Photography and Making Bedouin Histories in the Naqab, 1906-2013: An Anthropological Approach [1 ed.] 1032028998, 9781032028996

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‘Emilie Le Febvre’s book, Photography and Making Bedouin Histories in the Naqab, 1906–2013, is a truly original exploration of how the Bedouin of the Naqab have used the unique qualities of photographs to turn them into “objects of historical persuasion” to evidence their longstanding presence in the region. Her book is the first of its kind to bridge the anthropology of Bedouin and visual culture, and offers a refreshing interpretation of how a cultural landscape and its objects (photographs) can be understood in the study of the Middle East’. Dawn Chatty, Professor Emerita of International Development Studies, University of Oxford

Photography and Making Bedouin Histories in the Naqab, 1906–2013

Introducing a novel anthropological study of photography in the Middle East, Emilie Le Febvre takes us to the Naqab Desert where Bedouin use photographs to make, and respond to, their own histories. She argues Bedouin presentations of the past are selective but increasingly reliant on archival documents such as photographs which spokespersons treat as evidence of their local histories amid escalating tensions in Israel. These practices shape Bedouin visual historicity, that is the diverse ways people produce their pasts in the present with images. This book charts these processes through the afterlives of six photographs (c. ­1906–2013) as they circulate between the Naqab’s entangled visual economies  –  a  transregional ­landscape organised by cultural ideals of proximity and assemblages of Bedouin iconography. Le Febvre illustrates how representational contentions associated with tribal, civic, and Palestinian-Israeli politics influence how images do history work in this society. She concludes Bedouin visual historicity is defined by acts of persuasion during which photographs authenticate alternating history projects. Here, Bedouin value photographs not because they evidence singular narratives of the past. Rather, the knowledges inscribed by photography are multifarious as they support diverse constructions of history and society with which members mediate a wide range of relationships in southern Israel. This book bridges studies of anthropology, photography, Palestinian-Israeli politics, and Bedouin Middle East history. Emilie Le Febvre received her DPhil and MSc from the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Oxford.

Photography, History: History, Photography Series Editors: Professor Emerita Elizabeth Edwards, De Montfort University, Leicester, UK Professor Patricia Hayes, University of Western Cape, South Africa Professor Jennifer Tucker, Wesleyan University, USA

This field-defining series explores the inseparable relationship between photography and history. Bringing together perspectives from a broad disciplinary base it investigates what wider histories of, for example, wars, social movements, regionality or nationhood, look like when photography and its social and cultural force are brought into the centre of analysis. Public Images Celebrity, Photojournalism, and the Making of the Tabloid Press Ryan Linkof Photography and the Making of Eastern Europe Conflicting Identities, Cultural Heritage (1859–1945) Ewa Manikowska Photographing Tutankhamun Archaeology, Ancient Egypt, and the Archive Christina Riggs Photography, Reconstruction and the Cultural History of the Postwar European City Tom Albeson Photography, Bearing Witness and the Yugoslav Wars, 1988–2021 Testimonies of Light Paul Lowe British Indian Picture Postcards in Bengaluru Ephemeral Entanglements Emily Stevenson Photography and Making Bedouin Histories in the Naqab, 1906–2013 An Anthropological Approach Emilie Le Febvre

For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.com/Photography-History-HistoryPhotography/book-series/BLPHOPHHP

Photography and Making Bedouin Histories in the Naqab, 1906–2013 An Anthropological Approach Emilie Le Febvre

Designed cover image: Figure 0: ‘Costumes and characters, etc. Bust of a Bedouin’. Original creator(s): American Colony (Jerusalem) Photo Department, photographer. Location of original: Matson (G. Eric and Edith) Photograph Collection. Date of original: Between 1898 and 1914. Medium: 1 negative, glass, dry plate, 10 × 12 in. Call Number: LC-M36-615-A [P&P]. Repository: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA. www.loc.gov/pictures / item/201969 8093/. Accessed date: 1 March 2023. First published 2024 by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 and by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2024 Emilie Le Febvre The right of Emilie Le Febvre to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. ISBN: 978-1-032-02899-6 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-64124-9 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-18570-3 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003185703 Typeset in Sabon by codeMantra

This book is dedicated to Marcus Banks and Atiya al-Athamin. Portions of the book were previously published by the author under the following: ‘A Shaykh’s Portrait: Images and Tribal History amongst Bedouin in the Negev’, vol. 2., The Royal Anthropology Institute – Anthropology and Photography Special Series, http:// www.therai.org.uk/publications/anthropology-and-photography (Spring 2016). ‘Contentious Realities: Politics of Creating an Image Archive with the Negev Bedouin in Southern Israel’, History and Anthropology – Special Series: Archives and Anthropologies: From Histories to Futures, vol. 26, issue 4: 480–503 (Winter 2015). Palestinian Activism in Israel: A Bedouin Woman Leader in a Changing Middle East, New York: Palgrave MacMillan, with Henriette Dahan-Kalev and Amal Elsana-Alhjooj (2012).

Contents

Acknowledgements Preface: Ethnonyms and Being Bedouin

Introduction: Contours of Place, People, and Ethnography

xi xiii 1

PART ONE

Histories21 1 Naqab Bedouin Social History and Historiography

23

2 Making Histories in a Bedouin Society

61

PART TWO

Photography103 3 Anthropology of Bedouin Photography and Photographs

105

4 Photographic Presences and Entangled Visual Economies

128

PART THREE

Photographs161 5 Circulating Images: Tribal Histories of Lineages

163

6 Circulating Images: Community Histories

202



233

Conclusion: Historical Persuasion and Photographs in the Desert

Appendices247 References  253 Index267

Acknowledgements

The Wenner-Gren Foundation, the Palestinian American Research Centre, and the ­Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology (ISCA) at the University of Oxford funded the research in this book, which was awarded The British Society of Middle Eastern Studies’ Leigh Douglas Memorial Prize for the Best PhD Dissertation on a Middle ­Eastern topic in the United Kingdom in 2017. I also received substantial administrative and institutional support from St. Cross College, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, and the Library of Congress. Many thanks are due to Marcus Banks, whose kindness, encouragement, and insights as a mentor were instrumental in the creation of this project; Cédric Parizot, whose knowledge of the Naqab Bedouin significantly enriched this study; and Dawn Chatty and Christopher Pinney for their invaluable comments and encouragement during my viva. I am sincerely grateful to Elisabeth Edwards, Patricia Hayes, Jennifer Tucker, and the anonymous reviewers of this manuscript for their careful attention and valuable feedback. I would also like to thank all of the faculty members at ISCA who helped with the development of this during its early stages. At Routledge Publishing, ­Isabelle Vitti and Loredana Zeddita also have my gratitude for helping me throughout the publication of this book. My fieldwork was greatly enriched by the friendship and expertise of Amir Shibli, who assisted me with translating and interpreting local dialects. My appreciation also goes out to the immediate and extended families of the al-Athamin, al-Huzayyil, Abu Rabia, and al-Sana for their friendship, generosity, knowledge, and patience. Their willingness to lend their expertise, open their homes, and share their histories with me made this research possible. I am also in debt to all of the Bedouin members who were kind enough to take the time to speak with me during my stay in the Naqab. Many thanks to Aref Abu Rabia, Safa Abu Rabia, Amal Al-Sana-Al-Hjooj, Haia Noach, and Henriette DahanKalev for their support. I would like to acknowledge here Salman Abu Sitta, Farideh Al-Aref Al-Asam, Oren Zvi, Richard Randolph, Shelagh Weir, and Klaus Otto-Hundt who spoke to me about their photographic and documentary archives. My research was also greatly assisted by the skills and expertise of numerous library and archival staff at the Royal Anthropology Institute, Activestills, St. Antony’s College, Library of Congress, and Palestineremembered.com. The faculty, staff, and students at ISCA at the University of Oxford also have my many thanks. Finally, my love goes out to my husband Ike Belcher (who accompanied me during fieldwork), my son Everett, my parents Robert and Clara, my sisters Mary and Anna, and my wonderful friends. This book would have been impossible if not for their support during my long days of writing and help adjusting to a new life on the Kansas prairie after spending nearly two decades abroad.

Preface: Ethnonyms and Being Bedouin

The Arabic transcriptions in this book follow the International Journal of Middle East Studies’ transliteration practices with some exceptions.1 English translations of Arabic, Hebrew, and French in this text are the author’s unless otherwise stated. I am not an Arabist nor a scholar of the Hebrew language. My knowledge of both languages is practical, and I am extremely grateful to my friends and colleagues who assisted me with translating and transcribing my research. I use colloquial Arabic translations of relative terms spoken to me in dialect during fieldwork. Hebrew terms are transcribed into their popular English forms. Regional places in southern Israel are identified by their English names, while localities are presented in transcribed Hebrew and Arabic relative to their Jewish or Muslim majorities. I use the word ‘Naqab’ (contemporary Arabic term), however, to describe Israel’s southern desert rather than ‘Negev’ (Hebrew – dry), ‘Negeb’ (English Biblical name), or as-sabʿ (old dialect) for reasons described later in this section. Place names are not italicised. Along with localities in the Naqab, I transcribe tribal namesakes, lineages, and names of notable individuals described in the text with full diacritical markings. Pseudonyms are used for people’s first names in order to anonymise the direct identifiers of those I interviewed, specifically individuals whose conversations were recorded in private settings with their authorisation. The first names of people described in the text whose narratives are available elsewhere are not anonymised. Additionally, relevant phrases, concepts, and terms are translated and transcribed from Arabic and Hebrew into English, along with the names of local authors when referring to them as individuals along with Arabic language history published before 1950. The surnames of all other writers, including non-Bedouin Arabic and Hebrew authors, and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) are presented as commonly published in English from the midtwentieth century onward. In Arabic, badū is the term used by outsiders such as urbanites (ḥaḍar) and villagers (fallāḥīn) to describe pastoral persons who live in the desert (bādiya). Bedouin throughout the Middle East, however, typically refer to themselves as ʿarab, a word meaning people.2 This term has become less popular in the Naqab for reasons explained later. Ultimately, the term ʿarab signifies genealogical connections to the Arabian Peninsula, an association accentuating one’s origins (ʾaṣl, ʾaṣīl).3 I distinguish the word ʿarab from ‘Arab’, which describes a contemporary pan-identity in the Middle East and North Africa. To do so, I identify the latter with a capital ‘A’ in reference to pan-national Arab ethnicity (ʿarabiyyūn) and the former ʿarab with the smaller case ‘a’, which mostly appears in interviews. The goal is to trace, not isolate or disassociate, Bedouin’s unique experiences in the Naqab while recognising that they consider themselves distinct from Arab

xiv  Preface: Ethnonyms and Being Bedouin urbanites and farmers while continuing to be a part of cross-border networks in the Palestinian West Bank and Gaza, Jordan, Egypt, and Israel.4 This differentiation in terminology also avoids confusion with the phrase ‘Israeli Arabs’, that is Palestinians in Israel. During the Ottoman Empire and British Mandate, Bedouin residing in the Naqab referred to themselves as ʿarab as-sabʿ (people of Beersheba).5 After the Nakba (Catastrophe) or Arab-Israeli War in 1948,6 the newly created state of Israel labelled all Bedouin members who remained inside the Armistice (1949) borders in southern Israel, Habeduim Banegev (Hebrew) (see Figure 0.1). The term ‘Bedouin’ is the English translation of the Arabic word badū and is commonly used by those writing for English-reading audiences to specify people living in desert lands (bādiya) throughout the Middle East whose primary economic mode of production includes varying degrees of pastoralism. From 1948 onward, English speakers have used the phrase ‘Negev Bedouin’ or ‘Bedouin of the Negev’ to refer to Bedouin residing in southern Israel. Richard Randolph noted during his own fieldwork in the 1950s, however, that members understood the English word ‘Bedouin’, but they did not frequently use it because of confusion about its meaning.7 According to him, at that time, they preferred ascriptive terms relating to specific tribal associations such as their lineage (ʿāʾilāt) namesakes rather than those referencing their ecological or economic practices. Thus, words such as ʿarab and badāwī referred to the ‘situation of one’s descent rather than to the ecological niche one occupies’.8 Bedouin in the Naqab continue to employ local tribal namesakes indicating lineage designations among themselves and kin residing in Israel, the Palestinian West Bank and Gaza, Egypt, and Jordan today. By the end of the twentieth century, individuals had also appropriated foreign terms such as Habeduim Banegev (Hebrew) and ‘Negev Bedouin’ (English) when interacting with outside audiences. Over the last twenty years, the phrases Badū an-Naqab (contemporary Arabic) and ‘Naqab Bedouin’ (combination of Arabic and English) have also become increasingly popular amongst community advocates, scholars, and local spokespersons. By using the term ‘Naqab’ as opposed to the term ‘Negev’, members highlight what they consider to be their native lands now governed by the state of Israel. Subsequently, I also employ the phrase ‘Naqab Bedouin’ in this book because this was the term most commonly used by spokespersons when describing their history and society in English during my fieldwork.9 While recognising the Orientalist stereotypes associated with Westerners’ descriptions of pastoral nomads, I also use the word ‘Bedouin’ rather than the Arabic term badū or the Hebrew word beduim to promote the readability of this book for English-language audiences. For descriptive clarity, the term ‘Bedouin’ will also refer to people claiming Arabian origins (ʾaṣīl) and those without origins (non-ʾaṣīl) who today affiliate as a heterogeneous society.10 Among the diverse demographic landscape of the Middle East, Bedouin have occupied imaginations for centuries and, as a consequence, discussions about these societies are ‘necessarily complex’.11 For early anthropologists, Bedouin were ‘seen’ as pastoralists isolated from the rest of the world.12 By the mid- to late century, ethnographers studied how urbanisation and nationalism ‘changed’ pastoral nomadic life in the region.13 At the end of the twentieth century, critiques of Orientalism forced scholars to reconsider their exotic portrayals and, alternatively, create contextualised descriptions of Bedouin experience(s) in the region.14 In particular, contemporary ethnology of tribal pastoralists (at specific times and places) often emphasised the referential nature of tribalism, changing identities, and practices of communication. Notwithstanding, discussion about what constitutes Bedouin-ism is a topic that continues to preoccupy not only scholars but also officials and Bedouin themselves. Confusion derives from the longstanding nostalgia

Preface: Ethnonyms and Being Bedouin  xv associated with the term ‘Bedouin’ and Orientalist depictions of these p ­ opulations; ­characterisations exploited throughout the centuries by imperialists, colonialists, and nation-states as well as urbanites and traders in pursuit of their various interests in the region. Western imaginings often present Bedouin as ‘a people of the past’ devoted to their tribes and honour systems, idealisations that portray them as generous, brave, independent, and tough while romanticising their nomadism. Contemporary representations continue to depict Bedouin as nomads living in black goat-hair tents and raising herds despite the fact many people reside in houses in towns and cities and also practise agriculture and wage labour. Consequently, literature continues to use the English words ‘Bedouin’, ‘Arab’, ‘nomad’, ‘pastoralist’, and ‘tribesmen’ interchangeably.15 The terms referencing Bedouin peoples have also been historically conflated in the Middle East with Ottoman and British Mandate Bedouin Courts and Tribunals using various labels such as ʿashāʾir (tribes), gabā’il (tribal confederations), badū (Bedouin), and al-badū ruḥḥal (nomadic Bedouin) to describe Bedouin in Egypt, Transjordan, and Palestine.16 Notwithstanding terminology, Middle Eastern residents and governments continue to treat Bedouin as a-temporal and a-spatial populations, who possess no connection to the lands that they historically defended, migrated, and resided within and which are now controlled by various countries.17 These stereotypes have indelibly saturated studies of the Middle East and contribute to essentialised depictions of Bedouin today. In the early twentieth century, the term ‘Bedouin’ in social analyses described a social category of Arabic-speaking pastoral nomads who organised themselves into tribes.18 For some cultural ecologists and modernisation theorists, ‘being bedouin’ (badāwa) was the emic binary of ‘being civilised’ or ‘urban’ (ḥaḍāra). This dichotomy exoticised Bedouin, presented their socio-political associations as static units within segmentary lineage systems, and isolated local ideologies of tribalism from growing affiliations with Islamic, civic, and national communities. When describing a way of life, scholars frequently spelled ‘Bedouin’ with a lowercase b, and they typically employed the term as an adjective rather than a noun connoting a specific ethnic people.19 Some scholars argued that they are a distinct Arab people whose societies are characterised by unique economic customs (pastoralism) and social identities (tribal ascriptions).20 In these instances, writers spelled the term with a capital B in order to describe a group of Semite peoples known for the domestication of camels, trade and warfare practices, codes of honour, and heritage dating back to 6000 B.C.21 Some scholars such as Linda Layne highlighted the difference between emic and etic terminology, as members typically refer to themselves as ʿarab rather than badū in Jordan,22 whereas Dawn Chatty employed the term ‘Bedouin’ to describe affiliates of confederations who claim origins from Arabia.23 I do the same here, but I also include members who do not claim Arabian origins but who have nonetheless been a part of this Naqab society over the last century. In all, writings about Bedouin peoples must address the dilemmas of employing specific terminology and the politics of assigning ethnological concepts such as tribe and community to specific peoples. Today, most scholarship recognises the complexities associated with group labels as discursive constructions. For example, Donald Cole argued that most Bedouin populations have multifaceted identities as a result of colonialism, state building, occupational changes, tourism, and sedentarisation.24 As a result, the term ‘Bedouin’ has changed from denoting a past way of life to referencing a contemporary identity wherein tribal ethos and practices coexist with market capitalism, nationalisms, and regional Islamic beliefs.25

xvi  Preface: Ethnonyms and Being Bedouin In light of these considerations, I emphasise here that Bedouin societies do not disappear when nation-states dominate, ethnicities are assigned, and communities assemble.26 As such, I approach terminology in this book and the labels people affix to identifiers as fluid, contentious, and continually changeable ascriptions influenced by scientific discourses, political ethnicities, and community dynamics. All of these factors sway how people remember, identify, and represent themselves as Bedouin to each other and outsiders. Additionally, it is important to understand that the labels scholars use to define social groups, places, and histories, such as those typically attributed to Bedouin peoples, are also constructions. As such, the phrase ‘Naqab Bedouin’ is a referential qualification, an etic expression used to describe a myriad of people and pasts. Thus, the phrase’s durability, weakness, and applicability as a signifier of people grouped or connected within it will change over time and always function uniquely in different venues with various audiences. While academic debates about these terms might seem pedantic, the words used by locals, scientists, and officials matter, and imply a politics of authenticity which influences peoples’ everyday lives. In particular, terms associated with group labels such as bedouin (English), beduim (Hebrew), and badū (Arabic) in the Palestinian and Israeli context are regularly politicised. Consequently, they become malleable constructions whose meanings are purposely reworked by different actors to support or challenge various causes, resource acquisitions, and rights-based ideologies, so much so that the terms’ original connotations are almost impossible to detangle. Subsequently, it is neither my intention nor the goal of this book to evaluate whether the Naqab Bedouin are authentic or pseudo bedouin – beduim – badū or debate the geopolitical utility of terms such as Negeb – Negev – Naqab. This comes as some academics have become fixated on delineating whether or not Naqab Bedouin are true Bedouin based on outmoded notions of ­economic production and race, adjudicating their ethnicity and indigeneity, and assigning Palestinian and Israeli nationalities over the last century. Instead, I take up a suggestion by Dale Eickelman to focus on: ‘Who says of which group that they are bedouin, and why?’ rather than defining ‘What is bedouin?’ by their ecological or cultural traits.27 In particular, I ask: How do Bedouin produce their histories in the Naqab with photography and how do photographs in turn shape their accounts of the past? Notes 1 Henkin, Roni. 2000. ‘Narrative Styles of Negev Bedouin Men and Women’, Oriente ­Moderno: Studi di Dialettologia Arabia, Nuova series, Anno 19, 80 (1): 59–81 (https://doi. org/10.1163/22138617-08001005). 2 While acknowledging the problematic Eurocentric origins of the phrase ‘Middle East’, I use it in this book because of the continuity of the Sinai Peninsula, Arabah Valley, and Naqab Desert for Bedouin peoples residing there – a region bifurcated by West Asia and North Africa maps. 3 Badū and ʿarab are contemporary words as the Qu’rān uses the terms ʿaʾrab and ʿaʾrabū to describe tribal peoples living in the bādiya. Lewis, Bernard. 1969. ‘What Is an Arab?’, Peoples and Cultures of the Middle East, Ailon Shiloh (ed.), New York: Random House. 4 Parizot, Cédric. 2004. ‘Crossing and Constructing Borders within Daily Contacts: Social and Economic Relations between the Bedouin in the Negev and their Networks in Gaza, the West Bank, and Jordan’, Note de Recherche n° 287 – 2004/10, Marseille: Université Paul Cézanne – Aix-Marseille III. 5 The phrase ʾurban al- sabʿ also appears in Ottoman records. There were many d ­ ifferentiations within Bedouin groups in Late Ottoman Palestine and official correspondences indicate that they used various epithets when referring to their people. Ben-Basset, Yuval. 2015. ‘Bedouin Petitions from Late Ottoman Palestine: Evaluating the Effects of Sedentarization’, ­Journal

Preface: Ethnonyms and Being Bedouin  xvii of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 58 (1–2): 135–162, 136 (https://doi. org/10.1163/15685209-12341368); Nasasra, Mansour. 2017. The Naqab Bedouins: A Century of Politics and Resistance. Columbia University Press (https://doi.org/10.7312/nasa17530). 6 Henceforth ‘Nakba’ or 1948. 7 Randolph, Richard. 1963. The Social Structure of Qdiiraat Bedouin, Unpublished PhD, ­Dissertation, Berkeley: University of California. 8 Ibid., 36. 9 Early twentieth century records use the phrases ‘Negeb’ or ‘the Beersheba area’ to describe the region. ‘Naqab’ is a ‘Palestinianisation’ of the Hebrew word ‘Negev’. Ratcliffe, Richard. 2016. ‘Bedouin Rights, Bedouin Representations: Dynamics of Representation in the Naqab Bedouin Advocacy Industry’, Journal of Holy Land and Palestine Studies, 15 (1): 97–124, 116 (https:// doi.org/10.3366/hlps.2016.0131); Abu Sitta, Salman. 2009. ‘The Denied Inheritance: Palestinian Land Ownership in Beer Sheba’, Paper presentation, International Fact-Finding Mission, Beer Sheba: Initiated by RCUV. 10 I argue that the Naqab Bedouin are a (non-static) small-scale ‘society’ because of their distinct forms of sociality and diversity of their internal relationships. This society is comprised of ­different communities, races, and classes of people today. 11 Eickelman, Dale. 1998. ‘Being Bedouin: Nomads and Tribes in the Social Imagination’, Changing Nomads in a Changing World, Joseph Giant and Anatoly Khazanov (eds.), Sussex: ­Academic Press, 39. 12 Evans-Pritchard, E.E. 1949. The Sansui of Cyrenaica, London and Oxford: Oxford University Press. 13 Chatty, Dawn. 1986. From Camel to Truck: The Bedouin in the Modern World, United States: Vantage Press. 14 Dresch, Paul. 1989. Tribes, Government, and History in Yemen, Oxford: Clarendon Paperbacks; Abu Lughod, Lila. 2000 [1986]. Veiled Sentiments: Honor and Poetry in a Bedouin Society, Berkeley: University of California Press (https://doi.org/10.1525/9780520965980); Caton, Steven. 1990. The Peaks of Yemen I Summon, Berkeley: University of California Press; Shryock, Andrew. 1997. Nationalism and the Genealogical Imagination: Oral History and Textual Authority in Tribal Jordan, Berkeley and New York: University of California Press (https://doi.org/10.1525/9780520916388). 15 Layne, Linda. 1994. Home and Homeland: The Dialogics of Tribal and National Identities in Jordan, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press (https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400820986). 16 Abd-Elsalam, Ahmed. 2021. ‘Tribal Judicial Norms–A Neglected Intangible Heritage of the Arab World’, Majalat al-ʿeimārat wa al-funūn wa al-ʿeūlūm al-ʾinsānia, 6 (3): 610–624. 17 Massad, Joseph. 2001. Colonial Effects: The Making of National Identity in Jordan, New York: Columbia University Press. 18 Not all pastoralist, pastoral nomads, or tribespeople are Bedouin in the Middle East and vice versa. 19 Eickelman, Dale. 1989. The Middle East and Central Asia: An Anthropological Approach, Fourth edition, Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 74. 20 Salzman, Philip. 1996. (ed.) 1996. ‘Peasant Pastoralism’, The Anthropology of Tribal and Peasant Pastoral Societies: The Dialectics of Social Cohesion and Fragmentation, Ugo Fabietti and Philp. Salzman (eds.), Pavia Collegio Ghislieri: Ibis. 21 Chatty, Dawn. (ed.) 2006. ‘Introduction’, Nomadic Societies in the Middle East and North Africa: Entering the 21st Century, Leiden and London: Brill Publications (https://doi. org/10.1163/9789047417750). 2 2 Layne 1994. 23 Ibid. 24 Cole, Donald. 2003. ‘Where Have All the Bedouin Gone?’, Anthropological Quarterly, 76 (2): 235–267 (https://doi.org/10.1353/anq.2003.0021). 25 Ibid., Chatty, Dawn. 2014. ‘The Persistence of Bedouin Identity and Increasing Political Selfrepresentation in Lebanon and Syria’, Nomadic Peoples, 18 (2): 6–33 (https://doi.org/10.3197/ np.2014.180203). 26 Dresch, Paul and Judith Scheele. 2009. Les Mots et Les Choses: L’Identité Tribale en ­Arabie’, Études Rurales: La Tribu à l›heure de la Globalisation, Juillet-Décembre (184):185–202 (https://doi.org/10.4000/etudesrurales.10559). 27 Eickelman 1989, 74.

xviii  Preface: Ethnonyms and Being Bedouin 1948 Palestine Land Society – Section of Naqab Desert Map. Original creator(s): British Government. Secondary creator(s): Palestine Land Society. Location of original: unknown. Date of original: 1948. Date of copy: 2002. www.plands.org/en/maps-atlases/maps/gaza-beer-sheba-1948. Accessed date: 1 March 2023.

Introduction Contours of Place, People, and Ethnography

The Naqab Desert is located in southern Israel. The eastern border of the region o ­ fficially follows the Arabah Valley (Wādī ʿAraba) to the city of Aqaba (ʿAqaba) located on the coast of the Red Sea. Its northern boundary runs east from Gaza (Ghaza) along the ­ Beersheba Plain and Hebron (Khalīl) Hills to the Dead Sea. In the past, the Naqab was the Sinai Peninsula’s northern frontier, a land bridge between West Asia and North Africa. Since the 1978 Camp David Agreement between Israel and Egypt, this desert region officially lies within Israel’s 1949 territory. The international boundary between the two countries marks the western border of the region. Today, the Naqab comprises most of Israel’s southern administrative district occupying 14,185 square kilometres, roughly 55 per cent of the entire country. Since the creation of the Israeli state, national media, travel journals, and political propaganda have imagined the Naqab Desert as a vacant arid desert awaiting development. From the 1930s onward, Jewish people of Caucasian backgrounds (Ashkenazim) established kibbutzim and moshavim1 in the Naqab’s fertile valleys. In the 1950s, the state concentrated Jewish populations from the Maghreb, Yemen, Middle East, and Central Asia (Mizrahim) into the cities of Dimona, Arad, Mitzpe Ramon, and Beersheba (Biʾr al-Sabʿ, Beer Sheva). As of 2018, the Southern District of Israel was home to 1,302,000 people and approximately 75 per cent had Jewish ancestry.2 Nationalist narratives implying the region was terra incognita, however, discount the Naqab Desert’s Arab ­population – namely descendants of pastoralists and farmers who have resided in the region over the centuries and who remained there after the Nakba (Catastrophe) or Arab-Israeli War of 1948.3 Before the war, there were between 60,000 and 90,000 Bedouin living in the Naqab.4 After the war, around 11,000 people remained as the rest were forcibly expelled or chose to join family and other members in Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, or Sinai because of the conflict.5 Of the seven tribal confederations (gabā’il) recognised by the British Mandate, mostly members of the Tiyāhā remained in the region. During Israel’s Military Administration (1948–1966), the government declared large areas of the Naqab Desert as state property and required families to relocate to a reservation (Sīyāj – fence in English) in an effort to consolidate Bedouin residence in the region. At the end of the 1960s, the state implemented an urbanisation policy (1967–1993) to coerce villagers living in the ‘desert diaspora’ (pezurah) to move to state-built townships.6 Varying in size and demography, half of Israel’s southern Bedouin population (approximately 150,000 people) live in these state-built towns today.7 Of these, many consider the city of Rāhaṭ, with its estimated 55,000 inhabitants, the unofficial capital of Bedouin in the south.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003185703-1

2  Introduction: Contours of Place, People, and Ethnography The remainder (approximately 130,000)8 live in villages primarily located within the boundaries of the former reservation (Sīyāj). These residences have been labelled by the Israeli state and civil society organisations as ‘unrecognised villages’9 or ‘illegal shantytowns’ (kfarim bilti mukarim).10 According to Israel’s 1965 Planning and Construction Law, these villages are illegal because the government does not officially acknowledge Bedouin homesteads that existed before 1948 or those established by families during the Military Administration (1948–1966). In the 1980s, the state intensified its ‘policy of pressure’ on these villagers and sought to move residents to the state towns by demolishing their homes and disqualifying them from governmental services. This policy continues today. Israeli officials justify the policy by arguing that they are enforcing the 1965 Law11 and by explaining that residents lack building permits and deeds. Consequently, public access to these villages is limited and visits by outsiders to them are generally rare. In the last decades, however, village spokespersons and community leaders have extended invitations to political tourists hosted by regional NGOs to shed light on the precarious living situations and systematic demolition of their homes. Notwithstanding, the majority of Israelis and outsiders typically ‘see’ these villages as slums dotting the hills of the Naqab Desert. As vehicles speed past these homes, passers-by rarely see beyond the corrugated roofs, pallet fencing, and herds of sheep; leaving many with preconceived ideas about Bedouin nomadism, primitivism, and exoticism in Israel. My own perceptions of the Naqab and villages were equally restricted until the summer of 2012. It was not until Suleīmān (anonymised) al-ʿAthāmīn invited my partner Ike and I to live with his family in Khashem Zanaʿ, a village that remains ‘unrecognised’ by the state, that my connection to these Naqab places and people became more intimate. Ethnographic Encounters Before moving to Khashem Zanaʿ in 2012, Ike and I relocated to Beersheba in September 2011 to conduct the fieldwork described in this book. I travelled to Bedouin towns such as Rāhaṭ, Ksīfa, Ḥura, and Lagīya to gather information on photographic collections owned by families and community organisations over the course of a year. At the end of the first year, I had spent most of my time with ʿĀʾisha (anonymised) al-Ṣānaʿ’s extended family (ʿāʾila) in Lagīya. During this initial period of fieldwork, it became apparent that Bedouin are not rural desert residents isolated from the world and their neighbours. Alternatively, they regularly work, study, and socialise with diverse groups of people including state officials, tourists, and co-workers from various backgrounds. They also intermingle with other Israelis, Palestinians, European diplomats, international journalists, and activists. They visit kin in Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Sinai, and elsewhere in Israel. Ultimately, members maintain a vast range of relationships with outsiders but, at the same time, also possess unique senses of history and society; an exclusive ethos that I became more familiar with during my second year of fieldwork while living in the ­village of Khashem Zanaʿ. Towards the end of my time in Lagīya in the summer of 2012, Suleīmān al-ʿAthāmīn, a member of the Regional Council for Unrecognised Villages (RCUV) who regularly invited political tourists to visit his homestead in Khashem Zanaʿ, agreed let Ike and I live with them if we taught English to his children. Suleīmān invited ʿĀʾisha and I to Khashem Zanaʿ so that I could first meet his wife and his family. Driving west out of Beersheba along Highway 25, the village is positioned next to Shagīb as-Sālām and Nevatim. It is

Introduction: Contours of Place, People, and Ethnography  3 composed of numerous homesteads where over 150 extended families live next to one another, approximately 2,300 people in total. Located south of Highway 25, Suleīmān’s homestead is perched on the side of a hill and surrounded by a metal fence protecting the inner courtyard. Below the main house are a playground and a one-room school. Two smaller houses, constructed out of intermodal shipping containers and cinderblock extensions, are located to the west of his home. Both homes have large solar panels on their roofs that are connected to water heaters. On the left of the house is a tented porch with a roof made of canvas and a plastic tarpaulin to keep out the winter rain. Suleīmān and his fourth eldest daughter greeted and directed ʿĀʾisha and I to their reception room or salon (dīwān) when we arrived. There we met his wife and his three other daughters. After several hours of introductions and drinking tea, his fourth eldest daughter left the room and came back with a small laptop computer with a portable Internet drive connected to its USB port. My assumptions about the seemingly isolated way of life in the villages were dispelled when she opened the computer and asked me, ‘Do you have Facebook?’ Surprised, I told her I did. Meanwhile, the third eldest daughter went to her purse and pulled out a new Apple iPad. For the rest of the afternoon, Suleīmān’s daughters and I learned about each other through our Facebook profiles and by viewing digital photographs of our friends and videos of our weddings. By the late afternoon, Suleīmān’s fourth eldest daughter became bored with the computer and asked me if I would like to walk around the village and meet her grandmother (her father’s mother). We left to travel to her grandmother’s property while her sisters continued playing on their devices. Bending low to walk under the tent’s side, I followed Suleīmān’s daughter into her grandmother’s house (bayt). An elderly woman sat in a traditional dress (thaūb) with a long black veil and her chin covered with blue tattoos (washam). Her grandmother explained that she would teach me to dress properly, make bread, harvest common mallow (khūbaīzah), and care for the herds. In that moment I  realised that the succeeding months of my fieldwork would be marked by profound generational differences. Ike and I lived in a remodelled shipping container next to Suleīmān’s eldest son during our time in the village. We spent our days working and socialising around the homestead. The eldest sons and Ike built extensions to the main house out of concrete and lumber. In the morning his wife and their elder daughters cleaned. I helped the younger children with the livestock after they returned from school. After dinner, we sat around the cast iron stove and drank tea in a tent outside the house, which the family reserved for sleeping, cooking, and hosting non-familial guests. At night, in the more intimate space of the tent, the youngest son did his homework next to the light bulb that hung from an extension cord connected to a generator in the main house. Along with the light, a power plug was tied to the metal tent frame to power our mobile phones, tablets, and computers. While the other younger children and I worked on our English and Arabic vocabularies, the rest of the family looked at the digital screens of their various electronic devices. Suleīmān read the Internet news on his computer, his fourth eldest daughter viewed and uploaded photographs on Facebook on the iPad, and his second eldest son listened to music videos on YouTube on his mobile phone. Our daily worlds were largely limited to interactions with family members, neighbours, and extended family while living in Khashem Zanaʿ. Ike often travelled with Suleīmān to an Israeli Jewish moshav to purchase building supplies where our host discussed national events in Hebrew with business owners. They would also drive to Hebron (al-Khalīl) to get groceries and other goods such as clothes during which our host would barter in

4  Introduction: Contours of Place, People, and Ethnography Arabic with his Palestinian neighbours. Ike and I would also serve as hosts when political tourists came to Khashem Zanaʿ from other cities in Israel, the West Bank, and abroad. On other occasions, we would take the family jeep further into the desert to the back boundary of the village to visit his wife’s kin. Together, we would look at old family photographs while they explained why Bedouin history in Israel is similar to that of ‘red Indians in America’ as they are also ‘natives of the land’ (ahl al-ʾarḍ). On other occasions, I joined the women on trips to Beersheba’s Bedouin market where Suleīmān’s daughters told me about the social differences between women claiming Arabian origins (ʾaṣīl) and ‘those other women’ from Rāhaṭ, which I later learned were Bedouin people locally considered to have Egyptian ancestry (badū fallāḥīn). Through these encounters, I realised that Bedouin members experience the Naqab Desert as a transregional place defined by overlapping layers of ‘connectivity’12 which include unique densities of interaction between people, things, and ideas that often transcend official Israeli state borders. I saw that they are not only immersed in complex and wide-ranging relationships but also engaged with assorted media technologies and varied types of history13 and identity in southern Israel. People’s notions of insiders and outsiders in Bedouin society were equally diverse. They ranged from other Bedouin families, lineages (ʿāʾilāt), or residential groups to Israeli Jewish and Palestinian Arab neighbours, and foreigners. Moreover, members, who regularly interacted with non-Bedouin outsiders like Suleīmān, also frequently placed importance on ‘history’ in everyday conversations or public lectures with various audiences. They not only articulated the legacies of their lineages but also strove to establish historical connections to other Bedouin populations through genealogy, to fellow Muslims through Islamic heritage, and to n ­ eighbouring Palestinians and Israelis through ethnohistory. When communicating knowledge (ʿilm) of the past to others, however, members emphasised different aspects of their local histories thus creating divergent pictures of their ‘Naqab Bedouin’ past and peoplehood. Articulations of history among members varied by audience with presenters drawing on a diverse assortment of oral stories, books, maps, and photographs to boast about their genealogies and create disparate tribal histories during dialogues on some occasions. At other times, they re-­contextualised narratives to make statements about their Palestinian or Israeli-Arab nationalisms or to explain their indigeneity to Western visitors. In all, Naqab Bedouin history has been enunciated through various learned, governmental, social, and community discourses over centuries, creating assorted narratives that influence members’ own articulations of their pasts today. During fieldwork, I found that photographs were playing a significant role for the production of these Bedouin histories and broader interactions in the Naqab more generally. In order to explore these circumstances, this book documents the occasions when spokespersons purposely use photographs to ‘construct’14 their pasts and, in doing so, aims to better explain members’ divergent historical narratives and the representational politics behind them. To do so, I outline a novel anthropological approach to the study of photographs as authenticating documents in this society. Photographic inscriptions possess a distinctive type of authority amongst Bedouin, who are increasingly mobilising them as historical evidence amid escalating Palestinian-Israeli tensions. These practices are conceptualised as visual historicity, that is the diverse ways people produce accounts of their past with images in the present. To further understand these efforts, the afterlives of six photographs (c. 1906–2013) are examined. These finite biographies detail the images’ circulations in the Naqab’s entangled visual economies, a representational landscape

Introduction: Contours of Place, People, and Ethnography  5 organised by ideologies of proximity and assemblages of iconography ­produced over the last century. By tracing these travels, I demonstrate how Bedouin visual historicity is defined by acts of persuasion characterising encounters between members and their various audiences during which photographs substantiate alternating history projects. I conclude that Bedouin use photographs for history-making not because they evidence singular narratives of the past. More importantly, the knowledges and experiences inscribed by photography support diverse presentations of history and society in the Naqab Desert. Naqab Bedouin Histories and Representational Politics Over the last twenty years, Bedouin have strategically converted cultural knowledge (ʿilm) and living memories into formal inscriptions of the past or ‘histories’ amid popular Western, Israeli, Palestinian, and local imaginings of their society. While not everyone in this society is interested in history, local spokespersons of particular ‘groups of people’15 (who regularly host and interact with members outside of their kin networks and non-Bedouin outsiders) often present family memories, lineage accounts, and personal experiences as official descriptions of their society in order to improve their legitimacy and visibility in southern Israel. Increasingly, they reproduce and disseminate this disparate information via maps, brochures, videos, websites, books, and news articles. Over the last decades, these enterprises have cumulated into a new repository of ‘local knowledge’16 created by Bedouin producers for various audiences but one promulgating diverse representations of their people and past. In the last twenty years, scholars of Naqab Bedouin have acknowledged members’ strategic representational efforts and the counter-narratives emerging from them, particularly during interactions with non-Bedouin outsiders.17 Of these, Cédric Parizot and Richard Ratcliffe also noted the internal differences between tribal narratives espoused in certain public venues by customary leaders (shaykh, shuyūkh) and elders (kabīr, kbār), and the recent creation of community narratives circulated by civic and religious advocates in this society.18 They describe how popular community descriptions often portray tribalism (gabaliyya or ʿāʾiliyya)19 and other customary practices, such as parallel cousin marriage, as backward retrogressive barriers to progressive development. For example, advocates frequently argue that tribal narratives support Orientalist claims by the Israeli state that the population is primitive and hinder their community’s shared future. The mutability of local public vocabulary describing Bedouin experiences in the Naqab reflects the forced changes to their way of life by Ottoman, British, and Israeli governments over the last centuries; a situation in which pastoralism has become less popular among some and segmentary visions of their tribal past less pervasive in certain publics, for instance.20 By conspicuously obfuscating local particularisms, however, community spokespersons advocating civic and Islamic ideologies often leave outsiders with the impression that tribal dynamics are relatively absent from their everyday lives in comparison to fifty years ago. At the same time, ongoing tribal oppositions and competition between lineages may leave others with the impression that members are uncommitted to civic and religious universalisms prevalent in the lives of other Palestinians in Israel. To further explore the ambiguity and heterogeneity of members’ presentations of history, I document the types of Bedouin histories circulating in the Naqab, the apparent representational antagonism between elders and advocates, and the photographs used by these spokespersons to produce and communicate their knowledges of the past. I take

6  Introduction: Contours of Place, People, and Ethnography a pragmatic approach to the term knowledge (ʿilm), defined here as ‘justified true belief’ which is connected to ‘honour’ (sharaf) in this society. In sum, this book documents the transfer of knowledge through photographic inscription by members. My focus on photography and Bedouin internal competitions and collaborations for making history in the Naqab is motivated by Andrew Shryock’s ethnography about local efforts to write down oral histories in tribal Jordan.21 This book departs from his study in two ways. First, I explore how photographs are also treated as authentic ‘sources of proof’ (masdār aṣ-ṣaḥīḥ) alongside texts but valued as documents that ‘evidence’22 histories in novel ways. I draw from his study which was written in the mid-1990s, a decade before digital technologies and multimedia drastically expanded the proliferation of images in the region. Second, I acknowledge the emergence of various Bedouin communities, alongside more customary tribal affiliations, in the Naqab and differentiate between the various histories produced by members representing these diverse groups of people. These constructions of the past do not merely reflect nationalisms or tribalisms but also universalisms associated with civic society and Islam. To do so, I build on arguments by Parizot and Ratcliffe that Bedouin partition the Naqab into ‘political fields’ in order to diversify the number of spokespersons in their lineages and extended families that can appeal for and secure much-needed capital in southern Israel.23 They do so to obtain external funding and assets from various civic and religious sources that, once acquired, are chiefly distributed through descent lines and among cognates. This comes as civic and Islamic spokespersons, irrespective of their public rhetoric, typically collaborate with elders in their own ‘tribal (ʿashāʾirī) networks’24 to buttress their extended families’ capacity to conduct bilateral negotiations with the Israeli state and international NGOs, accumulate the political power, discredit competitors, and acquire resources. I argue, however, that internal discrepancies pertaining to Naqab Bedouin history, for example, are not always necessarily between customary and progressive spokespersons but rather they are the result of strategic identification practices and mediations based on ‘acts of persuasion’25 characteristic to tribal politics between lineages. Therewith, selfpresentations of history nearly always respond to the interlocutor’s status (be they a member or outsider) within a specific network of affiliates and modified by members accordingly. That is, the rhetorical statements about the Naqab Bedouin’s past and society a member chooses to put forward or not will depend on their audience and their relative negotiation of positionality and status among different people. While these dialectics are symptomatic of sociality throughout the world, these practices among Bedouin in the Naqab are notable because they are not only distinguished by the scaled nature of local tribal socio-politics but also the dramatic political tensions and intense clash of identity framing Palestinian and Israeli nationalisms and people’s everyday interactions in this part of the Middle East. While lineages have diversified the number of arbiters in their ranks, they have also expanded their representational repertoires and media practices to include photography in order to navigate the Naqab’s complex public politics, connect their histories to various audiences, and appeal for resources. More specifically, the majority of spokespersons, irrespective of their individual positionalities, strategically utilise the interpretative nature of history in the Naqab and the heterogeneity of their relations to connect with others in the pursuit of authority and legitimacy. Consequently, self-presentations of history have become both varied and strategic as they aim to validate their rights and acquire means in the Palestinian-Israeli context.26 These practices have also become increasingly dependent on historical capital in the form of archival documentation and

Introduction: Contours of Place, People, and Ethnography  7 artefacts over the last thirty years. This comes as spokespersons have been increasingly forced to contend with the ‘authoritative weight of a more widely known and accepted Zionist version of history that is fixed in books and archives’27. Subsequently, ‘Bedouin history’ has become an affirmation that must be acknowledged by outsiders and confirmed by documentary materials such as photographs. The importance of archival resources among Bedouin comes as Israeli state courts and Knesset members are adjudicating whether or not village residents should be legally defined as semi-nomadic and determining whether they farmed the Naqab prior to 1948. These legal rulings, which have steadily intensified since the 1980s, determine Bedouin land and civic rights today. For example, some Israeli officials argue that the Bedouin are nomads and therefore cannot make historical claims to Naqab territory.28 This line of reasoning has forced members to prove their ongoing residence on what the state has long considered the Naqab’s empty lands. Government officials throughout the Middle East, however, typically disregard the Bedouin’s customary oral histories as speculative stories of the past and consider them to be illegitimate forms of historical information as they are ‘less tied to published sources’29. This has left many residents unable to substantiate their connections to Naqab lands through more official means.30 In light of the above-mentioned struggles, they have developed an alternative strategy over the last thirty years. Members are turning to, what are popularly perceived in the Palestinian-Israeli context to be, learned materials such as archival documents to evidence their histories. In particular, Bedouin are drawing on an assortment of old travel diaries, government records, maps, and old photographs to validate their genealogies, support tribal stories, foster community cohesion, and confirm their population’s longstanding residence in southern Israel. Of the materials currently resourced, members treat photographs, in both physical and digital formats, as valuable and versatile types of documentation that authenticate their ancestors’ pasts and their current experiences in the present. Moreover, the intensified use of photography by Bedouin has not only widened the temporal spectrum of proof in the Naqab but also diversified the media strategies through which they legitimate themselves amidst the backdrop of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. It is a situation that makes a study tracing their historical narratives through the use of photographs by Bedouin extremely pertinent today.31 By examining these practices, I further understandings about how a Bedouin people, as Palestinians in Israel, put ideas of history to use in their everyday lives and the role of photography in producing the ‘histories preserved by people themselves’32 in the Middle East. Photography and the Bedouin Past Over the last decades, Bedouin in the Naqab have experienced a ‘changing’ of media practices similar to other populations throughout the region. Up until the late twentieth century, members customarily relied on incorporating practices such as oral recitations to share and preserve their nonlinear understandings of the past predominantly among ­themselves.33 In the wake of the population’s improved literacy since the 1970s  and  access  to the Internet in the 2000s, individuals and groups have come to progressively privilege inscription practices in order to interweave their distinct narratives into uniform chronologies,34 record family gatherings as cultural events, and compile everyday objects into collections of artefacts. Over the last thirty years, they have ­increasingly ­utilised learned resources to call forth genealogies (nasāb), validate

8  Introduction: Contours of Place, People, and Ethnography tribal legacies, counter accusations of lying, and create community narratives to share among t­ hemselves and with outsiders. Today, these varied promulgations rely on diverse ­mediations of which photography is playing a progressively central role. Bedouin use computers, printers, cameras, and mobile phones to transform their family archives, folktales, genealogical (nasabī) trees, and lineage narratives into tangible and virtual documents of their pasts and presents. Individuals then circulate these representations in various physical and virtual spaces such as family salons, agnate meeting places (shigg), civic centres, schools, blogs, community websites, and social media. Of the different types of media produced and employed by members, photographs and other visual materials have come to shape how Bedouin in the Naqab reference and construct knowledge over the last decades. Until the early 2000s, the presence and use of images among Bedouin was not as prolific because of their limited access to visual technologies. In the past twenty years, however, the global economy has enabled individuals to easily purchase image-making equipment; devices that have augmented local access to and acumen of photography, the Internet, and web-based platforms. People can now easily search the web for old photographs, make digital copies of images, and capture images of their lives with a range of devices. These images can also be readily printed, shared, and exchanged between people on various physical and digital platforms. Moreover, new digital technologies and applications like Instagram are also facilitating images’ circulations and adaptations in this society. Photographs are still found in their original physical forms but digital images are (by their very nature) nonlocal. They appear on blogs, websites, and social media like Facebook.35 On many occasions, it is not the photograph itself but its graphic contents that are removed and reinserted into people’s archives, re-embedded in books and newspapers, projected onto television and computer screens, reprinted on paper and film, hung on concrete and virtual walls, and compiled into databases and websites. Through practices of photocopying and digitising images, Bedouin are dislocating photographs from their initial material constraints and spatial contexts. It is a process wherein multiple individuals may then lay claim to a vast range of photographic images through co-option of copies rather than owning originals.36 Although it may be obvious to note that photography influences the way people think about and communicate their pasts, scholars of the Middle East have yet to fully examine these practices amongst the region’s desert inhabitants.37 While acknowledging the risk of repeating well-established trichotomies that discuss oral, text, and visual media in isolation, people throughout the world value different modes of historical knowledge production in distinct ways. Of these, photographs are popularly esteemed for their perceived objective reliability, recognitional ease, and their ability to be sourced and disseminated through a wide range of channels. Moreover, photographs are similar to other types of media in that they reflect various present-day ideologies and discourses but they also maintain their own lives and object agencies in the various contexts in which they perform. In order to explore these processes, this book documents the occasions when Bedouin use photographs (and their digital copies) alongside their oral and text-based histories. In particular, I describe how Bedouin media practices have expanded over time as members selectively incorporate photographs with more conventional media, such as books, when producing representations of their past.38 As such, my first goal with this book is to situate Bedouin photography in the Naqab amid broader modes of knowledge production in the Middle East. With that said, photography in the region is still largely treated as a homogenous enterprise, namely image-making by urban elites (ḥaḍarī) in relation to nationalisms and

Introduction: Contours of Place, People, and Ethnography  9 Orientalisms. Up until today, the conflicted presences, disparate uses, and contentious roles of photography in transregional places like the Naqab Desert have been overlooked. In response, I put forward an anthropological study of photography and photographs to better account for the ways in which a marginalised people like the Bedouin make their histories with images in the Middle East. This analytical framework investigates a series of polemics regarding the agencies of images in southern Israel. The first premise of this approach acknowledges that photographs are unique communicators. Their indexical qualities not only allow people to construct diverse and selective readings of history but their authorship can also be more readily disregarded than oral and text-based statements and their ‘meanings’39 more easily reworked as they circulate in and out of different contexts.40 They represent knowledge without saying or reading so, thus the authority to use them is less regulated in this society. In order to further explore these representational instrumentalities, I examine the changing or ‘polysemous’41 meanings derived from images of history by Bedouin in the Naqab. In addition to their value as ‘signs’,42 the influence of photographs for local historymaking is equally determined by their polyvalences. This is a photograph’s simultaneous ‘states of multiple being’43 in different settings be they walls, smartphones, archives, or websites. Here, the value of photographs amongst Bedouin is not solely predicated upon their capacity to articulate multifarious meanings but also based on their diverse presences as material and digital records of the past. While acknowledging the polysemous nature of images, I also examine the work of photographs as objects (and increasingly as digital copies). Photographs are locally treated as actants and attention here is given to their capacity to transform from tangible objects into digital code and back again in diverse times and places. I suggest that, together, it is photographs’ dual ability to mediate various meanings and modalities that make them both remarkable communicators for storytelling but also significant objects of historical persuasion in southern Israel. These analyses aim to recentralise Bedouin knowledge and practice on the production of their own histories with photographs. This comes as the institutional handling and popular nationalist interpretations of the Naqab Bedouin actors, events, and landscapes depicted in archival images are increasingly being challenged not only by members through their own photographs but also by their self-curations of the past. Here, the augmented availability of photography in the region has intensified members’ use and expectations of images and encouraged them to ‘speak for themselves’44 in the same media that typically otherises them. With that said, I do not critically read Naqab Bedouin photography and photographs for acts of resistance or oppression. Alternatively, I explore how contemporary members use photographs as ‘complex historical documents’45 to respond to power and conflict in the Palestinian-Israeli context at the beginning of the twenty-first century. These lines of inquiry significantly rely on information gathered via ethnographic and object biography methods, the latter being a tried but effective approach to the study of photographic material culture.46 In particular, the finite biographies of a series of ‘historically significant’ Naqab Bedouin images detail their afterlives and how they, as both objects and digital codes, are shaped by and in turn shape local histories in the form of genealogies, tribal legacies, Islamic heritage, and ethnohistory. My archival and empirical research aimed to find the ‘first image’ or initial production context of six photographs (c. 1906 and 2013) by tracing their display and value as circulating objects and digital copies in this society during my fieldwork. This approach involved forensic examinations of said photographs but I did not, however, search for the true or original meaning of

10  Introduction: Contours of Place, People, and Ethnography these photographs. Rather, the tactic provided me with a systematic way to uncover the different histories in which these images are involved. While the biographical method is effective, Elizabeth Edwards pointed out that it is ‘perhaps too linear to accommodate the analytical needs of the complex flows’47 of multiple image originals and their copies across diverse landscapes and timeframes. In response, I complicate Deborah Poole’s theory of visual economy that argued peoples’ un-even interactions with photographs often have more to do with power relations than they do with shared meanings.48 Her concept of visual economy is a productive way of mapping images’ encounters and travels between national and international circuits but her discussion does not address concurrent exchanges of images within local and familial contexts. In response, I explore the ‘entangled’ visual economies that comprise the Naqab Desert’s representational landscape. Further detailed in Chapter 3, this model attends to the different but interconnected image worlds wherein photographs of Bedouin have been produced, consumed, and circulated over the last century. These scaled milieus are organised according to ideologies of proximity which frame specific socio-political interactions in this society. I argue Bedouin photographic engagements are embedded within a network of distinctive yet interconnected visual economies that mirror the unique constellation of relationships that define their contemporary intersectionalities in this Palestinian-Israeli context. They are also stages upon which photographs assemble and acquire biographies of value while travelling between different contexts, and s­ubsequently evidence varied articulations of the past in the Naqab. Because ‘different kinds of history have different kinds of relationships with photographs’,49 this book complicates discussions of Palestinian visual history. Local historians are increasingly treating photographs as serious historical actants and searching archives to find images of historical Palestinian experiences. These studies aim to redress the fact that the majority of studies of regional history simply incorporated photographic images as illustrative depictions in their writings. This comes as most historians of the region rely on text-based translations of history which consistently place precedence on the printed word, a practice that reflects the established dichotomy between the subjectivities of the aesthetics and scientific efforts of objective relativism in the sciences.50 By inserting the ‘visual’ into history, new visual historians set out to rectify the photographic absence or erasure of Palestinian presences from past regional landscapes – a classic approach to visual culture that considers photographers and photographs as objective recorders and fixed recordings of the past.51 Through archival research and applied photographic case studies, images are treated as visual evidence of events (as witnessed by photographers of the past) to prove that specific events occurred, for example during the Nakba. Other contemporary studies of Palestinian photography are paying increased ­attention to historical visual practices in the region and the lives of Palestinian photographers in urban centres such as Jerusalem during Ottoman and British rule.52 Palestinian activists, scholars, and artists are also re-reading archival photographs for acts of resistance against imperialist, colonial, and state-based oppressions. They similarly set out to deconstruct stereotypical and Orientalist representations of their peoples.53 Visual activisms have also become extremely popular amongst photo journalists in the West Bank, Gaza, and Israel. This is a practice whereby activists with iPhones and photographers with cameras record confrontational encounters with Israeli officials, for example.54 Finally, studies are re-examining the social history of photographs and the archives compiling them and suggesting ways to decolonise understandings of Palestinian photographic history.

