s total population – whose ancestors crossed the desert for trade and ranching.
“The Bedouin community was traditionally a tribal community that traded by finding trade routes through the desert,” said Iftah Burman, an Israeli geopolitical analyst and founder of the Middle East Learning Academy. The shipment. “Over time, they passed these techniques on from father to son: how to travel in the desert, how to track the animals, how to use the vegetation. Those transactions made them excellent trackers.” Since the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, he added, Bedouins have worked with Israeli forces to “police the borders, identify smugglers and identify terrorists entering through the borders.”
Many Bedouin soldiers also fought and at least six died in this war along with Jewish soldiers. On October 7, when terrorists attacked the kibbutzim and military bases of the Western Negev, Bedouin forces were among the first on the scene. In one case, a soldier took off part of his Israeli military uniform and spoke in Arabic to lure the attackers out of hiding before others shot them at close range. They have also been deployed to the Gaza Strip, where they help locate terrorists, weapons and tunnels.
At Kerem Shalom – where Hamas rocket attacks regularly take place – the Bedouin battalion is one of Israel’s first lines of defense. On the day of my visit, an interview was abruptly moved to a shelter due to concerns about approaching fire. “On October 7 [the soldiers] came here to take away their weapons and immediately started fighting without any hesitation,” Idat said. “They’ve been here ever since.”
Bedouins currently enlist in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) on a voluntary basis, unlike Jewish men and women and Druze men – a non-Muslim, Arabic-speaking minority – for whom military service is mandatory. Before the Hamas attack, voluntary military service among Bedouins was quite unusual and even stigmatized in the often insular communities throughout Israel.
Now Bedouin soldiers say they wear their uniforms proudly at home. For many, joining the IDF also offers a path to integration into broader Israeli society. Bedouin troops can pursue a military career after their nearly three years of service, or join the civilian workforce; both efforts are supported by the Hebrew lessons taught at the military bases.
As one of the most poverty-stricken communities in the country, Israeli Bedouins are increasingly seeking military service to build a better life for themselves. But others have turned to crime, particularly the cross-border smuggling of drugs, weapons and people from the West Bank and the Sinai Peninsula. There have also been sporadic cases of terrorist attacks by Bedouins, although Hamas’s attempts to recruit Bedouins to its cause have largely failed.
But ongoing land conflicts between the Bedouins in the Negev and the Israeli government threaten to open the door to extremism. The Bedouins have many recognized townships, but their claims to larger tracts of land and attempts to build unrecognized villages have brought them into conflict with Jerusalem, which sometimes orders the demolition of illegal structures. Establishing new neighborhoods requires the approval of Israel’s Interior Ministry, which has often rejected the Bedouin’s right to build on state land.
These communities also lack basic services such as water and electricity, and the warning sirens and shelters that protect against weapon attacks found in other Israeli municipalities. The Iranian attack on Israel in April underscored this unmet need, when shrapnel from an intercepted rocket seriously injured a seven-year-old Bedouin girl in her home in the unrecognized village of al-Fur’ah in the Negev.
Despite what some have described as neglect by the state, many Bedouins proudly identify with their Israeli identity. That loyalty has only grown in the face of new threats to the country.
“We are here in Israel and we know exactly who Hamas is and what we are dealing with,” Idat said from Kerem Shalom. When asked if the Bedouins are conflicted about which side to support in the ongoing war, the commander took his national identification card from his wallet and held it up: “I am an Israeli. I was born here and I am going to fight for my country.”
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