Introduction: Contours of Place, People, and Ethnography  11 These novel approaches to Palestinian visual history address the active obfuscation of the Palestinian past and experiences in the present. For the most part, photographs are treated as a type of documentary technology that records and carries a visual ‘testimony to the history it has experienced’.55 While significant, I take up arguments by Issam Nassar, Stephen Sheehi, and Lucie Ryzova that the roles of photographs in making history in the Middle East do not emanate from the perceived objectivity, accuracy, and truth values of their image contents.56 Alternatively, photographs manifest historical meanings through their performances, reproductions, and repetitions within an ‘assemblage of socially construed facts and practices’57 that are not only framed by nationalisms and globalisms but also localisms. As such, this book contributes to efforts to move discussions of photography in the Middle East forward by exploring how Bedouin purposefully make history with photographs as a Palestinian people in Israel popularly regarded as having no documented or learned knowledge of the past. In doing so, this study contributes to a growing corpus of work examining the local roles of photographs in the Palestinian-Israeli context in order to open up ‘less oblivious experiences’58 and perspectives of times past in this contentious part of the world. To theorise these practices as a whole, the concept of visual historicity is put forward. It draws on the notion of historicity proposed by Eric Hirsch and Charles Stewart and adapted for the discipline of anthropology which addresses the manner in which people make sense of the past and the modes by which they construct it in the present.59 They argued that historicity, in their formulation, ‘concerns the ongoing social production of accounts of the past and futures’60 and suggested ethnographies of historicity for documenting non-Western understandings of the past and temporality. Further developed in the book’s conclusion, I propose a theory of visual historicity for the anthropology of photography to better account for the diverse ways people not only relate to but also ‘do history’61 in the present with images. Drawing on the work of Emrys Peters,62 I argue that histories derived from and supported by photographs provide no truer version of past events, people, and landscapes than written histories or oral genealogies in the tribal Middle East. He demonstrated that these practices are informed by social relations because peoples’ intrinsic concern for the past inevitably encapsulates present-day interests. Here, recordings of the past largely depend on peoples’ relative interest in and their ever-expanding techniques for representing it. As such, I question how historical storytelling in this part of the world is often more about emplacing meaning onto documents such as photographs rather than ascertaining a ‘true discourse of the past’.63 At the same time, I take up John Peel’s warning against rigid presentist approaches to history-making.64 Because a people’s sense of sociality is integral to their production of connectivity over time, a study of visual historicity must avoid the ontological pitfalls of completely unhinging the present from the past, persons from their peoplehood, and photographs from their contexts. The goal here is to shed light on how members transform photographs into objects of historical persuasion while holding on to the realisation that the histories derived from these images, though distinctive and nuanced, are never fully liberated from their initial production milieus and the more dominant Palestinian and Israeli narratives to which they are tied. With these diverse perspectives, this book provides a richer understanding of the photographic mediation of the past in the Middle East by describing how Bedouin revere photographs as artefacts that substantiate their local knowledge – information that increasingly relies ‘on the materiality of the trace, the immediacy of the recording, [and] the ­ visibility of the image’.65 Using a novel form of representation that

12  Introduction: Contours of Place, People, and Ethnography materialises experience, most spokespersons, irrespective of age, status, or residence, laud the ­ostensibly ‘learned’ ­evidence provided by photographs’ ability to realistically capture historical events, connect past peoples, and ground their society in Naqab landscapes. At the same time, spokespersons use photographs because their readings are not restricted to fixed expressions in the same way as one’s words or writings, which award more worth to authorship and sequence. Alternatively, the information validated by images is multifarious and well suited to the persuasion politics characterising history-making in this society. Thus, Bedouin award historical significance to particular images not only because they evidence singular narratives of the past but, more importantly, because they verify multiple histories and facilitate practices of strategic appropriation allowing spokespersons to mediate a range of relationships in southern Israel. Ethnography and Positionality The ethnographic approach presented in this book is two-fold. It informed my collection of empirical and archival information; and the radical empiricist strategy employed in the presentation of this information in narrative and visual forms. Data was collected through multi-sited research with a range of methods including long-term fieldwork conducted over eighteen months between August 2011 and April 2013. Fieldwork locations predominantly included Beersheba, the Bedouin towns of Rāhaṭ, Ḥura, Ksīfa, and Lagīya, and the villages of Khashem Zanaʿ and al-ʿAragīb. During my time in the Naqab, I surveyed local photo collections, interviewed spokespersons about their history-­making efforts, and documented how they used photography in their private daily lives and public exchanges with outsiders. I also traced the object and digital afterlives of several images that held significant value for those displaying them. These photographs were well known among the population and routinely used by spokespersons to provide insight into local history and society. To do so, I noted their material descriptions (creator, content, location) and encounters with other media (books, oral stories, or digital platforms). This required multi-sited archival research in the United Kingdom, United States, Israel, and the Palestinian West Bank, and extensive online research of digital collections. I also gained access to the personal collections of several anthropologists and photographers who worked with members of this society over the last century. Nevertheless, these biographies are limited to the people, places, events, and objects that I engaged with during my fieldwork. My own positionalities irrevocably influenced the collection of this information and, because of the polemics and lack of transparency indicative of the production of scholarship in the Palestinian-Israeli discourse, they warrant discussion here. Our personal subjectivities, affiliations, abilities or lack thereof, and our creative negotiations of them are indicative of all research encounters. I conducted most interviews in a combination of English, Hebrew, and Bedouin vernacular. Because of auditory processing disorder and dyslexia, translating between these three languages was challenging for me. I was fortunate to have ʿAmīr Shiblī as my chaperone, key research collaborator, and translator of dialect. We developed a friendship in the early 2000s while both attending graduate school at Ben Gurion University. ʿAmīr had taught in Naqab Bedouin schools for a decade and his connections as a Shiblī (a respected Bedouin lineage residing in northern Israel) were well known among most southern Bedouin. He also possessed equal status to individuals and groups claiming Arabian origins (ʾaṣīl) and thus male interviewees were more inclined to speak with us as a team rather than me alone. I found during my

Introduction: Contours of Place, People, and Ethnography  13 previous fieldwork in 2007 that my status as a woman intermittently determined my access to specific members.66 Thus, Ike’s and ʿAmīr’s presences were instrumental during interviews with several male informants. At other times, however, I was awarded special access to events and situations as a woman. For example, females invited me to several women-only photograph and video viewing parties, a contemporary event wherein female family members watched wedding videos and looked at images taken during their ḥennāʾ parties. My American nationality and Midwest upbringing also had important implications. In most situations, members responded to my background as evidence of my non-Jewish status and, consequently, felt open to criticise Israeli government policies. At other times, being an outsider justified my ignorance about certain forbidden (ḥarām) activities. On other occasions, being from the United States was problematic so much so that our host family frequently introduced us as English because of my Oxford affiliation rather than American. Suleīmān’s wife would often say that ‘We do not want people to think you are like those other Americans here’. There were also occasions when people in other lineages felt uncomfortable with providing a foreigner access to their prized photographic archives. Outside of this Bedouin society, I have many friends from Ashkenazim, Mizrahim, and Palestinian backgrounds whose knowledge of the Naqab was extremely informative during my fieldwork. At the same time, however, many Israeli Jewish residents I met wanted to know why Ike and I lived in Israel if we were not Jewish and why we were collaborating with ‘Bedouin terrorists’. In the villages, there were also several occasions when Palestinian visitors from the West Bank and diaspora directed their anger over American policies towards us, demanding to know why we were not in the West Bank studying ‘real’ Palestinians as the ‘badū [Bedouin] in the Naqab are not true Palestinians’. Issues of visibility and invisibility in the Palestinian-Israeli landscape also greatly mark my research. Labels such as ‘recognised’ and ‘unrecognised’ popularly articulate these dynamics yet form a broader part of everyday jargon employed by spokespersons today. By conducting long-term fieldwork, however, I was gradually able to move past these public narratives as I literally travelled inward at varying degrees of closeness, moving from Beersheba to the highly closed space of Khashem Zanaʿ. During this progression, people slowly provided me with more details about their lives, information about their pasts, their opinions on various matters, and access to their photographic collections. Over time my conversations with people became more nuanced as I observed the breakdown of official narratives in private chats between individuals. At other times, I continued to listen to the persuasiveness of the rehearsed rhetoric conveyed to other visitors. Because my fieldwork focused on Bedouin efforts to mediate and express their histories, I gained insights about intimate local knowledge, familiarities often obscured from the public eye. In doing so, I navigated contradictions between information, things, relations, and activities regularly hidden from particular publics, which often came out during times of closeness. As Michael Herzfeld argued, the study of ‘cultural intimacy’67 creates situations whereby external observers, such as myself, whose opinions do or are imagined to matter, are only given selective information and the researcher must navigate multiple truths of any given account.68 As such, during my time in the Naqab, I frequently came across inconsistencies and contested stories, and was regularly told not to trust others when it came to their statements about the Bedouin’s past and society. I was often confused about who had the authority to speak on others’ behalf and people’s use of certain language (often pejorative terms) when describing others. While documenting how members constructed their representational credentials through photography, I found

14  Introduction: Contours of Place, People, and Ethnography myself asking why stories frequently changed when told to others. I was given responses such as: ‘Those people would not understand….’; ‘It is not their concern….’; ‘It is very important that they know….’. In each event, the abstract ‘they’ were composed of specific groups in the eyes of speakers and I also participated as an audience member alongside them because of my own externality. Within the context of cultural intimacy, lineage (ʿāʾilāt) politics often arose during my research. People did not consider me loyal to any one particular lineage, and therefore most interviewees outside my host family often felt comfortable elucidating other members’ reputations and histories. It was only after a period of time that my affiliations with the al-ʿAthāmīn and al-Ṣānaʿ became more public and other members became more guarded in their responses. I was also frequently told by those who claim ‘Arabian origins’ (aṣīl) to be careful when asking questions about heritage, ‘Do not go around asking who is ʾaṣīl and who is not. It is a sensitive issue here and you might insult someone’. I later learned that tensions associated with ancestry reflect unequal power dynamics between members, particularly, internal politics of race and ethnicity, past patron-client relations, and more recent genealogical reconstruction efforts. The challenges of conducting fieldwork, particularly in contentious places such as Israel’s southern desert, must also be addressed here. In order to minimise disruption in Khashem Zanaʿ, Ike and I agreed to live in a shipping container located in the centre of Suleīmān’s neighbourhood that lacked the typical privacy fences or tented walls. As such, our daily activities within and outside of our home were made visible to and monitored by family members and our neighbours. In addition, we found that knowledge of social norms was not uniform among different generations or genders as family members often provided us with contrary information about what, where, or how we should act in light of our status as outsiders in the village. In order to address these contradictions, we typically took elders’ advice on such matters. Of these guidelines, gender and visibility politics among women were particularly significant. To reflect these concerns, all images presented in this text have been left in their original and simulated formats as I found them circulating in the Naqab. The only exceptions are those taken of ‘living’ women and children, whose faces have been removed out of respect for my host family and cultural conventions of visibility. Bedouin are not isolated in the Naqab and thus tensions within their society are intensified by confrontations with Israeli state representatives and neighbours. Subsequently, two significant events occurred in the region between 2011 and 2013 during my fieldwork: the systematic demolition of Bedouin homes and routine harassment by government officials; and war between the Israeli military and Gaza armed groups during Operation Returning Echo (9–29 March 2012) and Operation Pillar of Defence (14–21 November 2012). During these armed conflicts, rockets predominately landed outside of the city of Beersheba in the desert where villagers reside. Due to the illegal status of their villages, however, the state does not provide them with bomb shelters or sirens. ­Consequently, during these clashes one Bedouin man was killed and several injured. Finally, I wish here to acknowledge the ethics of highlighting representational contentions amid the politics of creating scholarship in the Palestinian-Israeli discourse. Most scholars writing about this part of the world are regularly confronted with conflicted opinions about ‘information’ and ‘misinformation’ and the propriety of recording local discord, gossip, racisms, inconsistent narratives, and competitions as internal contentions are antithetical to community advocates’ agenda. As Palestinian journalist Amjad Iraqi questioned, ‘How can we talk openly about “nuances” and “complexities” in

Introduction: Contours of Place, People, and Ethnography  15 Palestine-Israel without fearing it may harm our cause? How do avoid one-dimensional narratives without straying from our recognition of oppression?’69 This is especially relevant in the Naqab as some Israeli authorities present Bedouin society as primitive and fragmented. I tried to handle these issues as sensitively as possible. First, the varied nature of Bedouin representations of the past does not make them any less valid than state or dominant historical narratives, which are also framed by specific agendas and subjectivities. Second, my own opinions pertaining to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict are left out of this work and instead I emphasise my research collaborators’ points of view. Third, my case studies apply a ‘radical empiricist approach’,70 a reflexive writing strategy that explicitly places myself as an abettor who interacted with the oral stories, writings, and photographs compiled in this text alongside the people I interacted with both in and out of the Naqab. This tactic takes the reader through a series of research counters, including trips to the library, as if they were unfolding events which include, for example, verbatim transcripts of interviews and raw fieldnotes along with descriptions of Bedouin history that I acquired along the way. With this approach, photographs served as ‘sites of n ­ egotiation’71 to discuss the past with members and outsiders. I endeavoured, however, to move beyond personalised readings by asking questions about broader topics in order to place more intimate narratives in broader contexts. This methodology also acknowledges my ability to engage with various knowledge ecologies, resources, and people in and out of the region – ways and means that typically lay outside of the networks and geographies characterising the lives of the majority of Bedouin. In all, issues of positionality and politics associated with this research were carefully considered whether successfully articulated here or not, particularly in light of anthropology’s long history of failing to recognise their research collaborations, transparency, and the unequal power relations indicative to Palestine-Israel scholarship. Outline of the Book This book is organised into three parts. This structure reflects the analytical route of the chapters from text and oral to visual histories, which provides a more exhaustive examination of the continuity and development of Bedouin representational practices and histories over the last centuries. Why? Because studies of Bedouin peoples have yet to account for the multi-mediated production of histories in the Middle East today of which photographs are playing a centralised role. Moreover, by organising the book in this way, I stress that photography and the reading of photographs do not occur within a media vacuum. The history work of photographs in this society typically involves writings and oral stories, and thus are a fundamental part of broader media repertoires in the Naqab. Nevertheless, members prioritise and place certain moral codes, values, and expectations on particular senses, such as vision, on different occasions. Thus, a study of photographs can provide new insight to the ways in which they produce their histories. Because of the political nature of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, there is no consensus about what constitutes ‘Bedouin history’ nor any examination of how histories are produced by Bedouin themselves in the Naqab. Part One – Histories initiates this discussion. Chapter 1 presents a critical description of Naqab Bedouin historiography while keeping an eye on socio-political changes in their society and their transregional interactions over the centuries. I draw on writings produced over the last centuries describing Bedouin experiences as observed by a range of travellers, administrators, and scholars during the Ottoman

16  Introduction: Contours of Place, People, and Ethnography Empire, the British Mandate, and the state of Israel. Chapter 2 explores the production of histories amongst members. Here, the types of histories that are popular in the Naqab, their themes and registers, and the range of people creating and communicating them are detailed. As technologies become more available to members, Bedouin are not only expanding their established patterns of authority, the types of communities they engage with, and the number of sanctioned public arbiters in their society but they are also diversifying their media skills and history projects. Part Two – Photography outlines a study of Bedouin visual practices. To do so, ­Chapter  3 presents an anthropological approach to Bedouin photography and photographs composed of a series of analytics exploring the duality of photographs as being both a symbolic, culturally-formed image of an observed reality and an object travelling in space and time. Here, I also put forward an entangled visual economies model to better account for Naqab’s reticular representational landscape. Chapter 4 then uses empirical and archival research describing the varied production and consumption of photographs through an exploration of iconography in the Naqab’s six entangled visual economies. I also explore the historical presence of past Bedouin in photographs while discussing the aesthetic, mainstream readings, and technological characteristics of the images that assemble within these discourses. Vernacular photography is also examined. Part Three – Photographs documents the afterlives of six photographs (c. 1900-c. 2013) that Bedouin considered to be historically significant through their biographies. Chapters 5 and 6 describe a series of case studies detailing the circulation of these images between homes, archives, and the Internet as they make history alongside members’ oral narratives and written materials. The case studies are split between two chapters that thematically focus on tribal and community histories, specifically two prominent lineages and several community organisations that regularly appropriate and transform photographs of famous figures, places, and events. These chapters then discuss the images’ material and visual efficacies as they travel between visual economies and acquire value as evidence of tribalism (gabaliya and ʿā’iliyya) and community ideals (Islamism and civicism). I argue that these processes are caught up in local politics, specifically tribal opposition, gendered knowledge, and generational differences; and civic and Islamic community narratives responding to citizenship and religious identity in southern Israel. In conclusion, I situate members’ historical persuasions and representational contentions in the Naqab amid broader forms of affiliation and connectivity in the Middle East. I argue that (like many peoples throughout the world) for Bedouin in the Naqab, the past, present, and future are not separate. This is particularly the case with genealogical and tribal history projects which join more far-reaching ethno-national and Islamic associations. By way of analysis, I put forward a theory of visual historicity (as adapted in anthropology) to explain people’s diverse relationships with photographs as authenticating but interpretive documents of the past, particularly amongst non-Western peoples such as Bedouin whose photographic literacies and access to image-making technologies have grown substantially in the last decades. Drawing on the case studies presented in the book, I conclude that this concept has the potential to better address the relational knowledges of the past and the temporal dynamics that frame Bedouin treatments of photographs (as both representations of and instruments) for making their histories with which members maintain their unique forms of sociality in the present-day. Lastly, my presentation of figures in this book is strategic. The positioning and use of images in the text mirrors the evolving analytical treatment of visual materials in scholarship, moving from illustrations of history to discussions of visual history towards an

Introduction: Contours of Place, People, and Ethnography  17 anthropology of photography. As such, Part I showcases the traditional presentation of images as subsidiary historical documents and includes archival images, diagrams, maps, and documents. Part II reflects conventional treatments of images in studies of visual history. I present images as subjects of Naqab Bedouin iconography and photographic genres. Here, I was also inspired by the work of Susan Meiselas depicting the abundance of imagery of Kurdish people generated throughout the centuries.72 As such, Chapter 4 presents specific assemblages of Naqab Bedouin photographs. Finally, the use of photographs in Part III recentralises images as circulating ethnographic objects that acquire new meanings and values as they are collected, displayed, and reframed in changing material and digital contexts. Notes 1 This is a type of cooperative agricultural community in Israel. 2 Israel Central Bureau of Statistics (ICBS). 2019. ‘Populations by Settlement’, https://www.cbs. gov.il/he/publications/ doclib/2019/2.shnatonpopulation/st02_15x.pdf, Accessed 1 September 2023. 3 Archaeological evidence of Bedouin residence includes cemeteries (nawāmī) and open-air mosques created in early Islamic periods. Avner, Uzi and Jodie, Magness. 1998. ‘Early Islamic Settlement in the Southern Negev’, Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, 310: 39–57 (https://doi.org/10.2307/1357577). Baily, Clinton. 1985. ‘Dating the Arrival of the Bedouin Tribes in Sinai and the Negev’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 28 (1): 20–49 (https://doi.org/10.1163/ 156852085x00091). 4 Marx, Emmanuel. 1967. The Bedouins of the Negev, Manchester: University of Manchester Press. 5 Ibid. 6 Henceforth towns. 7 Negev Coexistence Forum for Civil Equality (NCF). 2014. ‘The Village Project’, http://www. dukium.org/eng/?page _id=1294, Accessed 20 August 2012. These townships are: Rāhaṭ, Lagīya, Ḥūra, Biʿr Hadāj, Tel as-Sabʿ, Ksīfa, ʿArʿarat an-Naqab, and Shagīb as-Salām. 8 According to the Population Authority of Israel there are 80,000 Bedouin residing in the villages. NCF puts that number closer to 130,000. 9 Henceforth ‘villages’. Term ‘unrecognised villages’ was politicised amid the 1987 Markovitz Commission, which investigated unlicensed building practices among Israel’s non-Jewish populations. 10 Labels such as ‘shanty’, ‘diaspora’, ‘periphery’, and ‘illegal’ give the illusion that these r­ esidences are not only scattered but also temporary. Parizot 2004. 11 This law was not implemented until the 1980s. 12 Scheele, Judith and James McDougall (eds.). 2012. ‘Introduction; Time and Space in the Sahara’, Saharan Frontiers: Space and Mobility in Northwest Africa, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 13. McKee, Emily. 2016. Dwelling in Conflict: Negev Landscapes and the Boundaries of Belonging, Stanford University Press: Stanford (https://doi.org/10.1515/9780804798327); and Parizot 2004. 13 In English, the term ‘history’ signifies representation of the past as recorded, the same holds true in Arabic. I take Jay Hexter’s approach to the term ‘history ’to refer to ‘any patterned, coherent account, intended to be true, of any past happenings…’ whereas ‘the past’ references ‘what was’. Hexter, Jay. 1971. The History Primer, London: Allen Lane – The Penguin Press, 3. 14 Peel, John. 1984. ‘Making History: The Past in the Ijesho Present’, Man, New Series, 19 (1): 111–132 (https://doi.org/ 10.2307/2803227); Sahlins, Marshall. 2004. Apologies to Thuycidides: Understanding History as Culture and Vice Versa, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. I use the phrases ‘construction of history’, ‘history-making’, ‘the production of history’, and ‘the making of history’ interchangeably throughout this book. 15 These are public spokespersons authorised by others to regularly act on their behalf. They are diverse and include tribal elders, academics and politicians, and civic and religious spokespersons. Individual identification to these categories, however, are temporal and multiple in that

18  Introduction: Contours of Place, People, and Ethnography they may identify as an elder and/or civic activist simultaneously or during specific periods in their life or occasions. 1 6 Ratcliffe 2009. 17 Parizot, Cédric. 2001b. ‘Gaza, Beesheba, Dhahriyya: Another Approach to the Negev Bedouin in Israeli-Palestinian Space’, Bulletin du CRFJ, Automne, 9: 98–110; Ratcliffe, Richard. 2009. ‘The Battle for Recognition: Civil Society, Citizenship, and the Political Rise of the Negev Bedouin’, Civil Organizations and Protest Movements in Israel, Elizabeth Marteu (ed.), United States: Palgrave Macmillan (https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230621749_11); McKee, Emily. 2010. ‘Of Camels and “Ca-mail”: Engaging Complex Representations of Bedouins in Activism’, Collaborative Anthropologies, 2: 81–92 (https://doi.org/10.1353/ cla.2010.0003); Hall, Bogumila. 2014. ‘Bedouins’ Politics of Place and Memory: A Case of Unrecognized Villages in the Negev’, Nomadic Peoples, 18 (2):147–164 (https://doi.org/10.3197/np.2014.180209); Tatour, Lana 2019. ‘The Culturalisation of Indigeneity: The Palestinian-Bedouin of the Naqab and Indigenous Rights’, The International Journal of Human Rights, 23 (10): 1569–1593 (https://doi.org/10.1080/13642987.2019.1609454). 18 Parizot, C. 2001a. Le mois de la bienvenue: réappropriations des mécanismes électoraux et réajustements de rapports de pouvoir chez les Bédouins du Néguev (Israël), Unpublished PhD Dissertation, Paris: EHESS, Ratcliffe 2009. 19 Tribalism is treated here as a socio-political orientating principle based on segmentary logic of identification typically established through genealogical idioms amongst Bedouin in the Naqab. It is a historically fluid principle that draws from various practical, academic, and political ideals of sociality that are have been successfully and consistently made over time throughout the region. Routledge, Bruce. 2004. Moab in the Iron Age: Hegemony, Polity, Archaeology, Pittsburg: University of Pennsylvania Press. 20 There are different privates and publics in the Naqab where people share interests and possess more knowledge and authority than others in these contexts. 2 1 Shryock 1997. 22 The term ‘evidence’ describes both documentary materials that possess public authority and truth claims. Scheele, Judith. 2009. Village Matters: Knowledge, Politics & ­ Community in Kabylia, Algeria, United Kingdom: James Curry Publishing (https://doi.org /10.1017/ upo9781846157752). 2 3 Parizot 2001a. 24 The changing relationships conducted under the banner of tribal namesakes in the Naqab are treated here as tribal (ʿashāʾirī) affiliations rather than tribes (ʿashīra, ʿashā’ir) implying a static and homogenous group. 2 5 Caton 1990. 26 I use the phrase Palestinian-Israeli context throughout this book to reflect the fact that peoples’ experiences and histories in this part of world are intertwined yet shadowed by unbalanced power relations. Pasternak, Gill. (ed.). 2020a. ‘Introduction’, Visioning Israel-Palestine: Encounters at the Cultural Boundaries of Conflict, London and New York: Bloomsbury ­Publishing, xviii (https://doi.org/10.5040/9781501364655. 0006). 27 McKee 2016, 47. 28 They argue that Bedouin never permanently lived in the Naqab; that their tribal society dissolved in 1948; and that they are a nomadic people who possess no value for land. Frantzman, Seth, Yael Havatzelet, and Ruth Kark. 2012. ‘Contested Indigeneity: The Development of an Indigenous Discourses on the Bedouin of the Negev’, Israel Studies, 17 (1): 78–104 (https://doi. org/10.2979/israelstudies.17.1.78); Salzman, 1996; Somfalvi, Attila. 2013. ‘­Avigdor ­Lieberman: Our Lands Are Being Robbed’, (30 November 2013) Ynet News, http://www.­ynetnews.com/­ articles/0,7340-4459669,00.html, Accessed December 2014. (Avigdor ­ Lieberman [former ­Foreign Affairs Minister of Israel] in Somfalvi 2013). 29 McKee 2016, 25. 30 Customary property rights are based on lineages (ʿāʾilāt) claims established through residence, consistent use, oral agreements, and historical connections to the land. 31 I do not wish to over exaggerate the capacity of Bedouin to impose meanings onto their Naqab landscapes. The representational contexts described here are informed by and inform broader political economies of meaning. Henceforth ‘contexts’ will also be referred to as ‘landscapes’ and ‘discourses’ in this book.

Introduction: Contours of Place, People, and Ethnography  19 32 Evans-Pritchard 1950; Peters, Emrys. 1977. ‘Local History in Two Arab ­ Communities’, Bulletin for British Society for Middle Eastern Studies, 4 (2): 71–81 (https://doi. org/10.1080/13530197708705212). 33 Peters 1977; Abu Lughod 2000 (1986); Shryock 1996; and Bailey, Clinton. 2001 (1991). Bedouin Poetry from Sinai and the Negev: Mirror of Culture, Oxford: Clarendon Press. 34 Shryock 1996; Samin, Nadav. 2019. Of Sand or Soil: Genealogy and Tribal Belong ing in Saudi Arabia, Vol. 59, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press (https://doi. org/10.1515/9781400873852). 35 Gruber, Christine and Haugbølle, Sune. 2013. (eds.) ‘Introduction’, Visual Culture in the ­Modern Middle East, Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. 36 Ibid. 37 Ryzova, Lucie. 2013. ‘I Have the Picture! Egypt’s Photographic Heritage between Digi tal Reproduction and Neoliberalism’, Jadaliyya, https://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/27880, Accessed October 2014. 38 Analyses of smartphones and websites are beyond the scope of this project. Instead, these technologies are treated as vehicles for communication. 39 The term ‘meaning’ in this book generally refers to images’ changing interpretations or ‘re-readings’. 40 Pinney, Christopher. 2003. ‘Introduction’, Photography’s Other Histories, Christopher Pinney and Nicolas Peterson (eds.), United States: Duke University Press (https://doi. org/10.1215/9780822384717-001). 41 Eder, Jens and Charlotte Klonk. 2016. ‘Image Operations: Visual Media and Political Conflict’, Manchester Scholarship Online, www.manchester.universitypressscholarship.com, Accessed 13 August 2018. 42 Gruder and Haugbølle 2013; Ryzova, Lucie. 2015a. ‘Unstable Icons, Contested ­Histories’, Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication, 8 (1): 37–68 (https://doi.org/10.1163/ 18739865-00801004). 43 Edwards, Elizabeth. 2009. ‘Photography and the Material Performance of the Past’, History and Theory, 48 (4): 130–150 (https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2303.2009.00523.x). 44 Marcus, George. 1997. ‘The Uses of Complicity in the Changing Mise-En-Scene of Anthropological Fieldwork’, Representations, 59: 85–108 (https://doi.org/10.2307/2928816). 45 Morton, Christopher and Darren Newbury. 2015. The African Photographic Archive Research and Curatorial Strategies, London: Routledge, 3 (https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003103912). ­ ollections, 46 Tilly, Christopher. 1994. ‘Interpreting Material Culture’, Interpreting Objects and C Susan Pearce (ed.), London: Routledge (https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203428276); Edwards 2009. 47 Edwards, Elizabeth. 2012. ‘Objects of Affect: Photography Beyond the Image’, Annual Review of Anthropology, 41: 221–234, 223 (https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-anthro-092611-145708). 48 Poole, Deborah. 1997. Vision, Race, and Modernity: A Visual Economy of the Andean Image World, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press (https://doi.org/10.1515/9780691234649). 49 Edwards, Elizabeth. 2021. Photography and the Practice of History: A Short Primer, Bloomsbury: London, 8–9 (https://doi.org/10.5040/9781350120631). 50 Banks, Marcus. 2001. Visual Methods in Social Research, London: Sage (https://doi. org/10.4135/9780857020284). 51 Granquist, Hilma 1981. Portrait of a Palestinian Village: The Photographs of Hilma ­Granquist, London: Third World Centre; Khalidi, Walid. 1984. Before Their Diaspora: A Photographic History of the Palestinians 1876–1948, United States of America: Washington Institute of ­Palestine Studies Press; Shepard, Naomi. 1997. The Zealous Intruders: The Western Rediscovery of Palestine, London: Collins Publishing; Steward-Howe, Kathleen. 1997. Revealing the Holy Land: The Photographic Exploration of Palestine, Santa Barbara: Santa Barbara Museum of Art; Safieh, Raffi. (ed.) 1999. Hanna Safieh, A Man and His Camera, Photographs of Palestine 1927–1967, Jerusalem: Raffi Salieh Press; Sanbar, Elias. (2004) Les Palestiniens: La photographie d’une terre et de son peuple de 1839 à nos jours, Vanves: Hazan Publishers; ­Azoulay, Ariella. 2011. From Palestine to Israel: A Photographic Record of Destruction and State F ­ ormation, 1947–1950, United States of America: Pluto Press; Sanchez-Summerer, Karène, and Sary Zananiri. 2021. Imaging and Imagining Palestine: Photography, Modernity and the Biblical Lens, 1918–1948, Leiden and Boston: Brill (https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004437944).

20  Introduction: Contours of Place, People, and Ethnography 52 Nassar, Issam, Salim Tamari, and Stephen Sheehi. 2022. Camera Palaestina: Photography and Displaced Histories of Palestine, vol. 5. Oakland: University of California Press (https://doi. org/10.1525/luminos.126). 53 Graham-Brown, Sarah. 1980. Palestinians and Their Society, 1880–1946: A Photographic Essay, London: Quartet Books Limited. 54 Azoulay, Ariella. 2008. The Civil Contract of Photography, Massachusetts: Zone Books, 12 (https://doi.org/10.2307/ j.ctv1qgnqg7); Stein, Rebecca. 2021. Screen Shots: State V ­ iolence on Camera in Israel and Palestine, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press (https://doi. org/10.1515/9781503628038). 55 Benjamin, Walter. 2008 [1936]. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, ­London: Penguin Group, 215. 56 Nassar, Issam. 2006. ‘Familial Snapshots: Representing Palestine in the Work of the First Local Photographers’, History and Memory, 18 (2): 139–155 (https://doi.org/10.1353/ ham.2007.0006); Sheehi, Stephen. 2012. ‘A Social History of Early Arab Photography or a Prolegomenon to An Archaeology of the Lebanese Imago’, International Journal of Middle East Studies, 39 (2): 177–208 (https://doi.org/10.1017/s0020743807070341); Ryzova, Lucie. 2015b. ‘I have the Picture: The Making of Photographic Heritage in Contemporary Egypt’, Dissonant Archives: Contemporary Visual Culture and Contested Narratives in the Middle East, Anthony Downey (ed.), London and New York: I.B. Tauris (https://doi.org/10.5040/978 0755607419.0020). 57 Sheeli 2012, 407. 58 Pasternak 2020a, 15. 59 Hirsh, Edward and Charles Stewart. 2005. ‘Introduction: Ethnographies of Historicity’, ­History and Anthropology, 16 (3): 261–274 (https://doi.org/10.1080/02757200500219289). 60 Ibid., 262. 61 Edwards 2020, 170. 62 Peters 1977. 63 Hexter 1971. 64 Peel 1984. 65 Nora, Pierre. 1989. ‘Between Memory and History’, Representations, 26: 7–24, 13 (https://doi. org/10.2307/2928520). 66 Dahan-Kalev, Henriette and Emilie Le Febvre with Amal el-Sana-Alh-jooj. 2012. Palestinian Activism in Israel: A Bedouin Woman Leader in a Changing Middle East, New York: Palgrave Macmillan (https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137048998). 67 Herzfeld, Michael. 1997. Cultural Intimacy: Social Poetics in the Nation-State, New York: Routledge (https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203826195). 68 Shryock, Andrew. (ed.) 2004. ‘Other Conscious/Self Aware: First Thoughts on Cultural Intimacy and Mass Mediation’, Off Stage/On Display: Intimacy and Ethnography in the Age of Public ­ Culture, United States: Stanford University Press (https://doi.org/10.1515/ 9781503624825-004). 69 Iraqi, Amjad. Twitter post. February 22, 2022, 6:12 P.M., https://twitter.com/aj_iraqi/status/1 496095668326346753?s=12. 70 Bowman, Glenn. 1997. ‘Radical Empiricism: Anthropological Fieldwork after Psychoanalysis and the “Année Sociologique”’, Anthropological Journal on European Cultures, 6 (2): 79–107. 71 Edwards 2003. 72 Meiselas, Susan. 2008. Kurdistan: The Shadow of History, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Part One

Histories

1 Naqab Bedouin Social History and Historiography

Naqab Bedouin historiography comprises writings produced during the Ottoman Empire, the British Mandate, and the state of Israel in a range of intellectual, government, and community paradigms. As such, learned imaginings of their history and society in the Naqab have been diverse over the last centuries with scholars focusing on a range of topics that reflect the thematic and theoretical trends of the times in which they were written. Early writings by explorers, Orientalists, and officials treated the population as isolated nomads; their accounts were inspired by centuries-long myths of race pertaining to tribes, nomadism, and Arabness in the Middle East. Nineteenth and early twentieth-century texts focused on the grand genealogies (nasāb) of tribal confederations (gabā’il) explaining how Bedouin came to be in the region. Mid-century anthropologists documented the lives and changing tribal structures of Israel’s new Bedouin citizens who resided in and around Beersheba after 1948. Since then, Bedouin history in southern Levant has been divided into three regional ‘groups’ (Naqab, Galilee, and Sinai). Of these, Bedouin residing in Israel’s Naqab Desert have come to be known as ʿarab as-sabʿ (pre-1948 dialect), Habeduim BaNaqab (Hebrew), Negev Bedouin (English), and Badū an-Naqab ­(contemporary Arabic) over the last hundred years. Because of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, topics of state power, marginalisation, and ethnocratic politics occupied centre stage for scholarship on Naqab Bedouin at the end of the twentieth century. Since the 1980s, studies set out to document the population’s struggles with coerced urbanisation and discrimination by the Israeli state.1 At the beginning of the twenty-first century, a ‘new wave’ of research had emerged. These studies argued that previous studies isolated Bedouin from other Palestinians and overlooked their resistances, civic pursuits, and indigeneity. This scholarship has hence been labelled the post-Oslo paradigm (2000-current).2 This latest discourse broadly set out to ­de-colonise research, reclaim agency, and complicate Orientalist studies of Bedouin in the Naqab as a Palestinian people in Israel. These writings support legal negotiations over land and civic rights by evoking languages of community, indigenous rights, and cultural differences in their public and scholastic works.3 In order to ‘counter academic fatigue with ethnographies focusing on tribal elites’,4 post-Oslo research examines Israel’s marginalisation of Bedouin in the Naqab and members’ resistance to it over the last century, particularly through the lens of ethnocratic state dynamics. A central component of this scholarship has been increased efforts to collect, recontextualise, and publish historical evidence of Bedouin lives in the Naqab. New s­ tudies of history are searching out and using old travel diaries, titles, government surveys, investigative files, archives, and reports created by Ottoman, British, and United Nations officials, for example, as text-based proof of Bedouin farming practices in the region and DOI: 10.4324/9781003185703-3

24 Histories land ownership over the centuries. They record local oral testimonies about the Nakba and narratives about members’ forced resettlement. By re-reading the archive, this new discourse strives to redress the absence of Bedouin voices in official regional historiography, dismantle stereotypes of the desert tribesman, situate Bedouin history within the history of the Palestinian people, and move beyond stagnant trajectories of ‘nomadism to modernity’.5 In summary, these new perspectives of Naqab Bedouin history aim to employ ‘fresh lenses through which to read their history and affairs’.6 Archival research among scholars of the Naqab Bedouin and their subsequent historical revisionisms, though, began much earlier in the mid-1980s. For example, Clinton Bailey’s research explored pre-Ottoman archives in the region (945–1516) for mention of tribes in order to highlight the population’s ongoing residence in the region.7 Later, New Historians redressed historical scholarship on this society in the 1990s. Their works provided alternative analyses of declassified governmental and archival records in Israel which often counter popular state narratives about the Bedouin’s past experiences.8 In all, these historical revisionisms aim to ‘uncover’ archival documents and re-examine Bedouin members’ experiences during Ottoman, British, and early Israeli rule.9 As of the early twenty-first century, cultural scholars and historians alike have augmented their efforts to source and compile written archival documents pertaining to the Naqab Bedouin past over the last several decades. While providing much-needed insight about the ‘weight of history’,10 both old and new discourses of history typically focus on making and correcting truth claims. In doing so, they constructed historical revisionisms predominantly through Western historicism and historiography, which separate the past from the present, and esteem textual archival documents and records as authoritative evidence of past events. In particular, they tend to isolate and periodise local history and juxtapose written historical accounts to Ottoman, British, and Israeli narratives. While text-based histories typically disregard members’ own history-making, they have, nevertheless, created ways of discussing the Bedouin past in southern Israel, and, over time, these descriptions have come to influence local perceptions of history and society. As Claude Lévi-Strauss pointed out, ‘[i]nsofar as history aspires to meanings, it is doomed to select regions, periods, groups of men and individuals in these groups and to make them stand out … History is therefore never history, but history-for’.11 With that said, there is little consensus between contemporary Bedouin and state officials about historical developments in the Naqab given that these complex pasts and contentious realities are often purposely re-contextualised for political purposes in the PalestinianIsraeli context. As such, it is beyond the scope of this chapter to requisition or postulate truths within the ‘canonical historical narratives’12 characterising this part of the world. The following chapter instead identifies the influential writings about Bedouin in the Beersheba region, particularly those generated by Western, Israeli, and Palestinian ­discourses – ­literature produced by a vast range of people that have come to compartmentalise popular rationalisations of Bedouin life in Israel but also members’ presentations of history.13 While summarising the breadth of historical records from approximately the end of the Ottoman Empire to 2013, I describe how Western, Israeli, and Palestinian studies have come to describe the Naqab Bedouin and their experiences of tribalism, intra and inter socio-politics, and citizenship status as an Israeli ‘Arab minority’. Through critical description and content analysis of texts produced over the last centuries, this chapter provides a general history about the Bedouin of the Naqab, surveys the various administrations of the population, and explains changes within their society – a necessary preamble for ascertaining the types of history expressed and produced by Bedouin themselves with photography today.

Naqab Bedouin Social History and Historiography  25 Beersheba Under Ottoman and British Rule (c. 1900–1947) Writings about Bedouin residing in the Naqab Desert first materialised in the tenth century in the form of histories produced by scholars such as Muḥammad al-Ṫabarī (c. 839–923) and Muḥammad al-Hamdānī (c. 893–945).14 Later works were created by ʿAḥmed ibn ʿAbdallah al-Qalqashandī (1356–1418) and ʿAḥmed ibn ʿAli al-Maqrīzī (1364–1442).15 They listed tribal namesakes and highlighted the difference between peasant and tribal peoples, distinctions informing the more definite typologies used to describe these societies today. Their system of classification distinguished peoples in the Middle East by their supposed urbanite (ḥaḍarī), peasant (fallāḥ), or pastoralist (badāwī) origins. The cataloguing of tribal namesakes continued in the mid-fourteenth and sixteenth centuries by local officials such as ʿAbd al-Qādīr al-Jazīrī (c. 1570-n.d.) from Cairo who also named tribes he met while travelling in the region in the sixteenth century.16 Records from the  Greek Orthodox Monastery of Saint Catherine’s also described tribal namesakes in the area from the fourteenth to the nineteenth centuries, when the region came under the rule of the Ottoman Empire (est. 1516). Prompted by dynamics of discovery between the ‘West’ and the ‘East’, European imperial interest in the Middle East escalated from the sixteenth century onward and the uniqueness of tribal peoples captivated the imagination of Western scholars and travellers alike.17 As European interest in the Middle East grew so did writings on Bedouin of Beersheba (ʿarab as-sabʿ) in Ottoman-ruled Palestine.18 For example, explorers such as Antonin Jaussen (1871–1962) and Alois Musil (1868–1944) published their observations gathered during expeditions to the area, most of which perpetuated idealised notions of tribalism, conquest, nomadism, and the ‘noble Bedouin’.19 These were produced during a time when the Ottoman Empire ruled the southern region (1516–1917) and its desert inhabitants with a ‘loose type’20 of governance. At the time, Bedouin in the region lived in similar ways as their ancestors in Arabia. They resided in goat-haired tents, raised livestock, and migrated to different pastures with minimal interference from the Empire. Migrations were seasonal and families annually sowed crops throughout the northern Beersheba Plain, valleys, and riverbeds. Contrary to myths about isolated Bedouin life in the desert, the population regularly interacted with non-Bedouin peoples during the Ottoman Empire and actively participated in the region’s broader economy and sociopolitics. For example, they traded with foreign pilgrims en route to Mecca and ­Jerusalem. Moreover, they lived alongside other settled Palestinians and Egyptians. They also collected payment (khawa) for protection against other raiding parties in the area and on major routes from villagers throughout Syria and Palestine. Beyond raiding, Bedouin interacted with outsiders at markets in Gaza, Hebron, and Beersheba throughout the centuries. In the mid-nineteenth century, Sultan Abdülmejid I (1823–1861) created the ­Tanzimât, which systemised government rule over Bedouin.21 Previous Ottoman policies that left the population largely alone over the last two hundred years were replaced by active administrations due to rising geopolitical tensions with the British Empire and the construction of the Suez Canal. New administrative tenets directed at Bedouin in the region included upgrading military forces regulating tribal warfare and encouraging migrating families to settle via the 1858 Land Law and classifying unused lands as uncultivated (mawat). Ottoman authorities required families residing on land labelled as uncultivated to register their names, acquire land titles, and pay taxes on their property. The Ottomans also formalised Beersheba as a new sub-district and the city of Beersheba as its new official administrative centre in 1901.22 The city was established on 2,000 dunams

26 Histories of land bought from the ʿAzāzmah confederation (gabīla).23 In 1904, the Ottomans built a local Tribal School in Beersheba, reserved for the sons of influential shaykhs who also constructed town-homes in the new city and participated in government activities. ‘It was hoped that the school would provide the future tribal leaders with the skills necessary for maintaining relations with the government officials’.24 Later, Ali Ekrem Bey (1867– 1937), who governed the Jerusalem area from 1906 to 1908, also initiated development projects to encourage semi-nomadic families to settle and farm. The construction of Beersheba and its official recognition as a capital coincided with the Sultan’s redesign of several Palestinian districts whereby geopolitically significant regions were labelled administrative centres (mutasarriflik). The government labelled the sub-district in southern Palestine Birüssebi. As historian George Kirk suggested, there was no specific geographical name denoting this southern region in Arabic before the nineteenth century.25 Alternatively, he argued that Jewish writers revived the term ‘Negev’ during the rise of political Zionism in the late nineteenth century. These authors appropriated the old Hebrew appellation meaning ‘dry’ to vaguely define lands south of Beersheba during Ottoman rule. Alternatively, throughout the Ottoman period, the Bedouin population was known as the ʿarab as-sabʿ (dialect). Sultan Abdülmejid II (1868–1944) revised the original Tanzimât to further augment Ottoman presence in the Naqab at the turn of the century.26 It formalised tribal boundaries at the turn of the century, which remained largely intact until 1948, and officially recognised a collection of tribal confederations (gabāʾil) in the southern district. Ottoman administrators also began mapping and recording the Bedouin demographic wherein they identified eight main confederations with established territory in the district: Tarabīn, Tiyāhā, ʿAzāzmah, Ḥanājrah, Jubarāt, Saʾidīn, Aḥēwāt, and Jahalīn. Of these confederations, the Tarabīn and Tiyāhā were the largest. Bureaucratically, late Ottoman officials treated the confederations as ‘closed’ units of people. In order to administer them, authorities created a system of ‘formally’ acknowledging some confederations over others and distinguishing their territories and leaders who they appointed as mediators between the Empire and their groups. While regulated, Ottoman-recognised shaykhs and confederations were based on local Bedouin leadership customs and affiliations that typically operated independently of imperial oversight before 1917. Intrusion of state administration on Bedouin affairs intensified after World War I. At this time, the residents of Ottoman Birüssebi became subjects of the British Empire. Between 1917 and 1948, the British Mandate took up similar coercion tactics as initiated by the Ottomans to administer the Bedouin populations in the Northern and the Western Gaza Sub-Districts. For example, during their rule, the British continued to run the Ottoman Tribal School but also made special provisions for migrating families wherein children were taught by travelling teachers at shaykhs’ agnate meeting places (shigg) within five tribal territories.27 By 1935, a literate class comprising the children of Bedouin elite had emerged whereas the rest of the general population remained largely illiterate. The British also expanded the ­Beersheba Bedouin Market, a well-established economic centre during Ottoman rule.28 To govern the Empire’s Bedouin populations on a regional level, namely in the Beersheba, Transjordan, and Sinai regions, British officials adopted policies to regulate cross-border tribal conflicts and movements. For example, interterritorial tribunals were established to bring shaykhs together to mediate and settle debuts about raiding, blood feuds, and land claims.29 With that said, the British took up a very different approach to governing Beersheba’s Bedouin population in comparison to other Palestinians in their

Naqab Bedouin Social History and Historiography  27 jurisdiction in light of the unique political backdrop of the Peel Commission (1937),30 the Palestinian Arab Revolt (1936–1939), and expanding Jewish settlements in southern Palestine. In particular, they excluded southern Bedouin leaders from regional policymaking and erroneously presented them as uninterested in Palestinian Arab national unity. This differed from their administrative approaches in Transjordan where Bedouin were integrated into their ‘nation-state apparatus, military and law institutions, and the national fabric of the modern Jordanian identity’.31 On a local level, the British adopted divide-and-rule policies. This colonial strategy involved the creation of internal policing units such as the Palestinian Colonial Force and the Bedouin Camelry, and the systematic exploitation of the Bedouin’s internal socialpolitical divides in southern Palestine. The British established the Bedouin Control Ordinance in 1942 which was designed to encourage members to take up agriculture and to increase colonial commissioners’ control over local travel between areas and limit nomadic migrations. Despite intensifying policies regarding agriculture and taxation, the British had trouble distinguishing between Bedouin who farmed from those who continued to migrate. They also struggled to identify the various tribal affiliations in the Beersheba region for the purposes of taxation.32 Consequently, the British commissioned administrators, explorers, and academics to gather information about Bedouin in the southern districts. They produced writings, maps, and historical records. For example, the British Mandate’s Palestinian Handbooks documented the history, economics, politics, and peoples of the region and included descriptions of the Bedouin’s perceived racial and cultural differences from other Arabs.33 Officials also created a census estimating that 65,000 Bedouin lived in Palestine between 1922 and 1931. ʿĀrif al-ʿĀrif, the Palestinian district officer of Mandate Beersheba (1933–1948), also extensively wrote about Bedouin society during his administration, which cumulated in a series of books on Bedouin genealogies (nasāb), tribal territories, namesakes, and customs. His writings, however, reflected his urban sentiments at the time which considered the population an exotic and primitive desert people. Notwithstanding, Seraj Assi explained that al-ʿĀrif’s books officially ‘wrote’ Bedouin into Palestinian history and his documentation of their tribal histories ‘offered an alternative narrative to official Zionist and British historiographies’.34 In addition to regional officials, travelling Western historians, explorers, and scholars also wrote about Bedouin residing in British Palestine.35 For example, Samuel Hillelson produced a series of academic articles detailing tribal genealogies (nasāb) and history. In them, he claimed the Tiyāhā confederation (gabīla) were descendants of Suleīmān al-ʿAnoud of the Banū Hilāl.36 Hillelson explained that the Maʿaza of western Saudi A ­ rabia drove the Tiyāhā and Tarabīn out of the Arabian Gulf during the Muslim Conquests (623–1050). The Tiyāhā were separated from the main group during their ‘famous march to the Maghreb’ with the Tarabīn in the tenth century and hence became known as the people of Jabal al-Tīh (Hills of the Wandering).37 George Murray also documented that the Tarabīn and Tiyāhā frequently fought over control of the land but the two eventually made peace when representatives agreed to hold specific lands.38 Despite established boundaries between each confederation, there was often conflict because of sales, inheritance, leasing, and transfer of land between families; a situation exasperated by internal power struggles, which often resulted in war being declared by one or the other.39 The British used information gathered in censuses, the scholarship of others, and surveys to further organise the Bedouin population into narrower administrative units also

28 Histories labelled ‘tribes’ to account for ‘smaller territorial combinations’ of people.40 Before 1948, members of the Tiyāhā confederation (gabīla), for instance, also customarily maintained affiliations with sub-confederations (ṣaff) or ‘super tribes’ during times of war or collaboration. In 1934, al-ʿĀrif listed the main sub-confederations of the Tiyāhā as: ʿIyāl ʿUmarī, Ḥukūk, ʿAlāmāt, Badīnāt, and Gdīrāt. In addition to sub-confederations, the British also identified smaller tribal associations (ʿashīra, ʿashāʾir). Up until 1949, tribes (ʿashāʾir) varied in size but were ideally composed of networks of people that banded together during times of war, citing genealogical (nasabī) alliances for their co-operation. During the Mandate period, tribes were formally recognised by the British as official Bedouin associations and thus determined familial land rights and territorial boundaries. By only acknowledging the customary land rights and alliances of the tribes, the British did not administratively account for smaller networks and alliances, for example, those associated with sub-tribes (rubaʾ). According to the customary model of tribal order before the 1950s four sub-tribes came together to create a larger tribe (ʿashīra). Alternatively, British officials, and later the Israeli government, treated tribes (ʿashāʾir) as homogenous units. As with vernacular treatments of affiliation within larger confederations (gabāʾil) and sub-confederations (ṣaff), however, customary tribes were also heterogeneous networks of kin, cognates, and affiliates sharing territorial pastoral lands, political interests (such as collaboration during conflicts), and economic interests (such as selling livestock and farmed goods). Relationships within tribes were typically justified through kinship, but all members did not necessarily share descent but rather affiliated under the same tribal namesakes during specific occasions. In the mid-twentieth century, the shaykh of a tribe customarily came from the most powerful sub-tribes, and succession of the title would pass to his male nephews, brothers, and cousins of the coregroup. Shaykhs of larger tribes were also judges and the main contacts for the British authorities.41 Bedouin members did not possess the same status within tribes (ʿashāʾir). For example, during the British Mandate land values rose because of intensified agricultural enterprises. Many shaykhs also expanded their lands and employed farmers (fallāḥīn) who moved to the region to work as sharecroppers, a situation that intensified clientelism between landless affiliates and land-owning Bedouin that began much earlier in the nineteenth century. By the Mandate period, most tribes in the northern Naqab were allied with specific client groups; however, patronage between the Bedouin landowners and client families was marked by long-held inequalities. Socio-political and economic disparities increased between tribes that could afford to patron clients against those who could not. Some clients were also able to rent land as tenets in tribal territories which awarded them a higher status than others in their respective ‘status groups’. Emanuel Marx later described the stratification of Naqab Bedouin society in the midtwentieth century between: members who claim nobility through ‘origins’ (ʾaṣl, ʾaṣīl) to the Arabian Peninsula (ʿarab) and consider themselves ‘land owners’; client-based farmers and affiliates (badū fallāḥīn) of non-Arabian (non-ʾaṣīl) ancestry who migrated from surrounding areas such as Egypt; and members of East African descent whose ancestors were brought the region as slaves42 and later freed when the Ottomans abolished slavery in 1924.43 Randolph explained the relationship between the former two groups at that time: Several large families tracing their origins to the villages of the Gaza region and Egypt are not considered ‘Bedouin’ by the indigenous tribes of the area and are not

Naqab Bedouin Social History and Historiography  29 given daughters of these tribes to marry. In this case, as in others, important social ­boundaries, especially those of status groups, are delineated by endogamy. Thus in this work, wherever Negev Fellahin are referred to they are not the usual Fellahin of the settled areas, but tent-dwellers who trace their descent to settled areas and who are low in the status hierarchy of the Negev.44 At the beginning of the twenty-first century, many Bedouin who claim Arabian origins (ʾaṣīl) continue to distinguish themselves from members with non-originative or non-ʾaṣīl backgrounds and do not consider these people to be their equals, reflecting an internal class structure based on discriminatory notions of race and ethnicity amongst members. In particular, individuals claiming genealogy to Saudi Arabia argue they possess ‘roots’ or ‘origins’ (ʾaṣīl) to the Naqab which validates their customarily higher status and power. These advantages are justified by their perceived lines of descent (sulāla) to a notable ­Arabian forbearer. They also use pejorative words such as ḥumrān to describe members with fallāḥīn ancestry and ʿabīd when referring to people of East African descent, while using the terms ʿarab, sumrān, or ‘freemen’ (al-aḥrār, kḥura) when referencing themselves.45 Parizot explained the stigmatisation of Bedouin (badū fallāḥīn) through dialect: The Bedouins [ʾaṣīl] call them hajara (tenants), mahmiyat (protected), even more pejoratively, lumūma (collection of individuals) or humrān (reds). This last term remains predominant until today. Its origin would come from the skin colour of the peasants which was lighter than that of the Bedouins, referring to themselves by the term sumrān or asmarān (blacks). Finally, the Bedouins name the peasants according to their place of origin and not according to a genealogical affiliation […] This form of appellation is not neutral insofar as it removes any claim to a relevant genealogical (asl) origin…46 As indicated above, Bedouin (ʾaṣīl) justify the low status of non-ʾaṣīl members because of (what they see as) a ‘lack of pedigree’ – creating a social hierarchy interpreted through genealogy and delineated by cultural practices such as marriage that justify established economic inequalities and socio-political dependence in their society.47 The politics associated with class politics, race-based dialect, decorum, and internal relationships amongst Bedouin continue to be morally saturated and ever-evolving in the Naqab Desert with younger generations and spokespersons increasingly challenging these prejudices today – a situation further discussed in the next chapter. Israel’s Naqab Bedouin ‘Tribesmen’ (1948–1966) In the late nineteenth century, the Zionist movement sought to create a new n ­ ation-state for Jewish people in then-Ottoman-ruled Palestine. Imaginings of an empty Levantine landscape underscored their enterprise but overlooked the region’s existing population. Nevertheless, by the early twentieth century, Jewish settlement in Palestine gained international support as the geopolitical interests of Western countries attenuated in the Middle East and the international status of Palestine’s residents remained invisible.48 In 1917, the British government established an alliance with the Zionist movement and legalised Jewish immigration to the region after they seized it from the Ottomans during World War I. Unlike locations in northern Palestine, however, Bedouin interactions with Jewish populations in the Naqab only intensified in the late 1930s. The first Jewish settlement of Negba in the northern Naqab was established in

30 Histories 1939 with other kibbutzim founded around Beersheba and Gaza in 1943. The relations between the  two  were  predominantly marked by co-operation with ‘Jewish headmen (mukhtār)’49 serving as liaisons with the Bedouin population in the area from 1943 to 1966.50 These Jewish leaders ‘took upon themselves the task of winning the good will of the Bedouin, purchasing lands and resolving disputes over land use and occasional thefts’51 between their communities and Bedouin. These men also positioned themselves as experts of Bedouin peoples and advised the Jewish leaders and later the state of Israel. After World War II, the United Nations Resolution of 1947 marked the end of the Mandate, and Palestine was divided into two states, one for Jewish peoples and one for Arabs. This declaration was rejected by both parties, which eventually led to the ArabIsraeli War of 1948 (also known as the Nakba and Israel’s War of Independence) in midMay. Similar to other conflict zones, research did not systematically occur during the war. Alternatively, officials and journalists reported on the population. United Nations observers mentioned Bedouin experiences during the war and expulsion from their southern Palestinian lands. The Haganah (est. 1920-1948) and the later Israeli Defense Forces (est. 1948) also documented the names of tribes in the Beersheba region during this time; these records are now held in state archives.52 An estimated 700,000 Palestinians were forcibly expelled or fled to Jordan, Lebanon, or Egypt; leaving hundreds of villages depopulated and destroyed during the war.53 Bedouin in southern Israel experienced the war differently as some Bedouin joined relatives residing in remote areas where fighting was less intense, while others were expelled entirely from their lands by the Israeli ­military. Hundreds of individuals also fought, some joining the Israelis and some the Arab forces. Others managed to avoid the conflict and remained on their lands throughout the war. These different circumstances determined which members remained in the Naqab after 1948, during the early years of the Israeli state, and now comprise Bedouin society there today. The majority of the Tiyāhā confederation (gabīla) did not leave the region and now account for most of the Bedouin population. The total number of Bedouin in the region before 1948 was estimated between 60,000 and 90,000.54 By 1953, however, approximately 15,000 stayed in the country to become Israeli citizens. Of the Tiyāhā, who numbered 18,000 before the war, 14,000 were counted in the Israeli census of 1960. In all, 90 per cent of the Bedouin that remained in the area held affiliation with Tiyāhā as fewer than 1,000 ʿAzāzmah and Tarabīn stayed inside Israel’s newly created borders. After the Armistice (1949), the new Israeli state established a Military Administration (1948–1966) for its new Arab citizens, which lasted until 1966.55 Elmo Hutchison (1912–1964), a United Nations Truce Supervision Organisation commanding officer, documented that Bedouin attempted to move back to their customary lands at this time, while others moved between Israel, Jordan, and Egypt as refugees due to their forced expulsion by the Israeli military.56 The main sub-confederations (ṣaff) within the Tiyāhā confederation (gabīla) that remained in the south after 1948 were the Ḥukūk, Nutūsh, Ẓullām, and Gdīrāt. Because of the war, however, the relative autonomy and previous power held by confederations weakened along with the geographical continuity of their territories (dīra). The new Israeli government immediately secured Naqab lands for ­Jewish settlement in the 1950s by declaring large segments of the region a military zone and state property. Members displaced during the war were barred by the Israel state from land that they owned before the conflict. The government formalised the acquisition of Bedouin lands with the 1950 Absentees’ Property Law. In it, the state declared that most Bedouin

Naqab Bedouin Social History and Historiography  31 voluntarily fled the region during the interwar period and thus abandoned their customary  land  holdings in Israel. The state could also appropriate land from Bedouin that remained in the Naqab but had not registered or acquired documentation (ṭābū) legalising their property ownership with the Ottomans or British authorities. Finally, according to the new law, the state could take possession of any land, despite titled ownership, if officials considered it uncultivated (mawat). As a result, Bedouin had lost approximately 95 per cent of their land to Israel by 1967.57 As part of this policy, the Military Administration proceeded to order a large number of Bedouin to relocate to the northeast part of the Naqab into a reservation (Sīyāj). Noting the lack of security in the region, the state divided the reservation into B1 and B2 zones, small territories established on what was only 10 per cent of the Bedouin’s customary land; property previously owned by the Tiyāhā confederation (gabīla). Since the reservation was a part of the Tiyāhā’s territory, members of this confederation owned land under customary law inside the area and thus continued grazing and using their agricultural property as they had before 1948. This included the following tribes (ʿashāʾir).: Abū Rabīʿa, Abū Jūīʿid, Abū Grīnāt, al-ʿĀʿsam, al-ʿĀʿsad, Abū Ārugīg, and al-Huzayyil. The Israeli Land Authority (ILA) (est. 1960) forcibly resettled other families to the reservation from their lands outside the area. Once there, they were allowed to lease land on an annual basis from the state. This was property officially registered as ‘abandoned land’ that had belonged to tribesmen now residing outside of Israel’s borders after the war.58 To facilitate this, the ILA solicited the help of state-assigned shaykhs (mukhtārshuyūkh) who mediated the land leases. Marx clarified that in the 1950s, fifteen out of nineteen customary shaykhs were also awarded the title of ‘village headmen’ (mukhtār).59 They were given a salary, formal titles, and a revolver, and were made responsible for the actions of members within their legal or state-created tribal unit (shevet, shevatim), which often differed from customary tribes (ʿashāʾir). From 1953 to 1966, this policy granted state-assigned shaykhs more economic control than they had previously held, a process creating new socioeconomic divisions in their society. On several ­occasions, they lost their authority among their people because of their co-operation with the state.60 Nevertheless, by 1955, most of the land inside the reservation was leased by the state through state-assigned shaykhs. They, however, often secured the best plots for themselves and their affiliates. Attempts by the new state to consolidate Bedouin residence inside the reservation were ad hoc and, in reality, some lineages (ʿāʾilāt) continued to live outside of government jurisdictions. Over this period, however, most members gradually stopped living in customary black goat hair and instead built semi-permanent shacks on customary and leased lands in order to secure their ownership and prove their ongoing use of the property. Bedouin believed that these buildings would indicate their productive use of the land and subsequently influence where state officials might acknowledge a permanent Bedouin settlement. The state restricted entry into the reservation and regulated travel within the reservation between B1 and B2 areas. It did not technically allow people to visit their relatives or herd livestock between these areas without a permit. The only people allowed to travel out of designated reservation areas were those who had wage-based employment beyond its borders. The policy of controlling travel came at a time when the state struggled to provide employment opportunities for Jewish workers. Over a twentyyear period, the Jewish population throughout the new state doubled to one million by 1961 with an average of 33,000 people per year granted Israeli citizenship by the state.61

32 Histories While living on the reservation, families raised livestock but the government restricted seasonal migrations (ʿizba). Consequently, land inside the reservation became overgrazed because of the large concentration of animals feeding there. Additionally, the state took measures to restrict pastoralism by making the sale of particular livestock illegal with the Black Goat Law of 1950.62 Because of these restrictions, families increasingly lived on a combination of wage labour, herding smaller flocks, and sowing and harvesting crops such as wheat. Landless tribesmen mostly worked as migrant labours throughout the Naqab. During the early state, Bedouin had a difficult time finding employment as Marx’s research showed; he estimated that only 4 per cent of males were formally employed in 1958.63 By the time the state abolished the Military Administration in 1966, both land-­owning and landless Bedouin were dependent on the Jewish-dominated economic sector for employment. Local schools were closed in the area after the dissolution of the British Mandate and the displacement of the population between 1940 and 1953. ‘Two schools reopened in 1954 but were reserved for the families of shaykhs with only 150 students registered by the end of the 1950s. By the 1960s, Israel’s Ministry of Education built a number of additional elementary schools for Bedouin.’64 In all, spatial reorganisations and economic transitions significantly influenced the composition of the s­ocio-political networks established in Bedouin society before 1948. After the war, social scientists and government officials began documenting the ongoing transformation lives of the state’s Bedouin citizens. The first two ethnographies of the population included monographs by Randolph, who examined local kinship, and Marx, whose seminal work explored the influence of state control on the Bedouin’s tribal system.65 It was at this time that the region of southern Palestine was officially labelled as the ‘Negev’. By the end of the 1960s, the state referred to Bedouin around Beersheba as the ‘Bedouin of the Negev’; a situation based, in part, on Marx’s work conducted just before the Israeli state introduced its urbanisation policy (est. 1967).66 Critics argue that early ethnographic scholarship on the Bedouin population in Naqab was used by Israeli government officials and media to justify Jewish stereotypes of Bedouin: Marx’s work on the Bedouin was prepared at a time in which Israel was struggling to define its own geopolitical separateness from its Arab others, a time when zones along state borders were sites in which identity was being etched…. Marx’s ethnography was thus much more than a study of tribal culture…. The significance of this ethnography for Israeli readers was its ability to lock the Naqab Bedouin into their consciousness as a community of essentialized, if by and large benevolent, Others. The clan, the shepherd, the kidnapped bride, the sacrificial sheep and other elements of Bedouin ‘culture’ became emblematic markers of the cultural boundaries of modernism, the Israeli state, and Jewish ethno-territorialism.67 In all, early ethnographies recorded changes to the Bedouin’s tribal order as a result of war and Israel’s land policies. For example, Bedouin remaining inside the 1949 Armistice boundaries were required by the government to register or affiliate with one of the statecreated nineteen tribal units (shevatim). As discussed earlier, the state-assigned shaykhs (mukhtār-shuyūkh) to each tribal unit (shevet) who served as the main administrative leaders through which Bedouin were governed. Members of the tribal units were given Israeli identification cards (Teuda Zehut), which listed the name of the tribal unit, their

Naqab Bedouin Social History and Historiography  33 legal residence which was typically the house of their official shaykh, and their birth date, and included a passport-style facial photograph. In most cases they rejoined the tribe they had belonged to before the turbulent events of 1948-49 scattered the tribes and broke them up … [however] Bedouin often paid a chief varying amounts of money for consenting to have them registered in his tribe.68 Some tribal units (shevetim) were based on several customary tribes (ʿashāʾir) in the 1950s. Other tribes such as the al-ʿAthāmīn, however, were not recognised by the state. Israeli officials regulated these members as affiliates of the al-ʿĀʿsam, a customary tribe that was acknowledged as a formal tribal unit. During the British Mandate in 1946, sub-tribes (rubaʾ) al-Ḥawāshlah had a disagreement with the shaykh of the al-ʿĀʿsam of whose tribe they were members.69 The elders of the al-Ḥawāshlah proceeded to ask the British for official approval to become their own, new tribe (ʿashīra) under the name of the Ashīrat Ḥawāshlah. Randolph explained: This group existed as a functioning ashireh until the British withdrew and were replaced by the Israeli government. With the end of the hostilities in 1949 the Israeli military government formed the remaining Bedouin into new ashayir, occasionally taking notice of the former groupings and in many cases regrouping named descent units into different ashayir. The Ṣanaʿ, Abu Rqayiq, and Aʿsam remained as ashayir but all of the members of the Abu Kaff ashiirah, as well as all of the Hawaashleh, some of the ʿAthamin, and some of the Abu Sbitt were placed under the sheikh of the Abu Rqayiq ashireh …The Abu Rqayiq sheikh commands little respect among the … [other] descent groups … individual members [alternatively engage] … with the ­outside world mainly through their descent groups leaders (kabiir ar-rubaʿ, sing.).70 The state policy of acknowledging specific customary tribes (ʿashāʾir) and sub-tribes (rubaʾ) as tribal units (shevatim) over others was a strategic attempt by officials to create divisions in society after the establishment of the Israeli state.71 The government also confiscated tribal territories belonging to tribes they considered to be ‘disloyal to the Jewish community’ (anti-yishuv) and gave them to loyal ones that had not customarily held power prior to 1948. On other occasions, the state would grant once-dependent sub-tribes (rubaʾ) the status of a formal tribal unit (shevet), for example, a group composed of the previous clients or non-ʾaṣīl affiliates, thereby usurping established hierarchies and allowing these groups to challenge the authority and power of traditional patrons, leaders, and lineages (ʿāʾilāt). The customary (ʾaṣīl) tribes (ʿashāʾir) and their shaykhs that managed to acquire official recognition as tribal units and state-assigned shaykhs by Israel were able to further augment their power and status, creating further economic and political disparities between their families and other ʾaṣīl sub-tribes who did not obtain shevet status. Finally, the administration forcibly displaced or expelled disloyal Bedouin individuals and groups from Israel and placed restrictions on Bedouin who remained in the country by forcing them to move to the reservation (Sīyāj). For example, officials granted members of the al-Huzayyil and Abū Rabīʿa special privileges such as bypassing travel limitations and residency requirements because the state considered them loyal to the state (whether they were or not is a matter of intense speculation amongst members today – a ­situation ­discussed later in this book).

34 Histories As detailed below, the legacy of Israel’s Military Administration ­(1948–1966) changed how people interacted with each other through their customary tribal affiliations. After 1949, when the government institutionalised specific tribal units (shevatim), they had to report any changes in tribal affiliation or alliance to the Israeli military governors. As a result, the contractual nature of patron-client relationships fractured because of state manipulation. Consequently, people could not officially switch alliances or affiliations without government approval. Local tribal relations further changed after the abolition of the Military Administration on 1 December 1966, when the government loosened restrictions placed on the number of official tribal units allowed to affiliate.72 This had a profound influence on established group relations. Clients, for example, were less compelled to stay with established patrons in order to secure resources. Many previously dependent or non-ʾaṣīl sub-tribes could also now negotiate with the state for formal recognition of their own administrative tribal unit. The policy established by the state also augmented both economic and political dependence between the state-assigned shaykhs (mukhtār-shuyūkh) and their constituents. In many cases, people ignored government tribal unit (shevet) assignments except at times of national elections or certain legal matters involving land claims and use. Descent groups that were reassigned to other tribal units by the Israeli administration paid little heed to their newly state-assigned shaykhs and instead dealt with the outside world through their customary elders (kabīr, kbār). Consequently, the tribal landscape changed radically after 1948, particularly at the level of the customary tribes and the alliances comprising sub-tribes (rubaʾ). Nevertheless, while the Military Administration reorganised and institutionalised tribal namesakes at particular levels of unity, it did not completely eradicate the ongoing significance of tribalism associated with past confederations (gabaliyya) and lineage-ism (ʿāʾiliyya) for local politics, marriage, land residence, and ancestry. These origins and alliances still hold weight among Bedouin in southern Israel at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Divided Urbanisation (1962–1996) Until the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, both the Ottoman Empire and the ­British Mandate had somewhat integrated customary shaykhs into their local administrations. During Israel’s Military Administration, however, the government marginalised the Bedouin from the local political economy and regional Jewish society by ruling the population through state-assigned shaykhs. In the 1960s, the government decided to take legal measures to urbanise Bedouin and reduce the size of the area within the reservation in which they resided. The Knesset designed an urbanisation strategy that would relocate families to state-built townships in order to dismantle the Bedouin villages. This plan sought to attract potential residents with services such as permanent housing, access roads, schools, electricity, and wage labour. In addition, the state offered to compensate families for any property they had to relinquish inside the reservation if they volunteered to move to a township. The Housing Ministry built the first town, Tel as-Sabʿ, in 1966. It consisted of small houses built in a linear pattern and a centralised commercial centre. The state built the town without economic infrastructure or agricultural lands but provided regular access to water and electricity to houses with building permits. By 1976, however, only 25 of the 41 homes were occupied by families who did not previously own or lease land in the

Naqab Bedouin Social History and Historiography  35 area. Many members refused to move to the town citing mixed lineage residency and fear that they would lose their land claims outside of the towns in the eyes of the government if they did. Moreover, mixed residence spurred conflict between residents as officials did ‘not take into consideration tribal composition and segmentary organisation either. Clashes between noble families and ­non-noble groups were so heavy that some people were seriously injured’.74 In light of problems in Tel as-Sabʿ, the government adopted a new urban design to build Rāhaṭ in 1971 by seeking to accommodate customary relations and separate residency in the form of neighbourhoods in order to ease the tensions between families in the city. They built houses in this city on larger plots of land to leave room for growing families and constructed visibility barriers in the form of empty spaces and fences between neighbourhoods. The Israeli authorities also gave the local elders control over the purchasing of property within neighbourhoods, choice over which families were allowed to live in specific areas, and regulation of segregation boundaries and co-residence patterns. While the planning model reduced some of the problems, it did not succeed in drawing people into the newly built towns, who had no desire to lose land claims by moving to them or to live next to non-family members. Nevertheless, the new strategy implemented in Rāhaṭ guided Israel’s policies in the Naqab, and in 1975, the Albeck Committee formalised Israel’s urbanisation procedures in the country. Because the state-built towns on land customarily owned by particular familial networks, members hesitated to engage in acts of dishonour by moving to these locations and subsequently violating another’s land (ʾarḍ). ‘The authorities played on the divisions and tensions that had developed during the Military Administration between customary groups and the administratively created tribes….’75 in order to attract people to the townships. Officials initially sent notification of land sales within the villages to those who had expressed the desire to leave the guardianship of a state-assigned shaykhs (mukhtār-shuyūkh) and switch their affiliation to a different assigned tribal unit (shevet). The state-assigned shaykhs gradually lost their hegemony as Israel’s new civilian administration used more personalised governing methods, which dealt directly with smaller agnate networks (agwām).76 Over time, the exclusivity of state-assigned shaykhs’ intermediary status between members of the tribal units diminished as the state began to favour alternative mediators, people that during the Military Administration (1948–1966) had not been allowed to interact with state officials unless granted permission by their patrons. Because of these changes, a plethora of new Bedouin spokespersons emerged as various people became able to conduct their own business with the state on behalf of different groups of people. These new administration changes did not necessarily mark the termination of the state-assigned shaykhs’ (mukhtār-shuyūkh) influence on their constituents.77 Many of these men had a history of working with particular Israeli agents and maintained their trust over the years, relationships that the newer intermediaries had yet to acquire. The Israeli administration regularly consulted with state-assigned shaykhs of tribal units (shevetim) in the construction of towns and neighbourhoods. For example, Shaykh Salmān al-Huzayyil consulted in the construction of Rāhaṭ and donated land under al-Huzayyil’s control to build the city. Most previous clients under the historical patronage of the ­al-Huzayyil moved to Rāhaṭ, whereas the al-Huzayyil, for the most part, as a core lineage prefer to live outside of the town on their own territory.78 Consequently, predominately client or smaller lineages (ʿāʾilāt) moved to the towns between 1967 and 1993 in order to acquire their own property whereas ‘customarily 73

36 Histories larger’ lineages claiming origins refused to do so, preferring to stay on customary lands located just outside of the localities or (in what the state considers) illegal homesteads or villages in the desert outskirts. The situation has created a dense semi-urban space around Beersheba in the form of towns inhabited mostly by the descendants of clients or smaller (non-ʾaṣīl) lineages and desert villages whose leading residents often claim historical origins (ʾaṣīl) to the Naqab. In all, Israel’s state urbanisation policies have amplified tensions between lineages by diversifying landownership, which not only bifurcated their society in terms of residence but also exasperated political and economic competition over limited resources. As of 2012, one-half of the Bedouin population (150,000) had relocated to the towns.79 Over the last forty years, Israel went on to build several more townships. Most towns had market centres, health clinics, gas stations, cafes, businesses, community buildings, mosques, and schools by the mid-1990s. Residents established Arab-focused businesses along with health, administrative, and educational services as Israeli Jewish citizens predominantly do not work in Arab sectors. The remaining Bedouin in the south (approximately 130,000 residents) live in what NGOs have labelled the ‘unrecognised villages’. According to Israel’s 1965 Planning and Construction Law, these villages are illegal because the state will not officially recognise homesteads that existed before 1948. Because of their illegality, the state monitors the construction of permanent buildings through official visits, satellite imagery, and photographic surveillance. The state considers unlicensed construction in the villages illegal and distributes arbitrary eviction orders. If not dismantled by the members, the state will forcibly demolish homesteads using bulldozers. Up until 2010, local NGOs conducted most of the research pertaining to Bedouin villages. Over the last decade, however, scholars have begun documenting Bedouin life and history in the villages.80 Bedouin villagers comprise 45 per cent of the population, with villages ranging in size from 500 to 5,000 residents or sixty to 600 families over approximately 250,000 acres of land throughout the Naqab.81 There are an estimated thirty-six villages but the exact number is unknown as the various state departments and nonprofits use different definitions of the term ‘village’. Many of these villages existed before the establishment of the state, while others were created during the Military Administration, which gave families permission to build in the area in the 1950s. Today most residents of the villages cannot secure building permits, the policy of housing demolition continues, infrastructure, such as roads, has yet to be built, and accessibility to water and electricity is sporadic. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the state continued to govern villagers through their official tribal units (shevatim). An Abū Shārib member explained the situation to Safa Abu Rabia: If it was listed on our identity papers, ‘Al-Jamama’, they could not expel us. Why? Because then we would be on the land that we owned…. We all have listed on our identity papers: ‘Al-Atawana Tribe.’ Why? For them [the state] you have nothing, you are with the tribe and belong to the tribe, you have no land of your own, so that you won’t be able to prove that you live in a particular place and that this is our place. And so we are wanderers within the tribe.82 Residents in the state towns, however, also still refer to this segment of the population as ʿarab and their tribal namesakes such as al-ʿAthāmīn.

Naqab Bedouin Social History and Historiography  37 In all, over the last fifty years, younger Bedouin understandings of what constitutes a tribe (ʿashīra) today are different from their parents and grandparents. While the tribal namesakes have not changed, their socio-political meaning and the group relationships they designate have changed since the Ottoman administration. These non-Bedouin influenced vernacular practices of calling forth tribal relations. For example, when  Cédric Parizot asked about the names of different tribal namesakes among his Bedouin friends in Rāhaṭ, several younger men could often identify their particular confederation (gabīla), sub-confederation (ṣaff), and lineage (ʿāʾila) but often had difficultly denoting the ­composition of a tribe (ʿashīra).83 He explained: Za`al, aged 26, replied: ‘The Tiyāha are gabīla, the Hkūk form a saff, and Abu Msā`ad are `ā’ila!’ His cousin Salame nods. I then asked what entity is the `ashira. Za`al replied by mixing Arabic and Hebrew…The` Asira is … [et in Hebrew] address, that is to say, the place, … [and Arabic] postal address!) With that, his cousins make fun of him, and a debate ensued to determine what corresponded to `ashira. But convinced of the futility of such a discussion, my hosts quickly went to another topic. That for Za`al, the `ashira refers to where is a group lineage is not trivial. Today the name of the tribal administrative unit (`asira) indicates the addresses of where related groups live today in the slums [unrecognised villages located] in the outskirts of towns and Beersheba.84 As described, since the tenth-century foreign officials and scholars have created lists of ‘tribes’ whereby writers employed diverse vernacular or emic (local dialect) and etic terms (various languages) to refer to tribal relationships according to their specific interests (that is taxation, land registration, census). The Ottomans conceptualised ‘tribes’ via confederations (gabāʾil) and thus engaged with only a few shaykhs. Later, the British conceived tribal order as atomised groups associated with local tribal (ʿashāʾirī) namesakes. At this point, vernacular tribes (ʿashāʾirī) transformed into an administrative unit and, consequently, the number of shaykhs through which the British governed the population was higher than the Ottomans, with eighty-eight in 1931 and ninety-five before 1948.85 Israel’s administrative treatment of tribes (ʿashāʾir) as tribal units (shevatim) in the 1950s further changed the role of tribal (ʿashāʾirī) networks and shaykhs. Greater inclusion of municipal and civic leaders after the state’s urbanisation policies (the 1960s onward) also changed these relationships. One outcome of this situation, however, was not the disappearance of tribalism but rather the adaptation of tribal relations which began focusing more on lineages (ʿāʾilāt) and less on tribes (ʿashāʾir). Notwithstanding, discerning and discussing broader tribal networks is also difficult because of state-based incursions and protectionism among the population. Distinctions are also opaque because of population growth leading to distortions in both dialect terminology or vocabulary used to designate social groups and in terms of scale or the particular functions of specific tribalisms within confederations (gabaliya) or lineages (ʿāʾiliyya) over the last decades. ‘While an ʿashira gathered on average between 500 and 1,000 people under the Military Administration, some ʿāʾila can regroup more than 3,000 people today’.86 Israeli Citizens and a Palestinian People (1948–2013) Since the early twentieth century, Jewish and Arab nationalisms have played an essential role in the Middle East and Israel is similar to many nation-states disseminating notions of a national identity in efforts to legitimate ideals of citizenship.87 In Israel, the A ­ shkenazi

38 Histories elite made early assertions that the new nation was a modern, Western state by reifying themselves against promulgated stereotypes of Palestinian primitivism. Over the last sixty years, Jewish and Arab nationalists have presented Israeli-ness and ­Palestinian-ness as two competing national narratives, which inevitably polarised the region’s diverse population including Bedouin. For example, many urban Palestinians and Israelis consider Bedouin dissimilar from themselves because of their perceived nomadic culture, ­enlistment in the Israeli army, or ‘reticenced in presenting themselves as ­Palestinians’88 at the turn of the century; a situation which has substantially changed in the last decades. As such, up until the early 2000s, in the Israeli political view, the Bedouin of the Naqab were an ethnic minority defined in opposition to Jewish ­Israelis but, up until recently, the population was also frequently omitted from the fallāḥīn ­history of other Palestinians. Israel’s dominant governing class addressed demographic challenges presented by Arab minorities while homogenising Palestinians residing outside of state lines through government policy and law. Internally, the Israeli state set out to administrate its population through ‘policies of ethnicisation’.89 In particular, ethnic minority studies (such as those mentioned at the beginning of this chapter) put forward that the Israeli state isolates Bedouin from both urban Palestinian and Israeli Jewish societies through de facto ethnic-based divisions and ‘Machiavellian systems of control’90 that reinforce loyalty and disloyalty between different ethnic groups. The Israeli government adopted the Ottoman millet system, a scheme whereby all citizens are principally organised by their religious affiliation. According to Israeli policy, Jewish citizens are differentiated from non-Jewish citizens, despite disparities between Mizrahi and Ashkenazi, and the state labels non-Jewish minorities as Israeli Arab citizens. This demographic is further de facto organised by their religions such as Christians, Druze, and Muslims. Israel also socio-politically differentiates cultural groups within religious groups such as Druze, ­Circassians, and Bedouin.91 Subsequently, religious-civic leaders decree the personal rights and status of their respective peoples. Since the 1950s, Israeli officials have used these ethnicity-based taxonomies to further allocate state-based rights to resources and assign specific civic obligations to its non-Jewish citizens. Within this scheme, Bedouin in Israel are grouped separately from Palestinian urbanites or villagers as the state classifies all Bedouin groups as bedui (plural beduim) in Hebrew – a term referencing those in the Naqab and Galilee. Despite grouping all Bedouin under the same ethnic banner, the Israeli state treats its Bedouin citizens disparately depending on whether they live in the north or south of the country. As opposed to portrayals of Bedouin in other Middle Eastern countries, the population in southern Israel were popularly considered by Israel’s Jewish population as loyal and obedient, unlike other Muslims who were regarded as enemies of the state up until the late 1990s. This perspective, however, has changed over the last decades amid escalating tensions and ever-developing discrimination between Israel’s Jewish and Arab citizens, particularly after the Knesset passed the Nation-State Bill or the Nationality Bill specifying the Jewish nature of the state of Israel in 2018, for example. By the end of the twentieth century, most Bedouin considered themselves P ­ alestinian by nationality and Israeli by citizenship. These self-ascriptions, however, depend on context. Naqab Bedouin as a group hold de jure legal status as Israeli Arabs but their de facto civil rights are typically unequal to Israel’s Jewish citizens. As Israeli Arabs, they have equal rights to vote, run for public office, maintain permanent residence, and technically receive the same political rights as Jewish citizens of Israel. In reality, however, the state and major Jewish political parties and bureaucracies typically side-lined

Naqab Bedouin Social History and Historiography  39 Bedouin interests. Moreover, non-Jewish Bedouin and other ‘minority-focused’ agendas are increasingly perceived as a threat to the Jewish character of the state among law and policymakers today. As of the beginning of the twenty-first century, Palestinian groups in the north and south of Israel have adopted significantly different approaches to national politics. In 2009, the majority of Naqab Bedouin voted for the United Arab List consisting of representatives from the southern Islamic Movement and the Arab Democratic Party. Bedouin Ṭalāb al-Ṣāneʿ served as their Deputy member of the Knesset from 1996 to 2012. In addition, Bedouin in the north come out to vote in larger numbers as opposed to those in the south who have the lowest Muslim voter turnout in Israel. The different voting characteristics among the various Palestinian groups in Israel reflect their different agendas. Because of ethnicisation processes in Israel from the 1950s onward, Bedouin have unique experiences with the state of Israel in the south. Parizot’s research showed that local politicians and activists began steadily employing ethnic and community politics to navigate the polarity between Palestinian and Israeli nationalisms and highlight their distinct geopolitical circumstances in the Naqab compared to those from the north since the 1970s onward.92 The internalisation of ‘Naqab Bedouin’ as a national demographic was made popular when leaders, such as Ḥamād Abū Rabīʿa, used the phrase as a collective identifier when referring to his constituents. Many groups used the terms ‘Negev Bedouin’ or ‘Negev Arabs’ in the 1990s to avoid framing their concerns as Palestinians and emphasise their citizenship in Israel.93 Similarly, proclaiming yourself Bedouin in 2005 was ‘about remembering your territorial anchorage and your attachment to the land’ whereas calling yourself a Negev Bedouin, Palestinian, or Israeli had more regional political and historical connotations.94 After the second Intifāḍa,95 however, the terms ‘Palestinian Bedouin’ and ‘Palestinian Israeli Bedouin’ emphasised ­growing connectivity with shared Arab nationalisms, religion, and ethnicity. For example, after the Six-Day 1967 War between Israel and surrounding Arab states, Bedouin expressed their nationalist support for their fellow Palestinians during protests and commemorations of Land Day (a massacre that occurred on 30 March 1976). After the 1982 Israeli-Lebanon War and growing anti-Arab sentiment in Israel, however, many Palestinian leaders in Israel including Bedouin politicians acknowledged their circumstances were different because of their Israeli citizenship and politically distanced themselves from the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and Hamas in Gaza. This process intensified with the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1992 which officially rendered Palestinian rights in Israel as an ‘internal state issue’, isolated the Bedouin population in the south, and attenuated their competition with other non-Jewish Israelis. As of 2010, Bedouin constituted approximately 2 per cent of Israel’s population.96 As Oren Yiftachel explained, however, Israel continues to function as an ethnocratic state where various ethnic groups must compete with other populations over land, services, and jobs.97 Consequently, NCF argued that throughout the early 2000s, there have been growing tensions between Israeli Jewish and Bedouin citizens due, in part, to escalating state policies aimed at relocating Bedouin residents in the villages to towns.98 Ratcliffe explained: The Negev Bedouin have come to embody the notion of discrimination against Arab citizens, where the Naqab has increasingly been rendered in advocacy usage as ­al-Naqab, a region emblematic of Israeli state discrimination, its renewed usages marking a nationalist reclaiming.99

40 Histories In the last twenty years, Bedouin have progressively become a strategic concern for the state, with government officials expressing fear of an ‘internal Bedouin Intīfada’,100 population growth, and members’ Palestinian national sentiments. In response, dozens of government committees, state plans, and legal measures have been introduced in the Knesset over the last five years as a way of dealing with the ‘Bedouin problem’ over the last decades.101 Under Israel’s urbanisation policy in the 1960s, the Bedouin did not initially control their own townships. Alternatively, throughout the 1950s and 1970s, regional Jewish councils managed the towns and controlled the allocation of resources there; a ­situation in which Jewish committees often side-lined the needs of the Bedouin municipalities and instead prioritised their own. The state governed the population outside of the towns through regional authorities such as the ILA, the Green Patrol (est. 1976), and the Bedouin Development Authority (est. 1984). In the late 1980s, members protested and officially received autonomy from surrounding Jewish councils with the first democratic elections held in Rāhaṭ in 1989.102 Elections followed in other towns and most gained control over their own municipalities by 2000. Local politics has taken three general forms in the last several decades. First, the established influence of lineages (ʿāʾilāt) as opposed to tribal units (shevatim) which were dissolved in the 1970s, whereby elders (kbār) serve as principal socio-political spokesmen.103 Second, the inclusion of alternative non-ʾaṣīl representatives and their linages within internal municipal and state regional politics (particularly in the towns in the 1980s). Thirdly, the increased public, external notoriety, and national influence of community spokespersons associated with Naqab civil society and Islamic discourses in both villages and towns since the late 1990s. Ultimately, lineages in the villages still guided local politics with men from powerful agnate groups (gōm, agwām) functioning as leaders, arbitrators, and spokesmen at the turn of the twentieth century. These men not only managed the internal affairs of their families as elders but also the entire village, for example maintaining collaborations with other agnates, neighbours, and affiliates. Since 2000, these villages have increasingly established alternative village spokespersons from within their kin networks to represent various communities, which more often than not from leading agnates, to outsiders, leaving elders to deal with internal local politics.104 For example, local committees (al-lajna al- al-maḥalliya) from forty-five villages founded the Regional Council of the Unrecognised Villages (RCUV) in 1997. The RCUV was an elected political body as residents of each village voted-in three to seven members whose chairperson and head committee were elected once every four years. In reality, however, these elected committees were comprised of elders working with community professionals.105 Despite representing several villages, the state does not acknowledge the RCUV committees and therefore its constituents cannot hold local municipal elections in these villages. Moreover, internal competition between committee members over limited resources also stifled their joint collaborations with the state. In response to the problem, the state created the Abu Basma Regional Council to address the political and economic interests of villages in 2003. As part of the plan, the state agreed to officially sanction selected villages and provide them with a municipal status and basic services and infrastructure.106 The RCUV, however, argued that the plan would transform the villages into urban ghettos, and the council was still run by the Minister of Interior’s appointees as of 2009.

Naqab Bedouin Social History and Historiography  41 Internal politics in the towns differ from the villages. Despite gaining control over their own municipalities by 2000, town councils are still largely governed by past patrons and their agnates since local elections serve as platforms for these members to re-exert dominance over non-ʾaṣīl affiliates and acquire control of state resources. The stratification between previous patrons and their former clients was institutionalised by the state, and in some cases strengthened, when the Israeli planners sought out local elites to design the towns thereby building systems of dominance and hierarchy into their municipal design and administrative mechanisms.107 As such, each town is affiliated with particular customary land-owning lineages (ʿāʾilāt): Rāhaṭ with al-Huzayyil, Shagīb as-Salām and Biʾr Hadaj with al-ʿAzāzmah, Ksīfa with Abū Rabīʿa, Lagīya with al-Ṣānaʿ, and Ḥura with al-ʿAṭāwna. Previous-client lineages have managed to obtain some representational authority through municipal channels. Since the 1980s, for example, solidarity between unrelated families has crystallised among co-residents who have strategically re-formed into their own lineages (ʿāʾilāt). Cohesion between extended families (ʿāʾila): has also augmented as a result of limited access to local services and shared resentment towards their past patrons, whose control they tried to escape by moving to the towns. Nevertheless, rivalries between lineages in the towns have splintered socio-political relationships leaving politicians to focus on specific neighbourhoods and families during municipal proceedings. For example, in his study of local politics in Rāhaṭ, Parizot found that by the end of the 1990s, elections mostly revolved around cleavages between various lineages and their efforts to gain control over the distribution of resources.108 To do so, they employed ideologies of tribal cohesion (gabaliyya or ʿāʾiliyya), which guided the electoral behaviour of their members. Local elections are significant events whereby lineages exercise and compete for power although Bedouin generally disregard national elections as a way to obtain formal, political representation or influence in the Israeli state.109 Unlike local municipal elections, elders did not tend to participate in national elections because they did not strengthen their constituents’ access to public resources, bring economic or social power to the whole lineage, and their participation would have negatively affected their established tribal relationships.110 Alternatively, over the last half of the twentieth century, national elections have become more of a social event whereby Bedouin set out to defy the official Israeli electoral system by purposefully committing electoral fraud and manipulating state officials.111 Notwithstanding, Bedouin political representatives are increasingly using national elections to pay lip service to community interests as a way of speaking past intra-tribal politics over the last decades, despite the fact that local politics continue to be enshrined in tribal relations.112 To do so, they draw on affiliations with Arab nationalist parties such as the Arab Democratic Party, National Democratic Rally, Communist Party, Muslim Brotherhood, and the southern Islamic Movement. Additionally, partisan political culture has also incorporated civil society, gender, and Muslim communities over the last several decades. Alternative community advocates also used local elections in the towns and regional civil society initiatives to demonstrate their leadership throughout the 2000s, an occurrence increasingly found in the villages. Economic research conducted in the 1980s indicated that Bedouin men were wagebased labours but mostly in Jewish-run businesses in construction, trucking, motor ­services, agriculture, or industrial processing. Others partook in semi-urban pastoralism and farming; provided public and private, health, education, and other professional

42 Histories s­ ervices; worked in the informal economy including smuggling and bartering; and formal business entrepreneurship. Townswomen no longer herded livestock, gathered firewood, or collected water at wells by the 1990s.113 Women’s formal employment is also limited because of gender segregation, the lack of private spaces, and the density of non-family in these urban environments. Most women work as housewives today. Women in the ­villages, however, continue to participate in some pastoral activities. As of the beginning of the twenty-first century, the average family relies on various sources of income based on pastoralism, wage labour, and NGOs. In addition to depending on several revenue sources and a general reluctance to visit Jewish stores and businesses, Bedouin also heavily draw on customary tribal, familial, and neighbourhood alliances to diversify and pool human and capital resources. This particular type of economic strategy has been described as family firms based on ‘reciprocal relations of exchanges’114 that allow them to adapt to the economic structural hindrances of the state and opportunities in the Naqab. Despite arguments that pastoralism is unprofitable, many families continued to own livestock whether in the desert or the backyard of a townhouse at the beginning of the twenty-first century. They do so for four main reasons: cultural ethos, land claims, income, and monetary savings. argued that members claim raising sheep was ‘in their blood’.115 Villagers still practice pastoralism and they believe the enterprise demonstrates their land claims and grazing livestock on family territories reminds others of their territorial markers and boundaries. Only a thousand or so families exclusively raised livestock which included mostly Awassi fat-tailed sheep to sell in Beersheba, Tel as-Sabʿ, and Rāhaṭ at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Alternatively, many families raise smaller and more diverse types of livestock in pens and corrals inside villages, take them to pasture in the spring and summer, and later sell them for provisions or luxury items in the markets. They keep smaller herds of sheep and goats, fowl such as chickens and pigeons, and occasionally horses, donkeys, and camels. These Bedouin conduct husbandry alongside other economic activities such as agriculture. Bedouin agricultural production is seasonal and fluctuates from year to year due to the unpredictable annual rains. During the Military Administration (1948–1966), the Israeli Ministry of Education listed the number of Bedouin attending nine schools (1950–1951) as approximately 360.116 The tradition of teaching children in the shaykh’s encampments continued in the 1960s with seven elementary schools located in the territories of selected tribal units. At that time, 14 per cent of the entire population was estimated to have schooling.117 The government went on to build schools in the towns in the 1970s as part of the urbanisation project, resulting in an increased number of educated and literate Bedouin children. When compared to Jewish schools many Bedouin facilities lacked equivalent resources and budgets. Today, most children attend school up to eighteen years old, however, drop-out rates rise after the age of 14, particularly among young girls whose domestic labour is often required at home. Notwithstanding, more and more people are also attending professional and university education. This has encouraged ‘ethnic entrepreneurialism’ associated with the creation of Bedouin-led transportation companies, construction firms, mechanic shops, industrial farming, and landscaping trades.118 As the next section details, greater educational levels have not only attributed to the professionalisation of Bedouin civic and municipal politics but also localisation of history-making.

Naqab Bedouin Social History and Historiography  43 Bedouin Academics, Activists, and the Localisation of History (c. 1990–2013) Learned writings on Naqab Bedouin produced over the last century and up until 2000 discussed thus far largely contextualised members’ experiences into linear timeframes, sequential forms, and synchronic narratives. For the most part, these mostly then-­ present-day examinations of Bedouin society were not concerned with history per se but over time became a substantial part of local historical narratives. The quasi-exclusivity of this predominantly externally created discourse, however, ended in the late 1990s. Naqab Bedouin history at this time was no longer merely about Bedouin life but increasingly made by members themselves. Since the 1990s, Bedouin academics and scholars from various backgrounds have written articles, books, and pamphlets in English, Hebrew, and Arabic that recount their own pasts from oral histories, record living conditions, preserve life narratives and poems, and archive old maps and texts created during the Ottoman and British Periods. This information has been reproduced in various publications and websites. For example, Bedouin scholars associated with Ben Gurion University of the Negev’s Robert Arnow Centre Bedouin Studies and Development compiled a digital database, which serves as a platform to study and preserve Bedouin heritage and address transformations in their society through academic research and public discussion.119 In all, increasing numbers of both lay and professional Bedouin scholars have set about writing their own Naqab Bedouin histories over the last thirty years. Acknowledged as local spokespersons and knowledge gatekeepers on various regional and international platforms, they are writing, presenting, discussing, and disseminating their own research on Naqab Bedouin in a variety of public settings, such as the British Academy’s conference hosted at the University of Exeter in 2010 and workshops at Columbia University, to name a few. In addition to academic outputs in the form of books, articles, and lectures, Bedouin scholars are also giving interviews to news outlets about a wide range of issues and topics such as Bedouin protests, polygamy, poverty along with political and land rights. Local civic professionals and activists have taken up similar projects by creating standardised oral accounts and written reports about the Naqab Bedouin past and presenting them at political tours, regional platforms, UN forums, international aid conferences, and different cultural rights associations since the 1990s.120 ‘Both Bedouin advocates and academics collaborate with NGOs to produce advocacy reports and briefing packets for visiting journalists, aid agencies, international and regional funders, government officials, and external university representatives’.121 Local Bedouin representatives also regularly work with Israeli NGOs to produce web-based knowledge about their history and society. For example, NCF hired a team of Bedouin and non-Bedouin researchers, media producers, and spokespersons to systematically map, collect data, and publicise the history of each village between 2010 and 2014 for an online mapping application (this platform is further described in the next chapter). These growing numbers of professional Bedouin spokespersons are also positioning themselves as community representatives exhibiting the new civic face of their people to outsiders. They typically express non-tribal and liberally minded views in order to improve financial resources and public appeal in Israel and internationally. Civic spokespersons have limited local political legitimacy but some NGO activists have become prominent representatives on national and international stages while being professionally linked to various Palestinian, Jewish, and international groups.122 In referencing

44 Histories the information created by local NGOs, Richard Ratcliffe argued that their work is often treated as the ‘authentic voice’123 of the Naqab Bedouin despite the fact that their ­information is typically created in co-operation with outside stakeholders. He argued it is also ­para-academic as most purposely streamline information to present a unified image of the Naqab Bedouin community through statistics. Finally, Ratcliffe noted the attenuated political status awarded to local spokespersons through their affiliations with the UN and international aid agencies, etc., which legitimise the persons’ citational qualities.124 Nevertheless, these civic-forward historical narratives have become highly persuasive in different public domains over the last twenty years for several reasons. Firstly, it is knowledge produced and advocated by local spokespersons whose professional affiliations include academia, municipal committees, religious groups, and regional NGOs. Secondly, it is a discourse designed for, disseminated among, and made regularly accessible to non-Bedouin outsiders through various languages such as English, Hebrew, and Levantine Arabic. Thirdly, it is information that is resourced from archival materials, documentary evidence, libraries and collections, data banks, and online encyclopedias and disseminated on various public and digital platforms. For example, academics and Bedouin civic spokespersons are widely circulating this locally produced information via online platforms such as Wikipedia. Over the last twenty years, this web-based encyclopedia has become a persuasive virtual space for debate about different issues in the Palestinian-Israeli context. English, Hebrew, and Arabic Wikipedia pages entitled the ‘Negev Bedouin’ have all grown substantially over the last decades. These sites are constantly edited and re-edited by political advocates and local historians particularly on the Hebrew and English sites, with all striving to assert their version of the Naqab Bedouin’s past and society in the public sphere. In all, the turn of the twenty-first century marked the beginning of a new type of Naqab Bedouin history in southern Israel; one produced by Bedouin members but inherently deviates from customary oral poems, proverbs, and epics customary recited among themselves such as those described and recorded by Clinton Bailey, for example.125 While Bedouin continue to share remembrances of past events, figures, and places through oral practices, state-induced changes in their society over the last century have coerced members to streamline, record, and transform many local memories into official histories. Bedouin academics, spokespersons, activists, and media-makers often in conjunction with non-Bedouin are spearheading these efforts and subsequently contributing and inserting their own perspectives into public historiographical discourses. These practices have, however, also resulted in the articulation of varied and disparate versions of the Bedouin’s past and society. This is partly due to the fact that Bedouin history-making aims to strategically counter or corroborate the Western, Israeli, and Palestinian descriptions summarised in this chapter. They also, however, respond to long-held parochial sources of authority held by customary tribal elders (kbār), the diverse memories and knowledge such as those associated with genealogies (nasāb), and newer, but equally significant, civic and Islamic narratives circulating in the Naqab. To explain these processes, the next chapter goes on to describe how the intrinsic heterogeneity of local Bedouin society, spokespersons, and mediations has not only diversified the types of history presented by members but also intensified their standardisation towards particular ­audiences and subsequently expanded their modes of production to include photographs (Figures 1.1–1.13).

Naqab Bedouin Social History and Historiography  45

Figure 1.1  Antonin Jaussen Map of the Bedouin Tribes 1908.  Original creator(s): Antonin J­ aussen. Location of original: Costumes des Arabs au pays de Moab, Paris: Victor Lecoffre. Date of original: 1908.  Accessed date: 1 March 2023.

46 Histories

Figure 1.2  Illustration ‘Tiyaha Shaykh’ 1847. Original creator(s): John Wilson DD, FRS. Source: The Lands of The Bible, Vol. 1, page 275. Edinburgh. Original date: 1847. Accessed date: 25 ­November 2014.

Naqab Bedouin Social History and Historiography  47

Figure 1.3  ‘Ottoman Beersheba 1917’. Original creator(s): American Colony (Jerusalem) Photo Department, photographer. Location of original: Visual materials from the papers of John D. Whiting. Date of original: 1917.  Medium: 1 album (243 gelatin silver prints); 28 × 40 cm. (album). Call Number: LOT 13833 (H) (USE DIGITAL IMAGES) [P&P]. Repository: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA. www.loc.gov/pictures/ item/2007675298/. Accessed date: 1 March 2023.

48 Histories

Figure 1.4  ‘Bedouin meetings with Ottoman officials 1917’. Original creator(s): American Colony (Jerusalem) Photo Department, photographer. Location of original: Visual materials from the papers of John D. Whiting. Date of original: 1917.  Medium: 1 album (243 gelatin silver prints); 28 × 40 cm. (album). Call Number: LOT 13833 (H) (USE DIGITAL IMAGES) [P&P]. Repository: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA. www.loc.gov/ pictures/item/2007675298/. Accessed date: 1 March 2023.

Naqab Bedouin Social History and Historiography  49

Figure 1.5  A British Survey of Palestine map from 1947 marking the distribution of Bedouin tents (each tent is marked by a dot) in the Naqab. Original creator(s): British ­Mandate surveyors. Created from information collected in the 1946 census, and from aerial photographs in January– June 1945.  Worked, sketched, and printed by the Survey Department of Palestine 1947.  Date of original: 1947.  Call Number: ISA-Collections-Maps-0006q18.  Repository: Israeli State Archives. www.archives.gov.il/product-page/200934.  Accessed date: 1 March 2023.

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Figure 1.6  ‘Visit to Beersheba Agricultural Station (Experimental) by Brig. Gen. Allen and Bedouin shaykhs 1940’. Original creator(s): American Colony (Jerusalem) Photo Department, photographer. Location of original: G. Eric and Edith Matson Photograph Collection. Date of original: 1940 March 26.  Medium: 1 negative: nitrate; 4 × 5 in. Call Number: LC-M33- 11282-A [P&P]. Repository: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540.  www. loc.gov/pictures/item/2019711298/. Accessed date: 1 March 2023.

Naqab Bedouin Social History and Historiography  51

Figure 1.7 ‘The Beersheba Bazaar’. Original creator(s): American Colony (Jerusalem) Photo Department, photographer. Location of original: G. Eric and Edith Matson Photograph Collection. Date of original: Between 1898 and 1946.  Medium: 1 negative: nitrate; 4 × 5 in. Call Number: LC-M33- P-224 [P&P]. Repository: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA. www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2019712769/. Accessed date: 1 March 2023.

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Figure 1.8  ‘Aref al-Aref with Bedouin Shaykhs’. Original creator(s): American Colony (Jerusalem) Photo Department, photographer. Location of original: G. Eric and Edith Matson Photograph Collection. Date of original: Between 1934 and 1939.  Medium: 1 negative, glass, dry plate, 5 × 7 in. Call Number: LC-M32- 8774-A [P&P]. Repository: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA. www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2019712769/. Accessed date: 1 March 2023.

Naqab Bedouin Social History and Historiography  53

Figure 1.9  ‘Flight into Egypt’. Original creator(s): American Colony (Jerusalem) Photo Department, photographer. Location of original: G. Eric and Edith Matson Photograph Collection. Date of original: Between 1934 and 1939.  Medium: 1 negative, nitrate, 4 × 5 in. Call Number: LC-M3310170-A [P&P]. Repository: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA. www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2019709777/. Accessed date: 1 March 2023.

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Figure 1.10  ‘Abdul Kanir Ibn Bari watering the vegetable garden in the backyard of his house in the Bedouin village of Tel Sheva 1969’. Original creator(s): Government Press Office photographer Fritz Cohen. Source: Israel National Photo Collection – Government Press Office. Reference number: D304-096. Original date. 1969. https://gpophoto.gov.il/haetonot/Eng_Default.aspx/. Accessed date: 1 February 2011.

Naqab Bedouin Social History and Historiography  55

Figure 1.11  ‘View of the Bedouin town of Rahat’. Original creator(s): Government Press Office photographer Milner Moshe Cohen. Source: Israel National Photo Collection – Government Press Office. Reference number: D825-130. Original date. 02 July 2003. https://gpophoto.gov.il/haetonot/Eng_Default.aspx. Accessed date: 1 March 2023.

Figure 1.12  View of the Bedouin village of Khashem Zanaʿ. Original creator(s): Emilie Le Febvre. Original date: 23 February 2013.

56 Histories Figure 1.13  1948 Beersheba Tribal Lands – Section of Naqab Desert Map. Original creator(s): S­ alman Abu Sitta, Palestine Land Society. Date of original: 2000. www.plands.org/en/maps-atlases/maps/beer-sheba-tribal-lands. Accessed date: 1 March 2023.

Naqab Bedouin Social History and Historiography  57 Notes 1 Yiftachel, Oren. 2003. ‘Bedouin Arabs and the Israeli Settler State: Land Policies and Indigenous Resistance’, The Future of Indigenous Peoples: Strategies of Survival and Development, Duane Champagne, and Ismael Abu Saad (eds.), United States: UCLA American Indian Studies Centre; Kressel, Gideon. 2003. Let Shepherding Endure: Applied Anthropology and the Preservation of a Cultural Tradition in Israel and the Middle East, Albany: State of University of New York Press. 2 Ratcliffe, Richard, Mansour Nasasra, Sarab Abu Rabia-Queder, and Sophie Richter-Devroe (eds.). 2015. The Naqab Bedouin and Colonialism: New Perspectives, New York: Routledge (https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315766461). 3 Koensler, Alexander. 2013. ‘Frictions as Opportunity: Mobilizing for Arab-Bedouin Ethnic Rights in Israel’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 36 (11): 1808–1828 (https://doi.org/10.1080/014 19870.2012.681677). 4 Pappé, Ilan. 2010. ‘Opening’, Rethinking the Paradigms: Negev Bedouin Research 2000+ Conference, United Kingdom: University of Exeter and the British Academy. 5 Nasasra 2017, 25. 6 Amara, Ahmad. 2016. ‘Beyond Stereotypes of Bedouins as ‘Nomads’ and ‘Savages’: Rethinking the Bedouin in Ottoman Southern Palestine, 1875–1900’, Journal of Holy Land and ­Palestine Studies, 15 (1) 59–77, 75 (https://doi.org/10.3366/hlps.2016.0129). 7 Bailey 1985. 8 Abu Sitta 2009; Cohen, Hillel. 2010 [2006]. Good Arabs: The Israeli Security Agencies and the Israeli Arabs, 1948–1967, Haim Watzman (trans.), United States of America: University of California Press (https://doi.org/10.1525/9780520944886); Bitzan, John. 2006. When ­Lawrence of Arabia met David Ben-Gurion” A History of Israeli ‘Arabist’ Expertise in the Negev (1943–1966), Unpublished Master of Art’s Dissertation, Beer Sheva: Ben Gurion ­University of Negev. 9 Nasasra, Mansour, 2014. ‘Memories from Beersheba: The Bedouin Palestine Police and the Frontiers of the Empire’, Bulletin of the Council for British Research in the Levant, 9 (1): 32–38 (https://doi.org/10.1179/1752726014z.00000000023); Amara 2016. 10 Jones, Clive, and Emma Murphy. (eds.) 2002. ‘The Weight of History’, Israel: Challenges to Identity, Democracy, and the State, London: Routledge. 11 Lévi-Strauss, Claude 1966. The Savage Mind, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 257. 12 Pasternak 2020, 1. 13 This Naqab Bedouin historiography is not exhaustive. 14 Al-Ṫabarī, Muḥammad ibn Jarīr, 1939 [1326]. Tā’rīkh al-Umam wal-Muluk, Cairo: Dar ­al-Macarif; Al-Hamdānī, Abū Muḥammad al-Ḥasan ibn Aḥmad ibn Yaʿqūb. 1884 [1968]. Sifat Jazirat al-ʿArab: Geographie der Arabischen Halbinsel, D. Muller (trans.) Leiden: ­Oriental Press. 15 Al-Maqrīzī, ʿAḥmed ibn ʿAli. 1847. Al-Bayān wal-Iʿrāb ʿammā Arḍ Miṣr min al- Aʿrab, F. Wüstenfeld; Al-Qalqashandī, ʿAḥmed ibn ʿAbdallah. 1959. Nihāyat al-Arab Miʿrafat Ansāb al-ʿArab, Cairo: Al-Sharikah al-ʿArabiyyah li al- Ṭibaʿah wa al-Nashr (trans.), ­Göttingen: Self-published. 16 Al-Jazīrī, ʿAbd al-Qādīr ibn Muḥammad ibn Ibrāhīm al-Anṣarī. 2002. Ad-Durar al-fara’id al-munadhama fi akhbar al-Hajj wa tariq Makka al-mu’azima, Cario: Dar al-al-Ilmieh Kotb. 17 Burckhardt, John L. 1822. Travels in Syria and the Holy Land, London: John Murray. 18 Seetzen, Ulrich Jasper. 1810. A Brief Account of the Countries Adjoining the Lake of Tiberias, the Jordan, and the Dead Sea, London: Palestine Association of London. 19 Thomson, William. 1856. The land and the Book: Pilgrimage and Mission in Palestine, New York: Harper and Brothers Publishers; Conder, C. R. 1878. Tent Work in Palestine: A Record of Discovery and Adventure, New York: D. Appleton. Ibid. 1889a. Palestine, ­London: G. Philip & Son. Ibid. 1889b. The Survey of Eastern Palestine, London: Committee of the Palestine Exploration Fund; Jaussen, Antonin Joseph. 1908. Costumés des Arabes au pays de Moab, Paris: Victor Lecoffre; Musil, Alois. 1908. Arabia Petraea, III, Deutschland: ­Kaiserl Akademie der Wissenschaften in Wien. Also see Clermont-Ganneau, Charles. 1875. ‘The Arabs of Palestine’, Palestine Exploration Fund Quarterly, 7: 208; Palmer, Edward. 1871. The Desert of the Exodus, Cambridge: Deighton; Hull, Edward 1886. The Survey of Western Palestine: Memoir on the Physical Geology and Geography of Arabia Petraea, London: ­Committee of the Palestine Exploration Fund.

58 Histories 20 Deringil, Selim 2003. ‘ “They Live in a State of Nomadism and Savagery”: The Late Ottoman Empire and the Post-Colonial Debate’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 45 (2): 317 (https://doi.org/10.1017/s001041750300015x). 21 The Tanzimât (Turkish – Reorganisation) was a policy of reformation (1839–1876). 22 After the Umayyad conquest in the eighth century A.D., Beersheba largely served as a watering hole and market centre for Bedouin (Berman 1965). 23 Al-ʿĀrif, ʿĀrif. 1933. Al-Qaḍāʾ bayn al-Badū, Al-Quds: Matba‘at Bayt al-Maqdis, Ibid. 1934. Tā’rīkh B’ir al-sab‘ wa-Qabā’ilihā, Al-Quds: Matba‘at Bayt al-Maqdis. 24 Marx 1967, 35. 25 Kirk, George. 1941. ‘The Negev, or Southern Desert of Palestine’, Palestine Exploration Quarterly, 73 (2): 57–71. 26 In 1882, Britain ruled Egypt leading to conflict with the Ottomans. The conflict ended with a 1906 agreement that created the Sinai border stipulating that Britain would rule south of the line and the Ottomans north of the line. 27 Abu Rabia, Aref. 2001. Bedouin Century: Education and Development among the Negev Tribes in the Twentieth Century, New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 68 (https://doi. org/10.2307/j.ctv287sf6j). 28 Nasasra 2017. 29 Ibid. 30 The Peel Partition Plan for Palestine excluded the Naqab from the boundaries of the new ­Jewish state (i.e., the Palestine Royal Commission of 1937). The region was included in White Papers published in March 1939. 31 Assi, Seraj. 2018. The History and Politics of the Bedouin: Reimagining Nomadism in ­Modern Palestine, Routledge Studies on the Arab-Israeli Conflict, London and New York: Routledge, 96 (https://doi.org/10.4324/9781351257886). 32 Abu Sitta 2009. 33 Luke, Harry and Edward Keith-Roach. 1930. The Handbook of Palestine and Transjordan, London: Macmillan Company. 34 Assi 2018, 98. 35 Hillelson, Sigmar. 1937. ‘Notes of the Bedouin Tribes of the Beersheba District I’, Palestine Exploration Fund, 69 (4): 242–252; 1938a. ‘Notes of the Bedouin Tribes of the Beersheba District II’, Palestine Exploration Fund, 70 (1): 53–63; 1938b. ‘Notes of the Bedouin Tribes of the Beersheba District III’, Palestine Exploration Fund, 70 (2): 117–126; Murray, George. 1935. Sons of Ishamel: A Study of the Egyptian Bedouin, United Kingdom: G. Routledge & Sons, Limited; Jarvis, Claude Scudamore. 1937. Three Deserts, New York: E.P. Dutton & Co; Von Oppenheim, Max. 1939. Die Beduinen Vol. 3, Deutschland: Georg Olms Verlag; Glubb, John. 1957. A Soldier with the Arabs, London: Hodder and Stoughton. 36 Hillelson 1938a. 37 Ibid., 55. 38 Murray 1935. 39 One notable example was the War of Zariʿ al-Huzayyıl (1875–1887) during the late Ottoman Period. This war was described to both Marx (1967) and Bailey 2001(1991) through oral stories. 40 Marx 1967. Also see Nasara (2017) for more detailed account of British colonial policies and interactions with the Naqab Bedouin. 41 The shaykh was a customary leader. He oversaw judicial cases and represented members to officials and non-Bedouin. As discussed later, the role of shaykhs was dramatically altered after 1948. 42 Abu Rabia, Safa. 2012. ‘Is Slavery Over? Black and White Arab Bedouin Women in the Naqab (Negev)’, Struggle and Survival in Palestine/Israel, Mark LeVine and Gershon Shafir (eds.), Berkley: University of California Press, 271–288. 43 Marx 1967. 44 Randolph, 1963, 37–38. 45 Today, these terms are considered to be racist by members of these groups. 46 Parizot 2001a. 47 Ibid. 48 Jewish immigration (aliyah) to the region came in two waves. The first were Zionists who established agricultural settlements in Ottoman-ruled Palestine in the 1890s. The second was a small part of the greater emigration of Jewish peoples from Eastern Europe, which lasted from the 1890s until the 1920s. 49 The term mukhtār (the chosen) is an appropriated fallāḥīn term describing a state-assigned municipal leader. Gubser, 1983.

Naqab Bedouin Social History and Historiography  59 50 Zivan, Zeev. 1998. Ha-Maʻ aseh veha-mediniyut ha-Yisreʾ eliyim ba-Negev ha-deromi, ­1949–1957, Unpublished PhD Dissertation, Yerushalayim: Universitah ha-ʻIvrit., Bitzan 2006. 51 Bitzan 2006, II. 52 For more information about Bedouin during the war, the Egyptians brief rule of the region, and the fall of Beersheba to Israeli forces, please see Nasasra 2017. 53 Morris, Benny. 2003. The Road to Jerusalem: Glubb Pasha, Palestine and the Jews, Vol. 1, New York: IB Tauris. 54 Marx 1967. 55 The Military Administration was granted legal power via the Emergency Defence Regulation issued in 1945 by the British Mandate but was continued by the Israeli authorities until 1966 (Marx 1967). 56 Hutchison, Elmo. 1956. Violent Truce: A Military Observer Looks at Arab-Israeli Conflict 1951–1954, New York: The Devin-Adair Company. 57 Maddrell, Penny. 1990. ‘The Bedouin of the Negev’, The Minority Rights Group, Report no. 81, United Kingdom. 58 Some tribes were able to prove land claims and did not participate in the leasing system (Marx 1967). 59 Marx 1967. 60 Boneh, Dan. 1983. Facing Uncertainty: The Social Consequences of Forced Sedentarization Among the Jaraween Bedouin, Negev, Israel, Unpublished PhD Dissertation, Brandeis University and University Microfilms International. 61 Marx 1967. 62 The Black Goat Law argued that the black goats customarily breed by the Bedouin were an ecological danger. 63 Marx 1967. 64 Dahan-Kalev and Le Febvre 2012, 96. 65 Randolph 1963, Marx 1967. 66 Bar Zvi, Sasson. 1991. Masoret ha-shiput shel Bedve ha-Negev: iyunim mevusasim al magaim im zikne ha-Bedvim, Tel Aviv: Misrad ha-bitahon., Berman, Mildred. 1965. ‘The Evolution of Beer Sheva as an Urban Center’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 55 (2): 308–326. 67 Rabinowitz, Dan. 2002. ‘Oriental Othering and National Identity: A Review of Early Israeli Anthropological Studies of Palestinians’, Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power, 9 (3): 305–325. 68 Marx (1967, 40) listed the named the tribal units (shevatim) and government skaykhs (mukhtār-shuyūkh) recognised by the Israeli government during the Military Administration (1948–1966). 69 Randolph 1963. 70 Ibid., 127–128. 71 Parizot 2001a. 72 Ibid. 73 Swirski, Shlomo and Yael Hasson. 2006. Invisible Citizens: Israel Government Policy Toward the Negev Bedouin, Tel Aviv: Adva Center. 74 Alafenish, Salim. 1987. ‘Processes of Change and Continuity in Kinship System and Family Ideology in Bedouin Society’, Sociologia Ruralis, 27 (4): 323–340. 75 Parizot 2001a, 63. 76 Ibid. 77 Abu Rabia, Aref. 1986. ‘Control and Allocation of Grazing Lands among the Bedouin Tribes of the Negev’, Nomadic Peoples, 20: 5–11. 78 As of 2013, 50,000 residents live in Rāhaṭ in thirty-three neighbourhoods. 79 NCF. 2014. ‘Map and Info of the Villages’, http://www.dukium.org/eng/?page_id=1294, Accessed 20 August 2012. 80 Hall 2014. 81 Dukium 2014. 82 Abu Rabia, Safa. 2008. ‘Between Memory and Resistance, an Identity Shaped by Space: The Case of the Naqab Bedouin’, Hagar: Study in Culture, Polity, and Identities, 8 (2): 93–120, 110. 83 Parizot 2001a. 84 Ibid., 89–90. 85 Al-ʿĀrif 1933. 86 Parizot 2001a, 88. 87 See Dahan-Kalev and Le Febvre 2012. 88 Parizot 2001b, 98.

60 Histories 89 Yiftachel, Oren. 1999. ‘Ethnocracy’: The Politics of Judaizing Israel/Palestine’, Constellations, 6 (3): 364–390 (https://doi.org/10. 1111/1467-8675.00151). 90 Rabinowitz, Dan. 2001. ‘The Palestinian Citizens of Israel, the Concept of Trapped Minority and the Discourse of Transnationalism in Anthropology’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 24 (1): 64–85 (https://doi.org/10.1080/014198701750052505). 91 Others include: Yemen-Jewish, Moroccan-Jewish, Polish-Jewish, Ethiopian-Jewish, ArabVillager, and Arab-Christian. 92 Parizot 2001b. 93 Jakubowska, Longia. 1992. ‘Resisting ‘Ethnicity’: The Israeli State and Bedouin Identity’, The Paths to Domination, Resistance, and Terror, Carolyn Nordstrom and Joann Martin (eds.), Berkeley: University of California Press. 94 Marteu, Elizabeth. 2005. ‘Some Reflections on How Bedouin Women of the Negev Relate to Politics: Between Political Marginalisation and Social Mobilisation’,  Bulletin du Centre de Recherche Français de Jérusalem, 16: 271–286, 283. 95 The second Intifāḍa (uprising) refers to a period between 2000 and 2005 of intensified ­Palestinian-Israeli violence. 96 Israel’s Ministry of Industry, Trade, and Labor. 2010. ‘The Israeli Economy’, http://www.gov. il/FirstGov/TopNavEng /Engoffices/ EngMinistries/EngIndustry, Accessed 19 January 2015. 97 Yiftachel, Oren and As’ad Ghanem. 2004. ‘Understanding ‘Ethnocratic’ Regimes: The Politics of Seizing Contested Territories’, Political Geography, 23 (6): 647–676 (https://doi. org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2004.04.003). 98 Dukium 2014. 99 Ratcliffe 2009, 216. 100 Ibid. 101 For example, the Sharon Plan (est. 2003) policed ‘Bedouin crime’ and strengthened the capacity of the government to prosecute unsanctioned building in the region. Also see the 2006 Goldberg Committee and the 2011 Prawer Initiative. Other policies have been directed toward the Bedouin in Naqab since 2013 (after I completed by fieldwork) but are beyond the scope of this book. 102 El-Sana-Alh’jooj, Amal and Elizabeth Marteu. 2005. ‘Participation in Politics and Public Life’, The Arab Women of the Negev: Realities and Challenges, Beer Sheba: Maan – The Forum for Bedouin Women’s Organization. 103 Parizot 2001a. 104 This practice is detailed in the next chapter. 105 Ratcliffe 2009. 106 Baruch, Nili. 2004. ‘Spatial Inequality in the Allocation of Municipal Resources’, Adalah Newsletter, 8: 1–4. 107 Parizot 2001a. 108 Ibid. 109 Parizot 2004. 110 Parizot 2006. 111 Ibid. 112 McKee 2010. 113 Fenster, Tovi. 1999. ‘Space for Gender: Cultural Roles of the Forbidden and The Permitted’, Environment and Planning: Society and Space, 17: 227–246 (https://doi.org/10.1068/d170227). 114 Jakubowska, Longia. 2000. ‘Finding Ways in Make a Living: Employment among the Negev Bedouin’, Nomadic Peoples, 4 (2): 94–105, 99 (https://doi.org/10.3167/082279400782310502). 115 Kressel 2003; Abu Rabia 2001. 116 Abu Rabia 2001. 117 Ibid. 118 Meir, Avinoam and Ayelet Baskind. 2006. ‘Ethnic Business Entrepreneurship among Urbanising Bedouin in the Negev, Israel’, Nomadic Peoples, 10 (1): 72–100 (https://doi.org/10.3167/ 082279406781020437). 119 https://in.bgu.ac.il/en/Pages/news/bedouin_database.aspx. 120 While the work of academics and activists are distinguished here for the purposes of discussion, many Bedouin representatives engage with both forms of knowledge production. 121 Dahan-Kalev and Le Le Febvre 2012, 139. 122 Ratcliffe 2009. 123 Ibid., 216. 124 Ibid. 125 Bailey 2001 (1991).

2 Making Histories in a Bedouin Society

Peoples throughout the Middle East transform memories into formal representations of the past and group histories. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, these enterprises typify peoples’ efforts to define their collective identities amid encroaching nationalisms and economic competitions. Chantal Mouffe argued, however, that these practices also often ossify pluralisms, restrict people’s orientations, and intensify competition between marginalised peoples.1 Consequently, many of the world’s populations are caught in a ‘double bind’ whereby advocating peoplehood requires members to essentialise their own pasts. As Pierre Nora pointed out, ‘ethnic groups and social minorities, every established group, intellectual or not, learned or not, has felt the need to go in search of its own origins and identity’.2 In the wake of forced historical self-determinism their enterprises have also become increasingly dependent on strategic representations and the diversification of media skills. Treatments of times past amongst Bedouin are similarly shaped by the diverse modes by which members define themselves and the world around them to include their own unique but differing perspectives. Of these, notions of ethnicity adopted by the state of Israel, nationalisms advocated by fellow Palestinians, and indigeneity used by international organisations have come to influence how members orient their pasts, creating what Michael Herzfeld has coined as the ‘hijacking of history’.3 Over the last decades, Palestinian, Israeli, and international institutions have been providing much-needed funding and state subsidies to the Naqab Bedouin. Allocations of these resources, however, are often funnelled to specific people with strong ties to particular organisations and those groups who have the capacity to prove their historical rights to said assets. In order to appeal to these stakeholders, spokespersons make effective use of community ideals and Western universalisms through acts of mediation which largely draw on expert testimonies supported by deeds, writings, and photographs. As a result, a large majority of learned (both scholastic and activist) treatments of the Bedouin past today have a tendency to replicate, whether consciously or not, Naqab Bedouin ethnohistory – a discourse presenting generalised descriptions of this society for outside consumption in order to situate local history amidst nationalist and global narratives, and highlight the population’s ongoing marginalisation.4 While I do not imply here that Naqab Bedouin ethnohistories are less valid than other forms of history, these types of narratives of the past typically spend ‘more time collecting or piecing together substantive historical narratives and presenting them according to a Western conception of history than they have analysing local historicities’.5 These efforts cannot be politically faulted as they strive to collect archival documentation and articulate cohesive historical accounts that augment the capacity of these people to defend their rights in Israeli and DOI: 10.4324/9781003185703-4

62 Histories international courts and counter state arguments that they are a people ‘without a history’.6 In the pursuit of advocacy, however, many spokespersons silence viewpoints they consider counterproductive to their local interests, thus creating articulations of the Bedouin’s past from an outsider’s point of view rather than producing analysis about history-making and sociality amongst members. For example, Yiftachel argued that tribalism has ‘split and weaken the “community”, and enhances traditional, often chauvinist and reactionary elements….’7 of society and encourages Orientalist stereotypes made by the state that the population is nomadic and therefore unable to make claims to Naqab lands. These treatments of tribal history, however, disregard the contemporary role lineages (ʿāʾilāt) play in the everyday lives of Bedouin when criticising state policies and decreeing that tribalism is reminiscent of the past and stifling the population’s future as a Palestinian ‘Arab minority’ in Israel. In these cases, tribalism is perceived as a negative institution yet in other instances advocates use this form of sociality to emphasise the Bedouin’s indigeneity in the Naqab.8 Arguments that Bedouin are indigenous to the Naqab were heralded by Ismael Abu Saad, who was one of the first scholars to explain how Bedouin experiences in Israel are similar to other indigenous people around the world.9 Over the last twenty years, the notion of indigeneity has come to increasingly frame discussions about Naqab Bedouin rights.10 For many spokespersons, indigeneity is ‘a useful concept that enables them to be heard and discussed by international legal entities’11 and relates to the Bedouin’s ‘prior presence before the arrival of new settlers’.12 With regard to ethnohistories, Andrew Shryock demonstrated that this type of history is a reactionary ‘by-product of the relentless spread of nationalism in the region’.13 He described his own resistance to the discourse in the 1990s and argued that, unlike synchronic ethnohistory, Bedouin understandings of the past in Jordan are diachronic and include tribal genealogies and spatial narratives. It is less important to determine ‘what really happened’ as ethnohistories attempt to do, but instead illustrate how these types of externally directed narratives differ from locally held views.14 Dale Eickelman pointed out that ethnohistories often essentialise peoples’ complex realities and are less adequate for understanding internal relationships in a society and, as I argue, more nuanced conceptualisations of their past.15 Unlike many Bedouin populations in the Middle East who have kept ‘this familiar genre at bay’,16 Bedouin histories in the Naqab have been a part of Palestinian and Israeli national politics since the early twentieth century. In contrast to Bedouin in Balgā where the colonial encounter remained ‘oddly peripheral to the making of Bedouin history’,17 spokespersons in the Naqab purposely use ethnohistory to connect themselves and their pasts to Palestinian or Israeli Arab nationalisms and other global movements be they in collusion or opposition. Over time these narratives have come to shape contemporary articulations of local history and society there. Nonetheless, because of the persuasiveness of this ethnohistory among members and outsiders alike, existing discourses of Naqab Bedouin history have yet to adequately account for the diversities of their histories and the variety of media works creating them. In other words, the plurality of Bedouin historical narratives is often obscured by ethnohistorical accounts. Despite the fact that spokespersons strategically distance themselves from tribal polemics in certain publics to advocate on behalf of their various communities over the last thirty years, other histories such as those associated with tribalism are still produced today. Tribal histories, for instance, are internally competitive but not necessarily

Making Histories in a Bedouin Society  63 externally antagonistic during the construction of collective history directed at outsiders, whereas broader constructions of the Islamic past and ethnohistory connect to universal religious, national, and civic ideologies associated with these discourses. This comes as Bedouin constructions of the past are inevitably varied and multiple as they do not make claims to a single universal authority but to a range of particularisms associated with members’ diverse relationships. In all, histories are produced at various levels of affiliation and connectivity – knowledge that is locally characterised by internal competition between lineages (ʿāʾilāt), maintained by cognate groups (agwām), inscribed onto local territories (dīra), and experienced differently by subsequent generations and families. Thus, as Yiftachel’s work also suggested, the most popular history projects in the Naqab predominantly connect to genealogy and tribalism along with ethno-nationalisms and Islamisms, keeping in mind these are not ossified categories.18 Studies such as his, however, tend to disregard internal competitions and collaborations in this society in the pursuit of resources to which these histories are put and often rarefy the diverse universalisms to which they aspire. In order to explore these practices, I draw on Emrys Peters’ insight that a study of history is one thing, a study of how people create and use history is an entirely different matter.19 As such, this chapter details the types of history that circulate today, their common themes, the stakeholders who construct this information, to whom they direct these histories, and the multimedia practices they commonly employ. These topics are examined through discourse analysis and empirical data focusing on oral presentations and texts such as books and websites. Analysis of photography set aside for now as I explore visual iconography and how Bedouin use photographs to authenticate these oral and text-based histories in the remainder of the book. This multi-stranded tactic constitutes a more exhaustive approach to understanding local history-making, navigating shifting narratives of the past, and accounting for the diverse mediations behind these ­constructions – practices in which photography now plays a significant role. To do so, I begin with an ethnographic sketch of Khashem Zanaʿ as observed between 2012 and 2013. This description contextualises the internal socio-political landscape of life in a village, notes the various tribal and civic spokespersons speaking on behalf of villagers, and situates the village as a public venue for the production of history.20 This sketch also provides a background for the next section, which explores the popular rhetorical themes and socio-linguistic registers of local history. It does so by describing a series of events in which the village’s main civic spokesman, Suleīmān (anonymised) al-ʿAthāmīn, explained the Naqab Bedouin’s past and society to guests and political tourists brought to the village by regional NGOs and governmental officials. Suleīmān was a part of a large network of Bedouin academics, religious leaders, civic professionals, tribal elders, and politicians who regularly speak and write on behalf of others in their society. These spokespersons, however, communicate versions of history that are relative to their audiences, internal socio-political status or worth (gīma), and necessary goals. This is due to the highly political landscape of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and the sheer numbers of outsiders these members regularly interact with on a daily basis during which identity clashes are common and topics of history regularly debated. Socio-Political Life and Oral History in Khashem Zanaʿ (2012–2013) Socio-political life in Khashem Zanaʿ between 2012 and 2013 for the majority of residents in the village, including Suleīmān (anonymised) al-ʿAthāmīn and his family, was

64 Histories divided between close (garāba) people and outsiders, or distant people.21 These idealised proximities patterned everyday interactions, defined territories, and endowed events with significance. Residents closely associated with other individuals within their extended family (ʿāʾila)22 and sub-lineage (gōm), which in turn connected them to other people within their larger lineage (ʿāʾilāt) through residence, descent (sulāla), and genealogy (nasāb). The closest relationships in Khashem Zanaʿ included one’s immediate family and the word house or tent (bayt) commonly referenced this tertiary household. ­Members identified each household (bayt) by the name of the senior male residing there along with his wife or wives, sons and daughters, son’s wife or wives, and their children. This ­network formed the minimal household unit. Suleīmān’s eldest son’s family lived in a house next to Ike and I’s shipping container, below Suleīmān’s house. The three eldest daughters resided in houses with their families next to Suleīmān’s wife Fāṭimah’s (anonymised) kin. During fieldwork, the fourth eldest daughter married and moved to the paternal kin just north of Suleīmān’s homestead. The remaining children lived in the main house with Suleīmān and Fāṭimah. While frequently present in the household, their daughters’ residences were outside of the main home in different areas of the village though they shared economic responsibilities and social bonds (‘ishra). These daughters travelled to their natal home every day, assisted Fāṭimah with daily housework, visited with me in the women’s gathering room (ʿarisha), and frequently spent the night. Suleīmān’s family ideally shared space or ʾarḍ (distinguished from ʿirḍ or virtue), intimate quarters (muḥra), house (bayt, buyūt), property (dār, dīra), and dependents (mahmiyāt). These domains (and the people allowed in these spaces) were juxtaposed to the outside world or public arenas as the household exists in relation to villages, communities, regions, and nations.23 As the next section discusses, these positionalities and proximities significantly shape articulations of history in this society. Today, households are organised differently in villages and towns. Village homesteads tend to be constructed horizontally, whereas town homes are built vertically due to building restrictions and the lack of building permits. Despite their different layouts, residences in villages are characterised by strict spatial boundaries created between one’s property (dār) and neighbourhoods (hāra, hārat) where male descendants live next to their paternal relatives’ homes.24 Most dwellings in the villages were similar to Suleīmān’s house in Khashem Zanaʿ wherein families constructed their houses out of permanent cinderblock structures (buyūt cement) and tin houses with attached tents (buyūt al-sha’r).25 Each house has designated areas for guests and family. Each house in the village varied in size and dimensions, however, wealthier men such as Suleīmān constantly added to their homes, building additional rooms with various functions. Moreover, influential tribal (ʿāʾiliyya) associations, such as Suleīmān’s extended family, also possessed rights to larger grazing and farmlands in the village. The interior space of each village home is divided into public spaces such as a guest reception room (salon or dīwān) and private spaces (rab’a or muḥra), distinguished by restricted insider/outsider access (that is where members of the household (bayt) were allowed to enter as opposed to guests). Private domestic spaces typically include a kitchen, bedrooms, and bathing or shower rooms. These areas were constructed out of concrete walls and tin roofs whereas the guest or more public areas were a combination of tent and concrete spaces filled with mattresses, pillows, and a metal stove or fire pit. Most houses in Khashem Zanaʿ had electricity provided by petrol-fuelled generators or solar panels. Up until 1985, water was collected from wells and streams; however, today

Making Histories in a Bedouin Society  65 most houses have indoor plumbing drawing on water purchased on the Israeli market or from water tanks provided by NGOs. Suleīmān explained, ‘Between 1948 until 1985, we carried water to the village on donkeys from nearby wells located three kilometres away’. During my fieldwork, kitchens contained gas stoves and faucets, and bathrooms possessed flushing toilets and showers connected to the water main and underground sewage tanks. In all, I found houses in the villages were not slums as popularly stereotyped in Israeli media and despite the rough appearance of privacy fencing around the house, the interiors were tidy with tiled floors, painted walls, and wood planked ceilings. Each property (dār) was composed of a house, and the immediate lands surrounding it, and ideally included an outdoor guest area, agnate meeting place (shigg), lands for grazing and farming, and livestock pens. Suleīmān’s property hosted a large concrete slab on the east side for hosting large events. To the west was a small field planted with wheat and two olive trees, and to the south, there were livestock sheds for sheep, goats, pigeons, and chickens. To the north of Suleīmān’s land, there was a playground, preschool, store, and mosque. Each property is situated within a larger neighbourhood (hāra), which in Suleīmān’s case, included his younger brother’s lands to the southeast, his eldest brother’s land to the north of him, and his mother and middle brother’s land to the west. Suleīmān’s closest neighbours were thus his patrilineal kinsmen. These neighbourhoods (hārat) were separated from others located to the east and south of Suleīmān’s homestead but comprised a village, which as a whole shared a cemetery, mosque, store, and preschool. Suleīmān estimated that 2,300 people resided in the village as of 2012. Non-kin neighbours claim tribal affiliation with the al-ʿAthāmīn, but who do not share descent, also resided in Khashem Zanaʿ. These neighbourly relations (ʿishra) were established by living next to one another and these residents attended each other’s ceremonies and events. Because non-kin mixed socially there was no strangeness (ghurabāʾ) between them as they were familiar with one another.26 For example, during Suleīmān’s daughter’s wedding in Khashem Zanaʿ, tribally affiliated but non-kinswomen attended and led songs (tarwīd, tarāwīd) which commiserated the matrimonial event, complimented the bride, and welcomed the guests. Customarily, land ownership in the village was negotiated through a process whereby residents cleared a field of stones for planting (hajer). Up until the late nineteenth century, members established ownership over land by demonstrating presence via dwellings and protecting boundaries, which in the past were indicated by planted bushes and large rocks with symbols (wasam) painted on to them. Since the late 1960s, members have used tractors to artificially construct dirt mounds to indicate the boundaries between homesteads. There were strict boundaries in the village between properties. Large fields, valleys, and networks of roads also created ‘natural’ boundaries between neighbourhoods in the village. Pallet privacy fencing, sheep sheds, and other man-made markers demarcated each property in a neighbourhood. These structures and paths separated ambiguous public spaces, lands, and pathways winding between the homesteads and private land that required an invitation by their owners to enter. Families also fervently protected both village and property boundaries as crossing them potentially entailed social transgressions. Suleīmān, in an interview with Bogumila Hall, explained: Here the territory is divided between families. No stranger can enter my property without my permission. We all know each other, but when I go to see somebody, I do not go to his house; it belongs to the private sphere. It is a shame to enter it…. When men gather it is always in the shigg [guest-tent, meeting place]. The house is

66 Histories for women and their guests. In towns, there are no divisions anymore, anyone can go anywhere. It is not how it is meant to be.27 The protection of property also included grazing areas. During the week, Suleīmān’s youngest daughter and I had watched over Fāṭimah’s herd of thirty sheep and goats which grazed in the pasture and water beds (wādī) located directly behind Suleīmān’s lands. As mentioned above, the livestock in our family was Fāṭimah’s property and she and the youngest daughter were responsible for taking them to pasture, constructing pens and housing, feeding, and medicating the herd. In addition to the sheep and goats, chickens were another main source of meat for the family. Suleīmān and Fāṭimah treated her livestock as an important investment in times of economic uncertainty. As stated earlier, Suleīmān was typical of many Bedouin men as he also maintained full-time employment as a security guard at a Jewish-owned grocery store located outside of Beersheba. In addition to these business activities, Suleīmān and Fāṭimah travelled to the market in Hebron located in the West Bank to purchase groceries every two weeks. They said they preferred Palestinian-run markets to Jewish-owned shops in Israel closer to the village. During these trips, they purchased fruit, baked goods, luxury items such as candies and new clothes, school supplies, and provisions for the small village store they maintained on their land. This store was run and visited by younger males from various neighbourhoods (hārat) and served as an informal meeting place where they listened to music on their mobile phones, smoked cigarettes, and talked. In addition to the unlicensed selling of household goods, members also traded and sold livestock in desert markets away from government oversight. These unofficial trades and sales occurred among those who have not registered their herds with Israeli officials or do not have required transportation certifications for trailers or trucks to attend livestock markets in the urban centres. As the main breadwinner, Suleīmān was the senior male within the household but also the public representative of the family in 2012 and 2013. These responsibilities were relinquished to the eldest adult son when Suleīmān unexpectedly passed away in 2016. At that time, the son established his own independent household and took on the responsibility for caring for the elders who then become his dependents. Every male child has the potential to create his own extended family (ʿāʾila) and establish agnate relationships (agwām) when needed. Thereby, his own familial networks’ interests may align with or go against those of his father, brother, or cousin; a situation encapsulated by the proverb, ‘Myself against my brother; my brother and I against my cousin; my cousin, my brother, and I against the outsider’.28 Notwithstanding, each extended family consisted of households located in a neighbourhood in which all members claim shared descent (sulāla) and connections reinforced through marriage ties. Extended family form co-resident groups comprised cognates, related kin, or larger lineages. Thus, they tend to isolate themselves, strive for economic independence, and spatial separation, and frequently reside on their own lands in a village. Internal group dynamics within extended families, however, strengthen or weaken in different circumstances as in-group solidarity and relationships are continually reorganised because of conflict or alliances, births and deaths, and marriages in and out of households. Consequently, extended families set out to increase collective numbers through marriage in order to maximise social cohesion, economic resources, and political strength. This is ideally accomplished through parallel cousin marriage, which aims to strengthen shared descent between people and connect named ancestors, thereby establishing sets

Making Histories in a Bedouin Society  67 of relationships that can be called forth and justified during times of need.29 Over time the practice creates overlapping ties between individuals and reinforces the closeness of members within an extended family.30 In all, parallel cousin marriage is a form of aggrandisement that indelibly promotes processes of affiliation through atomisation in their society.31 The main priority of matrimonial strategies is not necessarily the exchange of m ­ embers but the establishment of ties through homology. ‘Thus groups are therefore structured around the concept of sharing to the extent in which their members define their status on their homology and through shared [marriage]’.32 Consequently, marriages also hold symbolic significance for broader tribal dynamics as both husband and wife are representatives of their natal family and broader groupings. According to Gideon Kressel, matrimonial alliances are characterised by competition between two families as groups use them to gain greater resources.33 Thus marriages typically position two intermarrying networks in competition with one another rather than strictly establishing collaborative relationships between families.34 The local terms indicating conjugal relationships include husband (zawj), wife (zawja), and in-laws (nasāyib). As stated, these relationships established through parallel cousin marriage ideally occur within a named patrilineal descent group. Preferably, marriages are established through exchange (badal) wherein one’s son is married to one’s father’s brother’s daughter (bint ‘amm) or between persons who are first to fifth cousins. In many cases, male descent groups share maternal relatives and kinsmen via endogamy but cases of exogamous marriage exist. Marriages are made between structural equals and, ideally, not between those with unequal (kuf’) status. Marriages between members (namely ʾaṣīl and non-ʾaṣīl) exist but are limited to the ‘taking of women’ by Bedouin with origins. Most ʾaṣīl women are encouraged not to marry non-ʾaṣīl men. In Khashem Zanaʿ, most married males had more than one wife, however, the first wife tended to claim Arabian origins and, more often than not, was the man’s patrilineal cousin.35 The second and third wives were often non-ʾaṣīl from outside of the extended family from a client group or an Arab woman not native to the Naqab. They are typically from the West Bank and on some occasions Bedouin women from Jordan. In the first instance, married cousins typically share kin through matrilateral or patrilateral ties. Ultimately, the goal of the first marriage is to establish alliances and power within a named lineage.36 Thus the father or male patriarchs, in coordination with close male agnates, have the ultimate authority in choosing their daughters’ husbands.37 Generally, young persons do not arrange their own marriages. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, local marriages involved Israeli civilsecular law, Islamic law (Sharīʿa), and tribal law (ʿashāʾirī). Despite the extension of civil laws in Israel, Islamic and tribal laws take precedence. Today there are two ways to register marriage, through formal contracts with a person charged by the Islamic court or through the local custom (ʿurfī) of bridal exchange (badal). Marriages between households, extended familial relatives, and neighbours also strengthen maternal relations but members consider these connections a weaker form of social identity as opposed to those established through paternity. Notwithstanding, maternal kinship is highly valued. Women as well as men maintain close ties to their maternal homes for both strategic and practical reasons such as in the case of divorce or an abusive husband. In summary, the closest social relations during my time in the village were concentrated within a house and extended family out of which other larger, abstracted tribal connections were made and articulated. According to local belief, the capacity of familial

68 Histories units such as Suleīmān’s household to collaborate or disassociate with multiple other households is one of the fundamental dynamics of lineage-based tribalism which characterise this society. Members treat other households as opponents that compete on some occasions but on other occasions choose to affiliate as an agnatic lineage group. These connections can be ideally established at different generational depths within the tribal network. As noted by Randolph in the 1960s, lineages were then and continue to be today to be ‘strongly enmeshed in a network of kin ties with other families, and kinship provides the idiom for creating corporate groups to an extent not found in the West’.38 One’s relationships within an extended family connect them with other members through broader protracted named descent networks or lineages whose members relate to one another by corresponding ancestry between four to eight generations and justify their collaborations and competition through claims of shared patrilineal descent (sulāla). Named lineages are referred to by the surnames of said ancestors. A lineage’s tribal namesake is a part of the broader language of tribalism among Bedouin. Relative terms that express tribal affiliations include one’s customary tribe (ʿashīra) and/or state tribal unit (shevet), sub-confederation (ṣaff), or confederation (gabīla). For example, Suleīmān’s customary (ʾaṣīl) tribe, the al-ʿAthāmīn was not recognised by Israel as a tribal unit. Instead, the state regulates these members as affiliates of the al-ʿĀʿsam. Nevertheless, Suleīmān and his family tribally affiliated with other members of the Gdīrāt ṣaff and the Tiyāhā gabīla, and each of these namesakes signifies different types of socio-political and economic obligations and divisions. Again, regardless of terminology, Bedouin typically do not experience ambiguity of reference because the articulation of namesakes depends on who is asking and what type of relationships the inquirer is attempting to establish. Both males and females with shared named descent will also share surnames and lands. The affinal and bilateral relationships established through marriage in a lineage ideally bring agnates together during times of collaboration or conflict in the form of a series of agnate or co-liable groups (agwām, sing. gōm). According to Parizot, these ensembles are led by a number of men who cement their bonds by privileging the intermarrying of their children, that is of their brothers and first cousins.39 When practiced over time, these matrimonial strategies gradually isolate and create closer relationships within an agnate group. Members refer to agnates by the name of their shared ancestor or the patrilineal forebear of the group that is ‘Children (ʿAwlād) of “named” ancestor’.40 Customarily, each agnate group has male elders who serve as spokespersons of the extended family and jurally represents other members during times of mutual interest with other Bedouin. On a daily basis, the elders lead religious activities, mediate internal disputes, and protect alliances such as those established through marriage. They are influential and respected figures but they do not have complete authority over the internal affairs of the lineage as each male head maintains control over his own household. Elders of large and powerful agnate groups may serve as leaders of the entire lineage. Suleīmān was the second oldest son in his family. He and his four brothers all resided on their father’s land. Ḥamād, as eldest, often performed slaughtering during major feasts or holidays. He predominantly led familial and tribal-based activities in the neighbourhood and served as the spokesperson for his extended family. Suleīmān, as a middle brother, however, did not possess the same influence as his older brother or elders (kbār) in Khashem Zanaʿ, particularly in regards to internal familial and intra-tribal (ʿashāʾirī) affairs. Alternatively, Suleīmān headed the local committee (al-lajna al-maḥalliya) and served as a civic spokesperson of the village to non-Bedouin outsiders. As briefly described

Making Histories in a Bedouin Society  69 in the last chapter, the positions of community spokespersons, such as Suleīmān’s, have become more prominent in the villages over the last twenty years. These men present themselves as spearheading the village’s political strategies, publicity campaigns, and lobby for resources by seeking outside supporters and allies usually in the form of governmental officials and international NGOs. One practice by which spokespersons like Suleīmān accomplished their political and economic goals is by historicising their own villages such as Khashem Zanaʿ and publicising their residents’ struggles with the Israeli state in various public forums. Their self-presentations of history and ­contemporary circumstances are both varied and strategic as they aim to validate a range of rights and historical claims to external audiences in order to acquire resources from them – ­organisations and persons who provide funding, equipment, provisions, infrastructure, and other forms of capital. The Diversification of Bedouin Histories and Their Productions Suleīmān told me that when outsiders learn more about the conditions in the villages, they do more to help the people there. His efforts have obtained solar panels and hot water heaters, a preschool for their neighbourhood, and a playground for his extended family; all paid for by NGOs and outside donors through charitable and development projects. Nevertheless, Suleīmān paid lip service to broader Naqab Bedouin community interests but in reality, he predominantly strived to buttress the capacity of his lineage and village to obtain resources from outsiders through strategic representational practices, which distinguished their needs while emphasising their connections with others in southern Israel. In order to reach non-Bedouin audiences, Suleīmān regularly invited political tourists and NGO stakeholders to his home. Successively, his efforts transformed Khashem Zanaʿ into a popular destination for outsiders interested in Bedouin life in an ‘unrecognised village’. During my fieldwork between 2012 and 2013, visits by political tourists and foreign donors to Khashem Zanaʿ were intensifying. At the time, the village was under possible threat by the state of Israel for demolition. These visits were organised by approximately a dozen various NGOs and other advocates working in Israel and the West Bank to raise international and national awareness about the situation in the ‘unrecognised villages’ and aimed to solicit funding for their civic projects with residents. Most notably, for our purposes, these encounters also turn out to be history-making occasions in which spokespersons and others created, rationalised, and disseminated formalised narratives about the Naqab Bedouin past to outsiders. The following sections describe events during which Suleīmān shared his versions of the Naqab Bedouin’s past and society with others. During these times, I found that his rhetorical themes and strategies were similar to the types of history constructed by other spokespersons over the course of my fieldwork. These ambiguous and diverse accounts focused on establishing connections and oppositions with others ‘communities’ predominantly through: genealogical (nasābī) and tribal (gabaliyya or ʿāʾiliyya) pasts; Islamic heritage; and village ethnohistory. The oscillation between these histories among spokespersons is common throughout the Naqab, an observation that concurs with the experiences of other scholars who have worked in southern Israel41 but differ substantially from other Bedouin populations residing in places like Jordan, particularly in regard to their diversification and politicisation.

70 Histories Articulations of Naqab Bedouin Ethnohistory

During tours with outside visitors (typically tourists, journalists, politicians, and ­students), Suleīmān provided guests with tea or a meal, a lecture on the Naqab Bedouin, and a tour of Khashem Zanaʿ. Afterwards, Suleīmān guided guests across his concrete courtyard, through a large dirt area, which unbeknownst to them was the homestead’s trash heap, to a hill next to his wife Fāṭimah’s sheep corral made from old pallets. Once there, visitors would take pictures of the landscape, livestock, and village houses. Back in the reception room, he directed visitors to a room filled with handicrafts for sale. Afterwards, most visitors proceeded to their tour bus with new purchases and an informative pamphlet on the ‘unrecognised villages’. Once boarded, the NGO’s official host would give Suleīmān an envelope with a payment. During the early days, when Suleīmān’s presentations were new to me, I often stayed in the guest reception room to learn more about the history of Khashem Zanaʿ. By the third month of receiving visitors, I realised that I was re-listening to a tailored lecture, one Suleīmān repeated over the course of my fieldwork. Among Western guests from Europe, his narrative (spoken in Hebrew or dialect and translated into English or French in situ) was the following: I am the head of the village council and a part of the RCUV and Abu Basma ­councils. I come from the al-ʿAthāmīn tribe but the state of Israel does not recognise us. Khashem Zanaʿ is a historical village within the Sīyāj and we have never moved from place to place. My grandfather came here a hundred years ago and began to farm, created a cemetery, and used the caves as storage for grain. We have historical roots here. Before the state of Israel, we were found on maps. We had an address but the state deleted it from the map and told us to move from here. We now have no address only a tribal name on our ID cards. There are 2,300 people living in the village but we have no basic services unlike other Israelis. We have 600 school age children but no schools. When I was a child, I walked to school in another village for ten years. I had to wait until a group of children also went to school and I would sometimes take a donkey but my sisters were not allowed to go to school. Only in 1985 did they begin to go because there were buses to take them. When women and mothers do not go to school it influences the family’s life. The first Bedouin student to go to university was in 1982, he was from this area. We have no connection to electricity here and only four years ago we got generators. This is a problem…. We can’t do anything without electricity. We can’t create small businesses that might improve the land. There is today some electricity that passes through the village but it is not enough…. We do not have streetlights to get place to place like the ­Jewish villages. This is because we do not have formal documents [ṭābū] for our land between 1950s and the 1960s. They wanted us to give up twenty dunams for one dunam. But it doesn’t matter if you have a lease [ṭābū] or not. The Abū Kāff are being kicked off their land and they have these documents. They [the state] do not recognised Bedouin land ownership. After the speech, he passed out a flyer produced by the Regional Council of Unrecognised Villages (RCUV) explaining the situation in the villages. It described the Bedouin as an indigenous population living on ancestral lands along with their housing struggles, ­poverty, and socio-economic marginalisation.

Making Histories in a Bedouin Society  71 In addition to giving lectures about Khashem Zanaʿ to visitors, Suleīmān also gave interviews to various reporters during my stay. For example, on one occasion Suleīmān re-oriented the history of Khashem Zanaʿ as an ‘unrecognised Palestinian village’ and reflected on the Days of Palestine (ʿAyyam Falasteen) with the West Bank-based news syndetic Quds in 2013. The information he conveyed during this interview was similar  to his presentation given to Westerners. Interestingly, however, the Palestinian ­journalist later contextualised Suleīmān’s ‘Palestinian Badāwī history of Khashem Zanaʿ’ as such: Khashem Zanaʿ is a Palestinian Arab village in the Naqab, and because they are not recognised by the Israeli authorities as a village, they are deprived of the services…. The village [is] ‘historic’ and he tells the story of his grandfather … who arrived hundreds of years ago. ‘Where did your grandfather come from?’ He answered, ‘We the [Tiyāhā] wandered from Sinai…. They say that there was a famine in Saudi Arabia and Yemen in the ancient times, and people began migrating to the Sinai and wandered there, and distributed tribes in different areas, and we have come to Palestine.’ About the logic of the village’s name, he told us, ‘Khashem means the nose, it references here the nose of the mountain….’ I stopped his narrative, smiling and asked him about the Bedouin words he uttered that I did not understand. He said instead that his grandfather arrived here and had the ‘honour’ to cultivate land and take care of it. He told us that it is only prejudice in geography books that states everything in the Naqab is ‘desert’. His grandfather had the gift of cultivating land, digging wells, and holding workers to him. You feel that you are experiencing [Bedouin] hospitality in the Naqab and more about their way of life. But I do not only have the task of compiling traditional press material. So you do not learn about history, but about ‘making history’ according to the stubborn Badawi model who have withstood, to put it mildly, ‘uprooting’ attempts [sic]. We had to leave our talk about the fun memories and family history, to talk about life under occupation.42 Midway through my fieldwork, I sat with Suleīmān on another occasion when he recounted Khashem Zanaʿ’s history to an Israeli Jewish male representative working for Negev Co-existence Forum (NCF, Hebrew Dukium). This NGO regularly brought political tourists to the ‘unrecognised villages’ to meet with residents to hear about ‘the historical and political processes that have shaped the current demographic challenges’.43 The interviewer also asked Suleīmān to explain the history of the village so that the NGO could advertise it on their website. This interview was part of the NGO’s broader project aimed at rectifying misguided information in the Israeli media about the villages and inserting village committees’ (al-lajna al-maḥalliya) local knowledge in the public sphere. Suleīmān’s oral narrative was later contextualised by the NGO as such: The unrecognized village of Khasham Zaneh is home to some 2000 people and predates the establishment of the State of Israel. The village has important historical sites including an ancient cemetery from the period of the Ottoman Empire, a well that was filled in by the government, several ancient houses, and caves that were carved for storing crops. The village is named after Zaneh a righteous woman who is buried in the village. The hill on which the village stands is shaped like a woman’s nose, and the village is consequently called Hasham Zaneh – ‘Zaneh’s nose’…. 44

72 Histories Over the course of my fieldwork, I sat in the reception room and listened to Suleīmān give these lectures to various audiences and observed him hand out pamphlets about the ‘unrecognised villages’. Upon further research, I later found that his oral accounts were re-produced in writing in Israeli, Palestinian, and international newspapers, academic articles, and websites. Eventually, it became apparent that Suleīmān’s speeches remained largely consistent in content during these events but regularly shifted between Israeli, ­Palestinian, and indigenous identities. NGOs and their affiliated advocates from other places in the Naqab, however, also re-tailored Khashem Zanaʿ’s history to meet the different expectations of their audiences in their text-based news articles and websites. After observing these occasions in Khashem Zanaʿ and a half dozen other villages and towns such as al-ʿAragīb, Lagīya, and Rāhaṭ, I came to find that Suleīmān and other spokespersons are presenting a new type of oral colloquy that differs from customary stories and poems. Alternatively, these spoken presentations highlighted their historical rights, selectively negotiated between their multiple socio-political affiliations, and noted their socio-economic struggles to a vast range of outsiders. They regularly entailed the use of ethnohistory, community descriptions, and civic vocabulary including proscriptive terms used by state and international groups such as ‘Israeli Arab minority’ and ‘­Palestinian Bedouin in Israel’. For example, in a talk given to European visitors at the Rāhaṭ Community Centre, politician Ṭalib al-Ṣānaʿ phrased the situation of the Naqab Bedouin as Israeli Arabs: We have become a national minority issue within the Jewish and Palestinian conflict but Bedouin have historical presence on this land. Today our cultural identity is a crime but thirty per cent of the Naqab is Bedouin. The problem with the Zionist mind-set is that they are patronising to minorities in Israel. They teach their citizens in educational textbooks that Bedouin are thieves but use the army service as a way to distinguish us from other Arabs. They present the ʿArab minority’ as ‘Bad Arabs’ or ‘Good Arabs’ using history and education to support these images but these presentations are taken out of context and set us against other minorities for human rights. The Palestinian and Bedouin differences are political and over different lands, but Israel treats us as ‘Our Arabs’ yet discriminate us all the same. Since the late 1990s, spokespersons have also incorporated Hebrew, English, and Arabic civic vocabularies including terms such as ‘unrecognised’, ‘historical’, y’lidih (Hebrew – indigenous), and ṣumūd (Arabic – steadfastness) into their presentations of the past. Likewise, they thematically stress education, Bedouin presence and cultivation of land, and the lack of modern infrastructure in their talks. These narratives, however, regularly omit kin-based allegiances, status hierarchies, and tribal heterogeneity from their representations in order to exemplify or appear to exemplify the entire ‘community’. In addition to promulgating local ethnohistory through speech, spokespersons are also handing out literature written in Arabic, English, and Hebrew created by local scholars, newspapers, religious and civic organisations, and municipalities. This literature not only chronicles tribal events but also maps Bedouin lands and rationalises the Naqab Bedouin demographic. For example, information about major socio-political events such as scheduled protests in the towns, villages, and Beersheba are written down and published in the local newspapers, pamphlets, and websites. While conducting fieldwork, I discovered that the efforts of spokespersons have also been central to the successful acquisition of resources from state and non-state actors but

Making Histories in a Bedouin Society  73 that much of this NGO-based funding was funnelled to specific groups who had strong social, political, or religious ties with organisation’s leaders, personnel, and grantmakers. It became apparent that since 1948 various tribal, civic, and religious spokespersons who have negotiated and advocated with Israeli state officials and international stakeholders have successfully acquired ‘recognition’ of specific villages that were once deemed by the state as illegal and have secured hard-to-obtain land and economic rights. In all, over the last several decades, spokespersons have also gone on to nurture relationships with a wide range of organisations to secure infrastructure in villages which increasingly include Muslim groups and representatives located across the Middle East, particularly from the Arabian Peninsula. Expressions of Islamic Heritage

After several months of listening to Suleīmān’s narrative about Khashem Zanaʿ, I asked him privately one evening if he could tell me more about the history of the Bedouin before 1948. To do so, Suleīmān did not begin with the history of the Israeli state but rather relayed a three-hour recitation that began with Zamzam, the holy water well in Mecca. He explained that God created Adam and Eve from all kinds of soil. Some of this soil was white and soft, some dark and hard, and some swarthy and flexible like the Bedouin. ‘This is why there are so many different types of people in the world’. According to Suleīmān, Jacob and the twelve tribes of Israel were Bedouin along with his sons Joseph and Benjamin who travelled out of Egypt to ‘live here around Biʾr Sabʿ [Beersheba]’. He went on to tell the story of Moses, largely his youth and exodus from Egypt to Sinai. Suleīmān described how the Pharaoh drowned in the Red Sea and that God decided to make an ‘example of him’. ‘From the end of that time until today, the Pharaoh’s people, the Egyptians, are an example of bad and weak people’. Suleīmān explained that Judaism began 3,000 years ago and Christianity was established when Jesus came into the world through the breath of God. After his birth, the shaykhs from tribes came to talk to the infant prophet and provided him with wisdom about life. He went on to state: Now at 2000 years, the Quʾrān was written down. But we Muslims believe in Moses, Jesus, and all of the prophets. We believe in the Torah, the Bible, and the Quʾrān but the Jewish know only the Torah and know nothing of the Quʾrān and Bible…. All of this in the Quʾrān. It says there in the history of the Quʾrān that Joseph was Bedouin. You can teach and learn about all of our stories. To know about the past, about today, and about the future. All of this is known from the Quʾrān but now you can find it on the Internet. It was not surprising that Suleīmān recalled local history by connecting it to important Islamic figures and places throughout the centuries as it reflects a long-established ‘epistemology of revelation’45 whereby reputations and status are justified amongst many Muslim peoples. This comes as the Quʾrān or al-Kitāb holds an incomparable place amongst a majority of Bedouin today and many followers such as Suleīmān consider knowledge conveyed in the Quʾrān and its memorisation a contemporary and educated paradigm for historical understanding and learning. Most members consider themselves ‘a people of the book’ yet until recently, most members in the Naqab were not sufficiently literate to read the Quʾrān. Up until the late twentieth century, literacy was a luxury

74 Histories enjoyed by a few who were taught privately in the houses of teachers or inside mosques in urban ­centres in the region. Thus, various intellectual traditions (ʿulūm) and learned men (ʿulamā) held privileged status as persons (who largely resided in cities such as Jerusalem/ Al-Quds) to be consulted by the unlearned populace along with men of power such as customary shaykhs.46 When asked, Suleīmān was often demonstrated how well-versed he was in popular Sharīʿa doctrine. He regularly took the time in the evenings to explain the stories from the Quʾrān to the family. Suleīmān also made great efforts to not only acknowledge the ‘Bedouin origins’ of various Islamic figures but also to connect them to Christian biblical names. This was in part due to the fact that upon moving to the village, he and his family had quickly assumed Ike and I were Christians because we were not Jewish nor Muslim, despite the fact that we said we were not religious. Suleīmān also made a pilgrimage (Ḥajj) and often spoke about his experiences taking a bus from Rāhaṭ to Mecca, explaining how different people were from his own society and how expensive the entire trip was for him once he was there.47 Suleīmān and Fāṭimah also prayed several times a day. A small mosque was located on the eastern side of Suleīmān’s property, each day he and his brother would share responsibility for giving the calls to prayer. He and his agnates also travelled to nearby towns each Friday to worship at the larger mosques there. Most villages and towns have constructed mosques which are associated with ­specific lineages. The size and construction of mosques differ dramatically as their presence has become a way to display the wealth of one’s lineage and thus there is often competition between extended families to create grander mosques than their neighbours. Moreover, many mosques are constructed with financial assistance from not only wealthy members but also Muslim brothers from places such as Qatar. Notwithstanding, local Islamic spokespersons go out of their way to appear not only pious but also unbiased by family affiliations in order to promote ‘brotherhood’ with these potential funders and the ‘community of believers’ (ʾUmmah Wāhidah) at large despite the fact that neighbourhood mosques are often associated with particular extended families. Many individuals are also taking up codes of piety and standard Islamic practices in order to gain moral authority and appeal for economic resources outside of the customary tribal system. Here younger generations such as Suleīmān are identifying with the broader Islamic community as being more rationalised and offering ‘a mode of more egalitarian sociability to families and lineages of modest status’.48 For example, the ­Director of the Rāhaṭ Community Centre expressed this sentiment as the following: Today the Bedouin community is trying to balance between modern and Bedouin ­honour, government, justice, and customs. Religion is bringing the Bedouin to the modern way of life because the tribal traditions are backward. Religion is bringing us closer to the modern way of life because women could not study under tradition and religion allows women to study. Tradition and religion do not agree. Suleīmān explained a similar sentiment to me: In the 1980s the Islamic Movement became very popular here and living a Muslim life became significant among the people here. The older generations resisted the Islamic Movement but the younger generations have accepted Islam. Islam is much more

Making Histories in a Bedouin Society  75 rational way to understand our life and history. It has better logic about life and explains the reasons ways things are as they are. I would rather go to the Mosque than sit in the shigg and listen to folktales about the past. As noted in the quote above, the Islamic Movement has become an increasingly ­dominant political force but also actively engaged in institutionalising religious ideology and practices in the Naqab over the last several decades. According to Lawrence Rubin, the Movement is unique in southern Israel because it has presented itself as not only a protector of Muslim identity but also Palestinian nationalism in the region.49 It has also successfully supported socio-welfare activities amongst this population, and actively established leadership positions in the form of religious leaders (imām) and teachers. Lastly, the Movement has attuned itself and, in some ways, played into the hands of internal and local lineage politics by offering alternative forms of socio-political and economic capital and status for members. In all, Islamic heritage does not necessarily exclude elders or wholly bypass tribal networks but the socio-political connections established between Bedouin affiliated with the Islamic Movement and those identifying as pious Muslims have become additional channels and stages through which spokespersons in their ranks obtain and legitimate resources from other Muslim groups and organisations outside of their society.50 Moreover, the Movement has effectively augmented the presence of religious language and local symbols of Islamic heritage in the Naqab. It does so not only through its political engagements such as defending the religious use of the Grand Mosque in Beersheba or organising protests in response to the demolition of unrecognised villages by the Israeli state but also by providing members with various digital, written, and video resources about Islamic heritage at various community centres throughout the region. Genealogical Reckoning

Several months later towards the end of my fieldwork, I privately sat with Suleīmān again and asked him to again explain the history of the Naqab Bedouin and the village of Khashem Zanaʿ. On this occasion, I also asked why the al-ʿĀʿsam tribal namesake kept coming up during conversations about history when Suleīmān identifies as al-ʿAthāmīn? He explained: We are both part of the Tiyāhā who wandered from Saudi and Yemen through to Sinai to the Naqab in ancient times and they say that the Tiyāhā got lost in the desert and separated from the tribes. We came to the Naqab and al-ʿAthāmīn have lands within the Tiyāhā and Gdīrāt territory and so do the al-ʿĀʿsam, which is now our tribe (shevet and ashīra) and al-ʿAthāmīn is our ʿāʾilat. A hundred years ago my great grandfather went in search of his own land within the Tiyāhā lands when he came upon a ridge located east of Biʾr Sabʿ [Beersheba]. He decided to live there and cleared the land through hajer and prepared the soil for farming. He established Khashem. It means nose because of the ridge to the west. He was the first to do agriculture and he was good at it and was able to live off of the products from the ground. So more and more families from within the tribe came to live here. For members such as Suleīmān, their history before the creation of the Israeli state in 1948 is contextualised through one’s tribal associations including one’s confederation

76 Histories (gabīla) such as the Tiyāhā, sub-confederation (ṣaff) such as the Gdīrāt, and tribe (ashīra) such as al-ʿĀʿsam. These affiliations were the broadest forms of tribal identification in both the past and today. For example, another interviewee further explained: So many tribes come from the same tree. These trees have a Shaykh of Shaykhs. In the Naqab, these trees are the Tarabīn, the Jubarāt, the ʿAzāzmah, and the biggest of them all, the Tiyāhā. Now, I have to go back a long time ago, past 1,200 years. At 1,200 years, the biggest of all the Bedouin were living in the area known as Yemen today. Not in Saudi Arabia but in the Arab Gulf…. The Arabic Island. At 1,200 years, all the Bedouin that are today in Iraq, in Syria, in Lebanon, in Jordan, in Saudi Arabia, in Sinai, in Palestine, in Egypt, in Tunisia, in Libya, in Morocco come from Jabīlat al-Banī Hilāl and at that time, there was a very, very, big tribe. They also had a strong shaykh. Together, they made a tribal confederation and it was Banī Hilāl. In the Banī Hilāl there were many strong gabā’il living in Yemen and Saudi today but the biggest tribes lived in Yemen. And before 1,200 years, they had a lot of cows and camels and sheep and had many women. However, at some point, the pastures started to become dry, cause of lack of rain, so they started to move north to look for a place where they could find grass. However, because they were very strong, they would take over or occupy all the places before them…. However, there were some people in the group that were tired, who stayed in the back, and but they lost their way in Sinai because it is a large desert, you know. They didn’t find their way and got lost, so people called them the Tiyāhā or ‘The People Who Lost Their Way’. And the people that lost their way in Sinai, they came to be called the Tiyāhā. They stayed in Sinai while the other people continued to occupy all North Africa, Morocco, Algeria, Libya, and Tunisia, all of the Bedouin there are Banī Hilāl. These Bedouin that stayed in Sinai, before say 580 years, they like others such as the Tarabīn came to Sinai. However, Tarabīn and Tiyāhā, they are the biggest of the gabīla. Around 580 years ago they moved north and occupied the Naqab. From that time, they came together and took the land from the Banī Jarīr – Abū Jāber. So, they divided the land, but this caused many wars such as the War of Zari’ but I will tell you about that later. Genealogical (nasābī) reckoning is a customary history and society-making exercise that predominately deals with the distant past amongst various Bedouin populations in the Middle East.51 As suggested in the above quote, genealogies typically focus on tribal confederations (gabā′il) such as the Tiyāhā as fixed reference points for connectivity. This comes as genealogies have more to do with explaining socio-political connectivities and territorial boundaries between people than with the past per se. Here, significance is placed on the types of groups whose histories are cited by observable contemporary evidence – facts created through reflection and casual links ‘about how things have come to be what they are’.52 Shryock explained the practice in the 1990s amongst Balgā Bedouin in Jordan: The continuity of Bedouin history is visible in the branches of tribal genealogies, and these genealogical structures connect tribespeople to an “age of shaykhs”… In other words, ‘Abbad and ‘Adwan are social configurations which reproduce themselves across and apart from historical periods, and the personal and collective identities that membership in these groups convey are equally resistant to temporal periodization.

Making Histories in a Bedouin Society  77 Hence, … “structures of conjunctures” [Sahlins 1981] can be set aside in the study of tribal history…[since for the Bedouin] genealogies are both structure and history.53 In the Naqab, members also continue to employ genealogies to distinguish their pasts and therewith conceptualise their present-day status (gīma) of tribal lineages. For many members, genealogies of tribalism (gabaliyya) connect people through bygone confederations (gabā′il) such as the Tiyāhā to the Banī Hilāl. This comes as they also conceive of their socio-political connections ‘as branches from the same tree’54 and confederation namesakes provide a way to rationalise how contemporary lineages (ʿāʾilāt) came to be in the region. Before the creation of the Israeli state and the establishment of international borders between Bedouin in Jordan and Sinai, references made to one’s confederation were the broadest form of identification. Today when asked about the history of their lineage, people such as Suleīmān make claims to have Arabian origins (ʾaṣīl) and continue to reference their connections to the Tiyāhā through their tribes (ʿashā’ir).55 By demonstrating ‘proven’ links to common apical ancestors, members use genealogies to communicate and legitimate tribal territories, familial reputations, and social positions. Ultimately, genealogical connections to the past establish one’s pedigree and ‘inherited’ membership among other lineages with the highest status. Members without established origins (non-ʾaṣīl) to Naqab lands also employ genealogical rhetoric when discussing their histories with others. These ‘lineage seekers’56 call forth tribal groups that were established after 1948 under alternative or ‘new’ tribal namesakes and superimpose a genealogy onto said groups despite the fact that these tribal associations do not share a common genealogical origin or (at the very least) their origins can be highly contested when compared to others.57 Up until the 1960s, those who once served as non-ʾaṣīl clients (badū fallāḥīn, for example) to larger tribes (ʿashā’ir) could not customarily claim direct Arabian heritage through their lineage namesakes like their previous patrons. Today, however, a small minority within this status group declare themselves ‘persons with origins’ (ʾaṣīliyyin) through ‘distant’ relations to confederations (gabā′il) outside of the Naqab by circumventing their previous patrons’ tribes in order to reassert their tribal connection, be them once client-based, to the Naqab. As one interviewee stated: They [non-ʾaṣīl] are claiming our history, our heritage as their own. They want to be connected to the big families but their claims depend on who they are speaking to and to some they claim to be authentic people with roots to connect them to the lands and to others. They cannot do this.58 Local reconstructions of genealogies continue to be the most ubiquitous form of collective history-making in the Bedouin Middle East. Shryock pointed out that genealogical reconstructions have become ‘quite ordinary for the culture-making classes to drape new identities in the legitimacy of older, genealogical traditions and vice versa’.59 Drawing on Shryock’s and Nadav Samin’s notions of ‘authenticating genealogy’,60 I suggest that common features of this practice among the Bedouin in the Naqab include: legitimating contemporary status (gīma) through local historical discourses as discussed above; and intensified concern with proving descent and ancestry through archival documents. Because of the tensions between temporality, space, and structure associated with oral genealogies, mid-twentieth-century scholars of the Middle East typically

78 Histories classified pastoralists (badū) as low-diglossic societies wherein vernacular language and ­‘incorporative performances’61 were thought to communicate and maintain memories of past. ­Alternatively, studies of high-diglossic, urbanites (ḥaḍar) focused on regional literates’ use of archival documents when sharing information about their lives and past.62 Replicating this false dichotomy, folk studies examined oral poetry, tribal narratives, and tales whereas urban studies focused on writing among learned urbanites. As a result, a large percentage of academic literature on Bedouin noted how genealogical knowledge in these societies is constructed and communicated through customary oral proverbs and poems and explained how oppositional logic or discord (fitna) exemplified these incorporative practices in this part of the world.63 For example, Shryock argued that genealogical histories are unique because they are continually re-worked over time in order to maintain tribal relationships.64 He suggested that through storytelling tribesmen share and re-share oral knowledge of ancestors and events during which names and outcomes appear and disappear. Because of these reworkings, many mid-century scholars and contemporary government officials alike argued that oral mnemonic practices are divorced from temporal sensibilities, particularly when compared to the text-based practices in urban societies (ḥaḍarī). In all, oral knowledge derived from folktales is frequently treated by outsiders as fictitious epic narratives and therefore speculative throughout the Middle East. For example, Sophie Richter-­Devroe explained that Bedouin oral and embodied traditions are ‘deemed untrue and valueless, because they are “just oral” – not written down, not registered, not archived, displayed in the museum’.65 Many members continue to construct their genealogies through lectures, conversations, and oral performances in order to make connections to their tribal confederation namesakes (gabā’il) but they also have gone on to record these oral recitations in writing and collect documentary evidence of their genealogies and territorial claims. During field work, one interviewee explained: [I]t is so important for us to write down this history before it gets lost to us forever and we can never get it back. This is why our work is important, we have to record and keep this knowledge…. This is also why we may never find out the truth. Many families also collect historical texts such as ʿĀrif al-ʿĀrif’s books about Bedouin tribal history produced during the British Mandate.66 In particular, several chapters in his Tāʾrīkh Bʾir al-sabʿ wa-Qabāʾilihā (1934) describe the confederations and the history, leaders, territories, and reputations of the tribes (ashāʾir) composing them. Consequently, spokespersons’ narratives pertaining to genealogy in the Naqab often ‘read’ similarly to historical texts such as al-ʿĀrif’s writings which not only included ethnographic accounts and oral histories but also tables illustrating classic Arab genealogical taxonomies.67 ­People frequently cite his written accounts during their retellings and, when unavailable, they look for other historical materials resourced from foreign archives;68 particularly materials that other lineages have yet to claim but reference more distant tribal confederation connections to the Arabian Peninsula from which they legitimate their affiliations and status. Bedouin efforts to record, collect, and archive written documents about their families’ connections to specific genealogies such as those described by al-ʿĀrif reflect the increased value awarded to print culture over the twentieth century. This comes as local access to books and historical documents in the form of printed materials such

Making Histories in a Bedouin Society  79 as newspapers,  magazines, manuscripts, and official documents, and state reports and literacy rates has greatly improved in their society in the last forty or so years.69 Today, members consider texts as epistolary documentation and thus legitimate sources for preserving and transmitting information about their past, so much so, that the capacity to validate their historical narratives seems to be progressively tied to products of inscription. The process mirrors Michael Rowlands’ suggestion that the transmission of knowledge becomes systematic when people are consistently exposed to high concentrations of material technologies invested with authoritative credibility.70 ‘A socialised memory of this kind is not peculiar to Western conceptions of time but it does have a particular, if changing, relation to literacy … which marks it with many of the features of an “inscribed practice”’.71 In fact, before the late 19th century, the term ‘history’ (tāʾrīkh) seemed to only refer to a specific type of writing or knowledge of the past, whereas in the contemporary Middle East, the term has become ‘equivocal, comprising both events per se and verbal representation of these events’.72 Despite the increased value placed on written records for validating or denying sociopolitical connections such as those provided by genealogies, these articulations of the past and society are not confined to binary modes of oral and textual production. Instead, they are constructed and re-constructed through a range of media which amount to performative ‘code-switching’,73 creating multimodalities that increasingly include visual practices such as photography. Notwithstanding, there is a sense of authenticity associated with narrating genealogical histories and having the choice or ability to use specific oral, literary, and increasingly visual media in different contexts in the Naqab. Because the communication of the past among people changes over time and place, Bedouin, who customarily relied on oral practices to share and preserve their pasts, have come to increasingly privilege inscriptions within the last forty years. As literacy levels rise and multimedia engagements intensify, people who previously did not possess linear storylines about their past now make efforts to interweave separate narratives into official collective knowledge exemplified by ethnohistorical, Islamic, and genealogical treatments of their past. The intensified use of one communicative practice over another, however, is not always a smooth process as shared narratives are often hard for tribal authors to construct since members typically aim to emphasise the distinctiveness of their own kin and tribal networks – contentions that are indicative to the making of lineage (ʿāʾilāt) histories amongst Bedouin in Naqab.74 Making Lineage Histories

As suggested earlier in this chapter, genealogical (nasābī) heritage is not the only type of tribal history. Histories after the Nakba amongst lineages (ʿāʾilāt), be they connected through genealogy, have also developed into a localised but competitive form of historymaking. Unlike genealogies, which typically seek to connect, these particular histories set out to distinguish and compare groups with the same origins, status (gīma), and their experiences during the ‘Fall of Beersheba’ (Kasret al-Sabʿ),75 Military Administration (1948-1966), and coerced urbanisation (1967–1996). As Safa Abu Rabia argued, members perceive this post-Nakba past in ‘an entirely different manner; the past now meant the era before the establishment of the state for those who experienced it, as opposed to the … new life of displacement from their land and from their previous existence’.76 For example, she noted that Bedouin continue to share local memories through tribal references particularly during commemorative visits for remembrances of the past; oral stories

80 Histories about genealogies and tribal territories; and when using proof of land ownership via old titles and maps.77 Since the mid-twentieth century, these treatments of the past address the extreme upheavals Bedouin experienced after the Nakba. For example, they explain why certain lineages remained on their customary tribal (ʿashāʾirī) lands, while the state forcibly displaced others to specific Naqab areas after 1948; or why certain tribes (ʿashīra) were recognised as tribal units (shevetim) by officials and others were not. These articulations are the domain of tribal resident groups (in both towns and villages) who share this information among themselves and differentiate their lineage’s experiences from other extended families. Consequently, this localised history is inescapably particularised as ‘entire tribal kinship groups participated in its handing down … each tribe possesses its own history and truth’.78 For example, Richter-Devroe explained how women’s oral poetry and storytelling communicate more personalised historical details about tribal events, places, and customs. At the same, however, these oral performances function in a very different way than recorded and written archives because they do not ‘freeze the Bedouin in a forgone past but instead they maintain, enact, adapt, and reshape indigenous knowledges and modes of knowledge production in the here and now with a view to the future’.79 Similar to genealogical reckoning, members are also recording pre-Nakba ‘land narratives’80 or ‘histories of residence’81 to compete with other lineages for status and resources that are secured in part by the fact that they can prove their family’s ancestral connections to the Naqab through documentary evidence. For example, larger lineages officially recognised by the state of Israel as tribal units (shevetim) in the 1950s gradually acquired more distinct parochial and regionalised histories. They explain: why Shaykh Salmān al-Huzayyil II donated land within the tribe’s pre-1948 territory to the Israeli state upon which the city of Rāhaṭ was later built in the 1970s and why mostly the tribe’s previous client affiliates, for example, came to reside in designated neighbourhoods but largely run the municipality today. Similar to the oppositional nature of tribal remembrances of the past in Balgā Jordan, Bedouin in the Naqab also generally prefer not to share intratribal legacies, land claims, and historical narratives on a local level. ‘Each tribe is proud of their own past but it is hard not to undermine the history of the other tribes in the promotion of their own’.82 Notwithstanding, in efforts to establish their own forms of historical capital, the creation of distinctive lineage histories has intensified since the establishment of the state of Israel along with the collection and use of archival documentation to support them. For example: Suleīmān: They [al-ʿAthāmīn] did not get a ṭābū [land deed] from the Ottoman because it would cost money to bring the surveyors here to map the land. But the Abū Kāff did. They had enough money to pay for this and get a document that they have passed to their sons. But it does not matter today. Despite having these documents, the state takes away their lands. The British also wanted us to get a ṭābū and they came to Khashem Zanaʿ from Biʾr Sabʿ [Beersheba] and started measuring the land. They created a military point on top of the hill but we did not see the necessity of the paper and paying them. The military point was a station on the road that led all the way to Jordan. The British took people from Khashem Zanaʿ to repair the Suez Canal and many died there and are now buried underneath the water.

Making Histories in a Bedouin Society  81 Emilie: What did the al-ʿAthāmīn do during the 1948 War? Suleīmān: In the War, the shaykh of al-ʿÃʿsam fled and left most their belongings. Many big families went out of Israel to Jordan. Others like us, refused to leave and some fought…. After Israel was created the state needed workers and made men from the family work on building roads with no pay. Khashem Zanaʿ was in the Sīyāj (reservation) so people did not move and convinced other families not to move from our historical roots. As Suleīmān explained above, many lineages at the time saw no need to get official ­documentation in the form of a ṭābū because the Ottomans charged money for deeds and fees for surveyors to map their tribal boundaries.83 Alternatively, land-owning lineages recorded the location and size of their plots on deeds (sanād), a traditional document outlining business arrangements with farming tenants who cultivated tribal lands.84 ‘Every Bedouin recognizes and respects the sanad and knows exactly where his land lies – from which stone to which bush – and where his brother’s land begins and ends’.85 Today, old ṭābū and sanād are valued documents among those who own and preserved them as material records of their history and land claims. People keep archival records in family libraries and, occasionally, frame and hang on the walls of agnate meeting places (shigg). In an interview with Safa Abu Rabia, a member of the Abū Shārib explained: The papers are title deeds … because this is our land that we planted … our land is empty today, and we have proof that it is our land that we own. It is marked. This is my ownership, so one of these days, when perhaps I will die and their mother, too, this is what they will have left. They need to tell their children that there is land, and I have documents and photocopies. I photocopied those documents a few times and arranged them in my folder. I put all my papers away, in order.86 If they have them, members are increasingly sharing copies of their customary land deeds (ṭābū and sanād) along with Ottoman and British land titles, sale documents, tax receipts, official correspondences with outside stakeholders and disseminating copies of these papers in various brochures, articles, and websites. While treated as authentic and authoritative forms of knowledge among spokespersons, members’ use of historical documents in some contexts, for example during legal proceedings with the state, is proving problematic as Israeli courts often reinterpret these texts to support their own arguments and/or dismiss particular customary documents as inconclusive. This also holds true for archival texts about the Naqab Bedouin such as those produced by eighteenthcentury Western writers like Alois Musil (1868–1944).87 For instance, during one of the six court cases involving the al-ʿUgbī lineage’s land claims taken up by the Israeli courts, two Israeli academics were called as expert witnesses to debate the history of nomadism and agriculture in the region. During the trial, they debated the contents of Musil’s travel writings as evidence for both the plaintiffs’ and defendants’ positions. The court ruled, however, in favour of the state’s argument based on readings of Musil’s work suggesting the al-ʿUgbī did not ‘consistently’ reside on said land over the last ­century and therefore could not make claims to the property today.88 Over the last half of the twentieth century, spokespersons have also used their particularised lineage narratives to create parochial ethnohistories of state-built towns and ‘historic villages’ such as Khashem Zanaʿ. By doing so, they strive to ‘speak past’ familial politics to represent their residents as people (shaʾab) and communities (mujtama) to

82 Histories outsiders. These narratives foremost define Bedouin experience by their relationships with non-Bedouin and the governments that have ruled the Naqab over the last century, which over in the last decades have been increasingly contextualised under the auspices of resistance against the state of Israel’s demolition of villages such as al-Arāqīb. It is also an excellent example of the ways in which lineage stories of the past support broader historical activisms through the inclusion of customary documents which are then used alongside government maps, records, and photographs produced during O ­ ttoman, ­British, and Israeli administrations. Similarly, Suleīmān’s talks, hand-outs, and interviews pertaining to Bedouin and Khashem Zanaʿ not only attested to their genealogy. Through rhetorical manoeuvres and literary materials, they also strategically connected his family to tribal (ʿāʾiliyya) namesakes to other Bedouin as Muslims and placed his village in national Palestinian and Israeli contexts. In particular, his narratives tactfully rationalised and connected local experiences to Western and Islamic ideals, regional languages, chronological periods, and broader international events; practices reflective of the particularities and universalisms prevalent in their lives in southern Israel. In doing so, however, most spokespersons are socio-politically cognisant that: the historical origins of tribal namesakes do not mean anything to non-Bedouin audiences; expressions of Islamic heritage and Palestinian nationalism are uncomfortable to Jewish stakeholders; and their Israeli citizenship is frequently deemed problematic to Palestinian representatives and vice versa. As a consequence, Suleīmān and other spokespersons’ efforts have, over time, strategically merged local knowledge and learned historical registers thus creating different types of history in the Naqab. Building on Dale Eickelman’s work, I argue that these generative historical registers among Bedouin orient around culturally specific ideologies such as those associated with genealogy and tribalism that were customarily used by members to describe and contrast their pasts over the centuries.89 They also respond to outside Western and Islamic historiographical registers associated with national and universal ideologies. Finally, the Bedouin’s historical narratives also reflect the practical proclivities implicitly held by members such as inherited social status that guide everyday behaviours, while keeping an eye on civic concepts employed by scholars and others when describing these societies such as notions of indigeneity and piety. The combination and shifting between these learned and customary registers not only reflect the diverse nature of local history but also the heterogeneity of Bedouin society itself. Representatives of the Past and Strategic History-Making Spokespersons such as Suleīmān have substantially expanded local representational repertoires communicating information about Naqab Bedouin histories and society in various public spheres over the last decades. Unlike many Bedouin populations in the Middle East who are not frequently in situations where they must reflect upon their social order or pasts with outsiders, Bedouin in the Naqab have been forced to rationalise their own society and past since the 1950s because of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. As a result, from the mid-twentieth century onward, a diverse network of local spokespersons has emerged, people who publicly exemplify a range of communities in their society. These include: elders representing lineage members of particular tribal (gabaliyya and ʿāʾiliyya) networks, and their residential groups in villages and town neighbourhoods; municipal and professional politicians representing constituents on various state governmental stages; civic leaders working on behalf of particular villages, towns, and groups

Making Histories in a Bedouin Society  83 (e.g., women and youth groups); and religious leaders such as those associated with the local Islamic Movement. The representational responsibilities of these spokespersons are diverse and their internal relationships with one another vary and often overlap. Nevertheless, most spokespersons I encountered during fieldwork all drew on (in their different ways) ethnohistorical, Islamic, and genealogical, tribal constructions of the past to ­establish connections and differentiations in the Naqab. Local spokespersons present histories in order to create a specific set of relationships, even if only for a moment, during certain events in specific public venues. Because of the temporal nature of these meetings and the strong ideological and political beliefs typically held by their audiences, spokespersons must effectively and quickly draw on their knowledge of broader identity politics characterising the Naqab’s various public domains. Parizot explained: [T]hese differences and antagonism are internalised and often perceived as a given. This is all the more true as people use these experiences to reconstruct dominant narratives that stress distinctions between these very populations…. Narratives about ‘us’ and the ‘others’ are often presented as facts … encounters and experiences people drawn from them validate categories like, ‘Bedouin’ against ‘Palestinian;.… In brief, while … sharing of culture, they also foster processes of differentiation already at work among local populations. This is the case for the processes of ethnicity and community building undergone by the Bedouin who remained in the Naqab.90 Consequently, spokespersons must approach outside audiences as homogenised groups in order to successfully navigate the intensely diverse but highly politically, contentious landscape of southern Israel. One by-product of these efforts is not merely the variation of local histories conveyed to various audiences but their inevitable and strategic ­essentialisation over time.91 While symptomatic of sociality throughout the world, the etic historical claims constructed by spokespersons must contend with a range of cross-societal encounters in the Naqab and employ universalisms that are familiar to their audiences. The strategicness behind these articulations of histories, however, is also influenced by a cultural proclivity noted by Steven Caton in Yemen – ‘acts of persuasions’92 common to tribal politics throughout the Middle East. Specifically, he noted that among Yemeni tribesmen ‘political rhetoric is a communicative act of persuasion which is made in response to the inherent conflict in the segmentary social order’.93 Bedouin in the Naqab also often employ historical references during private and public acts of persuasion among themselves wherein individuals, with various statuses, strive to legitimate, mediate, or differentiate their positionalities (at said time) within particular networks of people. These emic selfpresentations (similar to etic expressions in practice) differ in content and purpose as they are directed to particular audiences that comprise Bedouin society itself. They are, however, also organised by notions of closeness and distance – ideals of socio-political proximity that are symptomatic of internal familial, tribal, and residential affiliations such as those described in Khashem Zanaʿ. Through these ideals of proximity, people maintain certain degrees of ‘boundary permeability’ which serve to strengthen sociopolitical inclusion and exclusion in this society.94 They shape everyday social relations. Moreover, as Lila Abu Lughod demonstrated, the idioms emanating from proximity such as kinship frame how individuals identify and relate to each other as it bifurcates their social arena into kin and non-kin, family and outsiders, and private and public spaces.95

84 Histories The regularity and strategicness of these emic encounters equip spokespersons with the practiced ability to negotiate multiple affiliations and oppositions, which today include religious and national associations. These broader affiliations also require acts of persuasion, although they are etic in nature, to create connections with others and to distinguish themselves from other populations. Nevertheless, both types of representational strategies are dependent on the spokesperson’s own knowledge, social acumen, their status among other members, their audience’s place or lack thereof in society, and their skills at using various media. This situation makes historical accounts (which form a substantial part of their broader identification practices) partly a by-product of persuading others (be they insiders or outsiders) of one’s social positions and negotiating similarities and differences. To do so, spokespersons must tactically negotiate the complex socio-political landscape of the Naqab – situational contexts that significantly influence the variations and shifting of historical narratives articulated by Bedouin as they ‘bargain’ with others in the pursuit of status power, and resources. Appeals to civic, religious, and state audiences have risen in previous decades but it is important to note that tribal hierarchies continue to frame local representational politics, and elders (kbār) still largely sanction who may serve as reputable public spokespersons. This situation has encouraged extended families (ʿāʾila) to diversify their spokespersons and expand the scope of their expertise. They do so by awarding specific members the status of community advocates within their intra-tribal groups, relying on them to act on their behalf towards specific audiences. Consequently, some spokespersons may not have the highest status within their own tribal networks as daughters, younger brothers, or cousins but they are typically born into dominant lineages (ʿāʾilāt). This is not to say, however, that members within lineages do not regularly express conflicting interests such as those relating to gender inequalities but, rather, on the regional and national stages, most affiliates tend to rally together in the pursuit of resources. In the Naqab, appeals for capital, status, and resources increasingly rely upon new types of expertise, media, and evidence; creating opportunities for orally persuasive individuals such as Suleīmān to participate in history-making. Members such as Suleīmān are able to better engage with ethnohistory because elders such as his eldest brother are publicly tied to tribal networks of people and cannot overtly advocate community narratives.96 To do so would potentially strain their status as leaders of specific families and harm the reputations of their cognate networks, based on principles of independence, equality, and strength. In order to engage these community contexts, universal ideals, and national Palestinian-Israeli politics, members strategically rely on alternative intermediaries who tactfully avoid the contradictions of tribal politics while operating in public venues wherein they engage with outside stakeholders. Since the last half of the twentieth century, various extended families (ʿāʾila) and lineages (ʿāʾilāt) depend on members within their own ranks from different social and economic backgrounds, genders, and origins but who together form a new ‘class’ of advocates, historians, and politicians communicating on behalf the Naqab Bedouin to the outside world. To do so, however, the spokesperson’s community work must strategically avoid the inherent particularisms of tribal histories and sociality when working with outsiders because the ‘idea of a tribe’97 is counter to Western civic ideals and regional nationalisms. In order to achieve their representational credentials in external venues some intermediaries often appear to overtly challenge the status of customary leaders and powerful lineages.98 For others, it is simply a matter of creating essentialised presentations of community history and society to non-Bedouin audiences through media

Making Histories in a Bedouin Society  85 practices such as writing and speech-making.99 When doing so, they leave ‘certain things as “tribal”’100 in order to justify the cohesion of Bedouin people, culture, land claims, and heritage. Despite the diversification of representational responsibilities among lineages, the public domain is also an arena of intense competition among spokespersons. For example, in some venues such as community centres and municipalities civic spokespersons publicly argue that customary shaykhs and elders have failed to acquire resources, rights, and recognition for all people because of tribal patronages, class-based inequalities, and established relationships with Israeli authorities.101 ʿĀʾisha (anonymised), a well-known community advocate, explained the situation as such: ʿĀʾisha:

Emilie: ʿĀʾisha:

 ribe can be considered as one of the important frames of our society. It is T not the opposite of community. A tribe is a type or part of our culture… our common interests, shared responsibilities. Our tribes were established before the state of Israel and before our other senses of community. But the problem today with the tribal structure is that when the state of Israel was established they rearranged it and gave power to only certain parts of a tribe or certain people in the tribe. As a result, some aspects of the tribe disappeared and because of struggles the tribes have lost some of their communal values. So when I started community development work, I didn’t fight the tribal structures. We can’t do that. Instead, I wanted to bring back a sense of community in the tribal structure as people that who share interests, values, and resources rather than competing for our concerns, values, and resources…. Do people from your generation experience tribes and communities in ­different ways than your parents? Yes, we cannot bring back the tribes as they were in the past. We have to ­create new ways to bring people together. Our work as community organisers is to bring people together around issues of mutual interest to create a sense of people that not only are members of their tribes but they also belong to a community of activists, educators, youth. So this is how the issues such as Wādī Naʾam [a village] is not just an issue for the ʿAzāzmah tribe. It is also an al-Ṣānaʿ tribal issue. It is my concern. It is a community issue. We must bring attention to Bedouin community issues as shared concerns not just the concerns of one particular tribe because the government wants to separate us, tribe by tribe, to separate our interests in order to control and take over our land. We from the al-Ṣānaʿ tribe always hear from the Israeli government for instance, that, ‘This is not your problem. It is the problem of the other tribe’. As Bedouin activists, we have decided to take all individual tribal concerns and bring them together. The problem of ʿAzāzmah in Wādī Naʾam together with al-ʿAthāmīn in Khashem Zanaʿ, and together al-ʿUqbī in al-ʿAragīb. We are all together in this struggle for recognition of our rights and land. So the activists try to make these community issues not only tribal issues.

Spokespersons such as ʿĀʾisha set out to represent the ‘community’ to outsiders rather than particular families on civic platforms. By doing so, she and other civic spokespersons gained legitimacy among international funders and state officials because local NGOs and municipal politics should not ideally implicate family- or class-based affiliations. As ʿĀʾisha indicated, however, despite their efforts among external audiences most

86 Histories spokespersons, like herself, must locally work with pre-existing intra-lineage politics. This comes as community principles and ethnohistory ‘have not destroyed the authority and social organisational models registered in the tribal ethos, but coexist with them’.102 In other words, while the numbers of spokespersons have diversified along with the constituents they represent, their responsibilities are still pragmatically tied to the needs of their lineages and extended families. Civic and religious spokespersons may challenge conservatism or tribalism (ʿāʾiliyya) and subjugate tribal events, internal conflicts, unequal allocations of resources, and power plays in certain public venues to support collective interests and community narratives. Locally, however, these same civic and religious spokespersons often work with elders to buttress the capacity of their lineages and cognates to conduct their own bilateral negotiations with various others.103 In all, lineages have both elders and community advocates such as ʿĀʾisha working on behalf of their interests. This is a similar occurrence in Jordan, ‘If a son of an ashira [tribe] works in the bureaucracy, he should help the members of the ashira meet their needs not on the basis of well-functioning bureaucracy, which is normally not recognised, but by means of his recognizable traditional authority and relationships in the bureaucracy’.104 In addition to the diversification of representatives of the past within the same lineage groups, external pressures and discriminations put upon Bedouin by the Israeli state have also intensified inter-tribal competition for historical capital and status in the area. As noted in the last chapter, members organise their society into three internal status groups based on ideas of race and ethnicity such as those detailed in the last chapter. Those whose who make claims to have Arabian origins (ʾaṣīl) members maintained higher positions up until the 1950s, justified by their links to a particular line of descent and a notable male forbearer. Amongst them, the notion of blood from ancestry differentiated them from not only Palestinian fallāḥīn in Israel, Jordan, Gaza, and the West Bank but also justified past patronage of non-ʾaṣīl and exclusive ownership over Naqab lands. As described earlier, until the mid-twentieth century, families ‘without origins’ were tied to tribal patrons through specific economic collaborations such as sharecropping, for example, but were not allowed to intermarry with those with perceived origins or own land and thus held lower status because of their perceived lack of pedigree and landlessness. Moreover, I explained that over the last half of the twentieth century, both Israel’s Military Administration (1948–1966) and urbanisation policy (1967–1993) substantially fractured customary patron-client hierarchies by allowing previous clients to socio-politically disassociate from their past patrons, and purchase or lease land from the state from the 1960s onwards. Today, the descendants of previous clients have successfully challenged the stronghold status of many lineages claiming origins, particularly at regional levels. For example, their spokespersons are progressively taking up opportunities offered by Israel’s urbanbased economy and professional opportunities such as government-funded education and entrepreneurial loans made available to them in the towns to improve upon their status. Meanwhile, several lineages in the villages have become disconnected from the towns and increasingly dependent on government welfare, pastoral agriculture-related enterprises, and rural-based businesses located in the desert. Some members are shifting their status in economic spheres and they are also doing so in political arenas where they have significantly strengthened their presence in regional politics through communitybased municipal elections, religious organisations, and civil society initiatives in the last twenty years.105 In several townships, these professionals also use their higher education

Making Histories in a Bedouin Society  87 and greater economic achievements to stage their capacity for regional leadership and ability to represent the Naqab Bedouin to external parties such as state officials and private companies.106 In the villages, customary tribal politics still largely framed internal political endeavours. This comes as these locations do not have any official relationships with the state of Israel but instead rely on locally authorised leaders or elders from individual lineages or extended families for political representation, a practice established by the Israeli government in the 1950s.107 The perceived power relations between the Bedouin’s different status groups, however, are not solely about internal notions of race, residence, economic estates, or political agency but also the competitive accumulation and diversification of cultural capital. Because of upheavals occurring since 1948, many members claiming Arabian origins continue to rely on cultural heritage and displays of Bedouin authenticity for emic status negotiations. For instance, they promote the importance of Bedouin values in order to stress the fact that they are true as others are not because they are unable to make genealogical connections. In all, these members effort to reassert their customary positions of power through proof of culture and status (gīma) through genealogy, knowledge, and artefacts and less on political and economic dominance over the last several decades. In order to publicly convey these ideals, they rely on a range of media practices including oral poems, ritualised performances, old books, and archival photographs to ­communicate their customary status. Of these, archival documents and written texts have become objects of historical persuasion, materials often unavailable and inaccessible to smaller lineages and descendants of previous clients. Because of their limited access to these types of parochial resources, however, non-ʾaṣīl individuals are looking outward to generate alternative forms of cultural capital resourced from national and foreign venues via various Web-based and digital platforms. As a result of these growing practices, appeals for capital, status, and resources associated with the production, circulation, and presentations of local histories (be they tribal, Islamic, or ethnohistory) increasingly rely on new types of media expertise. In summary, the Naqab Bedouin histories are ambiguous and the spokespersons creating them are diverse. Thus, articulations of histories spoken and written in Hebrew, English, and Arabic hold various meanings to different people, including members themselves, who interpret and reinterpret these constructions in multiple ways. Similar to Charles Piot’s description of the Kabre of Togo,108 spokespersons have taken advantage of the multiple meanings of socio-political categories in southern Israel and disparate interpretations of history there. They strategically ‘play’109 with the ambiguity of historical registers in order to conceal or reveal certain meanings, which in their emic categories of the world are not bound by Western notions of history in the same way. This comes as outsiders’ descriptions of their society and past differ from peoples’ own representations as ‘[s]ome meanings are shared, other are challenged or denied, and most are consciously altered in the process of transmission’110 over time and places. As the next section describes, however, the competitive play of history, be them tribally inclusive or exclusive, in the Naqab also involves strategic mediations such as selecting between audio recordings, written documents, artefacts, and photographs to communicate and legitimate local history projects. In particular, Bedouin inscriptive practices and archival appropriations are not only influenced by the presence of historical literature and literacy but also by the growing availability of multimedia and members’ intentional interplay between different modes and mediums for constructing history and society.

88 Histories Expanding Spectrum of Proof At the turn of the twenty-first century, the production of history throughout the Middle East has been increasingly affected by new media technologies in the form of videos, televisions, radios, audiocassettes, CDs, computers, tablets, and mobiles. As a consequence, technologically savvy people are regularly using new media to acquire representational authority through their own user-generated content that can bypass traditional, often elite, gatekeepers of historical knowledge. Consequently, new people such as Suleīmān are increasingly communicating their own narratives of the past through readily available micro-media enterprises. This comes as members’ ability to access literature, watch TV programmes, listen to news and music, and access information on the Web has steadily improved because of telecommunications and the mobile Internet in Israel over the last twenty years. While acknowledging existing economic disparities in this society, many people use mobile phones, laptop computers, iPads, and other electronic and digital devices such as cameras, iPods, etc., irrespective of residence today. In fact, many people own mobile phones, computers, or iPads, which connect to the Internet through Israeli service providers. Mobile companies such as Orange and Telecom offer a range of ways to own mobile and Web USB modems. There is, however, a ‘digital divide’111 between Israeli Jewish and Bedouin citizens. Notwithstanding, over the last decades, expanding Internet and mobile networks in the region have allowed Bedouin to encompass old mass communication technologies such as videos and interpersonal media such as the telephone to create new forms of self-communication which include, for example, online communications via social media applications such as Twitter, Facebook, and WhatsApp. Social media and digital practices amongst Bedouin are often contextualised as forms of non-elite ‘resistance’ as it allows people (whose voices, histories, and experiences are typically side-lined within broader mass media enterprises controlled by states such as Israel) a platform to communicate and share their experiences. Multimedia and especially user-generated or social media have become central to activisms and protests in the last decade, most predominantly during the Arab Spring in 2010. For example, as Chapter 6 explores, social media, mobile phones, and digital cameras were regularly used by local activists to visually record and document their protest of the Israeli state’s demolition of al-ʿAragīb in 2010. Amit Schejter and Noam Tirosh argued that social media has given Bedouin in the Naqab an international voice.112 They explained: The mobile phone provided the isolated and disconnected Bedouin with needed c­ onnectivity, and later they used it as an organizing tool in their civic struggle. The Internet provides them with the ability to express themselves and reach people willing to hear about their plight.113 As a result of the augmented connectivity afforded by social media and mobile phones, members are not only widening their socio-political networks to include a wide range of outside stakeholders but also using digital technologies to create and collaborate on blogs and websites dedicated to their histories in Arabic, Hebrew, English. While the production of websites associated with lineage histories is further detailed in ­Chapter 4, members are also working with regional NGOs such as Zochrot or NCF in order to shed light

Making Histories in a Bedouin Society  89 on the histories of specific villages, provide evidence of their established residences, and detail their various struggles with state officials. For example, a website entitled Ground Truth: Destruction and Return in al-’Araqīb was produced in 2017 by a group of nonBedouin stakeholders with residents of al-ʿAragīb including Nūri al-Uqbi and Sayīah al-Tūri. The website is part of a larger project that ‘aims to document and collate disparate legal, historical, and material evidence for the continuity of the sedentary presence of the Bedouin population on this land, as well as traces of their repeated displacement and destruction by government forces’.114 Part parcel to the project was the digitisation and publication of historical documents such as identity cards, old land deeds, purchase agreements, letters, aerial photos, and other official papers from the British Mandate and early years of the Israeli state kept by members in their family archives.115 Ultimately, the style, scale, and mediums of customary presentations of the past have been reconfigured as a result of improved literacy, expanding socio-political networking, and augmented media skills throughout the twentieth century. Today the privileged representative expertise and authority customarily held by elders (kbār) has shifted to learned elites, professionals, and political activists, who are more likely to rely on media exposure, technologies, and recognition rather than oral recitation and the written word to produce and share historical knowledge. Consequently, the rise of media expertise amongst spokespersons, along with changing technologies in the last decades, has also greatly contributed to the development of alternative communication ecologies in southern Israel through which particular historical narratives are articulated and shared. As media technologies and the accessibility of phones, computers, and cameras increase among younger people such as ʿĀʾisha and the communities they represent are therewith becoming the region’s new communicative gatekeepers of Naqab Bedouin histories. Spokespersons professionals frequently rely on their skills with new media technologies but their efforts must also account for rapid flows of information to successfully mediate their own and others’ intersectionalities and subsequently advocate strategic ideological and political positions. In a time of competing nationalisms, ethnicities, and market economies in the region and beyond, people’s local histories have come to increasingly rely on one’s media literacy and acute awareness ‘both of cultural difference and of the meanings difference might acquire in the minds of “external observers”’.116 As a result, the creation of Naqab Bedouin histories frequently entails adroit engagements with large corpus of information derived from ever-growing sources (such as the Internet) that can then be used by spokespersons to legitimate specific needs of their groups and justify resource allocations to selected persons because of their uniqueness. Whose voices and which issues get channelled onto external stages are increasingly defined by the actors’ media aptitude for creating, circulating, and networking information on behalf of their communities. Thus, knowledge of new media and the information it generates have become all important sources of socio-political capital and, subsequently, determine contests over authority and the making of history in the Naqab. New media technologies and literacy have augmented the ability of local professionals and community spokespersons to obtain authority, but one cannot simply position these ‘new people’ against elders or juxtaposed civil ideologies to customary values.117 Albeit, modern-educated members have the tendency to emphasis their ‘breaks with the past’ and the empowering aspects of their alternative and newly acquire media skills. For example, Shryock explained, ‘The intelligentsia of the region have, throughout the Muslim era, posed tribal society as the antithesis of proper Islam and just government,

90 Histories and even today, tribes (and tribalism) are eagerly portrayed by the same learned elites as an obstacle’.118 Albert Hourani argued, however, that there is an intrinsic dilemma in completely disregarding traditional forms of intellectual authority and knowledge as it overlooks the continuity, flow, and subtle interaction between old and new ‘chains of transmission’.119 In many ways ‘a set of old, strongly held assumptions about the dialectics of knowledge sharing still inform everyday representations in the Middle East’.120 In all, customary oral histories were, and in many situations still are, the primary mode for communicating history in the Naqab in the early to mid-twentieth century, a representational repertoire and custom largely controlled by shaykhs, elders, and older generations of women and men. As literacy and media skills increased from the 1970s onward, people outside of the customary cohort of historical gatekeeping such as nonʾaṣīl spokespersons and younger academics, civic activists, and religious spokespersons (from all status groups) are now able to authenticate their knowledge of the Naqab Bedouin past not only in speech but also with the perceived authoritative assistance of written text. Since then, a much larger variety of members now use literature, documents, and artefacts in the decisive pursuit of much-needed resources, which include: validating their various experiences; countering accusations of lying; proving claims such as land ownership; and making connections and disconnections within a range of people. As a result, the practice of history-making among Bedouin today increasingly revolves around the ownership and control of archival documents. As these heterogenous spokespersons continue to widen their mediations of the past to include novel and more readily available media technologies, members are progressively using photographic and digital images created by their own camera work along with images resourced from regional archives and the Internet as an additional type of visual evidence authenticating their knowledge of the past. More specifically, the growing presence and use of photographs alongside oral testimonies and text-based accounts have substantially widened the existing spectrum of proof in the Naqab in the last decades. Their representational landscape is now, more so than ever before, characterised by spokespersons’ persuasive visualisation of historical information – a unique Naqab ­discourse in light of the temporal nature of their media practices, the diversity of spokespersons’ connectivities, and the perceived ‘truth (ṣaḥīḥ) value’ of photographic modes of knowledge production (Figures 2.1–2.10).

Making Histories in a Bedouin Society  91

Figure 2.1  Suleīmān’s main house with front tent – west facing 2012 in Khashem Zanaʿ. Original creator(s): Emilie Le Febvre. Original date: 21 November 2012.

Figure 2.2  Map of Khashem Zanaʿ – neighbourhoods 2012.  Original creator(s): Emilie Le Febvre and Suleīmān al-ʿAthāmīn. Source: Field notes and interview with Suleīmān. Original date: 20 February 2012.

92 Histories

Figure 2.3  Room for hosting tourists in Suleīmān al-ʿAthāmīn’s house in Khashem Zanaʿ. Original creator(s): Emilie Le Febvre. Original date: 20 February 2012.

Figure 2.4  Political tour in al-ʿAragīb with European officials on a visit to the Naqab. Original creator(s): Emilie Le Febvre. Original date: 29 April 2012.

Making Histories in a Bedouin Society  93

Figure 2.5  Grand Mosque located in centre of Beersheba built by the Ottoman Empire. Original creator(s): Emilie Le Febvre. Original date: 29 April 2012.

94 Histories

Figure 2.6  Page from ʿĀrif al-ʿĀrif’s book on Bedouin tribal history. Original creator(s): ­American Colony (Jerusalem) Photo Department, photographer. Producer of secondary copy: ʿĀrif al-ʿĀrif’s (1934) book Taʾrikh Biʾr al-Sabʿ wa-Qabāʾiliha. Producer of third copy: Emilie Le Febvre. Archive original image: G. Eric and Edith Matson Photograph Collection. Repository: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA. Original date: approximately 1920–1933.  Accessed date: 20 May 2013.

Making Histories in a Bedouin Society  95

Figure 2.7 Compilation of land documents owned by families residing in al-ʿAragīb presented in a brochure created by Zochrot. Original creator(s): Nūrī al-ʿUgbī Family Archive. ­Brochure creator(s): Zochrot. Date of originals: 1922–1948.  Date of copies: 2009.

96 Histories

Figure 2.8  Photograph of Arabic and Hebrew text-based media collected in the Naqab over the course of fieldwork 2010–2013. Secondary creator(s): Emilie Le Febvre. Original dates: 1933– 2012.  Accessed date: 20 November 2012.

Making Histories in a Bedouin Society  97

Figure 2.9  Photograph of a political tour and documentary picture wall in Wādī Naʾam, a Bedouin ­village. Original creator(s): Rawia Abu Rabia. Original date. Accessed date: 2 August 2014.

Figure 2.10  Screenshot from Shaykh Suleīmān al-Huzayyil II’s memorial Facebook page presenting a collection of historical documents. Original creator(s): al-Huzayyil Family Archive. Date of original: unknown. Accessed date: 1 March 2023.

98 Histories Notes 1 Mouffe, Chantal. 2000. The Democratic Paradox, London and New York: Verso. 2 Nora 1989, 15. 3 Herzfeld, Michael. 2010, ‘Engagement, Gentrification, and the Neoliberal Hijacking of ­History’, Current Anthropology, 51 (S2): S259–S267, 259 (https://doi.org/10.1086/653420). 4 More specifically, Naqab Bedouin ethnographies often overstate Israel’s policies as more coherent than they are in actuality. They also tend to employ politicalised dichotomies such as recognised/unrecognised, power/resistance, and indigenous/modern, while leaving ethnological references to desert culture, nomadism, rural life, tribalism, and traditions undefined or rarified. Ethnohistories also frequently sideline local Islamic affiliations and tribal (ʿashāʾirī) and genealogical (nasābī) divisions. Also see McKee 2010, Hall 2014. 5 Hirsh and Stewart 2005, 267. 6 Wolf, Eric. 1982. Europe and the People with-out History, Berkeley: University California Press, 19. 7 Yiftachel, Oren. 2009. ‘Critical Theory and ‘Gray Space’: Mobilization of the Colonized’, City, 13 (2–3) June–September: 240–256, 251 (https://doi.org/10.1080/13604810902982227). 8 Lana Tatour (2019, 2) has defined this as the ‘culturalisation of Bedouin indigeneity’. 9 Champagne and Abu Saad 2003. 10 Nasasra 2017, Tatour 2019. For critique, see Frantzman et al. 2012. 11 Nasasra 2017, 22. 12 Nasasra, Mansour. 2010. ‘Transfer and Expulsion of Palestinian Bedouin Tribes from the Naqab 1948–1959’, Rethinking the Paradigms: Negev Bedouin Research 2000+ Conference, United Kingdom: University of Exeter and the British Academy, 86. 13 Shryock 1997. Also see: Axtell, James. 1979. ‘Ethnohistory: An Historian’s Viewpoint’, Ethnohistory, 6 (1): 1–13. 14 Ibid. 15 Eickelman 1989. 16 Shryock 1997, 36. 17 Ibid, 36. 18 Yiftachel 2009. 19 Peters 1977, 71. 20 Other venues include NGO offices, mosques, shiggs, and community centres. 21 Clifford Geertz’s ‘experience-distant’ concept is further discussed in Chapter 4. Geertz, ­Clifford. 1983. Local Knowledge, New York: Basic Books. 22 The word ʿāʾila references many relationships including a small nuclear family or extended families of cognates comprised of three hundred to three thousand living descendants claiming shared ancestry. Parizot, Cédric. 2006. ‘Counting Votes That Do Not Count: Negev Bedouin and the Knesset elections of 17th May 1999, Rahat, Israel’, Nomadic Societies in the Middle East and North Africa: Entering the 21st Century, Dawn Chatty (ed.), Leiden and London: Brill Publications, xxv (https://doi.org/10.1163/9789047417750 _009). 23 Bourdieu, Pierre. 1965. ‘The Sentiment of Honour in Kabyle Society’, Honour and Shame: The Values of Mediterranean Society, John Peristiany (ed.), United Kingdom: Weidenfeld & Nicholson. 24 Fenster 1999; Meir, Avinoam. 1997. As Nomadism Ends: The Israeli Bedouin of the Negev, United States: Westview Press (https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429040535). 25 Up until the 1960s, these tents were made out of goat-hair but today are largely made out of plastic tarpaulins. 26 Abu Lughod 2000 (1986). 27 Hall 2014, 156. 28 Murphy, Robert and Leonard Kasdan. 1959. ‘The Structure of Parallel Cousin Marriage’, American Anthropologist, 61 (1): 17–29, 20. 29 The main goal of this form of marriage practice is to increase the autonomy of agnates. The same holds true in the Naqab. 30 Peters, Emrys. 1960. ‘The Proliferation of Segments in Lineage of Bedouin of Cyrenaica’, The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, 90 (1): 29–53. 31 Murphy and Kasdan 1959, 17.

Making Histories in a Bedouin Society  99 32 Pierre, Bonté, Edouard Conte, and Paul Dresch. 2001. Émirs et présidents. Figures de la parenté dans le monde Arabe, Paris: CRNS éditions cited in Parizot 2001a, 54. 33 Kressel, Gideon. 1992. Descent through Males: An anthropological investigation into the patterns underlying social hierarchy, kinship, and marriage among former Bedouin in the Ramla-Lod area (Israel), Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz. 34 Parizot 2001a. 35 Polygamy is common. Estimating the numbers of polygamous marriages is difficult as it is illegal in Israel. 36 This is not a simple patrilineal society but instead bilateral since typically father’s and mother’s line merges with each ascending generation. 37 Women’s male relatives are responsible for her marriage. She can raise objections or indicate her wishes with the support of her female relatives. 38 Randolph 1963, 185. 39 Parizot 2001a. 40 When asked about the term for lineage, members may also employ the names of their birth group (ḥamūla) and paternal clan (khamsa). 41 McKee 2010 and Hall 2014. 42 Qawāsmi, Hanadi. 2013. ‘Fee al-Naqab… ḥal taṭāl braka “zana” ʾazmana al-qaḥar’, Quds, http://www.qudsn.ps/article/10674, Accessed 20 May 2013. 43 NCF 2014. 44 Ibid. 45 Shryock 1997, 5. 46 The Quʾrān asserts that knowledge comes from God and various hadith encourage the acquisition of ʿilm (Arabic – knowledge). Islamic scholars, theologians and jurists are often given the title of scholar (ʿāʾlim, ʿulamāʾ) 47 It is estimated that 500 and 600 Bedouin from the Naqab make Ḥajj, a significant increase from the 1970s. Rubin, Lawrence. 2017. ‘Islamic Political Activism among Israel’s Negev Bedouin Population’, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 44: 429–446 (https://doi.org /10.1080/13530194.2016.1207503). 48 Parizot 2001a, 141. 49 Rubin 2017. 50 Parizot 2001a. 51 Peters 1977, Shryock 1997, and Samin 2015. 52 Shryock 1997, 77. 53 Ibid, 35. 54 Interview 2012. 55 Arabian origins (ʾaṣīl) are considered shared descent with confederations originating from the Arabian Gulf. 56 Samin 2015, 86. 57 Parizot 2001a. 58 Interview 2012. 59 Shryock 1997, 314. 60 Ibid., Samin 2015. 61 Connerton, Paul. 1989. How Societies Remember, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 74 (https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo978051 1628061). 62 Armbrust, Walter. 2006. ‘Audiovisual Media and History of the Middle East’, Middle East Historiographies: Narrating the Twentieth Century, Israel Gershoni, Amy Singer, and Y. Hakan Erdem (eds.), United States: University of Washington Press. 63 Bailey 2001(1991), Caton 1990, and Abu Lughod 2000 (1986). 64 Shryock 1997. 65 Ibid., 39. 66 Al-ʿĀrif 1933, 1934. 67 Assi 2018, 116. 68 For examinations pertaining to the value of older written documents in other parts of the ­Middle East see: Gilsenan, Michael. 1982. Recognizing Islam: Religion and Society in the Modern Arab World, New York: Pantheon; Messick, Barbara. 1993. The Calligraphic State,

100 Histories Berkeley: University of California Press; Atiyeh. George. 1995. The Book in the Islamic World: The Written World and Communication in the Middle East, New York: University of New York Press and The Library of Congress; Shryock 1997; Scheele 2009; Samin 2015. 69 Shryock 1997 and Samin 2015. 70 Rowlands, Michael. 1993. ‘The Role of Memory in the Transmission of Culture’, World Archaeology, 25: 141–151 (https://doi.org/ 10.1080/00438243.1993.9980234). 71 Ibid., 143. Also see Connerton 1989. 72 Davis, Rebecca. 2011. Palestinian Village Histories: Geographies of the Displaced, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 14 (https://doi.org/10.1515/9780804777186). 73 Bassiouney, Reem. (ed.) 2010. ‘Introduction’, Arabic and the Media: Linguistic Analyses and Applications, Leiden: Brill. 74 Le Febvre, Emilie. 2015. ‘Contentious Realities: Politics of Creating an Image Archive with the Negev Bedouin in Southern Israel’, History and Anthropology, 26 (4): 480–503 (https:// doi.org/10.1080/02757206.2015.1074900). 75 Nasasra, Mansour. 2018. ‘The Politics of Claiming and Representation: The Islamic Movement in Israel’, Journal of Islamic Studies, 29 (1): 48–78 (https://doi.org/10.1093/jis/etx078). 76 Abu Rabia 2008, 103. 77 Ibid. 78 Ibid., 101. 79 Richter-Devroe, Sophie. 2016. ‘Oral Traditions of Naqab Bedouin Women: Challenging ­Settler-Colonial Representations through Embodied Performance’, Journal of Holy Land and Palestine Studies, 15 (1): 31–57, 17 (https://doi.org/10.3366/hlps.2016.0128). 80 Hall 2014, 155. 81 McKee 2016, 16. 82 Interview 2012. 83 The Ottomans often provided documentation of land sales between the Empire and tribes (ʿashā’ir). They also created written records of land inheritance and paper receipts of taxes paid on properties often registered and kept in courts in Jerusalem and Beersheba (Abu Sitta 2009). 84 Kressel, Gideon, Joseph Ben David, and Khalil Abu Rabia. 1991. ‘Changes in the Land Use by the Negev Bedouin Since the Mid-19th Century’, Nomadic Peoples, 28: 28–55. 85 Lori, Aviva. 2010. ‘Reclaiming the Desert’, Haaretz Magazine, http://www.haaretz.com/ weekend/magazine/reclaiming-the-desert-1.310558, Accessed 21 September 2014. The B ­ ritish Mandate continued textual record keeping while at the same time both the Mandate and the Ottoman Empire, also recognised land ownership through customary law. 86 Abu Rabia 2008, 104. 87 Musil 1908. 88 CA 4220/12 Al Uqbi v. State of Israel, (May 14, 2015) translated in The State of Israel, The Judiciary Authority Supreme Court (Isr.), https://supremedecisions.court.gov.il/Home/Downl oad?path=EnglishVerdicts\12\20 0\042\v29&fileName=12042200.V29&type=4. 89 Eickelman 1989, 127. 90 Parizot 2004, 4. 91 Herzfeld, Michael. 1991 A Place in History: Social and Monumental Time in a Cretan town, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 226 (https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400843312). 92 Caton 1990. 93 Ibid., 37–41. 94 Eickelman, Dale.1985. Knowledge and Power in Morocco: The Education of a TwentiethCentury Notable, Princeton Studies on the Near East, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press (https://doi.org/10.1515/9780691221861). 95 Abu Lughod 1986, 51. 96 Parizot 2006. 97 Shryock 1997, 6. 98 Parizot 2006. 99 McKee 2010, Hall 2014, and Tatour 2019. 100 Dresch 1989. 101 Parizot 2006.

Making Histories in a Bedouin Society  101 02 Parizot 2001a, 317. 1 103 Parizot 2006, Ratcliffe 2009, and Givati-Teerling, Janine. 2012. ‘Negev Bedouin and Higher Education’, University of Sussex: Sussex Center for Migration Research, Paper 41: 1–22. 104 Al-Shboul, Ayman. 2012. ‘Al-Madafa and Ad-Diwan among Al-Shboul Tribe: A Case Study in Ash-Shajarah Village of Jordan’, International Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences, 12 (14): 210–225, 224. 105 Parizot 2001. 106 Ratcliffe 2009. 107 It should be noted that several larger lineages have maintained their customary economic and political power, in addition to their tribal territories. 108 Piot, Charles. 1993. ‘Secrecy, Ambiguity, and the Everyday in Kabre Culture’, American Anthropologist, 95 (2): 353–370 (https://doi.org/10.1525/aa.1993.95.2.02a00050). 109 Gilsenan 1976. 110 Eickelman 1989, 127–180. 111 Abu Kaf, Ghalia, Amit Schejter, and Muhammad Abu Jafar. 2019. ‘The Bedouin Divide’, Telecommunications Policy 43 (7): 101810 (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.telpol.2019.02.004). 112 Schejter, Amit and Naom Tirosh. 2012. ‘Social Media New and Old in the Al-’Arakeeb Conflict: A Case Study’, The Information Society, 28 (5): 304–315 (https://doi.org/10.1080/0197 2243.2012.708711). 113 Ibid. 313. 114 Ground Truth. 2017. ‘The Project’, Ground Truth: Destruction and Return in al-‘Araqīb, https://www.naqab.org/about, Accessed 1 March 2023. 115 NCF’s ‘On the Map: The Arab Bedouin Villages in the Negev-Naqab’ is another noteworthy website that presents the historical narratives of villages and towns in the Naqab. https:// www.dukium.org/ about/. Accessed 2 March 2023. 116 Shryock 2004, 22. 117 Eickelman, Dale and Jay Anderson. 2003. New Media in the Muslim World: The Emerging Public Sphere, Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 118 Shryock 1997, 316. 119 Hourani, Albert. 1983. Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age, 1798–1939, Cambridge: ­Cambridge University Press, 114 (https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511801990). 120 Shryock 1997, 321.

Part Two

Photography

3 Anthropology of Bedouin Photography and Photographs

Visual practices deviate from customary methods of information sharing and allow ­people to express and preserve local knowledge in unique ways.1 Of these, photography has increasingly become an alternative form of cultural reproduction especially when traditional methods become less effective. For example, peoples experiencing significant upheavals often take up the camera as a way to mediate social ruptures and reconstruct the past and present. In particular, small-scale visual practices such as photography and reappropriation of archival photographs are allowing indigenous peoples and ethnic minorities to further communicate their cultural heritage, struggles for ­self-determination, and conflicts with state governments.2 As such, since the turn of the twenty-first century, photography outside of the West in the Global South has received increased attention in the last decades. Amid this ever-growing corpus of work, studies documenting local visual practices in the Middle East have only recently emerged. This comes as examinations of visualism in the region were typically relegated to folk culture and established scholastic binaries emphasised audiocentric modes of authority in Muslim societies and the ocularcentric nature of European cultures. Discussions about ‘ways of seeing’ amongst Bedouin in the Middle East have been largely consigned to folk cultural studies despite the fact that vision is embedded with moral and political significance in these societies. Bedouin value sight. ‘The eye’ symbolically exhibits bravery, wisdom, and strength. Phrases indicating the cultural value of ‘seeing’ include: ‘His eye is sharp, but his reach is short’;3 and ‘Putting out of an eye’ can be a fine for slander.4 The power of ‘the eye’ is also conveyed by popular beliefs about the ‘evil eye’. Specific colours and symbols also have different visual significances.5 The colour white embodies the idea of blessing and often relates to milk and protection against the ‘evil eye’. Members tie white flags to cars during special events or in front of their homes as indications of God’s goodwill, symbolising connections to saints and good fortune in a family. The colour of clothing is also significant, especially for women, who embroider specific colours of thread onto their dresses and belts. These indicate different stages in a woman’s life and the various statuses acquired throughout her lifetime.6 In addition to colours, Bedouin employed pictorial signs to indicate beauty and ownership in the form of engravings, tattoos, and dyed graphics throughout the twentieth century. These symbols (wasam) or markings were inscribed onto objects and livestock. Some women from older generations also have symbols in the form of facial tattoos (washam) on their chins, forehead, and hands indicating their ʾaṣīl (origins) status. In addition to these, men and women who continue to own livestock brand their valued animals with ‘markings’ (sawawm) to indicate ownership as each lineage (ʿāʾilāt) retains their own symbols for communicating possession and value. For Bedouin the discipline of DOI: 10.4324/9781003185703-6

106 Photography seeing not only entails particular vernacular aesthetics but also entails considerable moral significance. Members display ideals of modesty through veiling, which among strangers demonstrates respect for kin and is a symbolic language for communicating morality. Veiling is a both voluntary and situational act undertaken by both men and women to express their virtue during encounters with others. Nevertheless, acts of veiling also correspond to the broader discourse of visibility and invisibility associated with the dynamics of honour, modesty, and moral space. Understandings of Bedouin visuality have also been hampered by established scholastic binaries highlighting audiocentric modes of authority amongst Muslim peoples and the ocularcentric nature of Western traditions, and by persistent misconceptions that photographic images are morally prohibited in Islam.7 The comparison of Muslim to non-Muslim values compounds debates about the place of the ‘visual’ in the Middle East.8 It has been argued that Westerners often consider vision a sense that places one in relation to the world through sight, a process allowing people to create internal representations based on observation of their physical surroundings. For example, vision is treated as externally objective, empirically knowledgeable, and analytically detached in the West and therefore attributed to ocularcentrism, whereas auditory senses are thought to characterise Arabic-speaking cultures; however, these are ultimately Orientalist differentiations.9 Nevertheless, misconceptions regarding the importance of audiocentrism in the Middle East persist and emanate from the perceived value awarded to sound and the revered status of recitation in many Arab societies. While scholars would not argue that peoples in the Middle East undervalued vision, ‘[s]uperficial readings of certain Quranic and Hadith texts undoubtedly made Arab-Islamic aniconism seem more clear-cut than it actually was, but in reality “the relations between the visual world and ocular experience and its representations” is always complex and fluid’.10 Notwithstanding, many regional studies have a tendency to replicate this Cartesian logic by ordering the senses and reviving stereotypical binaries indicating that Muslims prefer sound to sight. Despite these hindrances, visual practices associated with photography in the ­Middle East have steadily gained attention over the last decade, particularly photographic iconography associated with national and Islamic discourses.11 Regionally, photography plays a significant role in the production of nationalist historical narratives for various Middle Eastern governments. For example, through the combined efforts of re-using Western archival images and their own photography, officials in places like Egypt regularly use photographs in public spheres to visualise the power of their various nationstates. In the Bedouin context, the photography of Wilfred Thesiger (c. 1945-c. 1950) is used in the United Arab Emirates by the ruling elite to promulgate an indigenous national identity based on their ideas of an ‘authentic Bedouin’ past. Here, photographs have supported visual stereotypes of Bedouin culture in order to support state narratives since the 1970s.12 As suggested above, photography was largely a technology made available to Middle Eastern elites until recently, a process that left the medium to disseminate unevenly among different classes and concentrate within urban centres over the last hundred years. Reflecting on this situation, Christine Gruber and Sune Haugbølle noted that regional photography has changed how people function within ‘different scopic regimes’,13 but applications of the technology have increasingly less to do with geography and more to do with access to the medium. Today, however, the growing availability and cheaper costs of cameras, laptop computers, mobiles, and other digital devices in the Middle East have significantly augmented the use of photography and photographs

Anthropology of Bedouin Photography and Photographs  107 outside of the region’s metropoles. This situation has given more dispersed populations the ways and means to produce and appropriate photography since the beginning of the twenty-first century.14 In an effort to examine visual practices outside of the urban Middle East, I outline an anthropological approach to the study of photography (as practice) and photographs (as objects) amongst Bedouin in this chapter. To do so, I first situate their visual practices amid regional Palestinian and Bedouin photograpies and self-curations. I then explore a series of analytics examining photographs’ efficacies, particularly, their diverse productions, evidentiary authority, polysemous re-readings, changing formats, and varied circulations. This analytical framework strives to bridge recent visual critiques and ethnographies of photography in the Palestinian-Israeli context by describing the temporal and changing Bedouin socio-politics associated with the creation and interpretation of photographs in southern Israel. With this conceptual groundwork, I argue that amid the various forms of historical documents available to spokespersons today, photographs are unique. They possess a distinctive type of evidentiary authority that members believe visually communicates and ‘proves’ their narratives of the past. Photographs are dynamic historical resources, be them unstable or ‘disruptive’15 ones when placed amongst or alongside written historiographies, for example. Images are realistic records of times past. They also imply multiple meanings and alternating temporalities through their diverse displays. These qualities are expressed during their circulations in and between different times and places. Amid their travels, images (and their collections) can also simultaneously inscribe knowledge of the past and serve as artefacts of identity without saying or reading so, thus bypassing language and literacy boundaries, and established patterns of authority customary awarded to authors and orators. Images communicate what members believe to be objective information not only as signs (through the polysemous readings) but also as material objects and digital codes (through their polyvalences) – a situation that allows a wide range of images-users to confirm historical meaning through the creation, ownership, exhibition, and archiving of photographs within the entangled visual economies characterising their lives in southern Israel. Photographs as Evidence As the presence of photography and photographs becomes more widespread in the region, the ‘scopic regimes’16 of the Middle East are also diversifying. People are engaging the medium in distinctive ways.17 In the Naqab Desert, lay and professional photography among Bedouin has significantly grown over the last twenty years amid the steady availability of digital cameras and mobile phones. For example, in a previous article, I described the image work of a thirty-year-old Bedouin photojournalist and digital archivist who photographs protests organised by members in response to governmentsanctioned, housing demolitions in the villages and other large political events.18 Karīm’s (anonymised) digital photography efforts are similar to other visual activisms in the West Bank and Gaza,19 particularly his photographs of local protests and political events. Like most other local photographers, however, he also collects historical photographs of their society, largely digital copies taken from websites which he curates and reposts on his Facebook and Instagram pages. By way of further analysis, I make the argument here that Bedouin photography in the Naqab not only involves vernacular camera work but also members’ self-curations, that is Karīm’s and others’ efforts to source and collect

108 Photography historical photographs of their peoples, events, and landscapes from various archives with which they then curate and display in a range of physical and digital venues. People throughout the world are collecting and curating photographs of their pasts from outside archives and globalised digital sources in order to augment their cultural capital and verify historical claims to ancestry and lands.20 Indigenous and minority peoples, specifically, are seeking out materials located in foreign archives in order to reconstruct and strengthen their own identities at home.21 Along with localised efforts, external repatriation efforts have also proliferated in recent years as international museums, photographers, and researchers reconnect with source societies and return photographs previously stored in and restricted to foreign archives. Reflecting this trend, photographs of the Palestinian past (and the archives that house them) have become topics of increased interest in the last decades. For the purposes of discussion, I treat photographic archives as conceptual, physical, and digital sites wherein travelling image artefacts assemble, move in and out, and enact various agencies and performances.22 In the Middle East, photographic archives often serve as repositories of artefacts and documents that legitimate state histories. They are visual warehouses used to rule and sites of nationalised knowledge production. For example, Ariella Azoulay and Roni Sela argued that Palestinian photograph archives held by various Israeli state institutions service ‘Zionist narratives’23 by dispossessing ­Palestinian histories through ‘archival violence’.24 Azoulay pointed out this practice includes the institutional classification of photographed people into the classes of ‘undocumented’ and ‘refugee’ peoples and the governmental looting, confiscation, and displacement of pre-1948 Palestinian photographic collections.25 Similar to the African context, however, the definition of archives in the Middle East is broad. Many old photographs in the region are not housed within institutional archives but kept in collections kept in family homes, houses of worship, community centres, and websites.26 The Palestinian archive is also media diverse. It includes a vast array of sources such as Islamic legal texts, biographical chronicles, literary writings, and family papers along with other types of material cultural artefacts, oral histories, and built environments.27 Amplified efforts amongst Middle Eastern professional and lay historians, non-profits, cultural organisations, and artists seeking out both institutional and local archives reflect a growing ‘archival fever’ in the region. Beshara Doumani was the first to discuss ‘Palestinian archival fever’28 with Ann Stoler and others calling for the further examination of Palestinian collective archiving efforts in the last decades.29 Lucie Ryzova explained that amid the various historical documents currently resourced from archives in the Middle East, however, old photographs have become steadily ‘valorised’30 as important archival materials. She described that in the Egyptian context, people revere photographs for their potential evidentiary qualities in some contexts while treating them as ‘inferior historical documents’31 in other occasions. According to Ryzova, this situation has generated a sense of ambiguity relating to old photographs amongst Egyptians whereby their value, be it placed on iconographic or indexical qualities, typically shifts in accordance with a person’s relative interests.32 Issam Nassar, Stephen Sheehi, and Salim Tamari also argued that photographic albums produced by individual Palestinian photographers in the early twentieth century are also important archives because they preserve, bring together, and consolidate important visual records of past P ­ alestinian lives. Their work joins other scholastic efforts to document the growing value of old photographs and the archives assembling them amongst Middle Eastern peoples. Similarly, archival fever amongst Bedouin academics and spokesperson in the Naqab includes a wide range of materials, cultural artefacts, digital scans, and oral histories.

Anthropology of Bedouin Photography and Photographs  109 Reflecting broader regional trends, members are searching archives for photographs but they also typically treat old images and their digital copies as a type of documentary evidence that records the past and carries a visual ‘testimony to the history it has experienced’.33 Since its invention in the nineteenth century, photographs have been thought to depict unmitigated images of reality, a ‘material vestige of its subject’.34 People throughout the world consider the chemical fixing of the camera obscura image, hailed as photographic truth, as an objective representation of reality created by the camera’s optical and light recording mechanisms.35 For many, the camera is a well-known instrument of evidence that reproduces the subjects placed before its lens into a photographic image. As Walter Benjamin noted, photography’s capacity as a technology of mechanical reproduction to communicate meaning, particularly as a documentary device that meticulously records details, has made it a powerful cultural innovation that captures social and material experiences.36 Here, the camera creates a visual record of ‘what the people in the image have already achieved in the past’.37 For example, over the last decade, aerial photographs of the Naqab Desert landscape have become sought-after archival documents amongst Bedouin and outside advocates of villages experiencing state-sanctioned demolitions. These images were largely produced by the German Imperial Air Force, the British Royal Air Force, and the Israeli Air Force.38 As conflicts over land claims in the Naqab are more regularly contested in Israeli courts, members are seeking out these types of photographs to demonstrate that specific lineages and connected families continuously farmed, resided, and utilised land before 1948. As described in the last chapter, Bedouin plaintiffs are gathering and preserving a vast range of documentary evidence to testify their ownership and cultivation of lands before 1948. Interest in aerial photographs replicates what surmounts to border-line obsessions with old maps amongst Palestinians and Israelis alike. Similar to maps, however, the contents of these photographs must be interpreted. Eyal Weizman described the history of ariel photographs and their role in Israeli legal proceedings.39 He reasoned that the interpretation of these images for evidence of Bedouin settlement, such as old cemeteries, requires close readings of the photographically captured landscapes for ‘subtle traces’40 of the past that have been often erased or scrubbed from present-day settings. Weizman argued that this process must also take into account the politics that framed their productions and the technological, material properties of images which inherently effect the resolution and authoritative potentialities of these photographs to be used as evidence in Israeli courts.41 In all, Bedouin archival fever has resulted in the increased self-curation of photographs of past landscapes, events, and people – practices defined by the diverse and often oppositional interpretations of visual information amongst Bedouin but also their uneven access to said photographic materials. As Tina Campt discussed, amongst Black Europeans, photography offers people a medium to create visualisations of themselves that counter ‘how they are popularly perceived’.42 Similarly, Bedouin use photography and p ­ hotographs in ways that not only mirrors their identities but also their varied ideas of history – a practice made easier and more frequent with the advent of the Internet and the digitalisation of photographic archives. These developments are democratising institutional archives and official historiographies, which relied on resources that were notoriously hard to access. Twenty-first-century technologies in the form of computers, printers, cameras, and mobiles have augmented physical and digital access to archival photographs thus amplifying their historical resonances outside of the urban Middle East. These processes are providing people throughout the region with more opportunities to re-read stereotypical images of themselves through photographic re-appropriations. For

110 Photography many, images found in archives are not only evidential sources for the societies depicted within them but they are also versatile documents that can be reinscribed with alternative layers of information (Figure 3.1).

Figure 3.1  ‘Aerial photograph of cultivation in the Bedouin village of Abu Ruqaiyiq, 1945’ (Royal Air Force). Content: These images were taken as part of the survey of ­Palestine by the British mandate. RAF Palestine Survey series, 5 January 1945. Original creator(s): Royal Air Force. Date of original: 1945.  Secondary creator(s): Palestine Land Society. Date of copy: 2002.  www.plands. org/en/maps-atlases/maps/gaza-beer-sheba-1948.  Accessed date: 1 March 2023.

Anthropology of Bedouin Photography and Photographs  111 Beyond Photographic Truth Despite being a quality commonly valued among large numbers of people, photographic truth and the camera’s ability to produce objective depictions of reality are always relative. Photographs are not simple records of the world.43 Instead, viewers make sense of images through trained exercises of encoding, a representational system whereby they ‘achieve their communicative function in collaboration with pictorial conventions – some of which emanate from the medium itself and others which are determined by the culture in which we live’.44 People acquire information and create representations by looking at images through correlated processes wherein visual signs produce and exchange meanings in their cultures. That is people create meanings via their unique relationships with signs and objects.45 Ultimately, representations associated with visual images, such as photographs, must be deciphered despite seeming natural in their presentation of ­information and thus their meanings are constructions. This process involves interpretation – that is how people understand representations of meaning. Images do not have inherent meaning. They operate within un-coded semiotics where the reading of a picture is not merely tied to its ability to represent a specific physical referent.46 Alternatively, ‘photographic images are like the world they represent: they do not mean anything; they are always awaiting interpretation or the ascription of meaning; they have the capacity to signify without end’.47 As such, once removed from its original context and circulated in society, images acquire figurative significance through varied interpretations that are informed by the viewers and their cultural codes for reading signs. As a result, the meanings of an image are never solidified as the picture (or floating signifier) remains inherently tied to the mental representation it conjures (the signified). Images are signs that construct information in different ways: through their presentation and arrangement of visual information; presence as an object and the power it exerts; and the manner in which objects operate with other media to produce authority.48 When pictures build mental maps through their confirmation and ancillary documentation of experiences, they typically work alongside oral and text-based mediums. Thus, images often achieve their communicative function from ‘languages of vision’ that work in collaboration with sound and speech.49 As Jens Eder and Charlotte Klonk pointed out, images typically do not operate alone but instead join other semiotic forms to create ‘multimodal texts, intertextual networks, referential chains and large discourses contributing to the constitution of knowledge and power’.50 Vision also works with other senses within the body to cognised sight thereby generating perceptions of our landscapes and experiences. Different factors affect how viewers comprehend images. This process was defined by Nicholas Mirzoeff as intervisuality.51 He argued that images are never perceived or consumed on their own. Rather, there is always an interaction between different kinds of visualities and referential exchanges between oral, textual, and physical phenomena. In all, studies of photographic semiotics demonstrated how the conceptual processing of images is learned, passed on, and encoded through ‘signs’ that determine how people interpret the world through visual information and media technologies.52 By focusing on the constructed nature of visual media, they emphasise that images can be imbued with diverse cultural meanings when the relationships between the signifier and signified are reworked in different ‘contexts of viewing’53 such as those characterising the Middle East.

112 Photography Despite the lack of scholastic attention (including mine) given to visual semiotics, Bedouin have maintained an exceptionally strong visual presence in late twentieth-­ century studies of Orientalist photography. Images of these peoples have become a frequently used example of Middle Eastern clichés, stereotypes, and the politics inherent to photography in the region.54 This work critiqued early studies of photographic semiotics for not sufficiently exploring the discourses of power associated with images of the Middle East, which have long served as instruments for imperial projects and colonial ideologies.55 While it may appear that photography and photographs objectively capture what is placed before the lens of the camera, they are a technology unequivocally tied to unequal and subjective visual representations.56 As such, images often serve as points of reference for making determinations about human traits, comparing different cultures, mapping landscapes, and depicting events. As a result, photographs have been instrumental in creating biased stereotypes of Middle Easterners since the nineteenth century. Motivated by Edward Said’s work on Orientalism,57 postcolonial scholars set out to deconstruct colonial and imperialist depictions of the ‘Arab Other’, critique representational strategies of colonial administrators, and highlight the persistence of visual clichés and social taxonomies of the region’s population since the 1980s.58 For instance, İrvn Cemıl Schick (et al.) pointed out: Throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, for example, photographers scoured the Middle East and North Africa in a relentless quest to classify and catalogue … their many ‘exotic’ peoples. In their efforts to capture each and every ‘type’ – the Druze, the Bedouin, the Jew, and so on…. these “orientalist” photographers … gave orientalist photography its specificity and particular agenda … [their] typology confirmed a world view, producing rather than reflecting reality.59 These now familiar arguments examining the relationship between Orientalism and photography have been, however, criticised in recent decades.60 This comes as many of these examinations had a propensity to stereotype all early image-making practices as Orientalist and frequently dismiss the history of vernacular photography in the region. For example, some analyses narrowly singled out poorly taken images epitomising racist depictions or cheaply produced images as portraying people as ‘stereotypes, freaks, or objects of sexual fantasy’.61 They also homogenised the political meaning of Oriental photographs by overly dichotomising East/West power relations and thus overlooked the local socio-political contexts in which these photographs were produced and consumed.62 By treating historical photographs as observable truths, many studies also overemphasise the hegemony of ‘visualising rhetoric’63 and promote ‘physiognomic readings’ of images that simply reflect the pre-existing political leanings of photographers.64 Consequently, over the last twenty years, discussions of Middle East visual culture have moved beyond critiques of Orientalist photography of the region to instead investigate photographs in the region and the diverse readings of photographs by local populations.65 Social historians, critical of the truth-holding status awarded to photographs, have gone on to document the reuse of photographs (such as archival images) amongst

Anthropology of Bedouin Photography and Photographs  113 various peoples throughout the world.66 Drawing on the work of Elizabeth Edwards and Christopher Pinney, for example, the practices by which people reinterpret colonial and imperialist photographs to produce counter-narratives of their pasts in places such as South Asia and Africa have been increasingly acknowledged amongst anthropologists and historians alike. These studies are concerned with what photographs might or unexpectedly achieve through their re-reading in different places. This recent ‘cultural turn’ to the study of photographic histories outside the West has also encouraged examinations of how gender, racial, social, and economic discourses shape the creation of photographic meaning in societies. Here, photographs are considered sites for people to counter stereotypical depictions of themselves and create multifaceted understandings of their pasts. As Laura Peers and Alison Brown argued, photographs ‘prompt the re-learning of forgotten knowledge and skills, provide opportunities to piece together fragmented historical narratives, and are material evidence of cultural identity and historical struggle’.67 This new approach to photographs addresses the reality that the interpretation of image contents does not naturally occur in one singular ‘cultural direction’.68 In the last decade, photographs in the Middle East are also increasingly being treated as documentary resources for critical historicising in the region. This is a situation whereby images (that were once thought to simply reflect the logic of empires, governances, and state powers) are now being redressed through alternative knowledges of the past by the region’s marginalised peoples. Likewise, the anthropological approach to photographs advocated in this book emphasises photographs’ capacities as floating signs in order to ascertain their alternative meanings that are typically silenced by popular readings of Orientalist iconography, for example. Thus, the first aim of this book is to document the polysemous re-readings of Naqab Bedouin photographs. This includes accounting for the changing and multiple meanings derived from images when members engage with images of their past. By doing so, I explore how members instrumentalise photographic inscriptions of ‘historically significant’ images of their people and pasts as they respond to power and marginalisation at the beginning of the twenty-first century. With that said, photographs are also artefacts, whose material and digital presences are entangled with the specific representational politics that frame history-making in this part of the world. According to Ryzova, for example, Egyptians regard photographs as ‘two dimensional aesthetic texts’ but also as ‘three dimensional social objects’ and, in practice, people regularly take advantage of the ‘ambiguity between photographs-asimages and photographs-as-objects’ for their own pursuits.69 Sheeli also pointed out that photographs are objects whose truth values are enmeshed in multiple and shifting social networks and operate as afterimages that manifest different meanings in the M ­ iddle East.70 I argue the same holds true for photographs among the Naqab Bedouin. With that said, continued focus on the institutional and dominating qualities of photography in the Palestinian-Israeli context has not only overshadowed the polysemous re-readings of images but also their polyvalences within local societies. This situation has left questions about how photographs – as objects – influence people’s histories and how peoples’ histories influence the meaning and afterlives of photographs in this part of the world unanswered (Figure 3.2).

114 Photography

Figure 3.2 Exhibition of old Bedouin photographs at a Bedouin Community Centre. Original creator(s): Anonymised. Photographer: Emilie Le Febvre. Original date: 29 January 2013.

Polyvalent Images Since the 1990s, portraits of patriarchs are displayed in houses, Polaroids have been taped in albums, and photo files have been displayed on mobile phones throughout the Naqab Desert. All of these image-containing objects requisition and construct visual information. Heirlooms, souvenirs, photographs, and family videos are socially constructed artefacts that evoke knowledge and connote memory through their use, presence, and ownership throughout the world.71 As a result, these products and their visual signs accumulate value, meaning, and authority. In other words, artefact do not simply reflect peoples’ intentions. They are central to processes of socialisation and culturally learned, habitual actions. Material cultural analyses investigate the performance capacities of objects along with their agencies and actions.72 Rather than examining the world merely through social relations, the goal is to consider how materiality orders and sway sociality. Here, things are meaningful because they have the capacity to reproduce relationships and mediate peoples’ different interests. Because of these abilities, objects are vehicles facilitating self-conceptualisations among peoples, affecting their creation of context, meaning, values, habitus, and identity.73

Anthropology of Bedouin Photography and Photographs  115 For example, government officials link the Jordanian nation-state to idealisations of the tribal Bedouin past by recasting everyday items such as coffee urns, water pipes, headscarves, and textiles as ‘objects of shared citizenship’.74 These mundane items are transformed into nationalised artefacts symbolising Jordanian nationalism, which in turn influences local conceptualisations of Bedouin-ness there.75 The re-assemblage and reframing of everyday objects into artefacts of material culture have also occurred in the Naqab. Specifically, the Joe Alon Museum of Bedouin Culture, located in a kibbutz 25 miles northwest of Beersheba, was created by a group of Israeli anthropologists in 1974. According to their website, the museum’s exhibition of Bedouin artefacts provides a record of the ‘radical changes’ and ‘almost-extinct way of life’ among ‘the Bedouin tribes scattered throughout the Negev and Sinai deserts’.76 These displays include dioramas of ‘housing types’, faceless mannequins clothed in traditional dresses (thaūb), enlarged black and white photographs, contemporary photographic installations, and the display of musical instruments, coffee sets, and textiles such as rugs and decorative tapestries.77 The re-contextualisation of these items in this context, however, does not service ideals of shared nationalism as they do in Jordan. Alternatively, these objects present and affirm notions of differentiated Arab ethnicity and Bedouin primitivism in Israel. As noted above, photographs frequently work and function alongside displays of material culture in places such as the Joe Alon Museum. Thus, analytics pertaining to objecthood are also helpful when investigating the specific qualities and agencies of image-containing ‘things’ such as photographs. Here, materiality translates photographic representation into photographic objects that perform and exert their influences in specific times and spaces.78 Thus, as Edwards has argued, the question is ‘not simply what photographs mean, but how they act, why they do whatever it is they do and to whom’.79 They function in similar ways to other items as people encode meanings into them. Once created, however, these objects also reproduce and alter the social contexts in which they are consumed and circulated. Through practices of display and consumption, these photographs become socio-political entities, inscribing specific meanings, and mediate relationships in various spaces.80 Some visual materials, however, hold more weight than others because some objects have more or less clout than others and thus people assign different values to them.81 As a way of approaching both the historical contents and the material weight of photographs among Bedouin, this book also explores the polyvalences of images – that is a photograph’s literal and figurative existences and its varying historical significances in this society. Throughout the Middle East, photographs are increasingly becoming things to be owned and artefacts to be valued. These practices transform photographs into commodities that people compete over, strive to protect, and control. As a result, photographs are not equal when it comes to constructing meaning and acquiring value. In order to account for these variations, Igor Kopytoff suggested a biographical model for things. He asked: What are the biographical qualities contributing to a thing’s value and status in different periods and cultures? Where does the thing come from and who made it? How does the thing’s use change over time?82 Drawing on this biographical approach to photographs, for example, Nassar and his co-authors described the afterlife of early twentiethcentury Palestinian composer and poet, Wasif Jawhariyyeh’s photographic albums.83 To

116 Photography do so, they treat both Jawhariyyeh’s albums and the images within them as ‘objects’ with their own history and contexts. In all, explorations of photographs’ biographies make it possible to discuss the networks of interaction or the ‘diverse processes wherein “inanimate” objects come to be socially alive’.84 Over the last decades, scholars have also examined the afterlives of photographs in order to ascertain the ‘micro-relationships in which image objects are involved’.85 For example, while not the focus of his research at the time, Shryock described a historical photograph in northern Jordan that he came across on the wall in an interviewee’s house.86 The man told him that the original came from the United Kingdom. When ­Shryock asked another friend about the picture, he told him the original picture in fact came from Spain and that the men were not of the originally-stated tribe but from another one. His friend then proceeded to show Shryock his copy of the photograph wherein the men were assigned different names.87 The picture of the “three shaykhs” was the most popular of [the shop owner’s] … ­collection. I asked who the men in the picture were. “Well,” he said, with a sly twist in his voice, “that depends on which family you belong to….”. Shryock also described how old photographs are often enlarged, ornamentally framed, and hung in a family’s public guest receiving rooms in ‘shrine-like space in which very different representations of time, identity, and power could all be simultaneously displayed’ throughout Jordan.88 He posited that reading these historic photographs is a highly contested activity whereby different tribesmen struggle to make claims about these images in order to make them their own and deny them to other tribes. Despite the popularity of biographical and afterlife approaches to photographs, it is difficult to ascertain the travels of multiple images and their copies across diverse landscapes and timeframes with this method. Because photographs have the capacity to circulate within various times and different spaces, Deborah Poole used the term ‘image worlds’89 to describe the conceptual maps upon which visual signs and objects move, come together, and create visual cultures. She argued that sight and representation are ‘material’, insofar as they insert meaning and intervene in the world.90 For her, the effectiveness of visual representation relies on the referential nature of images and their ability to be materially (digitally) circulated. As images travel between social worlds, they not only become ‘circulating referents’91 that inscribe meaning during their multiple acts of translation but they also become transformative things. Alfred Gell’s model of the ‘distributed object’92 highlights the deviating stories objects such as photographs obtain as they circulate and maintain multiple presences in multiple places, times, and paths. Edwards summarised the issue: ‘The meaning of photographs, material forms, and ideas of appropriateness shift through the double helix of image biography and the biography of material reconfiguration and remediation’.93 Her actor-network approach emphasised the social saliency of objects within networks of people and things. This approach not only acknowledges the flows of photographs as objects but also the technologies and structures that give these photographs meaning as signifiers.94 Taking up this analytical strategy, the anthropological study outlined here not only traces the polyvalences of photographs but also their circulations as objects and digital codes – travels that change the reading of photographic content and transform their material and virtual presences in the various ‘image worlds’95 that distinguish the lives of Bedouin people in the Naqab (Figure 3.3).

Anthropology of Bedouin Photography and Photographs  117

Figure 3.3 Installation of old Bedouin photographs at the Joe Alon Bedouin Center. Original creator(s): unknown. Photographer: Emilie Le Febvre. Original date: 25 February 2012.

Itinerant Photographs Images have proliferated throughout the Middle East because of photocopying and ­digital technologies in the last twenty years. These new platforms have also made images predisposed to circulation and adaptation as their communicative influences continue to intensify. Photographic objects are still found in physical venues and exhibitions but digital images, by their very nature, can be reused and viewed in multiple places at different times by various people. On many occasions, it is not the photograph that is centrifugal but its graphic contents which are dislocated from their original, material constraints and spatial contexts through copying, burning, and digitising. This situation creates new but oppositional virtual public spheres whereby authority over representations is legitimated through techniques of bricolage, re-contextualisation, and copying.96 During these circulations, material and digital objects exert presence at different times and places and through different modalities. As such, photographs acquire numerous life histories which become entangled in complex online and offline networks of interaction. In all, digital communications are intensifying and expanding the particularisms and universalisms that define societies. While digital anthropology studies largely examine

118 Photography the sharing and movement of information emanating from digital technologies, the materiality of the digital has increasingly garnered more attention in recent years. This comes as digital goods such as cameras, CDs, computers, smartphones, USB drives, and external hard drives are reframing the ‘parameters of human interaction’97 and their products, such as digital images, are landscaping and mediating new knowledge ecologies. At the same time, they are being shaped by pre-existing spatial realities and cultural conventions throughout the world.98 Consequently, archival images, like all photographs, have the potential to be divorced from their materiality and original contexts of ownership through photocopying and digitising – practices which compel many people like Bedouin to habitually disregard a photograph’s copyright, authorship, and other source information such as production dates and material formatting. Today, the values and knowledges conferred from both the inscription and materiality of photographs are becoming more transferable as access to historical images, for example, has steadily increased because of digital technologies and the Internet. Digital photographs are quickly becoming the most popular source of images among people throughout the world. For example, most Palestinians in Israel have limited physical access to archival photographs because they are mostly located in foreign venues or state institutes. Instead, these people are turning to online databases to copy, compile, digitise, and share photographs depicting their historical villages, landscapes, people, and events. As a result, an image’s simulations and re-materialised copies are increasingly appearing in landscapes outside of Palestinian and Israeli urban centres, institutional archives, and family collections. Ultimately, digital images are diversifying the persuasiveness and simulated agencies of photographs as producers and viewers speak through them via virtual languages and new multimedia practices in ways that are creating alternative forms of knowledge and connectivity. Because of digitisation, photographs are now more regularly resourced from and circulation between blogs, social media, and websites rather than merely between institutional archives and family collections. For instance, Nadia Yaqub examined old photographs on Facebook groups created by survivors and descendants of the armed siege of the Tel al-Zaʾtar refugee camp by Christian Lebanese militias in 1976.99 She argued that the memory work of these photographs on social media is similar to analogue photographs as both formats rely on the abilities of people to provide biographical and geographical details about the images through verbal and visual means.100 According to Yaqab, the platform also allows for circulation of photographs and comments which intermix old and new images, current events and memories, the collective past and present, and family and national histories. In order to account for the role of photography in the making of history among Bedouin, this book additionally traces the ambulating circulations of Naqab Bedouin images. In particular, the case studies in Part Three document the initial production of six photographs by a range of family, community, and government photographers along with their movements within and between online and offline spaces of connectivity and the socio-politics behind them. This approach draws on Arjun Appadurai’s research concerning the practices and spaces by which objects enable social cohesion and multiple levels of identification and interaction. According to him, focusing on the circulation of things makes it possible to argue that, ‘What creates the links between exchange and values is politics….’.101 This comes as the movement of things, such as photographs, also involves various types of competitions and contentions alongside collaborations, which in many cases coincides with pre-established social hierarchies, political networks, and

Anthropology of Bedouin Photography and Photographs  119 conflicts over who has the authority to use them as objects. People in many societies strive to own and control photographs for their own and disparate purposes; efforts to acquire personal capital often involve internal social debates as to what individuals, topics, themes, and events can be discussed and presented in various public spheres.102 In fact, photographs are regularly used to support internal debates and competitive capital acquisitions between rivals and their disparate knowledge claims justifying pre-positions of power and influence. I argue that images’ polysemous readings, polyvalences, and circulations among Bedouin are also characterised by discord. That is the historical knowledges derived from photographs, like text and speech, are situated within persuasive discourses of power thus presenting partial and subjective readings, which are consciously or implicitly altered during reflections about history in this society. In order to describe these contentions, I highlight the calculative resonances and underlying conflicts intrinsic to sharing historical knowledge in the Naqab. This comes as ‘not all parties share the same interests in any specific regime of value, nor are the interests of any two parties in a given exchange identical’103 in any society. As such, I theoretically treat photographs as visual inscriptions but also as objects (and digital copies) that acquire value during members’ socio-political encounters. Images’ re-readings may be limited by viewing contexts but Bedouin also esteemed photographs as things to be possessed, protected, and owned. And because photographs are valuable, members regularly treat them as an unconventional type of historical capital to be resourced and exhibited in the Naqab’s overlapping image worlds (Figure 3.4).

Figure 3.4  Activestills photographic exhibition in ‘The Protest Tent, Al Araqib, Israel on 30 July 2010’. Original creator(s): Oren Ziv. Original source: Activestill’s Collection. Image number: 13215.  Original date: 2010.  www.activestills.org/image/13215/. Accessed date: 1 July 2023.

120 Photography Differentiating Image Worlds Photographs construct historical knowledge alongside (and often in conjunction with) oral and written media. At the same time, they assemble visual meanings and objects within specific contexts of vision, practice, and knowledge that have the ability to cross discursive boundaries in the Naqab. These vast arrays of contexts are best understood as visual economies – a concept developed by Deborah Poole. She theorised that people produce, consume, and circulate images simultaneously but also unevenly as both representations and objects within and between places.104 Rather than focusing on shared visual culture which implies consensus and homogeneity, Poole’s visual economy model highlighted that peoples’ interactions with photographs and visuality are conflicted. Photographic meanings are never solidified but instead the relationships between signifier and signified are continually reworked as they travel between different social settings. According to her, images are assigned values as they circulate. Poole argued that visual economies are organised at three levels. The first level is an image’s original production context. The second level is the image’s economic organisation. Here, focus is placed on the technological attributes of an image and its ability to be transformed into a commodity that travels in and out of places. This idea is taken further with the third qualifier, the circulation of images between different socio-political systems, during which they accrue value through the cultural practices of collection, possession, and exchange.105 These analytics are particularly useful for mapping the representational work of photographs within highly conflicted places like southern Israel. In particular, this model landscapes the production of image iconography, the technological attributes, and object values of photographs at macro levels. In our case, these are Palestinian and Israeli ‘economies’, and global-Western circuits. It does not, however, account for the material-digital efficacies of images within more localised networks that also typify people’s lives. To this end, I investigate the entangled visual economies that assemble to create the Naqab Desert’s reticular representational landscape – a setting comprised of distinct but scaled image worlds that reflect and respond to the Bedouin’s diverse realities, uneven iconography, and complex transregional socio-politics. These not only include macro (national Palestinian and Israeli) and micro (familial, kin-based) visual economies but also meso image-scapes associated with descent, Islamism, and civic regionalisms which come together to compose their social universe. In summary, the entangled visual economies in which Bedouin engage photographs intrinsically reflect members’ diverse encounters, an overlapping milieu of connectivity and contention upon which photographs make and respond to histories. People simultaneously engage multiple visual economies in the Naqab. For the Bedouin, these ‘image worlds’ are scaled by proximities based on notions of affiliation and opposition that frame their socio-political interactions. These orientations also inform their competitive and often conflicting history projects. As discussed in the last chapter, people in this society are firstly organised by those who are considered ‘close’ (garāba) and those who are considered ‘outsiders’ (gharīb). Connections amongst those considered to be close are justified by way of kindship or ‘shared blood’ (damm), an ideology based on mutual descent lines (sulāla) which establishes a person’s relationships and connections with others. Moving outward, descent groups include: women, children, and men who share blood; kinsmen and kinswomen related through close affinal ties; agnatic relations based on patrilineal connections; and more distant tribal affiliations (ʿāʾiliyya) created

Anthropology of Bedouin Photography and Photographs  121 during times of collaboration. None of these are deterministic qualities or relationships. They do, however, typically order Bedouin behaviour and regulate peoples’ choices and actions during specific interactions. They also create a landscape of affiliation and opposition whereby people socially, politically, and economically relate and distinguish themselves from others. Clifford Geertz argued that this ‘close-distant’ inference explains how people in the Middle East identify and connect with each other in familial, corporate, and territorial groups. For example, it describes occasions when members speak as if they are related to one another through kinship but are (in fact) neighbours or related by some other non-kin-based associations or express ‘brotherhood’ with those sharing religious or national affiliations. In all, close-distant relationships structure meaning in these societies by shaping notions of honour (sharaf) which awards value to particular peoples, events, practices, and exchanges. It is an orienting principle with which members call forth their knowledge, make connections to common apical ancestors, assemble their tribal connections, establish their shared identities, and bring about specific types of collaborations.106 Close-distant relationships in Bedouin society also create a sociopolitical arena that is embedded within and influenced by broader ‘political economies of meaning’107 such as those deriving from Israeli and Palestinian nationalisms, for example. I argue that this close-distant inference is also useful for describing proximate relationships to things (photographs) and knowledges (histories) and the differentiated types of connectivity brought together under their banner. Approached as such, I can therefore explain the apparent representational discrepancies between members through the manufacture and reinterpretation of historical information inscribed onto and derived from images as internally competitive in terms of tribal, gender, and generational politics; but externally collaborative in terms of ethno-nationalism, community activism, and shared heritage. The significance of acknowledging the Naqab Bedouin’s entangled visual economies takes up Ali Behdad’s argument that we must better account for the overlapping networks in which photographs of the Middle East are involved.108 The concept is equally inspired by Gillian Rose’s discussion of the ‘different cartographies’109 in which images (such as family photos) perform and acquire values as capital outside of intimate spaces. The scaled work of photographs has also been noted by Christopher Morton and Darren Newbury, who argued that studies must ‘consider the different forms in which photographs accumulate and the contexts in which they reside… [as at] each social encounter, each shift in the photograph’s status, adds another layer of meaning’.110 Finally, Edwards argued that visual economy models have broaden our understanding of the diverse processes that ‘generate photography’s situational and historical meanings’.111 Amid the various ways photographs do history, she explained that both scale and abundance shape the relationships between images and history.112 According to Edwards: The reproducible nature of photographs, their flow within expansive global image regimes, from colonial photographs to international advertising, enable them to operate on a fully global scale – an abundance – while still holding the inscription at the micro level. The idea of material, visual, and political economies structuring experience and forming conduits to the past is well recognised by historians…The excessive potential of photographs enables history to be imagined on different scales and ­provides the possibility of a thickening of historical description.113

122 Photography By scaling Poole’s visual economies, I can more accurately trace the afterlives of s­ pecific photographs (as objects of historical persuasion) through their circulations in the diverse yet intertwined image worlds where Bedouin engage topics of history. This model emphasises the relational and scaled nature of photographic encounters in the Palestinian-­ Israeli context and complicates the role of photography at intersections of nationality and power such as those examined by Ariella Azoulay.114 Her works explore how ‘acts of photography’ plot political spaces during which people create meaning between one another. According to Azoulay, there are two main photographic by-products emerging from these encounters. One is the creation of photographic citizenship among ‘several protagonists, mainly photographer and photographed, camera and spectator’ who by the process of photography become part of the global ‘photographic citizenry’.115 The other is the photograph itself, which according to her neo-Benjaminian approach, captures historical events, landscapes, and peoples. Most recently, Azoulay argued that some photographs can assist with unlearning imperialism through the ‘potential histories’ they represent. Here, photographs can ‘retrieve, reconstruct, and give an account of diverse world that persist despite the historicised limits of our world’.116 As Pinney pointed out, however, Azoulay’s approach is prescriptive with regards to the imagined potentialities of photography and does not ‘offer an ethnography of p ­ hotography’117 per se. With that said, I suggest photographic citizenship is a useful concept for ethnographically examining acts of photography associated with Palestinian and Israeli nationalisms. Though, Azoulay solely contextualises these interactions (and the products of them) as violent photographic events, for example during protests.118 While relevant in the Naqab context, the entangled visual economies model I outline here speaks to other, more mundane, photographic encounters. Institutional influences of the state, conflict, and violence regularly shape photography in this part of the world, but the medium is also involved in collaborations and competitions that, for example, frequently occur locally between Bedouin members and their Palestinian and Jewish neighbours. Second, while inspired by Azoulay’s discussion of potential history, the model described here also aims to de-homogenise photographed Palestinian people as the marginalised ‘Arab Other’ in Israeli spaces and acknowledge their various photographic entanglements. For instance, Palestinian visual history is not a singular narrative. While sharing many experiences, Palestinian histories are also diverse and reflect peoples’ disparate relationships, citizenships, agencies, intersectionalities, and interpretations of the past. Third, this model deemphasises the notion of uniform acts of photography (e.g., those performed by Israeli officials and professional photographers) and instead describes diverse Palestinian photographies (i.e., vernacular photography and ­self-curations). Fourth, this line of query expands focus on the interpretation of images by Bedouin members, as a Palestinian people, as they reuse archival images outside state-dominated spaces and narratives of oppression (be they inherently framed by them) for their own purposes and agencies. Finally, this model of visual economies provides a contextualising framework with which to further landscape and theorise how photographs, as documentary actants, construct histories through practices of Bedouin visual historicity. In all, photography and photographs in the Naqab Desert are involved in unequal acts of othering, conflict, resistance, erasure, and nationalised history politics; however, one cannot ignore the fact that the lives of photographic objects and their inscriptions have the capacity to diversify – to transform into evidence (not only used by the Israeli state but) by various Palestinian peoples (of which the Bedouin are a part) in pursuit of

Anthropology of Bedouin Photography and Photographs  123 their own goals. Compelled by their changeable meanings, presences, and circulations, the history works of photographs are no longer solely dictated by the contracts of their birth or presence in Israeli state archives, for example, but instead they have the availability to accumulate other biographies of value and knowledges during their life span as they circulate in different contexts. It is on these occasions that a people, like the Bedouin, who were once merely considered to be photographed subjects, not only create, reclaim, but also reinscribe images with their own histories. These photographs then acquire lives beyond the visual economies of Orientalism, colonialism, and nationalism where they engage closer networks, intimate relationships, and local perceptions of the past (Figure 3.5).

Figure 3.5 Photo wall at Shaykh Salmān al-Huzayyil II’s home. Original creator(s): unknown. Original date: unknown. Location: al-Huzayyil Family Archive. Photographer: Emilie Le Febvre Original date: 20 December 2012.

Notes 1 Turner, Terrance. 1991. ‘The Social Dynamics of Video Media in an Indigenous Society: The Cultural Meaning and Personal Politics of Video-Making in Kayapó Communities’, Visual Anthropology Review, 7 (2): 68–72. 2 Ginsburg, Faye. 1991. ‘Indigenous Media: Faustian Contract of Global Village’, Cultural Anthropology, 6 (1): 92–112 (https://doi.org/10.1525/can.1991.6.1.02a00040); Himpele, Jeff. 2008. Circuits of Culture: Media, Politics, and Indigenous Identity in the Andes Vol. 20, United States: University of Minnesota Press. 3 Bailey 2004, 125. 4 Ibid., 351. 5 Abu Rabia, Aref. 2012. ‘The Significance of Colours in Pastoral Bedouin Society’, Serendipity in Anthropological Research: The Nomadic Turn, Haim Hazan and Esther Hertzog (eds.), England and United States of America: Ashgate, 246–256. 6 Ibid.

124 Photography 7 Armbrust, Walter. 2012. ‘History in Arab Media Studies: A Speculative Cultural History’, Arab Cultural Studies: Mapping the Field, Tarik Sabry (ed.), New York: I.B. Tauris & Co. Ltd, 36 (https://doi.org/10.5040/9780755611157.ch-002). 8 Ibid. 9 Ibid. 10 Jay, Martin. 1993. Downcast Eyes: The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth-Century French Thought, California: University of California Press, cited in Armbrust 2012, 36. 11 Gruber and Haugbølle 2013, Ryzova 2015a, 2015b. 12 Hawker 2002. 13 Gruber and Haugbølle 2013, xxv. 14 Aytemiz, Pelin. 2015. ‘Making Grandfather Come Out Better’, Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication, 8 (2–3): 355–337 (https://doi.org/10.1163/18739865­ 00802010); Sheehi, Stephen. 2016. The Arab Imago: A Social History of Portrait Photography, ­1860–1910, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press (https://doi.org/10.1515/ 9780691235356); Behdad, Ali. 2016. Camera Orientialis: Reflections on Photography of the Middle East, Chicago, IL and London: University of Chicago Press (https://doi.org/10.7208/ chicago/9780226356549.001.0001). 15 Campbell, Craig. 2014. Agitating Images: Photography against History in Indigenous Siberia. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press (https://doi.org/10.5749/minnesota/9780816681051.001.0001); Campt, Tina. 2017. Listening to Images, Durham, NC: Duke University Press (https://doi.org/10.1515/9780822373582). 16 Gruber and Haugbølle 2013, xxv. 17 Pasternak, Gill. 2020b. ‘Global and Local Forces in Photography Studies’, The Handbook of Photography Studies, Gil Pasternak (ed.), London and New York: Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 332 (https://doi.org/10.5040/9781474242233.ch-021). 18 Le Febvre 2015. 19 Stein 2021; Khatib, Lina. 2012. Image Politics in the Middle East: The Role of the Visual in Political Struggle, London: I.B. Tauris (https://doi.org/10.5040/9780755610785). 20 Meiselas, Susan. 2008. Kurdistan: The Shadow of History, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. 21 Peers, Laura and Alison Brown (eds.) 2003. Museums and Source Communities, London: Routledge (https://doi.org/10.4324 /9780203987834). 22 Banks, Marcus and Richard Vokes. 2010, ‘Introduction: Anthropology, Photography, and the Archive’, History and Anthropology, 21 (4): 337–349, 338 (https://doi.org/10.1080/0275720 6.2010.522375). 23 Azoulay, 2019; Sela, Roni. 2014, ‘Rethinking National Archives in Colonial Countries and Zones of Conflict: The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict and Israel’s National Photography Archives as a Case Study’, http://www.ibraaz.org/essays/78, Accessed 20 February 2015. 24 Azoulay 2019. 25 Ibid. 26 Morton, Christopher and Darren Newbury. (eds.) 2015. ‘Introduction: Relocating the ­African Photographic Archive’, The African Photographic Archive: Research and Curatorial Strategies, London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 3 (https://doi.org/10.4324/ 9781003103912-1). 27 Doumani, Beshara. 2009. ‘Archiving Palestine and the Palestinians: The Patrimony of Ihsan Nimr’, Jerusalem Quarterly, 36: 3–12. 28 Ibid. 29 Stroler, Ann. 2018. ‘On Archiving as Dissensus’, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, 38 (1): 43–56 (https://doi.org/10.1215/1089201x-4389967). 30 Ryzova 2014, 301. 31 Ryzova, Lucie. 2012. ‘I Have the Picture! Egypt’s Photographic Heritage between Digital Reproduction and Neoliberalism’, Jadaliyya, http://photography.jadaliyya.com, Accessed October 2014. 32 Ibid. 33 Benjamin 2008 (1936), 215. 34 Sontag, Susan. 1978. On Photography, United States: Dell Publishing Co. and University of California, 154. 35 Barthes, Roland. 1981. Camera Lucida, London: Jonathan Cape. 36 Benjamin, Walter. 1931. ‘A Short History of Photography’, The New Photography: Germany 1927–33, London: Arts Council of Great Britain.

Anthropology of Bedouin Photography and Photographs  125 37 Pinney, Christopher. 2016. ‘Crisis and Visual Critique’, Visual Anthropology Review, 32 (1): 76–77 (https://doi.org/10.1111/var. 12094). 38 Weizman, Eyal. 2020. ‘Ground Truth: Reading Aerial Images of the Naqab from the Ground Up’, Jerusalem Quarterly, 81: 37–51; Also see Weizman, Eyal and Fazal Sheikh. 2015. The Conflict Shoreline: Colonialism as Climate Change, Göttingen: Steidl. 39 Weizman 2020. 40 Ibid., 39. 41 Ibid. 42 Campt 2012, 5. 43 Sontag 1978. 44 Wright, Terence. 1999. The Photography Handbook, London and New York, Routledge Press, 69–70. There are several approaches explaining how this process works, this section explores constructionist positions (i.e., semiotic/poetic and discursive/political) due to their popularity in secondary literature. 45 Hall, Stuart. 1997. Representations: Cultural Representation and Signifying Practices, ­London: Sage Publication. 46 Barthes 1981, 37. 47 Campbell 2014, 188. 48 Hall 1997. 49 Wright 1999. 50 Eder and Klonk. 2016; Latour, Bruno. 1999. ‘Circulating Reference: Sampling the Soil in the Amazon Forest’, Pandora’s Hope: Essays on the Reality of Science Studies, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 24–79; Foucault, Michel. 1966. Les Motes et les Choses, Paris: Gallimard. 51 Mirzoeff, Nicolas. (ed.) 2002. The Visual Culture Reader, London: Psychology Press. 52 C.S. Pierce’s work. Pierce, C.S. 1977. Semiotics and Signifies, Charles Hardwick (ed.), Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 53 Edwards 2003; Pinney, Christopher and Nicolas Peterson. 2003. Photography’s Other ­Histories (Objects/Histories), Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press (https://doi. org/10.1215/9780822384717); Strassler, Karen. 2010. Refracted Visions: Popular Photography and National Modernity in Java, Durham, NC: Duke University Press (https://doi. org/10.2307/j.ctv11cw7gs). 54 Asad, Tal. 1975. Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter, New York: Ithaca Press; ­Mitchell, Timothy. 1991. Colonising Egypt, United States: University of California Press (https://doi. org/10.1525/9780520911666). 55 Ryan, James. 1994. Picturing Empire: Photography and the Visualization of the British Empire, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press; Maxwell, Ann. 1999. Colonial Photography and Exhibitions: Representations of the Native and the Making of European Identities, New York: Leicester University Press. 56 Tagg, John. 1988. The Burden of Representation, Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press, 19 (https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-19355-4). 57 Said, Edward. 1978. Orientalism, New York: Vintage Books. 58 Khalidi 1984, Graham-Brown 1988, and Moors, Annelies. 2001. ‘Presenting Palestine’s ­Population Premonitions of the Nakba’, MIT Electronic Journals of Middle East Studies, http://hdl.handle.net/11245/1.195790, Accessed 12 April 2010. 59 Schick, İrvn Cemıl, Sarah Graham-Brown, Malek Alloula and Rana Kabbani. 1990. ‘Representing Middle Eastern Women: Feminism and Colonial Discourse’, Feminist Studies, 16 (2): 345–380, 350–351 (https://doi.org/10.2307/3177854). 60 Hartmann, Wolfram, Jeremy Silvester and Patricia Hayes (eds.) 1998. Colonising Camera: Photographs in the Making of Namibian History, United States: Ohio University Press; Pinney 2003; Jacobson, Ken. 2007. Odalisques and Arabesques: Orientalist Photography 1839–1925, London: Quaritch Ltd.; Behdad, Ali and Luke Gartlan. 2013. Photography’s Orientalism: New Essays on Colonial Representation. Los Angeles, CA: Getty Publications. 61 Jacobson 2007, 91. 62 Behdad and Luke Gartlan 2013. 63 Edwards, Elizabeth and Christopher Morton (eds.). 2009. ‘Introduction’, Photography, Anthropology, and History: Expanding the Frame, United Kingdom: Ashgate Publishing ­Limited, 3.

126 Photography 64 Pinney 2003. 65 Behad 2016. 66 Miles, Melissa. 2020. ‘The Eye-Witness of Humanity: Changing Approaches to Photography’s Relationship to Society and Culture’, The Handbook of Photography Studies, Gil P ­ asternak (ed.), London, New York, Oxford, New Delhi, Sydney: Bloomsbury Visual Arts., 67 (https:// doi.org/10.5040/9781474242233.ch-005). 67 Peers and Brown 2003, 6. 68 Edwards and Morton 2009, 3. 69 Ryzova 2012, 1. 70 Sheeli 2016, xxviii, xxiii; Tamari et al. 2022. 71 Rowlands 1993. 72 Kopytoff, Igor. 1986. ‘The Cultural Biography of Things’, The Social Life of Things: ­Commodities in a Social Perspective, Arjun Appadurai (ed.), Cambridgeshire: Cambridge University Press, 64 (https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511819582.004). Also see Gell, Alfred. 1998. Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory, Oxford: Oxford University Press; ­Knappett, Carl. 2002. ‘Photographs, Skeuomorphs, and Marionettes: Some Thoughts on Mind, Agency, And Object’, Journal of Material Culture, 7 (1): 97–117 (https://doi.org/10.11 77/1359183502007001307); Miller, Daniel. (ed.) 1997. ‘Why Some Things Matter’, Material Cultures, London and Chicago, IL: UCL Press and University of Chicago Press (https://doi. org/10.4324/9780203033142-6). 73 Bourdieu, Pierre. 1977. Outline of a Theory of Practice, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (https://doi.org/10.1017/ cbo9780511812507). 74 Layne 1989, 30. 75 Ibid. 76 Joe Alon Museum. 2013. ‘The Museum of Bedouin Culture’, http://www.joealon.org.il/­ Content.aspx?itemId=18, Accessed 4 November 2014. 77 Ibid. 78 Edwards, Elizabeth and Janice Hart. (eds.). 2004. Photographs Objects Histories: On the Materiality of Images, Chicago: Routledge, 2 (https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203506493). 79 Porto, Nuno. 2004. ‘Under the Gaze of the Ancestors: Photographs and Performance in ­Colonial Angola’, Photographs Object Histories, Elizabeth Edwards and Janice Hart (eds.), London: Routledge, 113. 80 Kopytoff 1986, 68. 81 Gell 1998, Latour, Bruno. 2007. Reassembling the Social, Hampshire: Oxford University Press. 82 Kopytoff 1986, Miller 1997, Edwards 2004, and Porto 2004. 83 Nassar et al. 2022. 84 Knappett 2002, 97. 85 Edwards 2001, 28–29. 86 Shryock 1997. 87 Ibid., 294–295. 88 Ibid., 297–298. 89 Poole 1997. 90 Ibid., 7. 91 Latour 1999. 92 Gell 1998. 93 Edwards 2012, 224. 94 Latour 2007. 95 Poole 1997. 96 Gruber and Haugbølle 2013. 97 Miller and Horst 2012. 98 DeNicola, Lane. 2013. ‘Geomedia: The Reassertion of Space within Digital Culture’, ­Digital Anthropology, Heather Horst and Daniel Miller (eds.), London and New York: Berg ­Publishers, 80–100. 99 Yaqab, Nadia. 2015. ‘The Afterlives of Violent Images: Reading Photographs from the Tal al-Zaʿtar Refugee Camp on Facebook’, Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication, 8: 327–354 (https://doi.org/10.1163/18739865-00802009).

Anthropology of Bedouin Photography and Photographs  127 100 Ibid. 101 Appadurai, Arjun. (ed.) 1986. ‘Introduction: Commodities and the Politics of Value’, The Social Life of Things: Commodities in a Social Perspective, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 3 (https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511819582.003). 102 James Faris (1993) argued that making local culture visible to outsiders for political engagement does not free peoples from Western influence. 103 Appadurai 1986, 57. 104 Poole 1997. 105 Ibid., 11. 106 Dresch 1986. 107 Eickelman 1979. 108 Behdad 2017. 109 Rose, Gillian. 2010. Doing Family Photography: The Domestic, The Public, and The Politics of Sentiment, Farnham: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 5 (https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315577890). 110 Morton and Newbury 2015, 2. 111 Edwards and Morton 2009, 6. 112 Edwards 2021, 43. 113 Ibid., 48, 53. 114 Azoulay, Ariella. 2010. ‘What Is a Photograph? What Is Photography?’, Philosophy of ­Photography, 1 (1): 9–13, 11 (https://doi.org/ 10.1386/pop.1.1.9/7). 115 Ibid., 11. 116 Azoulay 2019, 289. 117 Pinney 2018. 118 Azoulay, Ariella. 2012. Civil Imagination: A Political Ontology of Photography, Trans. Louis Bethlehem, London and New York: Verso.

4 Photographic Presences and Entangled Visual Economies

In the twenty-first century, photographic and digital depictions saturate people’s lives in the Naqab Desert. For the most part, images circulate in isolation from one another. In many instances they exert their performances alone, unaccompanied by fellow images produced in the same series, and instead communicate through mediations in books, during conversations, and on websites. Notwithstanding their isolated sojourns, photographs share histories and work with one another to create visual knowledge of these people and their pasts. Moreover, when brought together under certain conditions (say within specific networks of things and people) images of Bedouin have generated (over different times and spaces) unique visual tropes over the last centuries, including specific iconography of the past. In particular, collections of photographic and digital images produced by a myriad of individuals with a range of photographic technologies over the last hundred years have created several concentric but well-established visual economies  – ­firmaments of vision, photography, and knowledge that influence how both members and non-members ‘see’ Bedouin society and history in southern Israel. In order to account for the embedded ‘image worlds’1 wherein Naqab Bedouin photographs work to produce and engage history over the last century, I survey the Naqab’s entangled visual economies in this chapter. These contexts are defined by the profusion and abundance of iconographies produced by culturally determined photographic practices within politically and economically specific representational landscapes. I label them: (a) global – international and religious communities (civic and Islamic); (b) macro – Palestinian-Israeli nationalisms; meso (c) – Bedouin (heterogeneous classes) society in the Naqab; meso (d) – named lineages (ʿāʾilāt – identified by tribal names, genealogical ancestry, and descent); micro (e) – extended family (ʿāʾila) and networks of cognates; and micro (f) – immediate family (bayt). For the purposes of analysis, these visual economies have been evened out. Notwithstanding, some visual economies, such as those characterising Israeli and Palestinian nationalisms, often have more weight in members’ lives than others. While separated here, the boundaries of these visual economies are also blurry, porous, entwined, and overlap yet together create the Naqab Bedouin’s distinctive yet hierarchical representational landscape today. As discussed in the last chapter, the visual economies discussed here are arranged by Bedouin ideals of closeness and distance but also the scope of image-making practices producing photographs of their society. They are described chronologically, that is arranged and ordered by the dates of their dominant image producers, for example, individuals and institutions bringing specific images into the world. The chronology of each visual economy differs as different peoples took up photography in the region at various times but, together, they span the late nineteenth century up until 2013 (the end of my fieldwork). In DOI: 10.4324/9781003185703-7

Photographic Presences and Entangled Visual Economies  129 this regard, the chapter provides a history of Naqab Bedouin p ­ hotography that discusses the broader ideological and iconographic contexts such as Orientalism, colonialism, and nationalisms along with the narrower tribal, civic, and familial discourses influencing the making of photographs.2 These processes have created specific photographic genres which include carte de visite, portraits, ID photos, family photos, school pictures, street photos, tourist images, and protest images, for example. Additionally, the economic organisation (technological qualities) of these photographs and their ‘viewings’ characterising each visual economy are also explored. At the end of the nineteenth century, for instance, many images of Bedouin in Naqab took the form of stereographs. During the mid-­twentieth century, black-and-white film and paper photographs dominated. At the turn of the twenty-first century, images are digital codes. Throughout this time, images were stored in national and regional archives and consumed by outsiders in magazines and newspapers. In the twenty-first century, however, consumption increased and now images cross international, language, and physical borders via the Internet, mobiles, and websites. These visual economies were created by a range of peoples and their respective photographs and access to technologies. At the same time, however, all of the images assembled here involved the active participation of Bedouin members from the past and present. As Nicole Strathman demonstrated with American Indian photography,3 marginalised peoples such as Bedouin were and still are agents in the creation of photographs depicting their history and society. Whether as local photographers, sitters, archival collectors, digital curators, collaborators, proxies, or actuates of their landscapes and events, Bedouin experiences are inscribed onto these images. For example, Elizabeth Edwards explained that photography endows imaged events, landscapes, and people not only with a sense of permanence but also a ‘presence’ that ‘echoes’ in the present.4 Gary Minkley also pointed out that images inscribe experiences that ‘someone lived through’5 despite that many acts of photography involved profound asymmetrical relations, seized moments, staged scenes, and replicated established hierarchies of power and oppression. In all, photographs reflect the standpoints of photographers and consumers but they also inscribe the subjective experiences of imaged Bedouin. With that said, however, in most cases, the names, experiences, and positionalities of these people were never recorded, lost to time, disregarded, or deemed unimportant by the image producers. Alternatively, the subjects were ‘chosen’ by photographers out of opportunity or selection because they represented particular ideas of Bedouinism for their prospective audiences. These attributes included their clothing, physical attributes, staged material culture, backgrounds, and cultural performances all representing particular clichés of this society. These range from overlapping Western stereotypes of Bedouin nobility, bravery, and Biblical imagery to Palestinian and Israeli views typecasting Bedouin primitivity, otherness, and poverty to members’ own notions of honour (sharaf), modesty, and kinship. Notwithstanding, the presences of the imaged subjects remain inscribed on these photographs as they were all produced through the direct and indirect participation of Bedouin individuals. Thus, these images hold an innate ‘potential’,6 in Azoulay’s words, to be reworked within and between the entangled visual economies typifying this society. In all, this chapter describes and organises the varied contexts wherein Bedouin engage photographic and digital images of their past and people. As a result, it presents a discursive map of the visual economies upon which I can later trace the history work of six images and their sojourns between a wide range of places. It is during travels that they evidence understandings of the past and acquire historical significance as they are instrumentalised as objects of historical persuasion by contemporary Bedouin in the Naqab.

130 Photography Macro Global and National Visual Economies The production of photographic and digital images of Bedouin peoples in the Naqab by outsiders has a long history. Some are vintage postcards created and sold to Victorian tourists visiting the Holy Land while others are digital works commissioned by NGOs depicting human rights abuses in Israel. Non-Bedouin travellers, expatriates, colonialists, regional governments, missionaries, and foreign photographers are the largest producers of these types of images of Naqab Bedouin.7 While the age, materiality, style, and production technologies of images of Bedouin in this part of the Middle East vary considerably; their contents, purposes, consumptions, and circulations within these broader visual economies have remained remarkably unchanged over the last hundred years. (A) Global – International Visual Economy – Internationally and nationally produced imagery of Bedouin in the Middle East depict cultural material objects, desert landscapes, and costumed subjects. Over time these depictions have created visual tropes pertaining to tribalism, honour, and tradition. Images portrayed Bedouin as ‘a people of the past’, emphasising their pastoral nomadic way of life, and highlighting their otherness in relation to regional urbanites and Europeans.8 Consequently, over the last 150 years, visual representations of Naqab Bedouin are firmly situated within Orientalist imaginings of tribalism and nomadism in the Middle East. These depictions present stereotypical images of the Holy Land and Bedouin ‘natives’ but rarely depict local ways of life. Thus photographs’ exchange values in these macro visual economies often say more about the interests, perceptions, technological capacities, and culture of the image-­makers, in this case outsiders, than the Bedouin peoples depicted in them.9 As Ali Behad pointed out, there was a ‘network of practices, institutions, and relations that made possible the production of these images in the first place, as well as the political-cultural context that led them to be so rapaciously consumed as visual and exotic objects’.10 The earliest visual depictions of this population developed alongside Islamic art in the seventh century. Visual art from this time is organised by period: Early Period (Umayyad Dynasty [661-750] and the Abbasid Caliphate [750-1258]), the Medieval Period (ninthfifteenth centuries), and Modern Period (fifteenth century to 1815, a time when the ­Ottoman Empire or Caliphate ruled the Levant). During these eras, people residing in this Muslim-ruled region created visual depictions of Middle Eastern peoples in the form of paintings, miniatures, illuminated manuscripts, and illustrations in bounded volumes or albums (muraqqa). For example, many historians consider the Abbasid Caliphate ­(749–1258) the Islamic Golden Age. During this period, court patrons commissioned paintings depicting the Empire’s peoples, events, and other scenes. Around the fifteenth century, however, Abbasid art patronages collapsed in the wake of colonisation by the Ottoman Empire and later European powers. During the early Ottoman Period (est. fourteenth century), manuscripts contained illustrations of various Middle Eastern populations including Bedouin people who were often presented as lawless nomads.11 From the eighteenth century onwards, European Orientalist styles influenced Islamic art produced under the rule of the late Ottoman Empire in the wake of Christian pilgrimages and tourism, Western colonisation and territorial wars, and commercial trade between Europe and Asia. During this ‘rediscovery’ of the ‘Arab World’, Europeans produced visual depictions of Bedouin peoples in the Middle East for Western audiences in the form of paintings and illustrations from the sixteenth century onward. For example, George Sandys (1615 [1577–1644]) published his experiences in Egypt and the Holy Land, included in his work were drawings and maps of the region’s inhabitants and various populations residing in the region. Illustrations of these peoples and landscapes were

Photographic Presences and Entangled Visual Economies  131 also included in Description de l’Egypte (1798), which contained the illustrative works of over 2,000 European artists. Another example of early illustrations of Bedouin people in the Middle East is John Wilson’s book Lands of the Bible (1847) produced during his visit to Egypt, Syria, and Palestine. By the nineteenth century, European fascination with the Orient solidified in art and scholarly discourses on the Middle East. ‘On a visual art media-scape it influenced everything from the Orientalist school of painting in the French Academy to the picture postcards tourists sent home to their families’.12 French and British Orientalist schools of painting began to emerge associated with Vogue de l’Orient.13 Artworks depicting Bedouin in the Orient focused on visual clichés of the ‘wild Bedouin, harems, biblical characters, and Oriental decay’.14 Painters portrayed Bedouin as fierce warriors and noble savages of the Middle Eastern deserts. One popular example was American tourist painter, John Singer Sargent who produced his ‘Bedouin series’ in situ during his travels in Ottoman Palestine. Visual iconography of Bedouin substantially increased in both the Middle East and Europe with the invention of plate (1839) and film (1885) photography. Because of their realistic indexical qualities, photographic portrayals of Middle Eastern cultures, people, and landscapes proliferated in the nineteenth century. Many photographs of Bedouin in the region often replicated Orientalist themes thus reflecting Victorian aesthetics of studio displays, theatrical poses, and exotic peoples, landscapes, and objects. Foreign travelling photographers created photographic images of Bedouin and their images were reprinted in a corpus of books, slides, postcards, newspapers, and other memorabilia of what Westerners idealised as biblical Palestine. These images became souvenirs for tourists, artistic study aids for painters, and empirical documents for historians, scholars, and government officials. For example, early anthropologists used photographs for the scientific study of ‘native Bedouin types’ associated with physiognomy conventions whereby full-face and profile portraits were produced to create (what they erroneously believed at the time to be) measurable information about different Middle Eastern people.15 By the end of the nineteenth century, photographic technology was firmly established in the Middle East. Residents (both local and expatriate Europeans) of cities such as Istanbul, Jerusalem, Beirut, and Cairo had set up studios by the 1860s. In Palestine, earlier commercial foreign photographers depicting Bedouin populations produced images between 1857 and 1948. In addition to commercial photographers, many British officials and foreign institutions produced photographic records of Bedouin during the Mandate Period. These included: The Jerusalem and Middle East Church Association (est. 1841) which produced a large collection of magic lantern slides; the Palestinian Exploration Fund (est. 1865);16 and the American Colony (est. 1881). Of these, the photographers of the American Colony’s Photography Department produced one of the largest collections of early Naqab Bedouin photographs as most other photographers at the time concentrated on northern Palestine and Jerusalem. For example, ʿĀrif al-ʿĀrif invited John Whitening from the American Colony to photograph the Bedouin, their way of life, and customs in southern Palestine during the British Mandate (1922–1948). The images, now held in the Library of Congress’s Matson Photo Collection, were later reproduced in several of al-ʿĀrif’s books. This archive is by far the most extensive collection of early photographs and stereographs of Naqab Bedouin society and history (as situation further detailed in the next chapter). In summary, photographers in the first half of the twentieth century were largely commissioned by elite patrons, news agencies, and local governments such as the Ottomans and the British. Along with professional photography, upper-class

132 Photography Middle Eastern elites in regional metropolises also gradually took up the practice and, consequently, the technology disseminated unevenly among different classes with photographs largely circulated within urban centres.17 Until the last half of the century, the region’s Bedouin populations never fully took up photography, leaving many desert areas without extensive photographic histories. By the mid-twentieth century and with the growing accessibility of cameras and film, foreign photojournalists increased the production of photographs of Bedouin in the Naqab. During World War I, foreign military photographers (e.g., with Ottomans, ­British, and Australians forces) photographed the Beersheba region. War photography of the Naqab includes images surrounding the events and people involved in World War I and the Southern Palestine Campaign (1917) between the British and the Turkish. During World War II, they took images of the ‘Battle for Beersheba’ (1948) between Jewish yishuv and Egyptians; and attacks between Jewish and Arab nationalist groups. While most images of the war were taken by Palestinian and Israeli photographers (discussed below), some foreign photojournalists such as Robert Capa (1913-1954) photographed the region at the time. Most of these images were consumed in foreign periodicals such as TIME and LIFE. Access to the war-torn Naqab, however, was largely restricted for foreign visitors. Instead, various staff created photographs for refugee and humanitarian organisations such as the United Nations (1948) and International Red Cross (1948) documenting the expulsion of the Israeli state’s Arab populations. It was not until the 1950s that Western commercial and amateur photographers were able to more easily access the Naqab Bedouin and produce their own images in the form of picture books, slides, and printed paper copies for commercial sale, personal collections, news agencies, and historical records. International photographers such as Klaus Otto-Hundt, Alberto Simon,18 Susan Gidal, and Tim Gidal (who later moved to Jerusalem), anthropologists such as Richard Randolph, and other visiting tourists, diplomats, and journalists all contributed to the increased production of photographs of the Naqab Bedouin throughout the mid- to late twentieth century. During this time, the region witnessed a proliferation of photojournalism by foreign media whose staff employed contemporary styles of photography including colour and ‘firing squad’ snapshots but regularly superimposed old Orientalist themes, conventions, staging, and material objects in their images. Visual signifiers included costumes, desert landscapes, and livestock representing the ‘ideal pastoral nomad’. Many also incorporated objects used in social customs and representing values such as hospitality, strength, or pride, for example, coffee pots, goat-hair tents, and swords. From the 1960s, the modern Middle Eastern nation-states were established and with them, many foreign photographers set out to record what they considered to be the Bedouins’ disappearing way of life. ‘Salvage anthropology’ and associated image-making focused on pastoral tribes, Kurds, Berbers, and Druze, which often ‘embodied a romantic nostalgia, and sometimes an explicit wish to capture a version of these “pristine” societies before they disappeared forever’.19 At this time, themes of ‘change’ were p ­ hotographically visualised through ‘juxtaposition of images: of Bedouin against the motorcar … the “biblical” Palestinian peasant against the “modern” Zionist setter’.20 These works draw on visual dichotomies such as old/new, modern/backward, and rural/urban to justify and portray progress, government programmes, and constructions of national heritage in newly established Middle Eastern states. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, photographic works depicting Bedouin in the Naqab expanded with digital technologies. With the advent of compact digital cameras, smartphones, and single-lens reflex (SLR) cameras, foreign-produced photographs of these people repeat similar themes in attempts to capture the demise of tribal existence and poverty in the desert. Beliefs about the end of Bedouin culture are not merely characteristic

Photographic Presences and Entangled Visual Economies  133 of Israel but permeate most Middle Eastern countries. Regional urbanites ‘have been nostalgic about the perceived disappearance of “the Bedouin way of life” for the last century’.21 For example, as early as the seventh century, regional writers have recorded their concerns about the decline of nomadism among Bedouin and the ‘breakdown of their ancient, nomadic, pagan culture’, which they considered to be in the ‘final stages of decay’ as a result of expanding influences of Islam, urban society, and modernity in the region.22 Today international photographers regularly visit the Naqab for the specific purpose of photographing Bedouin. For example, foreign photojournalists from Reuters, CNN, BBC, Al Jazeera, The New York Times, and the Guardian and staff from Amnesty International, Doctors Without Borders, and various other organisations can frequently be found in the Naqab in search of image-making opportunities for international photography awards, news articles, and humanitarian photo essays. These visits are usually hosted by regional or local NGOs such as the NCF and spokespersons who take visitors to villages and towns (along with political tourists). These visitors’ photographic and digital by-products are consumed in European or American venues such as art exhibitions, PowerPoint presentations, image databases, and individual websites. Many of these works also highlight themes of poverty, Israeli discrimination, pastoral nomadism, and the Naqab Bedouin life in the desert (Figures 4.1–4.4).

Figure 4.1  ‘An Easter in the Orient, The Evening Star (Washington, D.C.), 19 April 19 1908’. Original creator(s): Evening Star Newspaper Co. Print no. 15110. Location of original: Forms part of: Views of the Holy Land in the Photochrom print collection. Date of original: 1908. Medium: newspaper. Reel Number: 00280656288. Repository: Library of Congress, ­Washington, D.C. 20540 USA. https://lccn.loc.gov/sn83045462. Accessed date: 1 March 2023.

134 Photography

Figure 4.2  ‘Bedouins and children outside a tent, Holy Land’. Original creator(s): Detroit ­Publishing Co., catalogue J foreign section. Detroit, Mich., Detroit Photographic Company, 1905. Print no. 15110.  Location of original: Forms part of: Views of the Holy Land in the Photochrom print collection. Date of original: Between ca. 1890 and ca. 1900.  Medium: 1 photomechanical print, photochrom, colour. Call Number: LOT 13424, no. 115 [item] [P&P]. Repository: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA. www.loc.gov/item/2002725066/. Accessed date: 1 March 2023.

Photographic Presences and Entangled Visual Economies  135

Figure 4.3  ‘Aref el Aref & Bedouin sheikhs’. Original creator(s): American Colony (Jerusalem) Photo Department, photographer. Location of original: Matson (G. Eric and Edith) Photograph Collection. Date of original: 1932 August. Medium: 1 negative, nitrate, 4 x 5 in. Call Number: LC-M33- 8774-Y [P&P]. Repository: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA. www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2019708631/. Accessed date: 1 March 2023.

136 Photography

Figure 4.4 ‘Bedouin Market in the 1960s’. Original creator(s): unknown. Location of ­original: unknown. Secondary producer: Rami Atwan on 31 January 2012. www.­palestineremembered.com/ Beersheba/ Beersheba/Picture75652.html. Date: Unknown. Uploaded: 9 March 2011. Accessed date: 1 March 2023.

Photographic Presences and Entangled Visual Economies  137 (B) Macro – Palestinian and Israeli Visual Economies – Within the Palestinian national discourse (specifically Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza, diaspora, and Israel), representations of Bedouin-ness have different meanings as opposed to countries where Bedouin heritage has become a national signifier. Throughout the late twentieth century, Palestinian Arab nationalism, especially in the West Bank, was largely symbolised by the urban and farming peasants (fallāḥīn). In the 1990s, Ted Swedenburg argued that fallāḥīn is a unifying icon for West Bank Palestinian culture and images and symbols associated with fallāḥ life, villages, and farming found in paintings, stories, and magazine illustrations were nationalised in order to ideologically ‘cover over significant differences within Palestinian society’.23 Notwithstanding, fellow Palestinians have also created their own images of Bedouin in the region since the arrival of the technology to the area. By the end of the nineteenth century, local Arab (non-Bedouin) and Armenian photographers, for example, worked throughout Ottoman Palestine, setting up studios in Jerusalem, Jaffa, Haifa, and Nazareth.24 Similar to their European counterparts, elite patrons and wealthy families, news agencies, and local governmental officials commissioned early Palestinian photographers such as Khālil Raʿd (1854–1957) to produce images throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. These images were consumed in the form of postcards, travel albums, and souvenirs for the tourist market depicting the Holy Land’s sites, religious ceremonies, staged biblical scenes, and Ottoman events and notables.25 These early image-makers reproduced Victorian conventions, Western staging, and material culture. Unlike the Europeans, however, Palestinian image-makers also regularly photographed local ­families in studio portraits, community events, ceremonies, social occasions, and missionary organisations and activities mostly in urban environments. These images, however, almost exclusively focused on regional centres outside of the Naqab Desert. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Palestinian photographers (much like their Western counterparts) took up wartime press photography including studio portraits of army personnel, pictures of combat, and images of conflicts during World War I and World War II, which occasionally included the Beersheba region. This later generation of Palestinian photographers left the studio and went into the ‘field’ to take images of the war-torn region. Issam Nassar explained, ‘Several photographs from the 1940s by Hanna Safieh [1901-1979], for example, show leaders such as Abd al-Qader al-­Husseini, commander of the al-Jihad al-Muqaddas (Holy War) Army, posing for the camera surrounded by other armed men’.26 Their work appeared in newspapers and magazines such as National Geographic, Readers Digest, and the London News throughout the mid-twentieth century. It was also during this time that Palestinian photography increasingly focused on nationalist themes. Palestinians began information campaigns which employed photographs for nationalist propaganda depicting life in Palestine and ­highlighting ‘modern’ commerce, agriculture, culture, and people in order to counter Zionist claims that Palestine was an empty landscape devoid of people.27 Thus, for the most part, the region’s Bedouin populations and their peripheral way of life were seen to counter these nationalist goals at the time. Consequently, my archival research found little evidence of ­ Palestinian photography specifically portraying Bedouin in Naqab throughout the early to mid-twentieth century. For example, Khālil Rāssas (1948–n.d.) devoted his photography to ‘documenting the Palestinian resistance against the Zionist usurpers’28 but exclusively focused on urban Palestinian centres and not activities in the southern desert.

138 Photography Since the 1980s, the tradition of documenting Palestinian life has continued with contemporary Palestinian photographers studying in art academies while others work with international press agencies. These photographers have begun to increasingly capture the lives and struggles of Bedouin populations throughout Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza. Of these, Ahlām Shiblī defines herself as a Palestinian of Bedouin descent from Israel. Her image works, sold in photography books and exhibitions, explore the life of ‘her Bedouin people’29 in villages in the Galilee and Naqab regions through visual depictions of Bedouin homes. Using photojournalist styles of documentary image-making she depicts Bedouin landscapes, towns, cemeteries, and people, which for the most part replicate images of poverty in the Naqab. The content of contemporary Palestinian photography and digital photography focuses on themes of memory, humanitarian issues, political issues such as prisoners and West Bank villages, struggles during the Intifāḍa, and visualisation of Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Since the 1960s, these works have created a prolific visual narrative pertaining to Palestinian society, predominantly depicting people and events in the West Bank and Gaza. Visual tropes such as stone-throwing teenagers confronting Israeli soldiers destroyed houses in villages, the separation wall, refugee camps, PLO and Hamas soldiers, mourning mothers, and long lines at border crossings have come to saturate the Palestinian image world. Over the last several decades, these images have been consumed via: newspapers such as the New York Times; photography books by Whalid Khālil and Elias Sanbar;30 national posters; creative visual works exhibited in cultural centres such as the Al-Bireh Cultural Centre with the United Nations Relief and Works Agencies; and digitalised on websites as photo essays for NGOs and international photography competitions. The absence of images depicting Naqab Bedouin within Palestinian visual history from the early to mid-twentieth century is due to several factors. First, it is difficult to distinguish internal socio-political groups such as Palestinian fallāḥīn and Bedouin villagers because markers such as clothing or landscapes are often difficult to discern in images. Moreover, many Palestinian refugees are Bedouin and thus visualisations of Palestinians often do not distinguish between these peoples. Second, urbanite Palestinian photographers might have also regarded the Bedouin way of life as nomadic, thus countering narratives of ‘permanent residence’ exemplified by resident fallāḥīn farmers and city urbanites. Third, photographs featuring Bedouin in Israel were not thought to be representative of the Palestinian population as a whole due in part to the Israeli government’s efforts to isolate Bedouin residing in the Naqab from other Palestinians in the twentieth century. Finally, mid- to late twentieth-century Palestinian photographers from outside Israel might not simply had access to their Bedouin neighbours in the Naqab after 1948. In light of Bedouin efforts in Arab political parties and NGOs to increase the visibility of their struggles with the Israeli state at the beginning of the twenty-first century, ­Palestinians outside of the Naqab began to increasingly highlight the plight of the villages in the context of Israeli urbanisation efforts.31 Thus since the 1990s, Bedouin have become more politically photogenic in relation to the Palestinian struggle and, consequently, this national visual economy has witnessed an increase in images featured in the Palestinian press, by humanitarian organisations, and in fine art photography. Today photographs of Naqab Bedouin are found in archives such as those pertaining to the Nakba created by and for Palestinians over the last twenty years. For example, local and international Palestinian activists have created both physical and online archives such as The Palestinian Museum, The Palestinian Digital Archive, and Palestineremembered.com. These

Photographic Presences and Entangled Visual Economies  139 physical and digital archives not only collect oral stories and texts but also historical photographs, maps, and videos depicting various Palestinian villages and ­peoples throughout the region including Bedouin in the Naqab. These visual practices are now common throughout the contemporary Middle East, giving way to an ‘archival impulse’32 over the past decade, such as that discussed in the last chapter. Ultimately, the increased assembly and creation of physical and online image collections over the last decades deliberately counter the region’s visual clichés of violence and Orientalist tropes of exoticism. ‘Contemporary photographers and culture workers are crafting new mechanisms for memorialising history through photography as they and their fellow citizens experience it, effectively creating an archive where they belong’.33 For example, Palestineremembered.com, founded in 2000 by Salah Mansour, was initially started as a digital history project but now serves as an archival and social media website from the USA. They search and compile documentary resources on Palestinian history and culture, especially for events pertaining to Nakba. Their website lists several Palestinian areas throughout the region, one of which includes ‘Beersheba’. There Palestinineremembered.com and online contributors have included a range of photographs of this society, history, and landscapes. On some villages’ pages such as Lagīya, one can find digital copies of photographs of people uploaded on the website. Underneath each image, the creators of the website have provided a blog space where visitors of the site can make comments (mostly in Arabic) about the photograph. Palestinianremembered.com is popular among Bedouin, and over the last decades, the website has consolidated many archival images of their society and history. It has become an important public venue for local and other Palestinian photographers not only to upload their own photographs for the sake of preservation but also to share digital copies with others. In doing so, it has strengthened the connection between local image worlds and the broader Palestinian national visual economy. As suggested at the beginning of this section, however, Palestinian photographic and digital efforts inherently respond to the Israeli image world in which photographs of Naqab Bedouin maintain different visual tropes; leaving Bedouin images caught up in the complex imaginings associated with Zionist political ideology, Israeli Arab citizenship, and Palestinian nationalism. Jewish photography in Palestine or the ‘Land of Israel’ (Eretz Israel) began in the early 1880s and coincided with the First Aliyah (1882–1903) and Second Aliyah ­(1903–1914) during which immigrants from Eastern Europe moved to Ottoman Palestine. Some brought cameras from Europe and set about imaging their Zionist enterprise through photography.34 During this time, emigrating Jewish commercial photographers also began working with local Arab and foreign expatiate studios in Palestine and with ­studios in Jerusalem, Haifa, and Jaffa. For example, Shlomo Narinsky and his wife Sonia Narinsky (c. 1900-n.d.) came to Israel with the Second Aliyah. They produced a series of images of landscapes, sites, and portraits, which they featured on postcards. Most of them were sold through the Jamal Brothers Publishing House in Jerusalem.35 Similar to their European and urban Palestinian counterparts, Jewish commercial photographs at the time produced images for the tourist market which also depicted landscapes in the Holy Land, Jewish religious ceremonies, and people of Palestine, including the region’s Bedouin populations. Early Jewish photographers of Ottoman Palestine, however, also photographed the growing Zionist nationalist enterprise in the region coinciding with the First Zionist Congress in Basel in 1897. Their images documented newly established moshavim (cooperative farming communities), ‘empty’ desert landscapes, Jewish ‘pioneers’, interactions with their Arab neighbours, Jewish community organisations, and local religious life. These photographs were reproduced in newspapers and on

140 Photography postcards in order to document their new lives and the re-founding of the Jewish community (yishuv) during the Ottoman Empire. Many of these images were also sent back to Europe to encourage Jewish immigration to the region.36 This period of Jewish photography in Ottoman/British Palestine (c. 1880-c. 1930) is now considered the advent of Israeli photography and many of their works were inspired by European romanticism.37 It was also during this time that the Jewish National Fund (Keren Kayemet LeYisrael – JNF-KKL) was established (1901) in order to coordinate the purchasing of land for Jewish development. Part of their project was also to ‘redress the balance of photographs, documenting the Jewish presence in the land’.38 Over the subsequent decades, the JNF-KKL became one of the largest Jewish organisations to commission and produce photographs documenting this endeavour, specifically to: [R]ecord details showing the differences between traditional Arab buildings and modern [Jewish] methods of construction … [and] institutional attitudes towards the Arabs … [but it] had little reason to include photographs of Arabs or of their culture, unless in a political context, or in a comparison.39 These visual tropes set the precedent for the types of images produced by later IsraeliJewish photographers of Arab populations in the region. From the 1930s onwards, Jewish photography grew in British Palestine. Nationalists used these images to propagate visualisations of an Israeli state. Many images depicted the arrival of Jewish populations emigrating from Europe in the wake of anti-Semitism and the rise of Nazi Germany. The content of Zionist photography increasingly focused on creative themes of ‘making the desert bloom’, the building of cities such as Tel Aviv (est. 1906), developing Jewish businesses and industry, and creating schools and health clinics. In addition to professional photographic works, Jewish amateur photographers also produced images of pre-state Jewish society and relationships with P ­ alestinians residing next to new settlements. Several new Jewish settlers of southern Palestine also took photographs of their Bedouin neighbours. Most of these images are housed in personal family collections and archives in regional kibbutzim and moshavim today. The images depicted men in their robes with Jewish settlers dressed in ‘modern’ clothing such as shorts and alongside machinery. For example, residents of Kibbutz Lahav enjoyed a particularly close relationship with Bedouin in the Naqab. This kibbutz was founded in 1952, under the name Tziklag, and was an agricultural enterprise located approximately twenty kilometres northeast of Beersheba. Throughout the history of the kibbutz, its ­residents have developed a reputation among Bedouin for supplying historical photographs of their society and employing members in the kibbutz during the Military Administration (1948–1966). As noted earlier, the kibbutz is also the location of the Joe Alon Museum for Bedouin Culture, which houses and showcases a collection of ethnographic photographs taken by Israeli anthropologists documenting their way of life in different parts of the Naqab and Sinai. Between World War I, World War II, and Arab-Israeli War of 1948, Jewish ‘combat’ photographers also took up war and press photography, including studio portraits of army personnel, pictures of combat, and images of the aftermath of various conflicts, which occasionally included events in the Naqab. These images, however, mostly depicted foreign and Jewish military forces and not the Bedouin civilian population. The first systematic production of photographs of Naqab Bedouin by the newly created Israeli state occurred during the Military Administration (1948–1966) and involved the institutionalisation of identity photographs or Teuda Zehut. Today the state requires all

Photographic Presences and Entangled Visual Economies  141 Palestinian and Israeli adults to have and carry government-issued ID cards. In 1949 and after the November 1948 census, the state gave all Jewish residents Israeli citizenship and ID cards in 1949.40 Issuing ID cards for Palestinians in Israel was more complicated as these residents had to prove continuous residence in Israel between 1949 and 1952 in order to qualify for Israeli citizenship. As Ilan Pappé noted, ‘the worst offence was not being in possession of one of the newly-issued identity cards….’.41 Not having an identity card would result in the loss of property ownership and in some cases expulsion from the country for Palestinians inside Israel during the late 1940s and early 1950s. During the early years of the state, Israeli government photographers would travel to camps and villages in Naqab with their cameras to take photographs of men for these identification cards. Later a photographic studio was established in Beersheba and Bedouin males were required to travel there in order to obtain official portraits for their IDs. The situation was different for women, as will be detailed in the next paragraph. Notwithstanding, ID photographs are some of the earliest personal photographs for the majority of Bedouin today. Consequently, they are often preserved and presented alongside family photographs in personal albums, particularly among elders. For example, Suleīmān (anonymised) al-ʿAthāmīn, Khashem Zanaʿ village spokesperson introduced in Chapter 2, explained that in the 1990s the Knesset had mandated that women should also be required to have their images displayed on their identity cards Teuda Zehut. Before this, women had been exempted. For both Bedouin and other religiously conservative parties in Israel, such as SHAS,42 the issue of photographing women for the purposes of ID cards is still a highly political issue that often comes up during elections today. Emilie:

Are members still uncomfortable with Israeli officials taking ID pictures of women? Suleīmān: Yes, Yes. Even Fāṭimah (anonymised) does not want to have her picture in the ID card. It has always been an issue for us. In 1985–1990, the issue went to the Knesset. Emilie:  Before this time, women did not have their pictures in their ID cards? Suleīmān: No, not in passport and not in their identity cards. These are for cultural reasons. Even SHAS brought this issue up in the last elections. And this is for a very simple and practical reason. As far as the family structure is concerned it is the same for us as it is them. SHAS represents Jewish religious families and it just so happens that concern over this issue c­ oincides with the Bedouin families. Here neither of us want to have our families photographed by the government. Emilie: Could you explain why you and your families don’t want images on these cards? Suleīmān: This was for cultural reasons. This is why we do not want these photographs. Today, however, women have their picture taken for these cards so that they can vote and travel. Islam also says women can show their faces, however, our customs in Bedouin tradition say women cannot show their faces but these ideas are fading and Islamic principles are coming in. But there are still many, many women here that do not want their photograph taken for their identity cards. In fact, the issue of women covering is still very resistant to change in our society, more so than many other issues. Israeli-Jewish photographers of Naqab Bedouin during the state’s Urbanisation Period (1967–1993) also produced images for government records, news outlets, and commercial

142 Photography sales. Early Israeli commercial photojournalists created images of Bedouin, which were then circulated by the Government Press Office (GPO) and later stored in state and military archives. Most of these images depict the Israeli state’s modernisation of Bedouin in the south. Here, visual tropes include picturing Bedouin men in Western suits, watering yards in front of the state’s newly built houses in townships, driving cars, and hosting Israeli government officials and international notables. In all, the Naqab Bedouin as an ‘Israeli Arab minority’ maintained a relatively strong existence in Israeli national photographic archives, which are organised into two types: those compiling photographs produced by the Israeli civil establishment serving national goals; and those associated with military establishments preserving archival government records. Of these, the ­Government Press Office’s Photography Department has a particularly large collection of images taken of the Naqab Bedouin which the state digitised into the Israel’s National Photo Collection located in Jerusalem in 1998. In the 1960s and 1970s, Jewish residents of the Israeli metropolis of Tel Aviv, Haifa, and Beersheba also set up public studios in the cities for commercial photography. These businesses provided photographic services for residents such as wedding photography, and school portraits, and provided film processing/dark room access along with access to printing, enlarging, and framing services. These businesses can still be found in Beersheba’s Ottoman centre and surrounding shopping complexes such as local malls such as Canyon ha-Negev and Big and include the Alberto Studio and several dozen others. Since the 1960s, Bedouin, particularly those from wealthier families, visited these studios and commissioned their own personal photographs. Again, however, most studio photographers at this time were Israeli-Jewish image-makers. I am unaware of any local Bedouin commercial photographers that operated in the 1950s as most photographic efforts only proliferated in the late twentieth century. Notwithstanding, consumption of these types of personal studio image is restricted within Bedouin society and do not overtly circulate within Israeli-Jewish or broader Palestinian image worlds. As of the post-Oslo period (2000–current), Israeli photography of Naqab Bedouin is produced by a vast range of photographers whose works range and overlap forms of fine art, new media, and documentary image-making. Thematically, Israeli photography and digital images of these peoples frequently focus on capturing the ‘harsh’ and ‘changing’ existence of Bedouin’s life as an ethnic minority and poverty in Israel along with images of Bedouin protests. In regard to the latter, photographs typically record members holding signs and Palestinian flags, throwing rocks, and resisting arrest. These types of contemporary photographs of the Naqab Bedouin are produced and circulated by photojournalists and commercial photographers for national and international audiences via newspapers such as the Haaretz, Yedi’oth, and the Jerusalem Post with more fine art photographs being displayed in exhibitions in the Tel Aviv Museum, Eretz Israeli Museum, Joe Alon Museum, and other art galleries, urban public spaces, and artist websites. Contributing to both news media and fine art photography, Israeli-Jewish documentary photographers also create images of Naqab Bedouin for various alternative-media and civil society outlets, NGOs, advocacy and special interest groups, and co-existence consortiums such as +972magazine, NCF, Adalah, Rabbis for Human Rights, and Zochrot. Their works are contextualised as documentaries, visual literacy, and photographic awareness projects. For example, Oren Ziv (a co-founder of Activestills who now works for +972 Magazine) is well known for creating a vast range of images of demolitions and protests in southern Israel.43 Miki Kratsman is another established photographer who has worked with this population over the last decades. For example, his ongoing ‘Bedouin Visual

Photographic Presences and Entangled Visual Economies  143 Archive’ (2015–2016) series photographically documents contemporary displacement in the Naqab.44 In all, image-making within the Palestinian-Israeli national contexts is a diverse affair. Similar to the global visual economies, photographs and digital images of Naqab Bedouin produced with these entangled nationalised visual economies are fraught with biases characterising broader Orientalist and national knowledge productions, news ­coverage, technological access, and political agendas in the Middle East. As with Orientalism, ­Palestinian and Israeli nationalisms often imagine Bedouin through e­ xoticised scenes, subjects, and actions, which purposely omit, re-contextualise, and select images that support their various ideologies and goals. Moreover, as critical studies of regional photography such as Azoulay and others have highlighted, ­photographic exchanges and encounters in these colonial or national contexts are often fraught with conflictand thus underscore many ‘acts of photography’45 in the Naqab. This iconography and the expectations of photographers and outside viewers within these broader visual economies have come to indelibly shape how members read and assign worth to particular photographs. With that said, however, studies of photography in the ­Palestinian-Israeli context regularly overlook vernacular photographic practices by Naqab Bedouin residing in the area. Individuals have increasingly taken up photography and digital image-making themselves over the last thirty years; visual practices that indelibly respond to frictions in larger global and national visual economies, ongoing transformations of way of life, and stereotypical images of their society. As the next sections describe, members’ more localised photographic productions reflect their own culturally specific ideals and sociopolitics, a situation that has created unique parochial and intimate visual economies in this society (Figures 4.5–4.12).

Figure 4.5  Palestineremembered.com – Lagīya Page. Original creator(s): unknown. ­Location of original: unknown. Producer: Muhammad Ibrahim Ghanim, on 31 January 2012.  www.palestineremembered.com/GeoPoints/Laquiya_1381/Picture_57183.html. Date: Unknown. Uploaded: 9 March 2011.  Accessed date: 1 March 2023.

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Figure 4.6  Activestills’ photographs of Protest in a Naqab village on 12 January 2022. ­Original creator(s): Oren Ziv. Original source: Activestill’s collection. Image number: 48200 Original date: 2022.  www.activestills.org/image/48200/. Accessed date: 1 July 2023.

Figure 4.7 Land Day Protest. Original creator(s): Ike Belcher. Original date: 30 March 2012.

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Figure 4.8 ‘Palestine – A Bedouin in his happy mood’. Original creator(s): Shlomo Narinsky. ­Producer of postcard: Jamal Bros, Jerusalem (Palestine) 1921. Content: Sepia-toned print of a young Bedouin man in a keffiyeh (headdress) and jacket; Medium postcard 5 1/2 in × 3 1/2 in. Reference number: Part I, Box 2, Folder 15. Source: American Colony in Jerusalem Source Collection; Repository – Manuscript Division. www.loc.gov/resource/mamcol.044/. Original date: 1921. Accessed date: 21 February 2015.

146 Photography

Figure 4.9 ‘Bedouin sitting on camels holding Israeli flag’. Original creator(s): GPO photographer Milner Moshe. Source: Israel National Photo Collection – GPO. Reference number: D243013. Original date. 16 October 1980. URL: https://gpophoto.gov.il/haetonot/Eng_Default.aspx. Accessed date: 1 March 2023.

Figure 4.10 Installation of old Bedouin photographs at the Joe Alon Bedouin Centre. Original creator(s): unknown. Photographer: Emilie Le Febvre. Original date: 25 February 2012.

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Figure 4.11  ‘Fine art photograph by Carmit Hassine’. Original creator(s): Carmit Hassine. O ­ riginal date: unknown. Accessed date: 1 May 2023.

Figure 4.12  Activestills’ photographs of Demolition in al-ʿAragīb on 10 August 2010. Original creator(s): Oren Ziv. Original source: Activestill’s collection. Image number: 13302. Original date: 2013. www.activestills.org/image/13302/. Accessed date: 1 July 2023.

148 Photography Meso and Micro Visual Economies and Vernacular Bedouin Photography Bedouin engagements with photographic and digital technologies in the Naqab is a ­relatively recent affair, beginning en masse among wealthy families in the 1970s. While the number of local professional producers is low, the number of amateur photographers is steadily growing, especially in relation to the increased availability of digital cameras since 2000, particularly those found on smartphones and mobile technologies. In order to explore these developments, the remainder of this chapter draws on empirical research collected during fieldwork to describe the visual economies characterising this society, lineages (ʿāʾilāt), and more intimate image worlds of the extended (ʿāʾila) and immediate families. In doing so, my discussion, unlike the previous section, is not chronologically organised but ordered in terms of proximity relating to internal interactions among members. The broadest visual economy is presented first in this section as it includes the largest number of local image producers and consumers. Images within the closer, micro visual economies involve the fewest number of people, audiences, and producers, and thus are presented last in this section. The consumption of digital and photographic objects within these contexts is especially regulated since ‘seeing’ them entails closer relationships between Bedouin members. (C) Meso – Bedouin Society in the Naqab Visual Economy – Between the 1950s and 1960s, wealthy individuals travelled to Jerusalem or Beersheba to obtain professional photographs in situ from non-Bedouin Arab and Jewish photographers. Since the 1970s and 1980s, the number of locally operating commercial photographers working in the villages and towns in southern Israel has gradually risen, however, as photographic equipment has become less expensive and both film and digital image-making no longer require dark rooms, expensive chemicals, and equipment. Indeed, the number of commercial photographers operating locally in the towns significantly increased in the 1990s and 2000s due to the influx of low-cost digital cameras, computers, and printers. Today, there are two types of Bedouin professional photographers that produce images within this visual economy. These are commercial image-makers commissioned by members to photograph family celebrations and photojournalists hired by local newspapers, organisations, and municipalities to photograph notable people and events. Both types of professional photographers use digital cameras for their works and imaging techniques learned in community colleges such as those hosted by Sapir College. With the advent of iPhones, Instagram, and Facebook, professional photographers not only creatively experiment with production techniques, they also use these platforms to exhibit, share, and circulate their image works. According to a local photographer interviewed during fieldwork, ʿAṭīya (anonymised) Abū Madīghem, most commercial photographers start out as wedding photographers (he estimated that there are thirty-five operating in the Naqab as of 2012), with a handful progressing into photojournalism and fine art photography. Fathers, like Suleīmān al-ʿAthāmīn, also regularly hire a professional photographer for their daughters’ wedding events to take images during their ḥennāʾ party. Appropriated and adapted from other Palestinian populations, pre-nuptial ḥennāʾ parties are popular and have become a regular part of the larger wedding celebrations.46 Today, the celebrations are significant events and are scheduled several weeks before the actual wedding. They are usually organised by female relatives at the natal home of the bride, whose mother serves as hostess. The celebration includes dinner, music, coordinated dancing,

Photographic Presences and Entangled Visual Economies  149 and handing out packaged sweets. Today these events are occasions when family, neighbours, and friends celebrate their daughters’ nuptials; they are also, however, a time when women of extended families (ʿāʾila) display their status to other women. ­ edding in In 2012, Suleīmān al-ʿAthāmīn’s fourth eldest daughter celebrated her w Khashem Zanaʿ. For the occasion, Suleīmān hired a local family from Shagīb as-Sālām who run a commercial photography business out of their home. The business included a male professional photographer, his wife (a hair and make-up stylist), and their two daughters who worked as assistants. In addition to photographing the ḥennāʾ party, the family provides pre-party services for the bride such as hair styling, professional makeup, acrylic nails, and studio portraits in their Shagīb as-Sālām house.47 After being styled and photographed offsite, the bride was brought back to her natal house where a large party of female relatives and friends greeted her and took pictures of her with her family. The festivities were held in a large concrete space located next to Suleīmān’s house on his domestic property (dār), which is surrounded by a high privacy fence to protect the visibility of his female guests. During the celebrations, the hired photographers took images of the bride while she danced and intermingled with her guests. While photographing the bride’s family, they do not take individual pictures of the female guests as only women can take photographs of other women usually close friends and family. After the celebrations, the photographers printed several hundred digital images on eight-by-ten paper photographs. Suleīmān then travelled to Shagīb as-Sālām to pick up the photographs and deliver them to his daughter in plastic sacks. She stored them in a cardboard box, showed them to her female relatives over the course of the week after the wedding, and chose one to frame and hang on the wall of her newly built house on her husband’s family property. More often than not, professional photographers hired for ḥennāʾ parties maintain a different, typically lower status than the family that hires them for their photography services. In the Naqab, this can mean numerous things to various people such as those who lack origins, non-Bedouin, or non-Naqab locals. This situation is less difficult for female photographers since socially they are granted more freedom to intermingle with women not from their own lineages (ʿāʾilāt) and may travel within domestic spaces where ḥennāʾ parties are held. This is not the case for professional male photographers, who according to Suleīmān al-ʿAthāmīn must not be ‘Bedouin’ or ʿarab. Why are women ok with taking pictures at their ḥennāʾ parties but not for their ID card? Suleīmān: It depends on where the pictures go. Who is taking the pictures? What are they taking pictures of? If they are taken of the family, the pictures must not leave the family. I can take pictures of my mother, my sisters, but for other men, outside of the family, taking pictures is a completely different matter. Emilie: How so? Suleīmān: It matters if the photographer is family or not family. If his is ʿarab [Bedouin] or not ʿarab. I am not ready for an ʿarab to come into my house and take pictures of my daughters but it is ok for someone that it is not ʿarab as long as the pictures stay in family. Women do not mind having their pictures taken by non-ʿarab so long as the pictures will not be seen by other non-ʿarab.48

Emilie:

150 Photography The next type of professional photographers in this society are the largest contributors to this Naqab visual economy. These photographers are mostly younger men from the Rāhaṭ area such as ʿAṭīya (anonymised) Abū Madīgam and Karīm mentioned in the last chapter. Their photographic and digital works are similar to other Palestinian photographers in Israel and focus on political and fine art themes of protest, the ‘unrecognised villages’, Naqab landscapes, and public gatherings during weddings, religious, civic, and political events. Their visual tropes emphasise resistance, the Palestinian narrative in Israel, ‘Bedouin culture’, and ‘life in the desert’. A large proportion of their creative photographic and digital works are self-initiated for exhibitions throughout the Naqab, Israel, and overseas in places such as Paris. NGOs, municipalities such as the Rāhaṭ and Ḥūra Community Centres. Politicians such as Ṭalib al-Ṣānaʿ and local newspapers such as Ahkbār an-Naqab and Panorama-Panet.net also commission photojournalists to visually document events such as visits by international representatives, Islamic and civic community events, political speeches, and protests. Male photojournalists do not normally photograph women in the public sphere but can do so with the permission of the woman. Members also consume photographic and digital works via Arabic websites, local newspapers, and flyers. Maintaining neutrality is difficult for photojournalists such as ʿAṭīya, who as a freelance photographer who sells images to a local newspaper must tactfully navigate the complex socio-political situations in which he photographs. He explained to me that the local ‘politics of photography’ include both the act of taking the photograph and its subsequent circulations. According to ʿAṭīya as a male photographer, he does not normally photograph younger women or children but older women are typically comfortable with being photographed. He found that younger children in villages express fear of flash photography and most do not prefer ‘close’ photography but instead prefer photography ‘at a distance’. Moreover, once images are taken and produced, ʿAṭīya must be extremely sensitive about sharing them, that is he does not ‘post images of women Facebook as their brothers or fathers may get angry’ and avoids selling photographs that might show people in disrespectful contexts. According to him, each photographic situation is dependent on not only his position as a photographer but also the subjects’ positions in terms of gender, status, lineages, and circumstances of the event. In all, the general differences between these two types of professional photographers relate to the content (ḥennāʾ or news events), style (portrait or journalistic), consumption (familial or communal), and circulation (private or public) of their images. These disparities, however, do not merely reflect the photographers’ specific interests but also the result of the photographers’ socio-political access to other members and the private/public spaces in which they photograph – access predominantly determined by their status in their society. A commercial photographer’s relative status within his or her broader socio-political networks regulates what types of images he or she can create, that is whether or not the photographer is male or female, young or old. Their lineage (ʿāʾilāt), status, tribal affiliations, and perceived origins (ʾaṣīl) are also significant for these practices. In general, most (not all) commercial photographers have moderate status within the local socio-political system because their presence holds less prestige during group events whereas the presence of a person with higher status tends to hold more value in this society (Figures 4.13–4.15).

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Figure 4.13  Cut and cropped by Teuda Zehut Portraits/ID Photo (c. 1930-c. 1990) of Abū Rabia elder. Original creator(s): Unknown. Source: Abū Rabia elder’s personal collection. Secondary photographer: Emile Le Febvre. Original dates: c. 1930-c. 1990. Accessed date: 25 November 2012.

152 Photography

Figure 4.14  Photographs in local Bedouin newspaper. Original producer: Unknown. Secondary photographer: Emilie Le Febvre. Original date: Unknown. Accessed date: 1 March 2012.

Figure 4.15  Wedding photographer at a ḥennāʾ party in Khashem Zanaʿ. Original creator(s): Emilie Le Febvre. Original date: 23 November 2012.

Photographic Presences and Entangled Visual Economies  153 (D) Meso – Named Linages (ʿāʾilāt) Visual Economy – The next visual economy in which Bedouin engage is that associated with making visual statements pertaining to origins (ʾaṣīl), genealogy (nasab), lineages (ʿāʾilāt), and neighbourly relations. This context is defined by tribal relations (described in Chapter 2) and specific spaces associated with tribal networks in this society. The production and consumption of members’ photography of members in this visual economy centres on agnates’ meeting places (shigg), men’s sides of weddings, specific areas or rooms wherein families host formal guests, and increasingly informative and editable websites such as Wikipedia created by tribesmen about their genealogies. The introduction of photographs into lineage (ʿāʾilāt) spaces began in the 1960s (among an elite minority) as people commissioned photographs from outsiders such as Palestinians in the West Bank and Jewish-run studios in the cities. At this time, a small number of local tribesmen from particularly wealthy tribes also began taking photographs of their own lineages. These amateur photographers increased in numbers from the 1970s onwards as cameras and film development became more readily available and less expensive. These amateur photographers create images of family events, people, and landscapes but a select few are also commissioned to photograph lineage notables, such as tribal leaders and patriarchs. In all, since the 1960s, a few Bedouin photographers (but mostly commissioned by outside Jewish and Arab image-makers) have produced a culturally distinctive type of studio-quality forefather portrait depicting male patriarchs. These images pose men in their customary finery, positioning them in front of draped backdrops. In them, the men wear their headscarves (kūfiyya), long robes (thoūb), black caps, and sometimes show them with bandoleers and a knife. The portraits include full frontal poses and occasionally ‘Bedouin items’ such as horses, swords, and coffee pots are positioned next to them in the image. The men in the photographs are distant patriarchs of their families, that is great-grandfathers or grandfathers (occasionally fathers and uncles) who are often representatives of particular tribal networks such as agnate groups (gōm). These ancestral portraits range from black-and-white photographs to colour digital prints on paper, framed, encased in glass, and hung on walls throughout the Naqab. For example, these types of photographs are often displayed in agnates’ meeting places (shigg) to memorialise ancestors, past events, and lost landscapes associated with various tribal namesakes. Today agnate meeting places continue to serve as places of tribal politics, remembrance, and mediation. They are separate from residential houses and instead are located on the property of the senior male head of an extended family (ʿāʾila). They are constructed out of concrete and metal with a tarpaulin or metal roof with decorated interior walls. In general, they are places where agnates gather to: discuss economic enterprises and social topics such as folklore, marriage, and religious events; mediate political and tribal affairs; and share information about genealogies, reputations, gossip, and local news.49 The images hung in meeting places range in size from medium ten-by-twelve inches to larger thirty-by-forty inches. Next to them on the wall, Bedouin will often hang other photographs of men and honoured visitors and guests, and pictures also given to members by outsiders or images found in non-Bedouin sources and consumed between cognates. In addition to other photographs, members also hang, if they possess them, framed newspaper clippings, documents such as land registrations (ṭābū), old maps of Naqab, and letters from officials in Arabic, Hebrew, and English. In addition to documents and photographs, members display ‘Bedouin artefacts’ such as Oriental rugs, swords, Qu’rān-ic texts and Islamic calligraphy, hand-painted genealogical trees, and calendars. On walls, members also create shelves where other material cultures such as brass coffee pots, embroidered pillows, baskets, and books can be displayed.

154 Photography As noted, Bedouin members have also experienced an ‘archival impulse’ reflective of the broader Palestinian population in the past decade. Consequently, lineages (ʿāʾilāt) are also posting their ‘distant’ patriarchs’ portraits online, particularly on websites such as Wikipedia and pages such as Facebook created and designed for specific families. Several lineages such as the Abū Rabīʿa, al-Huzayyil, and al-Ṣānaʿ have their own websites describing their history, notable members, customary lands, and purported reputation. This practice sets out to expand the consumption and circulation of forefather portraits corresponding to the augmented emphasis of genealogies among lineages and distinguishing their roots from the Naqab. For example, a few prominent linages have their own websites which often display forefather portraits along with other digitised copies and scans of historical documents and maps such as those discussed in C ­ hapter 2. In addition to agnate and guest meeting places (shigg) and websites, members also exhibit photographs of their family ‘close’ patriarchs or senior males (usually a father or grandfather) in their salons (dīwān); practices contributing to the second closest visual economy ­characterising this society (Figures 4.16–4.17).

Figure 4.16  Portrait of Shaykh Salmān al-Huzayyil II hung on the wall of his son’s house. ­Original creators(s): unknown. Secondary creator(s): Emilie Le Febvre. Original date: 20 December 2012.

Photographic Presences and Entangled Visual Economies  155

Figure 4.17 Photos of Abū Rabia elder organised into an album with plastic sleaves. ­Original creators(s): unknown. Secondary creator(s): Emilie Le Febvre. Original date: 20 December 2012.

(E) Micro – Extended Family (ʿāʾila) Visual Economy – Most Bedouin families have reception areas (dīwān or salon) inside their residential houses (buyūt) where cognates and guests of the family meet. These areas consist of two reception rooms located at the entrance of the home and often (but not always) presented into ‘two faces’ – one traditional and one modern.50 One area will have sofas and TVs in the Western-styled areas while the Arab-styled areas recall Bedouin ‘tradition’ with mattresses and more intimate family photographs. Both meeting places and salons function as key places of social ritual, cohesion, and boundary-making wherein members construct and share g­ enealogies and tribal histories. Because of the regularity of patrilineal cousin marriage, the couple often share a grandfather. Portraits of their shared forefather are typically hung on the walls of couples’ salons along with images of their individual fathers next to them. On some occasions, members will also hang semi-formal, often contemporary colour photographs or printed digital images of their extended family (ʿāʾila) and older matriarchs. The photographs consumed here are similar to those in meeting places and are often positioned next to other wall decorations such as framed passages from the Qu’rān. These elements on the walls in both the salons and meeting places present their family’s past, identity, and influence. The nature of photographs hung in the salon (dīwān), however, is more personalised and therefore more contemporary as most images were taken in the residents’ lifetimes. The importance of the semi-formal image in the salon not only reflects the extended

156 Photography family’s (ʿāʾila) connections but also the identity and notoriety of the individual owner and nuclear family. Thus, viewing the photographs is synonymous with entering their semi-familial space where members discuss, debate, and decide household (bayt) politics, matters, and engagements. Consequently, the photographs hung in these rooms reflect more intimate or private themes, subjects, and landscapes. Not only are the contents of these images more private, but their place within houses (buyūt) is significant as they, along with furniture and other decoration, symbolise the ‘in-between-ness’ of the salon in Naqab Bedouin socio-political, family life. They are cognate spaces that are not entirely private or public places but the people, objects, and events in these rooms are situated between realms of interactions and the familial photographs hung in these areas reflect these dynamics. The subjects are dressed in formal clothes, and they are posed and staged, often taken during special family events. As Gillian Rose described in the West, family photography has also become a popular past time.51 Today the same can be said about the Global South as a result of the accessibility of digital cameras, particularly those found on mobile phones, smartphones, iPads, and other communicative devices in the last decades. As discussed previously, these people have witnessed a proliferation of digital technologies, and most people now own their own smartphones which have digital image-making capacity. Because of the abundance of mobile phones and compact cameras, the act of taking and creating photographs and digital images has become less invasive during everyday encounters. As ʿAṭīya (anonymised) Abū Madīgam mentioned, members prefer photography at a distance, which does not involve steady poses and close-up interaction as the act of image-making involves a range of politics associated with both the photographer and their subjects’ social standing. Within the family, these politics are intertwined with the domestic or familial sentiments that influence the patterning of interactions during special events such as wedding processions and receptions, smaller events than the ḥennāʾ party, and everyday activities such as herding livestock and family time. Extended family members also produce images of their relatives of the same gender during weddings and at other social events, practices reflecting the segregation of gendered spaces and social restrictions within extended familial (ʿāʾila) spaces. For example, images are typically taken of the wedding procession is an event at which female relatives announce the couple’s wedding. Men usually decorate and photograph their vehicles, drive-in villages and towns, or between localities if the groom and bride are from different ones, and play loud music to announce the wedding. The vehicles have coloured flags attached to them, each symbolising various sentiments. For women, the procession is a more intimate occasion. Female relatives gather in the bride’s natal home and await her arrival from the wedding ceremony during which they sing and take photographs (and increasingly videos) of the bride upon her return. The bride is then ushered into a vehicle and driven to her new husband’s natal home where she is then greeted by her husband’s female relatives that is her motherin-law and others. Except for her mother and sisters, the bride’s female relatives from her natal extended natal family do not join in the festivities on the groom’s property because they consider the bride-turned-wife to now be part of her husband’s extended family (ʿāʾila). Again, women from both sides of the family take photographs during the event as they travel from the bride’s natal home and husband’s family’s home, however, once inside the groom’s maternal household, the bride’s mother and sisters do not take photographs. Alternatively, they publicly express sentiments of sadness and remove themselves from the dancing by sitting at the back of the tent or room (Figure 4.18).

Photographic Presences and Entangled Visual Economies  157

Figure 4.18  Bedouin woman with iPad taking photos during a ḥennāʾ party. Original creators(s): Emilie Le Febvre. Original date: 20 December 2012.

(F) Micro – Immediate Family (buyūt) Visual Economy – In addition to special events such as weddings where the extended family is allowed to take images, families also capture more mundane moments. These photographic and digital activities contribute to the most intimate visual economy of the Naqab. While conducting fieldwork in Khashem Zanaʿ in 2012 and 2013, Suleīmān and his family often took images of each other at home, in the fields, with livestock, and during trips outside of the village. Even younger people such as his daughter of twelve would take photographs of sheep, flowers, and her­ ccasions self taking the herd out to pasture. Images of family members focus on happy o such as humorous antics, group meetings, and events of togetherness. Members also frequently photograph landscapes, animals, flora and fauna, campfires, cooking (outdoors), and other objects and scenes outside of the home but within spaces either outside of their society or owned by their own lineage (ʿāʾilāt). This visual economy is singular in that families actively restrict the consumption of intimate family photographs and digital images. Contemporary digital images taken with smartphones and compact cameras are not frequently printed out but are rather saved on iPads, USBs, and computer files. A select few are commercially printed in Beersheba or larger towns, as most families in the villages do not own printers. Most visual documents are also stored in plastic bags, loosely in drawers within chests, boxes, and occasionally inserted in albums, however, these are expensive. Of these images, a select few may be framed and hung on walls, placed on tables and shelves, and adhered to mirrors but only within the close domestic space in the house. Members will typically never display images of ‘close’ and younger female family members, after puberty and before marriage, in

158 Photography public spaces or in reception salons (dīwān). Consequently, the consumption of these types of photographs is also highly limited. Women will not display their portraits on Facebook pages, nor will male relatives circulate images of their female relatives. In fact, familial portraits of living adults are not popularly circulated outside of the extended family (ʿāʾila). There is, however, an exception to this practice. Family members, parents, and friends are increasingly uploading and displaying images of children, both females and males before puberty, on Facebook and other forms of social media. When non-Bedouin visit towns or villages, their hosts do not typically object when they take photographs of children but they will not allow them to take images of female teenagers or women. One way of analysing this phenomenon is to suggest that children in this society have yet to obtain significant social standing whereas women’s status is closely tied to familial reputations. Unlike children, her visibility or protection communicates the status or respectability of her relatives to others in her society. Another way to approach the growing practice is simply to note that many people do not fully understand the private/public dynamics of online social media networks and the diverse ways images uploaded to the Internet may circulate. Notwithstanding, family photography is predominantly guided and restricted by the same cultural principles of proximity characterising interactions between members, be they family (bayt), extended family (ʿāʾila), or other affiliates. As such, image production and consumption involve issues of visibility and closeness associated with moral principles and technological accessibility making these practices socially and politically significant. Ultimately, photographic depictions of Naqab Bedouin may be distinguished by their production and consumption characteristics within each visual economy in terms of networked proximity. With that said, some of the images originating from various visual economies have the capacity to travel or circulate between and into unintended image worlds. When doing so, their history works often deviate from their original production contexts.52 As such, the remainder of this book explores the afterlives of six photographs

Figure 4.19  Personal snapshot. Original creators(s): Suleīmān. Original date: 20 December 2012.

Photographic Presences and Entangled Visual Economies  159 valued by members. To do so, I trace the varied circulations but concentrated polysemous readings and polyvalences of a collection of historically significant images (c. 1906-2010) in this society through their biographies and travels within and between the Naqab’s entangled visual economies (Figure 4.19). Notes 1 Ibid. Throughout the chapter, the terms ‘contexts’ and ‘image worlds’ will both broadly refer to visual economies. 2 It is beyond the scope and space of this book to account for exchange values among nonBedouin or their visual practices. I acknowledge that the visual practices of outsiders, such as Israeli-Jewish photographers, influence Bedouin members’ own image-making efforts and semiotics. 3 Strathman, Nicole. 2020. Through a Native Lens: American Indian Photography, Vol. 37, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. 4 Edwards 2022. 5 Minkley, Gary. 2019. ‘The Pass Photograph and the Intimate Photographic Event in South Africa’, Ambivalent: Photography and Visibility in African History, Patricia Hayes and Gary Minkley (eds.), Ohio: Ohio University Press (https://doi.org/10.2307/ j.ctv224tp5b.9). 6 Azoulay 2019. 7 Graham-Brown 1988. 8 Pouillon, François. 1996. ‘Bédouins des Lumières, Bédouins romantiques: mouvement littéraire et Enquête sociologique dans le voyage en Orient (XVIIIe-XIXe siècles)’, The Anthropology of Tribal and Peasant Pastoral Societies: The Dialectic of Social Cohesion and Fragmentation, Ugo Fabietti and Philip Salzman (eds.), Italy: Pavia Collegio Ghislieri 57–79. 9 Jacobson 2004. 10 Behad 2016, 21. 11 Books of Festivals [Surname-I Hümayun] 1524, 1530, 1582, 1720. 12 Graham-Brown 1988, 5. 13 Sanbar 2014. 14 Graham-Brown 1988, 54. 15 Shanklin, William. 1946. ‘Anthropomorphy of Transjordan Bedouin with a Discussion of their Racial Affinities’, American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 4 (3): 323–375. 16 Key projects included: ‘The Survey of Western Palestine’ conducted by Claude Conder and Horatio Kitchener (1871–1878) and ‘The Wilderness of Zin Archaeological Survey’ conducted by Sir Leonard Woolley and T.E. Lawrence (1913–1914). 17 Jacobson 2007. 18 Biasio, Elisabeth. 1998. Beduinen im Negev: Vom Zelt ins Haus, Zürich: Verlag Neue Zürcher Zeitung. 19 Graham-Brown 1988, 53. 20 Ibid., 54. 21 Lanning, Robbyn. 2009 Inverting the Lens: Insider Photography by the Manaja’s Family, Humayma, Jordan, Unpublished Master of Arts’ Dissertation, Canada: University of Victoria. 22 Khan, Ruqayya. 2008. ‘Pastoralism and the ‘Wild Man’ in an Early Arabic Romance’, Middle Eastern Literatures, 11 (2): 139–153, 148 (https://doi.org/10.1080/14752620802223749). 23 Swedenburg, Ted. 1990. ‘The Palestinian Peasant as National Signifier: Tendentious Revisions of the Past in the Construction of Community’, Anthropology Quarterly, 63 (1): 18–30, 18 (https://doi.org/10.2307/3317957). 24 Israeli Jewish photographers are discussed later. 25 Nassar 2006. 26 Ibid., 151. 27 Sela 2014. 28 University of College Cork Palestine Solidarity Campaign (UCCPSC). 2013. ‘Khalil Rissas’, http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/ jabowen/ IPSC/php/authors.php?auid=53434, Accessed 20 March 2014. 29 Shibli, Ahlam. 2000. ‘Unrecognised’, Ahlam Shibli, http://www.ahlamshibli.com/Work/unrecognised.htm, Accessed 20 March 2014.

160 Photography 0 Khalil 1984, Sanbar 2014. 3 31 Ratcliffe 2009. 32 Woodward, Michelle. 2009. ‘Creating Memory and History: The Role of A ­ rchival Practices in Lebanon and Palestine’, Photographies, 2 (1): 21–35 (https://doi.org/10.1080/ 17540760802696930). 33 Ibid., 21. 34 Sela 2014. 35 Silver- Brody. Vivienne. 1998. Documenters of the Dream: Pioneer Jewish Photographers in the Land of Israel, 1890–1933, Jerusalem: Magnes Press and Hebrew University. 36 Most of these early photographs are kept in Israeli state archives. 37 Silver-Brody 1998, 51. 38 Ibid., 66. 39 Ibid., 75. 40 Tawil- Souri, Hegla. 2011. ‘Colored Identity the Politics and Materiality of ID Cards in ­Palestine/Israel’, Social Text, 29 (2): 67–97 (https://doi.org/10.1215/01642472-1259488). 41 Pappé, Ilan. 2006. A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples, Cambridge: ­Cambridge University Press, 201 (https://doi. org/10.1017/cbo9780511992728). 42 SHAS is an acronym for Sfarad’s Guards (of the Torah). It is an ultra-orthodox Jewish political party founded in 1984 and represents the interests of Mizrahim citizens of Israel. 43 Maimon, Vered and Shiraz Grinbaum (eds.) 2016. Activestills: Photography as Protest in ­Palestine/Israel, London: Pluto Press (https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt1gk080g). 44 Kratsman, Miki. 2011. All About Us, London: Sternberg Press; Kratsman, Miki and Shabtai Pinchevsky. 2019. ‘Anti-Mapping’, Philosophy of Photography, 10 (2): 229–242 (https:// doi.org/10.1386/pop_00018_7); Chelouche Gallery, 2022. ‘Artist: Miki Kratsman’ https://­ chelouchegallery .com/work/the-bedouin-visual-archive/. 45 Azoulay 2008, 2011. 46 These parties are named after the dye from which temporary tattoos in the form of body art are applied to the bride’s skin before her nuptials. 47 In addition to family-run photography businesses, several NGOs also support micro-businesses for Bedouin female photographers who provided similar services for ḥennāʾ parties. 48 While professional photographers of these parties generally produce images within broader visual economies associated with (c) Naqab Bedouin society and (d) linages (ʿāʾilāt), their photographs are only consumed with (e) extended family and (f) immediate family (bayt) contexts due to their content. 49 The location of shigg also demonstrates established hierarchies within and between lineages. 50 According to Irene Maffi these two spaces evoke specific temporalities through ‘Arab-styled’ and ‘Western-styled’ items in Jordan. Maffi, Irene. 2009. ‘La Madāfa en Jordanie: Un Lieu du Mémoire’, Études rurales, No. 184, La tribu à l’heure de la globalisation, Juillet-Décembre: 203–215 (https://doi.org/10.4000/etudesrurales.10567). 51 Rose 2010. 52 Poole 1997.

Part Three

Photographs

5 Circulating Images Tribal Histories of Lineages

One significant feature of the Naqab Bedouin’s socio-political landscape is the dozens of ‘named’ tribal (gabaliyya and ʿāʾiliyya) networks connected by their genealogies, alliances, and residences who compete over resources in southern Israel. Since 1948, some tribal namesakes in the form of lineages (ʿāʾilāt) managed to accumulate or maintain higher status than others due in part to their large numbers and patronages, established relationships with government officials, and relative territorial control over specific towns. As such, they have sustained prominent places in Bedouin politics, maintained regular access to private and state funds, and many of their members, particularly younger affiliates, have gained university education and technical expertise. Likewise, older generations within these families possess higher status as reputed elders (kbār) and leaders. Because of these circumstances, these tribal namesakes have generally accumulated popular histories, host well-known figures, and possess affiliated lands in the Naqab but also uphold a strong presence in archival records. During fieldwork, it became obvious that irrespective of their generation, tribal histories are still a central concern for members. Coincidently, within the mnemonic and socio-political landscape of the Naqab, tribal namesakes associated with these networks of people are significant sources of capital. Long-standing inter-group rivalries between lineages, however, require intensive redressing of both internal extended familial relationships and external reputations, which are then compared to and directed at other lineages, the Israeli state, and other stakeholders. This is an arena where rivalries or oppositions over local status, power, and reputations among lineages are enacted and contested. They are also, however, self-presentations restricted by gender and age and are unavoidably framed by members’ interactions with outsiders. Local history-making continues to be significantly framed by tribalism (gabaliyya and ʿāʾiliyya), that is communicating genealogies and the historical particularisms of tribal lineages to Bedouin and non-Bedouin alike. Specifically, people reference past events, highlight the clout of their ancestors with state officials, chronicle the longevity of their group’s influence, aim to prove their land ownership prior to the establishment of the Israeli state and evidence their origins to the Naqab from Arabia. Over the last decade, however, these expressions of historical capital have become dependent on archival documentation in the form of media artefacts and evidentiary materials such as photographs and digital images contesting or corroborating local, Western, Palestinian, and Israeli imaginings of local history and society. ‘Large’ lineages (ʿāʾilāt), most of whom were once labelled by the state as tribal units (shevetim), have extensive and unique visual legacies in the form of historical

DOI: 10.4324/9781003185703-9

164 Photographs photographs, heritage websites, and digital images. Specific spokespersons ­representing these lineages are also particularly active in genealogical and tribal reconstructions, visual media production, and collecting old family pictures. Many of these people have also positioned themselves as image-keepers of tribal histories. They not only engage in the regular production of images as amateur photographers but they also actively reproduce and circulate historical photographs and digital images among members and outsiders as spokespersons. These individuals emphasise specific readings of their photographs within various visual economies, doing so as owners, distributors, protectors, and experts of their lineage’s visual heritage. Whether boasting the legacy of ancestors or countering the reputations of others, their images have come to confirm local understandings of the past and correct perceived historical ‘untruths’ circulating in Bedouin society. In order to further explore these practices, I focus on spokespersons from two prominent lineages that historically comprised part of the Tiyāhā genealogy (nasab) and tribal confederation (gabīla): al-Huzayyil and al-Ṣānaʿ in this chapter.1 The tribal namesakes to which these individuals affiliate are also recognised inside and outside the Naqab. Importantly, however, these lineages (as a whole) have relatively equal ‘origin’ (aṣīl) status but thus also compete with each other for prestige. The circulations of a collection of images are grouped into a series of in-depth case studies focusing on these two lineages. The case studies are loosely arranged by chronology corresponding to the age of an image’s socio-political biography but also their initial displays, as presented to me, in the Naqab, and their subsequent replicated existences and re-readings in other physical and digital venues such as agnate meeting places, NGOs, Wikipedia, and Facebook. The photographs and digital images discussed here were described by members from within and outside of these lineages as ‘significant’ historical images of their families and tribal events, places, and relations. Moreover, these lineages were ‘locally’ reputed or known to not only possess but also ‘work with’ historical photographs and digital images in their society, which is why these particular case studies were chosen for investigation. In this chapter, I argue that old photographs and their digital reproductions (c.  ­1900–c. 1960) circulating within Naqab Bedouin lineages (ʿāʾilāt) are valued as forms of documentary capital that are produced and consumed in various visual economies (predominantly indicated by their international, Palestinian-Israeli, and Bedouin contexts). These images are appropriated and circulated by members and used to reference locally known events and figures associated with particularised tribal histories. I posit that old images within tribal networks hold more presence among Bedouin when they can be used to support local historical knowledge. The more weight an image has among members, the more likely the image will be displayed locally in venues, circulated by members within other visual economies as validation of tribal power and status, and transformed into various material and digital reproductions as learned evidence. While maintaining presence(s) in broader visual economies, these case studies demonstrate that the graphic contents of these images undergo material/digital transformations and recoding for their tribal past as they circulate in closer contexts. The last section of this chapter summarises the images’ production, consumption, and circulation characteristics along with their value or historical significance within the broader languages by which people authenticate their narratives of the past and buttress their tribal legacies (whereas the theorisation of these practices as visual historicity in the Naqab is examined in the conclusion).

Circulating Images: Tribal Histories of Lineages  165 Photographs among Two Lineages Al-Huzayyil’s Portraits: Family Legacies

During an interview with a local photographer from Rāhaṭ, Karīm (anonymised) explained that ‘big’ Bedouin families usually own large archives of old photographs depicting their ‘tribes’. According to him, the al-Huzayyil is Rāhaṭ’s ‘biggest family’ and one of the Naqab’s most famous shaykhs came from this ‘tribe’, Shaykh Salmān al-Huzayyil II. Karīm went on to say that the deceased shaykh’s youngest living son is a man named Ḥassan (anonymised) al-Huzayyil who is reputed to possess the tribe’s large collection of old photographs. He believed that Ḥassan lived in his father’s previous homestead located northwest of Rāhaṭ with his wife and sons. Karīm said that he had never seen the images for himself but that Ḥassan might be willing to show me his collection. In the hopes of interviewing Ḥassan about his photographic collection, ʿAmīr and I thought it best if he called Ḥassan to make the initial request. After several weeks of speaking with various contacts, we managed to find Ḥassan’s mobile number. During the phone conversation, he agreed to show us his large photograph collection at his home. Indeed, Ḥassan seemed extremely interested in sharing his father’s legacy. Later in the week, ʿAmīr and I drove to Hassan’s house where he and his wife greeted us and directed us to their salon. There he explained the history of the al-Huzayyil and his father’s legacy in a mixture of Hebrew, dialect, and English. Afterwards, Ḥassan showed us his photographic collection in albums and digital collection on his Facebook page from his office computer. At the end of the interview, Ḥassan took us to a metal structure located on the edge of his property, which now serves as the agnates’ meeting place (shigg). ‘This is Shaykh Salmān II al-Huzayyil al-Ḥukūk al-Tiyāhā. He was the King of the Shaykhs, the Shaykh of the Shaykhs in his time’. Ḥassan said while pointing to an old photograph encased in a small black wooden frame hung on the meeting place’s wall. The image was a creased photocopy of a black-and-white photograph printed, framed, and preserved behind glass. In it, a middle-aged man stood in front of a faded backdrop with his left hand resting on the back of a wooden chair. He was dressed in a customary stripped robe with a dark suit jacket and a long cape draped from his shoulders. Around his chest and waist, he wore bandoleers, on his head a kūfiyya, and a cigarette burned in his left hand. Below the image, the caption read, ‘SHAYKH SALMAN EL-HUZEIL OF THE TAYAHA TRIBE, MARRIED 26 WIVES’ (original capitals).2 I looked at the enclosed image and recalled what Ḥassan had previously told me about the man in the picture earlier in his salon: Ḥassan:

Ok, so Shaykh Salmān was the second because there was Shaykh Salmān the first. The first Salman was very strong, very charismatic, but there were always misunderstandings between him and the Turkish.3 His son, Shaykh Salmān II was born in 1882 and he died 1982. He lived around 100 years. You can say he lived ninety-eight years very healthy until 1982…. Yes, in his whole life he married thirty-nine wives. My mother is the last wife and he married her in 1948 and after he married her he never married another wife. I am the seventythird child of his. Ok, he had seventy-six children but only fifteen boys and the rest of the sixty-one were girls. There are three under me, and that is why I say I am the seventy-third. In the history of the Bedouin just twice has there

166 Photographs





ʿAmīr: Ḥassan: ʿAmīr: Ḥassan:

Emilie: Ḥassan:

been a shaykh of all the shaykhs. Now I know that you already study about the Bedouin, about our tribe. You know every tribe has a shaykh. However, the shaykh of the tribe is not like the times now in Israel. Before, there was a shaykh from each tribe. Now the shaykh would have to come from the biggest family, they had to be little bit rich, and have knowledge of Bedouin justice, and, if he can, be a medicine man. However, sometimes there was a shaykh of the shaykhs and in the Naqab there was one from every gabīla, from Tarabīn, from Tiyāhā, from the Jubarāt, and from the ʿAzāzmah. However, the biggest shaykh from all of the gabīla was the shaykh from the Tiyāhā.   The first shaykh of the shaykhs in the history of the Bedouin was Shaykh Salmān I and then Shaykh Salmān II who was the shaykh over all of the shaykhs for sixty years. They called him the King of the Bedouin … Shaykh Salmān II married thirty-nine women, because, you know he was the King of the Bedouin and most of the others wanted to have a political relationship with him and so they gave him a daughter to marry….   Oh, have you heard of the story? There was one girl that was grown by her aunt and one day Shaykh Salmān II was riding his horse when he came across a well. And there he saw a little girl there. I think today, that he felt that this little girl was of his blood. Something from inside him told him this because she was really, a very strong little girl. When he saw the girl he said to her, ‘Give my horse water, please’. She said to him, ‘No! Who are you that I should give you water. I am the daughter of an important shaykh!’ Shaykh Salmān II looked at her and recognised her as his own blood, and before he left, he said, ‘I am your father’. And then he decided to take her back with him. However, the story people tell in the Naqab is different from this one. But what I tell you now is the truth! This is how it happened. People say that the shaykh didn’t know that she was his daughter and he wanted to marry her but this is not true. She said that if you knew who my father was you would never talk to me. Yes! She said that! You know maybe I should tell my students here in the Naqab this version of the story. You know they talk about it in the classrooms. But now you both know the truth! This girl is a sister of mine. She is today around eighty years old. She has two children. One of her sons is a doctor and the other is a dentist. Ok, so, now back to the pictures. As I said, Shaykh Salmān II was very important man and his first picture was taken a long time ago. It can be found in an English book where ʿĀrif al-ʿĀrif wrote about him. He was very young in the picture, maybe thirty-five or forty, and he had already married twenty-six wives. It is written there. Already, at that time, when this picture was taken. Do you own this book and the picture? I will show you pictures and the book later. But it is important to know that Shaykh Salmān II was a very young shaykh. All of the north Naqab was under his control because it was the family’s ancestors’ land. There is a history about him. These are things that are written. The most important thing for you to know is that if he was not here, there would be no Bedouin here in Israel. You must know what is true!

Circulating Images: Tribal Histories of Lineages  167 After completing his story, Ḥassan got up and disappeared into the next room and returned with a photograph album, a blue file folder filled with plastic sleeves. In each sleeve ­ hotographs were black-and-white photocopies, newspaper clippings, small snapshot p on paper, and pages with images torn out of books. I later realised that copies of these images were also framed and hung in the agnates’ meeting place. He placed the album next to me on the sofa and told me I should go through it. Ḥassan explained the events, people, and places depicted in the images but paused when we came across a yellowed page that he had carefully removed from another, older book and inserted into its own plastic sleeve in the album (see Figure 5.1).

Figure 5.1  A photograph of Shaykh Salmān al-Huzayyil II located on a page removed from ʿĀrif al-ʿĀrif ’s (1944) book in Ḥassan (anonymised) al-Huzayyil photographic album c. 1900.  Original Creator(s): Unknown. Secondary creator(s): Emilie Le Febvre. Source of original: ʿĀrif al-ʿĀrif’s (1944) book Bedouin, Love, Law, and Legend. ­Original date: c. 1900.  Access date: 25 September 2012.

I asked him if this was the image he was speaking of earlier in our conversation. Pointing again at the album page, he explained: Yes, this is it. I took it from ʿĀrif al-ʿĀrif’s English book.4 I own his books. I have read these books! I have one book from him that was translated into Hebrew some

168 Photographs six years ago. I have read this. But he writes many things that are not true about the al-Huzayyil but every family knows of these books. See this, this picture here. It is the earliest photograph I have of my father. [Ḥassan pointed to the picture in Figure 5.1]. However, don’t believe what you read about the al-Huzayyil in ʿĀrif al-ʿĀrif’s books. ʿĀrif wrote about this and that. He wrote that Shaykh Salmān I was very hard on the people. That he would take unwilling girls from the people. He wrote this but the story is not true. No! He was a very strong shaykh and his people knew him and loved him and I want to tell you something very, very, very important. The Bedouin that have shorashim [Hebrew – roots] here in the Naqab, if they are famous and they have big families they would never make the mistake of giving their family a bad name or reputation. It would never happen! ʿĀrif al-ʿĀrif was disliked here and that is the reason he started these rumours about the shaykhs of the al-Huzayyil. But his writings are lies because those stories would have never happened because a shaykh would not bring a bad reputation upon his people. Nor would any Bedouin in general. Not the Tiyāhā, and not even people from the Tarabīn. They would not make the mistake of giving the family a bad name, especially against the tribe that they come from. After Ḥassan finished describing the pictures in the album, he directed us to his personal library. It was a small room located down the hallway with walls lined with books and a large desk with a computer. Rather than reaching for the books to show us the images in the printed volumes, however, Ḥassan went to his desk and turned on the computer. ‘I want to show the Facebook page I recently made in memory of my father’. ʿAmīr and I sat down next to him as he began navigating the Internet in search of the Facebook profile. ‘On this Facebook page I’ve upload most of the images and documents that I have collected’. Clicking on the homepage, he signed into the special account dedicated entirely to the life and visual history of his father. Ḥassan:

Emilie: Ḥassan: Emilie: Ḥassan:

To get to this Facebook page, you must read it in Hebrew not in Arabic. See here. [Pointing to the screen] It reads Shaykh al-Huzayyil in Hebrew. If you go there, you will see all of his pictures. Now I go inside. [Clicking the mouse] You see. These are all of the pictures and writings that I have of him, here on Facebook. When did you create the Facebook page? Maybe around a half a year or so ago. Do many people ask to ‘friend’ the page? Yes, but I don’t take everybody. Facebook is good but I don’t know … maybe putting them here was a mistake. I don’t know. A lot of people go inside to look at these pictures. Lots of people! From everywhere! I have people from Russia, Ukraine, Demark, and Sweden. They come to visit here to see the pictures. Oh, here we are! [Scrolling down through the page] Here is a copy of a book that was written in English and in Arabic but it really best if you see the original books, not like here, on the computer. [I recognised the pages were from Clinton Bailey’s (2004) book Bedouin Poetry

Circulating Images: Tribal Histories of Lineages  169

Emilie: Ḥassan:

From Sinai and the Negev. In fact, all of the poems in the book that mentioned the al-Huzayyil tribe had been copied, photographed, digitised, and posted on this page.] Are those poems from Clinton Bailey’s book? I don’t know who wrote them but there are a lot of things written about Shaykh Salmān II there in English and Arabic.

The entire homepage was composed of archival photographs, films, and pages from Hebrew, Arabic, and English documents. Clicking on the page’s album collection, Ḥassan went through the digitised collection of each photograph that he had previously shown us in family albums. Ḥassan contextualised each image with Hebrew, Arabic, and ­German captions.5 In addition to the captions, followers of the page also inserted comments about the images. Once again, Ḥassan went through each image and explained who was in the picture, the past event in which it was taken, and the importance of the shaykh’s legacy. Towards the end of the online collection, we came to a digitised copy of the earliest photograph taken of the shaykh, the image taken from al-ʿĀrif’s book (see Figure 5.1). Ḥassan:

Emilie: Ḥassan:

Emilie: Ḥassan:

Ok, so now we come to ʿĀrif al-ʿĀrif. This is a photograph is taken from ʿĀrif al-ʿĀrif ‘s books and here [pointing to the screen] see it says again, ‘Shaykh of all the Tiyaha’. At that time, he was the shaykh of all the Tiyāhā. See it says here in the photograph. [Scrolling down the homepage] That is him with ʿĀrif al-ʿĀrif and his sword. Here see this photograph [pointing to the image]. It  says, ‘The Sheikhs of Beersheba’. In 1920, the British took the shaykhs, those who really had power in the Naqab, and put them together in a shaykh’s court. See it says, ‘Shaykh al-Huzayyil of the Tiyaha was a member of the Tribal Court’. There were eight shaykhs there. Do you know the names of any of the others? No, they are written in the Arabic books. Their names stay there but not in the English and Hebrew books, only in the Arabic books. English and Hebrew books do not recognise everyone or give us their names. You know I want this book in Arabic. I only have the Hebrew one. They say these books are in Ben Gurion Library. The originals of the books are there at the Ben Gurion University. Where did you get these pictures? The images you put here on Facebook and the albums? Are they from your father’s personal collection? They were around. Most of the pictures were collected by my mother and me. Some were given to us. There might be more out there but I don’t know. I have what I have … that is all. But, you see, there are lots of pictures here and good ones too. The originals are in the albums not like you see like here on the computer, but they also now hang in our shigg.

Back in the newly constructed shigg of the al-Huzayyil, I studied the same image of his father, which was a photocopy of the image in the album (see Figure 5.2).

170 Photographs

Figure 5.2  A photocopy of Shaykh Salmān al-Huzayyil II portrait from al-Arif’s (1944) book h ­ anging on the wall of the agnate meeting house. Original creator(s): Unknown. S­ econdary creator(s): Emilie Le Febvre. Source of original: ʿĀrif al-ʿĀrif’s (1944) book Bedouin, Love, Law, and Legend. Original date: c. 1900.  Access date: 25 September 2012.

Around it hung twenty-five other pictures of Ḥassan’s father in variously sized frames. The quality of the images ranged from glossy colour photographs to dull photocopies taken from newspapers and books. Their content included stoic portraits, posed group pictures, and spontaneous snapshots taken during group events or meetings from the 1930s up until the shaykh’s death. In most, the shaykh was depicted with well-known figures such as Israel’s former Prime Minister Simon Peres (1977), the state’s former ­Minister of Defense Moshe Dayan (1967–1974), and other leaders from the Naqab. Arranged alongside the photographs were also framed documents including personal correspondences and newspaper articles in Hebrew, Arabic, and English script. In addition to the documentary materials, there were other material items such as a large blue Oriental rug along with coffee urns and commemorative plates. Looking over the picture wall, another image caught my eye. This one was in a decorative wooden frame and appeared to be a photocopy of an original photograph (see Figure 5.3). The picture depicted Shaykh Salmān II with Eleanor Roosevelt and an Israeli military officer. Below the image was Hebrew text that had been cut from its original

Circulating Images: Tribal Histories of Lineages  171 context and glued to the same mount containing the copied photograph. The caption read in Hebrew, ‘Honourable Guest Flew into the country. Eleanor Roosevelt, the widow of a president, came down to the Naqab to meet with Sheikh al-Huziel in his camp next to Kibbutz Shuval’.

Figure 5.3  Shaykh Salmān al-Huzayyil II, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Michael Hanegbi photocopied from an unknown newspaper in framed and displayed in al-Huzayyil’s shigg Photocopier: Ḥassan al-Huzayyil. Original creator(s): Fritz Cohen. Producer of copy: Emilie Le Febvre. Original date: 15 February 1952.  First copy date: Unknown. Access date: 21 November 2012.

Ḥassan explained that he had photocopied the image from a newspaper given to him by a friend, which he then framed and hung next to other portraits, group photos, documents, and letters on a wall commemorating the life of his father and the power of his family in the meeting place. Emilie: Ḥassan:

I heard that after the creation of Israel many international representatives came to the Naqab to visit the shaykh. Is that Eleanor Roosevelt with him? Yes, I want to tell you about this now. It happened in 1955 maybe or around then. You know that a lot of tourists come to Israel and they heard that there is a famous shaykh here in the Naqab and they wanted to come visit him. So

172 Photographs one day, an American from Newsweek magazine, a journalist wrote an article in America that Shaykh al-Huzayyil would like to marry with an American wife.… Why do I tell you this? At this time, the president’s wife Eleanor, she decided to visit the shaykh after the president died and she was a widow. I think that she read the Newsweek and heard that the shaykh wanted a wife and was curious [laughing]... No, no, I am joking. But there is a picture of this meeting also on the Facebook page that I showed you. So you know, usually because he was the most famous shaykh in the Naqab all of Israel’s presidents came to visit him. It began with Ben Gurion and Begin and Rabin and everybody was here to visit him. Even people from the Knesset during election and even people from the outside, those people even came to visit him. After we finished looking at the images, Ḥassan guided us back through his private g­ arden into his house where we had our earlier discussion. After we finished our conversation, we said our goodbyes. As we walked through the gated entrance, we thanked him for his time. Oh, by the way, Emilie, here is my business card. You should also look on the Internet. There is more information about my father there. Many, many websites because as I told you, he was a very important man for our people. He said in English. I thanked him once again and we said our goodbyes. As I drove the truck out of the parking area, ʿAmīr exclaimed, ‘Emilie, look!’ I followed his finger pointing over the fence line towards a tall metal post emerging from the garden next to Ḥassan’s house. There on the lamppost was an enlarged and framed black-and-white portrait of the shaykh, looking out over the parking lot to the expanse of the Naqab’s northern hills. A couple of weeks after our interview with Ḥassan, I travelled to Ben Gurion University (BGU) in Beersheba to find the books containing the images displayed on the meeting place’s wall and the shaykh’s son’s Facebook page. I was looking for the ʿĀrif al-ʿĀrif’s English volume Bedouin Love, Law, and Legend (1944) and the Hebrew and Arabic versions of Taʾrikh Bʾir al-sabʿ wa-Qabāʾilihā (1934) (English – History of Beersheba and Its Tribes). As stated earlier, al-ʿĀrif also wrote extensively about Bedouin society and history during his administration, which cumulated into the above-mentioned series of books. While providing information pertaining to genealogies, territories, and customs, his writings, these books also contained an impressive range of historical photographic reprints. There on the shelves, I found a variety of al-ʿĀrif’s books in BGU’s Middle Eastern Collection and skimmed them for the portrait of the young Shaykh Salmān II. There were Hebrew translations of al-ʿĀrif’s work, which the Joe Alon Museum of Bedouin Culture and BGU translated in 2006; a publication directed at Hebrew reading audiences. In each book, however, someone had torn out the pages containing larger portraits of shaykhs. In addition to ripping out the pages, a person had also gone through all of the Hebrew copies and translated each of the smaller images’ captions from Hebrew into Arabic in pencil (see Figure 5.4).

Circulating Images: Tribal Histories of Lineages  173

Figure 5.4  Photograph of book page containing portrait of Shaykh Ḥamād al-Ṣānaʿ in the Hebrew translation of ʿĀrif al-ʿĀrif ’s (1934) book Taʾrīkh Biʾr al-Sabʿ wa-Qabāʾiliha. Original creator(s): American Colony (Jerusalem) Photo Department, photographer. Location of original: Matson (G. Eric and Edith) Photograph Collection. Producer of copy: Emilie Le Febvre. Archive: Ben Gurion University of the Negev. Call Number: LC-M32- 3780 [P&P]. Original archive: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division W ­ ashington, D.C. 20540 USA. Original date: c.1920 to 1933.  Access date: 25 ­September 2012.

Flipping through the pages of al-ʿĀrif’s English (1944) volume, I came across Shaykh Salmān II’s early portrait. It was located on page seventy-three in his chapter entitled ‘Divorce and Polygamy’. In the paragraph next to the image, al-ʿĀrif wrote: If you were to ask a Badawi what is the most important material factor in his life, his answer probably would be land. If you asked him what is the second in importance, he would answer women. In his relationship with women, divorce and polygamy are freely practised. The prophet has said that divorce is tolerated but hated by God. It comes under the category of El-Halal (things which are permitted though frowned upon) as distinct from Haram (things that are forbidden). It is said in the Koran – ‘You may marry, twice, thrice, four times, but if you fear you will not do justice you should marry only one’. Shaykh Salman Huzeil married twenty-six, and one of his ancestors married 28 women. The Huziel tribe are known to indulge living in polygamy. At no one time does the number of wives exceed four as laid down in the Koran.6

174 Photographs Despite emphasising the ‘exotic’ practice of polygamy among Bedouin in the Naqab, al-ʿĀrif provided no citation for the shaykh’s portrait displayed in the al-Huzayyil’s meeting place. The remaining photographic reprints in the books, however, were all carefully referenced and attributed to the American Colony’s Photo Service. Did al-ʿĀrif forget to cite it? Did he own the image or take it himself? After perusing al-ʿĀrif’s Arabic works, it became apparent that photographers from the American Colony of Jerusalem produced most of the images in his books. In addition, each translation contained the same photographic images initially produced by these photographers. Moreover, as the shaykh’s son asserted, the Arabic version was the only volume that listed and identified shaykhs by name. In fact, it listed the names of each shaykh posed in the group photographs and described each pre-1948 tribal lineage. Upon careful examination, it also became clear that al-ʿĀrif or his publisher had identified each shaykh from the group photographs, cropped their image, and re-printed their smaller portrait in the relevant chapters describing their tribes. Additional images of Shaykh Salmān II showed him sitting with other Tiyāhā leaders participating in tribal courts established during the British Mandate. One was the picture that the shaykh’s son had copied and posted on his Facebook page. The portrait of the younger Shaykh Salmān II in the English (1944) book was not, however, among the images in the Arabic (1933) or Hebrew (2001) versions. Confronted with a dead end regarding the biography of the early portrait, I met with a local Bedouin professor from BGU in an attempt to get more information about ʿĀrif al-ʿĀrif’s books and the photographic collections in them. He explained that there are multiple translations of al-ʿĀrif’s volumes in Arabic, Hebrew, German, and English. The Israeli translators presented the Hebrew version as a direct translation of the Arabic book, however, he informed me that they significantly altered some of the information from al-ʿĀrif’s Arabic text. For example, they added and took away several images displayed in the original Arabic version.7 Moreover, he clarified that the English edition is an Orientalised version of the Arabic and only focuses on cultural aspects of this Naqab society and does not go into detail about tribal (ʿāʾiliyya) histories, unlike Hebrew and Arabic versions. Unfortunately, the professor had no additional information about the source of the photographic images other than that they originated from the American Colony, which had initially produced them. He explained: You know, most people believe that the photographs were taken by al-ʿĀrif himself since most find them in his books. These books are the only means for people to access these important images but as you have read, al-ʿĀrif clearly states that the images were taken by the American Colony photographers. He went on to explain that these photographs are the earliest surviving images of the Naqab Bedouin and are highly valued by members. I asked him why so many of the pages containing the shaykh’s portraits were removed from the Hebrew books. He stated in English: Bedouin students take them, especially pictures of shaykhs from their own tribes. In fact, these are probably the only photographs of their ancestors. Once taken, students make copies to frame and hang on the walls of their houses and the meeting place, and you can even find them on the Internet nowadays.

Circulating Images: Tribal Histories of Lineages  175 After our conversation, I conducted a more thorough Internet search for pictures of the shaykh. In addition to the shaykh’s son’s Facebook page, I found the portrait on a Hebrew version of Wikipedia created by another member of the lineage, ʿAlī al-Huzayyil. The webpage was entitled in Hebrew Salman al-Huzel (English – Salmān al-Huzayyil) and recounts several stories popularly relayed in the Naqab about the shaykh, such as the desert well story involving his daughter. The online version of the story is recounted by another shaykh who supposedly accompanied Shaykh Salmān II on the day in question. Today this account, not the shaykh’s son’s version, is the more popular version of the ‘well story’: Those days we went hunting and went riding horses. One day we passed one of the wells in the Naqab. Around the well were women drawing water for their flocks. We stopped to water the horses. Shaykh found a beautiful young girl among the women and as usual began to charm her for himself. He turned to her and asked, ‘What tribe you are from? What your father’s name?’ And she replied, ‘Al-Huzayyil tribe and my father is Shaykh Salmān’. He then asked her who is your mother? She answers and tells her mother was deported to her parents when she was a baby and now she lives with an aunt. She went on to say, ‘I have not seen my father for my entire life and I do not know him at all.’ The shaykh said surprised and disappointed, ‘I am that Shaykh and you are my daughter.’8 In addition to this story, the website contained a digital image of the young shaykh in the left-hand margin of the page – it was a copy of the portrait taken directly from al-ʿĀrif’s English edition.9 The caption reads, ‘Shaykh Salman al-Huzayyil in his youth’. Once again, however, there is no citation for the image. Pursuing my final lead, I decided to continue my research on the American Colony photographers, particularly Lewis Larsson, Eric Matson, and John Whiting, as little is known about them among Bedouin. In the hopes of locating the source of the shaykh’s portrait, I visited the Library of Congress in the United States where the Matson Collection is held – a large archive that holds many of the early photographic portraits of the shaykhs at the beginning of the twentieth century. The collection is composed of glass and film photographic negatives and transparencies, and photographic prints, including stereographic images and eleven albums, most of which have been recently digitised and made available online. The images depict events such as Sir Herbert Samuel’s10 arrival at the Naqab, customary wedding day feasts, and Bedouin way of life during the British Mandate. Included in this collection are also black-and-white portfolios with portraits of shaykhs most likely commissioned by al-ʿĀrif. In most, the leading noblemen sit in front of Beersheba’s stone buildings with their swords and guns, and wear their best clothing. As seen in Chapter 1 (see Figure 1.8), group photographs were taken of shaykhs of particular tribes (ashā’ir) and usually with al-ʿĀrif sitting or standing among them. None of the men images in the group photographs, other than al-ʿĀrif, were identified in these photographs; similar to al-ʿĀrif’s English books. Instead, the photographs’ captions simply read ‘Aref el Aref and Bedouin Sheikhs’, as Ḥassan noted in our conversation. Later research revealed, however, that these photographs’ biographies, namely their production and providences, are entangled in a complex story of conflict and mischaracterisation among the American Colony photographers. Images in the G. Eric and Edith Matson Collection were created by members of the American Colony that operated in Jerusalem between 1881 and 1933. The American Colony’s commercial photographic endeavours which began with Elijah Meyers

176 Photographs (1855–n.d.) in 1898. During the Photography Department’s Golden Era, Meyers and his apprentices including Hol Lars (later known as Lewis) Larsson (1881–1958) and Eric Matson (1888–1977), undertook ‘ground-breaking expedition work beyond the borders of Palestine, deep into the neighbouring Bible Lands’.11 They produced negatives with a dry gelatine emulsion on glass, which allowed them to create images in bulk. In order to capture images in remote locations, the photographers also used horses and camels to haul heavy boxes of glass negatives and their view cameras. Around 1910, Meyers handed over leadership of the Department to Lewis Larsson. It had ten employees from American, Swedish, and Arab backgrounds at the time.12 Larsson had cultivated a wide network of contacts through his extensive travels in the region and often spent long periods of time with local people to ‘gain knowledge of their customs’.13 Larsson left the sect in 1930. He and his family continued to reside in Jerusalem but sought temporary refuge in Sweden amid the hostilities of 1948. While they were abroad, fighting forces plundered and destroyed his entire personal photo archive back home in Jerusalem. Eric Matson took up leadership in 1929. In the 1920s, Matson served as Larsson’s main assistant and collaborated with John D. Whiting (1882–1951).14 The Department closed in 1934 with its services, equipment, and archive bequeathed to Matson, who used the inventory to establish the Matson Photo Service in Jerusalem. He produced new images and made reprints from original negatives taken earlier by the other American Colony photographers. All photographs published after 1934 were stamped, however, with the ‘Matson Photo Service’ trademark irrespective of authorship.15 Matson’s business operated throughout the majority of the British Mandate ­(1922–1948), until he and his family moved to the United States because of increased fighting in Jerusalem in 1946. After the Matsons left the region, local employees continued operating the business until the 1950s. Matson took approximately two-thirds of the photo archive with him to the United States, a compilation of images taken by the American Colony Photography Department and the Matson Photo Service. He left the remaining images at the YMCA in Jerusalem.16 Matson contacted the United States Library of Congress in 1966 and offered to donate the archive along with the negatives from Jerusalem, which he later shipped from storage in 1970. Rights for the archival images were initially held by Matson’s care home but they relinquished them to the Library of Congress after his death in 1977. The Library of Congress labelled the archive the ‘G. Eric and Edith Matson Collection’. Matson helped librarians sort and label the images over two months in 1971 and provided a written background about the archive. His narrative, however, omitted and misrepresented the history of the photographs. In particular, Matson led curators to believe that he himself had taken the negatives labelled under the ‘American Colony Trademark’ when in fact Elijah Meyers, Lewis Larsson, John Whiting, and others had produced many of the images. Tim Powers explained: When a curator later asked about Larsson’s role, Matson characterized him as one of his, i.e., Matson’s, assistants. Matson was also hesitant at the time to date many of the early photographs (indeed, he was only ten when the unit was formed in 1898) […] In any event, in 1976, one year before his death, Matson was more forthcoming when asked by researchers from Israel for information on the early photos, specifically those appearing in the American Colony Photographers’ 1914 catalogue – a period when Matson was not yet taking pictures. In a letter, Matson now acknowledged the role of Lewis Larsson and others.17

Circulating Images: Tribal Histories of Lineages  177 As a result, the biographies and captions of the images in the archive are fractured and vague with Matson having assigned individual photographs a broad range of dates (1920–1933, 1934–1939) and attributing them to either the American Colony Photography Department or its successor the Matson Photo Service (LC 2010), with no mention of individual photographers. Ultimately, individual attributions of the American ­Colony’s photographs such as those found in al-ʿĀrif’s book were difficult to assign because of the collaborative nature of the photographers’ work, which reflected the broader communal ethos of the sect itself. In many cases, the photographers worked together to capture, produce, and distribute their images whether on expedition or in the dark room, and simply stamped their work with the American Colony Trademark (and later the Matson Photo Service). Consequently, their photographs are spread across several library archives today including the Matson Collection, the John D. Whiting Papers (1890–1970), the Bain News Service Photograph Collection, and the American Colony in Jerusalem ­Collection (1886–2007). As noted in the last chapter, the American Colony photographers created an extensive visual record of everyday Bedouin life, leaders, and residences during the late Ottoman Empire (1789–1922) and the Mandate Period that constitutes valuable visual documentation garnered from the photographers’ long-term relationships with local Bedouin. In fact, visitors to the sect regularly noted the photographers’ interactions with tribes in the region.18 John Whiting, for example, maintained close connections with Bedouin in the region. He was fluent in Arabic and became the American deputy consul (1908–1910) and vice-consul (1915–1917). Whiting partnered with Larsson and collaborated with Matson several years after the American Colony disassembled. For example, Whiting took a camel trip to several camps in 1934 upon the invitation of al-ʿĀrif, during which he was photographed alongside elders and attending special events organised by al-ʿĀrif. My later research found that Whiting was also connected to a series of photographs in the Matson Collection depicting notables in al-ʿĀrif’s book. Larsson, Matson, or ­Whiting most likely took the majority of images of Bedouin in the Beersheba region created after 1934 but ‘to what degree [they and others] continued to use older American Colony images, for purposes, is unknown’.19 Assaf Likhovski noted, however, that: In his discussion of the Bedouin tribal court in Beersheba, al-Arif included a picture of a panel of Bedouin sheikhs deciding a case, with “Mr John Whiting, an American orientalist”, listening intently to their conversation […] Like many Westerners and some Arabs, Whiting was interested in the Bedouin because he viewed them as living relics of biblical times […] Despite the difference in motivations, however, al-Arif certainly relied on Whiting’s work and used many of Whiting’s pictures.20 While the American Colony photographs in the Matson Collection and its reprints in al-ʿĀrif’s books constitute one of the earliest visual records of the Naqab Bedouin today, after reviewing the entire collection, I was not able to locate the ‘original’ copy of the young Shaykh Salmān II’s portrait in its holdings. Thus the reconstruction of this particular image’s biography came to an end, lost in the hinterland of missing citations, conflict, misappropriations, and private family libraries. Despite its forgotten origin, however, the portrait of the shaykh continues to amass its own story as evidence for the history of the al-Huzayyil and their legacy, a source of ancestral pride today that supports popular

178 Photographs historical narratives such as that written on the lineage’s Hebrew Wikipedia page, which stated: It is known throughout the region that Shaykh Salman al-Huzayyil was a legend in his lifetime. He has an exceptional status not only among the tribes Tiyaha, but across the Naqab, Sinai, and Jordan. He had many purebred Arabian horses, some of which had a lavish heritage of five generations or more. Shaykh possessed great leadership, wisdom, courage, generosity and ability to negotiate with any government. He was a striking appearance: tall, noble-looking, fair skin and blue eyes. He also had popular healing abilities…. He also served as a judge in court Bedouin Beersheba.21 After failing to locate the original image of Shaykh Salmān II in al-ʿĀrif’s books, I went back to BGU library several weeks later to research the biography of the image depicting the shaykh, Eleanor Roosevelt, and the Israeli Military Governor. I began by taking up Ḥassan’s suggestion to take a more comprehensive look at his Hebrew Facebook page. There he had also uploaded a digital copy of the Roosevelt photograph in the page dedicated to his father. The photograph, like others uploaded onto his account, was captioned in English, German, Hebrew, and Arabic. Additional research found that Eleanor Roosevelt had made three visits to Israel in 1952, 1955, and 1959. In 1952, Roosevelt had visited Beersheba where she met with Shaykh Salmān II. According to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (19 February 1952), an international periodical for American English readers, ‘Mrs Roosevelt visited Beersheba where she lunched with the major and local notables. Later she visited Sheikh Al-Huziel and his tribe’. Mrs. Roosevelt made two subsequent trips to Israel. During each she took time to visit Shaykh Shaykh Salmān II. The story of Shaykh Shaykh Salmān II and Mrs. Roosevelt’s meeting was described in another news article directed at English-reading audiences in Russia. The St. Petersburg Times (3 December 1957) described how Roosevelt had met the shaykh six weeks earlier during a tour of the Middle East and that he asked her to marry him despite having thirty-nine wives. The marriage proposal was also mentioned in an article published by The Sydney Morning Herald entitled ‘Mrs Roosevelt Refused, but 1,000 want a sheik’. It stated: He is the desert Casanova who has already proposed three times to Mrs Roosevelt…. The sheik, known as the King of the Bedouins, lives in a fortress-like mansion built of massive limestone blocks and mud in the desert near Beersheba. Surrounding it are packs of horses, camels, dogs, arabs, palm trees – and sand. There are also dozens of children. Most of them are the sheik’s, by his 39 wives, but some are his grandchildren. He isn’t sure which are his. The sheik, who is at least 70, has mahogany skin, a hooked nose, piercing brown eyes, an Errol Flynn moustache, and chin whiskers. At present he has only two wives. A reporter asked what happened to the other 37. The sheik’s son, Shalet, answered by snapping a thumb over his shoulder like a baseball umpire. He gets rid of a wife by giving her clothes and pointing to the door. He specially wants Mrs Roosevelt, 73, to be his fortieth wife. ‘Of course,’ the sheik says, ‘I could never hope to match my grandfather. He had 45.’22 In 1960, The Sydney Morning Herald published a report entitled, ‘Mrs Roosevelt: The sheik still tries’.23 It describes that Mrs Roosevelt met the shaykh in 1953 and ‘[s]ince

Circulating Images: Tribal Histories of Lineages  179 then he has been wooing her with spoken and written words…. Mrs Roosevelt admitted that she was “tickled pick” by the sheik’s first proposal. Since then she has maintained a stony silence about her desert admirer’. I cross-referenced the dates of the articles with the Israeli government’s newly established online national photographic collection with Hebrew and English versions, which today houses the largest and oldest collection of historical images of Naqab Bedouin pertaining to the Israeli visual economy. There I found that Fritz Cohen of the Israeli Government Press Office (GPO) took the original photograph on 15 February 1952 (see Figure 5.3). The image was captured during Eleanor Roosevelt’s visit to the Naqab with the shaykh and Israeli District Governor Michael Hanegbi in 1952. The original copy is now stored at Israel’s National Photo Collection located in Jerusalem but the GPO’s Photography Department produced a digitised copy in 1998. Along with the photograph of Shaykh Shaykh Salmān II and Eleanor Roosevelt, the photographic collection houses hundreds of images of notables and events from 1949 to the late 1990s. Satisfied with locating the original copy of the photograph hanging in Ḥassan’s meeting place, I did not pursue the image’s biography any further at the time. Several months later, however, while attending a dinner party in Rāhaṭ with members of the al-Huzayyil and al-Ṣānaʿ, the photograph’s more recent and controversial biography was brought to my attention. Good Arabs (2010 [2006]) by Hillel Cohen, a professor from Hebrew University, is a book that describing the ‘political relationships’ of several dozen Palestinian citizens of Israel with the newly formed Jewish state as articulated in recently declassified court, government, and media records previously withheld by the state of Israel.24 Among these men are several well-known leaders from the Naqab who, according to Cohen’s research, worked with the new Israeli state in various ways during the Nakba and Military Administration (1948-1966). During the conversation (in dialectic) between diners attending the party, the guests discussed Cohen’s books and expressed their mutual concern about the prospect of his research injuring the reputations of the tribesmen mentioned in his work and further ramifications for their families. After their heated debate concerning which of their ancestors ‘cooperated’ more with the Israeli government than others, the dinner party concluded. Several days after the event, I went in search of a hard copy of the book in BGU’s library. Upon locating it, I was surprised to find that on the front cover of the English version was the photograph of Shaykh Salmān II, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Governor Michael Hanegbi taken by Fritz Cohen in 1952. I later learned that in both editions, Hillel Cohen devotes a section in Chapter 6 to ‘The Noble Savage and Breached Boundaries’ in which he describes Bedouin individuals from the Naqab who liaised with the Israeli officials and the patronising treatment by Israeli officials towards these leaders.25 To illustrate this point, Cohen details several occasions in which Shaykh Salmān II hosted and met with Israeli officials as an appointed civil servant wherein he served as an official go-between or state-assigned shaykhs (shuyūkh-mukhtār) for their tribal members.26 In addition to the written description of Shaykh Salmān II’s dealings with police in the chapter, the author or possibly his publishers also chose the GPO’s 1952 photograph for the cover of the English edition (2010) but not for the Hebrew edition. Since the publication of Good Arabs in 2006 and 2010, other lineages frequently reference the book and photographic illustrations as proof of the al-Huzayyil’s loyalty to Israel, which in the eyes of some Bedouin is a disavowal of Palestinian nationalism. This comes as both historical and contemporary accounts of people cooperating with the Israeli government are increasingly decried by other members as working against the solidarity of the Bedouin as Palestinians in Israel. During fieldwork, I was often told by

180 Photographs various people that certain lineages had worked ‘behind the backs of the community and collaborated with the state to get recognition of their own family’s lands’. While these accusations are not only characteristic of tribal politics, Bedouin’s more general interest in local historiography and subsequent revisions and/or confirmations of local tribal history have grown since the Israeli government opened27 several archives to the general public in the 1990s and the publication of the New Historians’ findings, written in mostly Hebrew and English, such as that of Hillel Cohen. Some attendees at the dinner party in Rāhaṭ, claim that these documentary disclosures merely substantiate the ‘truth’ of al-Huzayyil’s loyalty to Israel; others, such as those from the al-Huzayyil lineage, argued that al-ʿĀrif’s and Cohen’s books are recorded proof of their ancestors’ influence with the various governments ruling the region such as the nascent Israeli state. They expressed a viewpoint similar to Ḥassan’s belief that Shaykh Salmān II was personally responsible for convincing Israeli officials to let Bedouin remain in the Naqab after 1948, particularly tribes they considered to be loyal to the state. This occurrence, however, solidified the historical reputations of other lineages, like the al-Ṣānaʿ, as troublemakers among their peers and considered anti-yishuv (anti-Jewish community) by Israeli officials. In fact, it was this reputation that led the Israeli government to forcibly expel al-Ṣānaʿ from their Naqab lands in the area of Lagīya and to try, unsuccessfully, to relocate them to Jordan in 1952. Al-Ṣānaʿ: Gender, Authority, and Contest

ʿĀʾisha (anonymised) al-Ṣānaʿ and I first met in 2007 while I was conducting research for my graduate degree at BGU. While politically influential on a regional and international stage, ʿĀʾisha, as a woman, does not have the same status in the al-Ṣānaʿ lineage as her father who is a prominent elder (kabīr). Nevertheless, as a well-known figure, she has established relationships with other lineages and created several prominent civic organisations. During my fieldwork in 2007-2009, I became acquainted with ʿĀʾisha’s extended family during holidays. I also lived with her immediate family in Beersheba where she worked as the director of a local NGO the Arab Jewish Center for Economic Empowerment and Corporation (AJEEC). Upon my return to the Naqab in 2011 for my doctoral research, ʿĀʾisha agreed to help me find old photographs of Bedouin circulating in this society. Over the course of the first year, she introduced me to local photographers and took me to places where she believed old images were displayed. On one such occasion, ʿĀʾisha and I visited an NGO named Desert Embroidery located next to her brother’s house in her hometown of Lagīya. The NGO is part of the Lagīya Women’s Association founded in 1996 by ʿĀʾisha and other female relatives such as her older sister. She has been the supervisor of the organisation since 2001. Their projects provide 160 women around Lagīya with alternative sources of income from microeconomic projects where they sell embroidered handicrafts and textiles to visitors and museums. ‘There it is! The photograph I told you about … the one showing the history of Lagīya during the Nakba!’ (see Figure 5.5) ʿĀʾisha said while pointing to a large poster set into a black and gold frame that dominated the wall behind the cash register in Desert ­Embroidery’s storefront. The poster was an enlarged black-and-white copy of a photograph depicting a group of women and children sitting and standing alongside a dirt road in a desert landscape. In the foreground, a young boy was looking at an object in his hands while a group of veiled women sat and stood behind him. In the far distance, one could pick out a group of camels and men, along with a military jeep. Below

Circulating Images: Tribal Histories of Lineages  181 the image, the poster’s caption read in English, ‘Members of the es-Sani waiting to be searched before being taken back into Israel’. Above the image, an additional caption had been inserted and printed onto the poster copy in Arabic. It read, ‘March 3 in Remembrance of Earth Day’, along with a logo of the Association of Women of Lagīya. Below a caption in Arabic read ‘17 September 1952 Deportation of the Population of Lagīya to Beyond the [Israeli] Border’.

Figure 5.5  Photograph of a framed poster depicting the al-Ṣānaʿ on the Jordanian border in Desert Embroidery. Original creator(s): Elmo Hutchison. Secondary creator(s): ʿĀʾisha (anonymised) al-Ṣānaʿ. Third creator(s): Emilie Le Febvre. Original source: Hutchison. Elmo. 1956. Violent Truce: A Military Observer Looks at the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1951–1955, New York: The DevinAdair Company. Original date: September 1952.  Secondary date: Unknown. Access date: 30 April 2012. 

I recognised the picture she pointed to and recalled the first occasion ʿĀʾisha had shown me another copy of this photograph in her apartment in Beersheba in 2007. During one of our earlier interviews, I had questioned her about the al-Ṣānaʿ’s experiences during the Nakba. Then she explained in English that she owned a book that describes the history of the al-Ṣānaʿ during the Military Administration after 1948: ʿĀʾisha:

Emilie:

Here. [Placing the book on my lap]. You should take a look at this book. The book is in English so it will be easy for you to read. The history of family is in there. See the history of the al-Ṣānaʿ has been written down. There you can find the history of my family after the Nakba. Did you buy this book?

182 Photographs ʿĀʾisha: Emilie: ʿĀʾisha: Emilie: ʿĀʾisha:

Emilie: ʿĀʾisha:

No, I didn’t. A professor gave it to me but I don’t want to hurt him, so I won’t tell you his name. Maybe he stole it from the library. When did he give it to you? When? 2003 he gave it to me. Why? One day we were talking about my family, my tribe, and our history and he explained to me that he had found a book in a foreign library in the USA that recorded the al-Ṣānaʿ’s experiences during the Nakba. He was conducting interviews with my father at the time. He later gave me the book. See, here, it is written by a man named Hutchison when he worked here in the Naqab with the United Nations. This man tried to help our tribe when we were trapped on the Israeli border and the Jordanians would not let us enter. See here, he even took pictures. [Flipping through the book she showed me the images.] See here, this photo is my tribe and there. [Pointing to another photograph.] This is my great-grandfather Ibrāhīm al-Ṣānaʿ. He was the shaykh of the al-Ṣānaʿ at the time.28 Our tribe was very strong then and we were involved in politics like my great-grandfather, Ibrāhīm, who was a moral man, a judge, and spoke with King ʿAbdullāh of Jordan. He was someone he used to meet with. Like everyone in my tribe, he was strong and an educated man. Had you seen this book before or photographs of your family in it? No, it was the first time when the professor gave it to me.

The book was entitled Violent Truce (1956) and, as ʿĀʾisha indicated, it was written by Elmo H. Hutchison, a United States Navy Reserve Commander, and Military Officer with the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO),29 and published by the Devin Company in New York. In it, Hutchison described his experiences during an assignment to the UNTSO in Israel-Palestine during the 1951-1954 Armistice Period. In the preface, he explained the difficulties facing United Nations Truce officers overseeing the ‘transition’ of land between the Israelis and Palestinians. Flipping through the pages, I discovered Chapter Five was entitled, es’ Sanis; The New Refugees. There as she has said, Hutchison provided a first-hand account of the al-Ṣānaʿ’s forced displacement from the newly created state of Israel into Jordan and their eventual return to Israel’s Naqab desert in 1952.30 Hutchison stated that on the morning of 17 September 1952, he travelled to the IsraeliJordanian border to oversee a dispute between the al-Ṣānaʿ, Israeli officials, and Jordanian officers.31 ʿĀʾisha’s great-grandfather, Shaykh Ibrāhīm al-Ṣānaʿ had invited both the UNTSO and the Jordanian District Police Commander to explain how Israeli officials had expelled the al-Ṣānaʿ from their Naqab lands and forced them to cross the border into Jordan just south of Hebron.32 Jordanian officers had greeted them upon their arrival but told the Shaykh Ibrāhīm that the al-Ṣānaʿ could no longer stay inside the country and must travel back to Israel. The Commander argued that Jordan’s arable lands were overcrowded with Palestinian refugees and if the Jordanian government allowed the al-Ṣānaʿ to stay in their country, they feared the Israelis would push more Bedouin across the border. The UNTSO oversaw several complaints of this nature by neighbouring states of Jordan and Egypt, who protested Israel’s ‘cutting down of her Arab populations by driving Bedouins and even Arab villagers across their borders’ since the signing of the Armistice.33 Hutchison explained that upon arrival to the Jordan-Israeli border he found approximately one hundred families, nearly a thousand al-Ṣānaʿ camped with all their belongings

Circulating Images: Tribal Histories of Lineages  183 along the Jordan-Israeli border. There he met Shaykh Ibrāhīm who explained to the UNTSO officer the following story: [E]s-Sanis were once a rich tribe. Their many herds grazed over the lands of the Naqab but the people, other than those assigned to tend to the herds, lived on the lands they cultivated southeast of Beersheba at El Sharia. At the end of the Arab-Israeli hostilities, the Israelis forced them to leave these lands and move to El Laqiya, northeast of Beersheba… El Hajj34 Ibrahim continued. He explained that over a month ago the Israeli Military Government had told him Israel was going to establish a settlement at El Laqiya and that his tribe would have to move to Tel Arad. He knew the Tel Arad well and seeing no possibility of survival there, ignored the order. A week later the Israelis brought in tractors and a representative of a land company; work was started on the es-Sani lands. El Hajj Ibrāhīm took his complaint to the Israeli courts and, according to him, they granted him a provisional judgment against the Military Government of Beersheba and the land company engaged in the work. The tribe was given permission to stay at El Laqiya. The legal action, however, did not stop the Israeli Military Governor, who moved in rapidly to enforce his demands. When he stated that the tribe would have to go to Tel Arad, by force, if necessary, the old Shaykh countered by saying that he would move his tribe to Jordan before he would go to Tel Arad. The Military Governor claimed this would be against the terms of the Armistice with Jordan but he would make no attempt to stop the move. El Hajj Ibrahim took the offer and the border east of El Laqiya, usually carefully guarded by Israel against infiltration, remained open until his tribe crossed into Jordan. ‘Now,’ he concluded in a shout, ‘You stop me. Where can I lead my people?’ El Hajj angrily whacked the carpeted ground. Following this conference, we immediately arranged for a meeting between the Israeli and Jordanian representatives.… Here we were informed by the Military Governor … and Chief Israeli Delegate … that El Hajj Ibrahim es’ Sani had asked if he could move his tribe, ‘residents of Tel Arad,’ into Jordan. The Military Governor stated that he had told the Shaykh he could not grant such permission but would not object to the move.35 Upon hearing the two different versions of the stories, the UNTSO officers checked ­published court verdicts to see if the shaykh’s story was correct and understand why the al-Ṣānaʿ, if from Tel Arad as the Governor claimed, would choose to cross into Jordan at the Lagīya border.36 During their research, they came across a 28 September 1952 Israeli press announcement in an unknown periodical stating, ‘Bedouin Tribe Moved’. The a­ rticle documented that: Tribesman of the Kiderat El Sana Teljaha tribe were moved last week from their former homes at El Laqiya, east of the Beersheba-Hebron road, to a new site at Tel Arad…. On September 15th, the High Court in Jerusalem issued an order nisi [order to show cause] against the Military Governor … against the enforced move of the tribe.37 In short, the Israeli news article corroborated Shaykh Ibrāhīm’s version of events. Using this evidence from the newspaper along with the court verdict, UNTSO filed a formal request that Israel be forced to accept the return of al-Ṣānaʿ back to Israel in light of the Military Governor’s illegal efforts to dispel the tribe from their customary lands in Lagīya.

184 Photographs After days of mediation, it was arranged for the al-Ṣānaʿ to move back into Israel. The Israeli officials, however, requested the members be transported inside Jordan to a border crossing closer to Tel al-Sabʿ rather than at their current location nearby Lagīya. The Jordanian authorities refused and the al-Ṣānaʿ crossed back into Israel on 26 October 1952 at Lagīya. Amid the dispute, however, the Israeli court action against moving the al-Ṣānaʿ to Tel as-Sabʿ from their home in Lagīya was forgotten. By allowing the es-Sani to cross into Jordan under threat of being sent to Tel as-Sabʿ, the Israeli Military Governor had very cleverly been able to make credulous his claim that these were nomadic people who should not be allowed to control the more ­productive areas.38 The Israeli Governor then proceeded to argue that al-Ṣānaʿ had broken the Armistice agreement with Jordan and the Israeli government confiscated the grain they had brought with them. In addition to Hutchison’s written account of the event, the chapter included several photographs he had taken during his mediation at the border. Two of which were fullpage, black-and-white gloss insets (see Figure 5.6). While not essential to my research at the time, I made copies of the images and filed them away.

Figure 5.6 Book page ‘Members of the es-Sani’ in Violent Truce, Hutchison 1956. Original creator(s): Elmo Hutchison. Secondary creator(s): Emilie Le Febvre. Original source: Hutchison. Elmo. 1956.  Violent Truce: A Military Observer Looks at the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1951–1955, New York: The Devin-Adair Company. Original date: September 1952.  Secondary date: Unknown. Access date: 30 April 2012.

Circulating Images: Tribal Histories of Lineages  185 It was not until later in February 2010 that Hutchison’s photographs of the al-Ṣānaʿ reappeared in a public venue that I attended. This time a copy of the group photograph reappeared in the United Kingdom during a conference entitled ‘Rethinking the Paradigms: Naqab Bedouin Research 2000+’ at the University of Exeter’s campus where a group of Israeli-Jewish, Bedouin, and international academics discussed current research on the Naqab Bedouin. On the first day of the conference, after welcoming remarks, one of the event organisers, a PhD student in the UK, presented his paper on the transfer and expulsion of Bedouin from the Naqab between 1948 and 1959. In it, the student recounted his doctoral research in which he conducted fifty oral history interviews with ‘indigenous tribes in the Naqab’ and extensive archival research in order to ‘investigate the ­Palestinian Bedouin’s resistance to the Israeli Military Government 1948-1967’.39 Like most presenters of the day, the student created a PowerPoint slideshow to accompany his lecture during which he displayed several archival photographs and documents, including Hutchison’s picture of the al-Ṣānaʿ taken at the Jordanian border. During the coffee break, I asked him why he had chosen to exhibit that particular photograph. He explained that Hutchison’s book presented visual evidence of the al-Ṣānaʿ’s forced expulsion from the Naqab and illustrates how the Naqab Bedouin, on occasion, successfully resisted the Israelis’ attempts at forcible displacement during the Nakba. After his talk, several members of the audience raised their hands to give comments on his paper. By the end of the panel discussion, Hutchison’s 1956 photograph became the focal point of discussion wherein various members of the audience took opportunities to make public claims that they, in fact, were descendants of the people depicted in the photograph; a group who is locally perceived as successfully resisting the Israeli government. Because of the large amount of interest both the book and the photograph generated among the Bedouin audience and the fact that ʿĀʾisha had shown me years earlier, I decided to find out where the original photograph might be archived and to learn more about Hutchison’s book after the conference concluded. After the UNTSO mission ended, a number of its officers published first-person accounts of their experiences during their service. Of these accounts, Hutchison’s Violent Truce (1956) was remarkable in that, according to Andrew Theobald, it was written as a ‘passionate, bitter response’ to his experiences with the new Israeli state government.40 He elaborated: Hutchison technically completed his tour rather than being dismissed, although the Israeli smear campaign ended his effectiveness as a peacekeeper. His plight showcased not only Israel’s changed opinion of the peacekeepers, but also the peacekeepers’ altered view of Israel. For his part, Hutchison, ignorant of the conflict when he arrived, hardened into an outspoken public advocate for change in America’s ‘proIsrael’ foreign policy, as did Bennike and other officers. The Israeli campaign against him played a major role in this decision, but his bitter and hastily-published recollections, Violent Truce, traced the shift to a long series of Israeli actions that flaunted the Armistice Agreements and abused the peacekeepers.41 Because of the rarity of published accounts pertaining to ‘documented’ abuses by the Israeli forces against Naqab Bedouin during the Transition Period, Hutchison’s book and the photographs in it have become increasingly popular among Bedouin academics and activists for local history-making in the last ten years. Continuing the search for the original copy of Hutchison’s photograph of the al-Ṣānaʿ at the border of Jordan in 1952, I contacted the Devin-Adair Company which published

186 Photographs Violent Truce in 1956. Roger Lourie, their Head Copyrighter did not know where the photographs were, as they did not have copies of them on file. He suggested contacting Hutchison’s family to see if they might possess the originals. After his resignation as a UNTSO officer and the publication of Violent Truce, Hutchison relocated to Egypt where he served as the director of the American Friends of the Middle East (ARAMCO) in 1958, a CIA funded organisation.42 According to his obituary in the New York Times (26 June 1964), Hutchison drowned in Egypt’s Red Sea in June 1964. The article also mentioned that his widow Thelma and son Guy moved back to Texas that same year.43 ­Unfortunately, I was unable reach Guy in 2012 thus ending my search for the original image. Jumping forward to Lagīya in 2012, I stood next to ʿĀʾisha in Desert Embroidery’s storeroom reflecting an enlarged copy of Hutchison’s photograph and recalling the occasions I had seen it at her apartment in 2007 and in Exeter in 2010. With me now was a group of visiting European consultants and funders, who were currently at the store to purchase handcrafted products as souvenirs. The embroidered goods were arranged in display cases, all intricately decorated with designs sewn by women participating in a microeconomic initiative in Lagīya. The Europeans had come to the Naqab to learn more about the ‘community’ and their marginalisation in Israel’s south. Their goal was to collect information in order to produce a ‘truth-finding’ report about the Naqab Bedouin’s situation to present at the EU Parliament. The group had just completed a two-week tour of the West Bank, led by an American activist who arranged to bring them to the Naqab to meet with community spokespersons such as ʿĀʾisha (see Figure 2.4). Knowing my interest in visitor tours, ʿĀʾisha had called me the day before and asked if I would like to join them and locate more old photographs. She picked me up in a taxi in Beersheba that day and introduced me to the group. Over the course of the tour, the group listened to speeches by Ibrāhīm Abū Shārib of Rāhaṭ’s Community Centre and Ṭalab al-Ṣānaʿ, ʿĀʾisha’s uncle and a former Knesset Member. In addition, we visited two villages, al-ʿAragīb and Khashem Zanaʿ during which spokesmen relayed their community narratives. We then travelled to the old city of Beersheba and the Grand Mosque in the hopes of viewing The Beer Sheva Photography Museum, which unfortunately proved to be closed to the public, meaning that we were unable to visit. Our last stop of the day was Desert Embroidery, a concrete building with a store, workroom, and large black goat-hair tent equipped with rugs and pillows placed around its edges to form a guest area for eating and listening to lectures. The store room is grandly decorated with handicrafts hung on the walls along with dozens of other photographs and several plastic photo albums strung about the table in the entry way. Thumbing through the albums, I noticed the images documented the women’s activities with the NGO and visits by dignitaries, foreign tourists, ambassadors, and international funding representatives over the course of the organisation’s inception. Returning the albums to their place, I followed the European visitors back onto the tour bus, which took us to MuḤammad (anonymised) al-Ṣānaʿ’s house, that is ʿĀʾisha’s father’s house to spend the night. Later that month, I found myself back at her apartment in Beersheba where I had initially seen the photograph (see Figure 5.6) in 2007. There I took the opportunity to ask her about the poster hung in Desert Embroidery: Emilie: ʿĀʾisha:

When did you hang the Hutchison photograph in Desert Embroidery? In 2004, I hung it up. Every year, we celebrate Land Day and I wanted to celebrate the event with something real. We are always talking about land issues

Circulating Images: Tribal Histories of Lineages  187 and I wanted to make these talks personal. I wanted my family, my people, to be proud of who they are. So when they celebrate the event, it is not only about Land Day but it is also about our history. So I went to a special place in Rāhaṭ to make a copy of the photo from the book and I put the logo of Lagīya Women’s Association on it because I wanted the women’s organisation to be behind the idea and then we gave it to everyone in the village. Now most people in Lagīya have this poster hung in their house. I wanted to prove to my tribe that we are rooted in the land and to know who we are, we know our history, and we are proud of who we are. I wanted to tell the story of our tribe. When I showed it to my grandmother, Rukīya, she started to cry and all of the sudden the other elders started to feel awake, like a wakeup call. Because really, all of a sudden, the elders can talk about what happened to them in 1948 and 1953. All of a sudden, they began to feel that Land Day is our day. It represents us, our experiences. And the kids, I wanted the old and young generations to talk about these things cause the younger generation are very involved in Land Day but not from a personal or family point of view. So, I wanted them to start to speak with their older family members about these things and to start understand that this day is not just a National Day, but a family, personal event. Emilie: However, other non-al-Ṣānaʿ affiliates live in the village, such as the al-Āsad. Is this a part of their history too? Were they with the al-Ṣānaʿ in 1953 when your tribe was forcibly removed from their land? ʿĀʾisha: Yes, there are Abū Saʿad, Abū Bader, and more. These questions you have to ask my father. I don’t want to give the wrong answers, so we must ask my father. But how it used to be is that big tribes would take smaller families under their protection. And they would protect them. They would take them with them wherever they travelled. So Abū Saʿad, Abū Bader, and umm … were all under the protection of the al-Ṣānaʿ. So, when the Israeli government moved the al-Ṣānaʿ they all moved with them. Did the al-Aʿsad move? No, they were not with the al-Ṣānaʿ…. Someone told me the story about why they did not move but I forgot who. Maybe Salmān Abū Bader. He remembers why especially the al-Ṣānaʿ were forced to move from Lagīya. Why the government especially wanted them off of the land and to kick the al-Ṣānaʿ out of Israel or what at that time was to become Israel. He said that the Jewish Military General…. [stopping] Well, you know that the [Anonymised Lineage]44 were not taken from their lands, right? They stayed because they collaborated with the state and they were not removed. A man from [Anonymised Lineage] asked the General, ‘What do you think of the al-Ṣānaʿ tribe?’ The [Anonymised Lineage] said, ‘You know, they are trouble makers’. Then the General said, ‘Then I don’t need them here. I will kick them out of Israel if they are troublemakers’. Cause you know the story in 1938, when my great-grandfather Ibrāhīm brought all of the heads of the tribes together and asked them to swear that they would not sell land to Jewish people or the state of Israel. So, great-grandfather was very political aware and he had the ability to organise people together and when he would say, ‘Come!’, they would come.45 Emilie: Why would the [Anonymised Lineage] tell the General this information?

188 Photographs ʿĀʾisha: Emilie: ʿĀʾisha: Emilie: ʿĀʾisha:

Emilie: ʿĀʾisha:

Emilie: ʿĀʾisha:

Emilie: ʿĀʾisha: Emilie: ʿĀʾisha: Emilie: ʿĀʾisha:

Emilie: ʿĀʾisha: Emilie: ʿĀʾisha: Emilie: ʿĀʾisha:

They saw us as competition. But after the al-Ṣānaʿ were let back into Israel didn’t the [Anonymised Lineage] help the al-Ṣānaʿ by providing them with food? I don’t know. This is where my father can help. Are the al-Ṣānaʿ ‘known’ for being Arab nationalists? Yes, the al-Ṣānaʿ are known throughout the Naqab for being politically aware. My great-grandfather used to be friends with King Ḥusseīn and they have relatives in Gaza and in Lagīya and this was their area before the state of Israel and when fights started with Israel, they used to bring the guns from Gaza. So why is the Hutchison photograph important to the al-Ṣānaʿ? Because it is evidence of this event … of us getting kicked off of our land. Yes, and when people today see the picture, it wakes up them up in terms of our relationship with the state of Israel and our history. It proves our case. That we are not lying about our history and that Israel is discriminating against us – that Israel is taking us from our land. We own this picture and with it we can say, ‘See, look this is what happened in 1953’. If I would ask these same questions to the [Anonymised Lineage] about this period of time with Israel state, would they tell me a different version of these historical events or would they tell the same story? I don’t know but I would like to ask them, the [Anonymised Lineage]. But more importantly, I want to ask [Another Anonymised Lineage] about their collaboration with the Israelis. You always get different stories from each tribe about what happened during this time and who collaborated with whom. I recall that you sister’s husband is [Anonymised Lineage]. He told me the reason there are Bedouin here in Israel is because of the [Anonymised Lineage]. Yes, they are proud that they worked with the Israelis. I would not want this to be my family’s story. Have you seen the Hutchison photograph outside of Lagīya? It showed up at a conference that I attended in the UK, but have you seen it circulating anywhere else in the Naqab? No, it is only here with the family, our tribe. We own it. So, who were the politically strongest tribes of the Tiyāhā before 1948 who remained in Israel? Al-Ṣānaʿ, Abū Rabīʿa, al-Huzayyil, al-ʿAʿsad, al-ʿĀʿsam, Abū Rabīʿa, Abū Ghānem, Abū ʿAbdūn, al-ʿAṭāwna, al-ʿAzāzmah, and more. I do not know exactly but you should speak with Professor Abū Rabīʿa. He has all of this information. He writes about it. Al-ʿAṭāwna live in Ḥūra, yes? So, you understand that the recognised towns were established on each of these tribal lands? Yes, but yet different tribes had different relationships with the state? Yes, for example, many in the Abū Rabīʿa served as military trackers, in the army, and as policemen. But none of the al-Ṣānaʿ did these things. […] So how did the al-Ṣānaʿ kept their influence in the Naqab after 1948? Our education and political awareness. My tribe knew that if they went to the UN court in 1953, they would have their case heard. They knew at that time how to work the system.

Circulating Images: Tribal Histories of Lineages  189 Emilie: ʿĀʾisha:

Many people from your family are very educated being teachers, doctors, and lawyers. Is it the same with others? Al-ʿAṭāwna are the same, like us. They never worked for the government. They never collaborate with them. And only because of education and our political awareness have we achieved our history and power.

Today Hutchison’s written account along with archival photographs are considered ­specifically by al-Ṣānaʿ, such as ʿĀʾisha, as evidence of their particular ancestors’ forced expulsion from the Naqab. For them, the image depicts a rare but significant case wherein they as Arab nationalists, not other families, successfully resisted the nascent Israeli state’s Military Administration (1948–1966). For the purposes of local history-making, however, ʿĀʾisha’s statements in the above-mentioned discussion such as ‘These are questions you need to ask my father’ should not be overlooked amid her contributions to her lineage’s history and the Naqab Bedouin’s ethnohistory. This comes as lineage members’ historical knowledge and the evidence they use to demonstrate it, for example, comparison between ʿĀʾisha and her father, are varied and treated differently in assorted contexts. Peoples’ different treatments of history are not only the result of their ages, experiences, tribal status, and educational levels but also the consequence of gender. Emilie: ʿĀʾisha: Emilie: ʿĀʾisha:

As a far as local information about the past goes, you said several times during the interview that I should ask your father. Are their particular people in every family that have or keep this type of knowledge? Yes, these are the elders and many of them are dying. So people are travelling around and writing down their stories, video recording their stories. There are many in my family doing this, Ṭālib for example, is doing this. Do you think these tribal histories are important for your community work? Is tribal history important? Yes, of course they are extremely important. We need them to redevelop our self-confidence of the community and an important part of this is rebuilding our history, rebuilding our heritage. This is essential because people will not fight for their rights if they are not proud of who they are. Pride comes from knowing who you are, knowing who are your people, and knowing what is your history. This demands us to put the puzzle of our past together, our pieces of history and without them we might be a community, as a person we might be an activist, but without knowledge of the past you are an activist of global issues not an activist for local people with a past.

ʿĀʾisha, as a woman, does not normally participate in her agnate’s socio-politics nor does she attend events in the meeting place (shigg), a place where women are excluded but where the nuances of tribal relations and histories are discussed and debated. Thus her and her female relatives’ familiarity with al-Ṣānaʿ’s tribal relationships are based on their age, personal experiences with these networks, and overall status in the lineage. Over the last ten years, however, younger generations (irrespective of gender) have become increasingly active in appropriating and producing various types of visual materials including old photographs and digital images such as the one discussed above. It was, nevertheless, ʿĀʾisha’s unique relationship with the professor that resulted in the exchange of Hutchison’s book and the presentation of its images as a historical artefact

190 Photographs for her lineage, not the other way around. As such, she set out to publicly claim ownership of the old photograph, particularly for members of her own lineage by distributing copies of it to relatives and printing it on a poster that now hangs in Desert Embroidery. Most generations in ʿĀʾisha’s family network, however, also possess, share, and display photographs, portraits, and video collections of their own depicting their elders such as her grandmother Rukīya and specific forefathers in their homes. It is in these extended families (ʿāʾila) and private households (buyūt) that women are the dominant imagekeepers. They also actively take charge of compiling family photographs, enlarging and copying them, framing, arranging them in their homes, and distributing them among their own close relatives. Similar to Hassan’s mention of his mother in the last section, ʿĀʾisha’s mother, aunts, and sisters also hang old photographs of their own agnates and husband’s forefathers in their salons (dīwān) and guest reception areas. The first time I came across the practice was during a ḥennāʾ party hosted at ʿĀʾisha’s parents’ house for a wedding held in 2012. Guests of the family (several North American and Israeli-Jewish,) were asked to go inside and eat at a table rather than to sit on the floor of the outside patio with the other Bedouin female guests invited to the wedding. While we ate at the long table filled with food, drinks, and paper plates, I noticed a large framed portrait dominating the wall behind the female guests. The image was a blackand-white portrait of a young man in a chequered kūfiyya (see Figure 5.7).

Figure 5.7  Portrait of Salmān al-Ṣānaʿ hanging on the wall of his son’s house. Producer of copy: Emilie Le Febvre. Original date: Unknown. Access date: 06 June 2012.

Circulating Images: Tribal Histories of Lineages  191 Next to the image was another colour portrait of a man encased in a wooden frame. Other than these two portraits, the walls of the room were devoid of any decoration. After eating, I took a picture of the larger portrait and reminded myself to ask ʿĀʾisha more about the framed image and why it was hung on the salon’s (dīwān) wall in the house. A day after the wedding celebrations for her sister ended, I had a chance to sit with ʿĀʾisha and her father, Muḥammad (anonymised), to ask them more about the image and its significance for the family. Sitting on Muḥammad’s back patio, they proceeded to tell me more about the family photographs and their display on the wall: Emilie: ʿĀʾisha:

Emilie: ʿĀʾisha:

Where did you get the old portrait hanging in the house? The picture is of my grandfather Salmān al-Ṣānaʿ who was the son of Karīm. First, you have to speak with my uncle. He is the first one of the family to start taking pictures in the 1960s. He lives down the hill and works at Lagīya’s health clinic. He is my father’s uncle and he is the father of Philistin, the wife of my brother. So now you have two Ḥamāds to meet in the future. The first one lives in the mountains and he speaks English. You can spend the entire night with him. He was among the first to establish an NGO in the Naqab. It was Lagīya’s Sons Association so he knows the whole history. The other Ḥamād is now the head of the tribe. You need someone to help introduce you. He lives right next to my family. You also need to talk to Salmān. He is a friend of my father. He lives in Lagīya also. My aunt she is seventy-five years old. She can tell you more about what happened in 1953. So, you can reach her through my sister. (She gives me phone numbers of everyone). She also has the same portrait. She took the one here from my father’s house and made copies of it for the family. One copy is currently in my other sister’s house. We will see it later. Do you know where they got the image of your grandfather? My uncle Dr Ḥamād took this picture. My uncle is a great resource for pictures. But he is very protective of his pictures. He has all of the negatives since the early sixties and I believe that if you want to try to turn them into CDs since they are in big boxes now and there is no one to help him. Each time I went there to get pictures of my parents. He would not give me the pictures. Instead, I had to scan them and take only copies with me. He will never give the pictures to anyone and he only gives family members scans. If you go there, you will find lots of pictures of me as a baby. But you need to find his ‘key’ because he is protective over his images.

ʿĀʾisha finished the conversation by going into the house to get her belongings. Coming back to the patio, she told me that we were going to her sister’s house to see her aunt’s copy of the portrait. ʿĀʾisha’s sister lives behind their father’s property just south up on a hill overlooking the Hebron plain. Similar to ʿĀʾisha’s other relatives, she lives in the al-Ṣānaʿ’s residential neighbourhood. Her house itself is constructed out of light-coloured stone with large windows and Arabesque breezeways and entrances; the interior is comprised of four floors. On the main level, there is an entrance hall, formal and ‘traditional’ salon (dīwān), dining room, kitchen, and informal family room. ʿĀʾisha’s sister and her husband lived

192 Photographs on the top level and their eldest son, his wife, and young baby living in the bottom apartment. Throughout the house family photographs adorn the walls of the rooms. No one was home when ʿĀʾisha and I arrived so she proceeded into the unlocked house and took me into the dining room where the portrait was being stored before going to their aunt’s house. There on the floor behind a glossy wood dining set was the portrait ʿĀʾisha had referred to (see Figure 5.8).

Figure 5.8  Portrait of Salmān al-Ṣānaʿ set against the wall of his granddaughter’s house. ­Original Creator(s): Ḥamād al-Ṣānaʿ. Producer of copy: Emilie Le Febvre. Original date: Unknown. Access date: 06 June 2012.

As she said, it was another copy of her grandfather’s portrait. I quickly took a p ­ icture of the framed photograph and we left her sister’s house. We travelled back across the street, through a small pasture, and back to her father’s property onto a patio where MuḤammad sat on a plastic chair waiting for us to return. After serving tea, ʿĀʾisha explained to her father my interest in the portrait and asked him if he could tell us more about his forefathers. He explained in dialect: Ok, let me tell you the story about my grandfather Karīm, father of Salmān. He was a strong fighter and my grandfather was part of a group of ʿarab who joined the Turkish army to fight against the British Mandate. He fought with them and

Circulating Images: Tribal Histories of Lineages  193 this is how he was shot. However, the British defeated the Turkish and so when the British came here to Lagīya, they found out that Karīm was the shaykh, head of the tribe. They said to him, ‘You can go no longer be head of the tribe because you fought against us.’ They did what Israel is still doing now with the tribes here and the ­English took someone from another weaker tribe, the same family who is now the head of the unrecognised village council and he was put as the leader of the al-Ṣānaʿ tribe under the protection of the British but he was not al-Ṣānaʿ! He was not one of us. My grandfather got very, very angry about this situation. He travelled to Gaza and said to the British officials there, ‘Look what you did to me. You, the British, took from me my rightful position and gave it to someone who is not one of us!’ They said to him, ‘Look, we cannot do anything about this. It says here in the documents your name. It says here that you fought against us. You have to figure out if one of your brothers can the take the position as shaykh since you cannot.’ He came back to Lagīya and met with his brother Ibrāhīm who he decided should be shaykh. Together they went to the court in Biʾr Sab’ [Beersheba] and said to the British, ‘I know you will not take me to be the leader of the al-Ṣānaʿ so take here my brother Ibrāhīm.’ So how did Ibrāhīm then go to Turkey to study at the tribal school? Because Karīm had a good name with the Turkish and they agreed to take his brother to Turkey to educate him. My grandfather Karīm was in charge of collecting the taxes during the time of the Turkish. He was in charge of all of the Tiyāhā. Two of his children 19 and 18 years old, they were killed at that time by a disease, the same disease that makes people cough blood and only my father Salmān whose picture hangs on the wall in the bayt [house] was alive because he not born yet. Karīm, my grandfather was much stronger with much more influence than Ibrāhīm but because he had to give his position away to Ibrāhīm who is better remembered by the ʿarab as a shaykh and not as a kabīr that he was before my grandfather gave him his position. Several days after my conversation with Muḥammad, I contacted ʿĀʾisha’s uncle Ḥamād (anonymised) to see if I could view his photographic collection of the lineage. After several attempts, I finally reached him. I described my research and ʿĀʾisha’s suggestion that I contact him. Ḥamād said that he could arrange a time for me to see his collection. Before my arrival, however, he wanted to scan all of the images. He went on to explain that the scanning process would take several months. I tried to ease his concerns by telling him that I did not want to take the photographs nor did I require scanned versions of them, but I merely wanted to speak with him about his interest in photography and take snapshots with my own camera. He said he would think about it and requested I call him back in a couple of weeks. Upon doing so, Ḥamād clarified that he would feel more comfortable if he brought the collection to Muḥammad’s house and I viewed the images there. He said he would make the arrangements and would call me when it was convenient. After several weeks passed, Ḥamād never returned my phone calls. In a last effort to view the lineage’s extensive photographic collection, I phoned Muḥammad and asked if he had spoken with Ḥamād. Similar to ʿĀʾisha, he explained that his nephew is extremely protective of the photographic collection of the lineage and would most likely never arrange a meeting with me. Yet again, my reconstruction

194 Photographs of the image’s biography came to an end as a result of the protectionism over personal photographic collections. In all, Ḥamād’s attitude towards his collection of historical images was similar to that of other Bedouin men I encountered or attempted to engage with during fieldwork. When the content of old photographs depicts events that are considered to be mundane or socio-politically insignificant people, they maintain presences as family images and are circulated among predominantly women as heirlooms of family memories, stories, and occasions. In these instances, men treated both photographs and the visual practices of displaying them as hobbies, crafts, and decorations. When the content of an old photograph recorded, what are locally believed to be significant events, well-known and influential ancestors, and formal settings, members (often men) prized these images as historical records and their display have become socio-political acts, public demonstrations, and objects to be owned, protected, and selectively presented to outsiders. It is on these occasions that an image collection became a photographic archive and memories were transformed into histories among lineages such as the al-Ṣānaʿ. In 2014, however, having put the biography of Salmān al-Ṣānaʿ’s portrait aside having completed my fieldwork, I accidentally stumbled upon another copy of the image. This time in the form of a digital copy that had been posted by (I assume) a member of the al-Ṣānaʿ who had obtained a copy from either Ḥamād or one of the female relatives of the family, scanned it, and uploaded it onto the popular website Palestineremembered. com. There under the heading BEERSHEBA is an additional link to ‘Laquiya’. Under the pictures category, someone had uploaded the photograph with the Arabic title ‘Lagīya: Shaykh Salmān ʿAbdūlla Karīm al-Ṣānaʿ. Under the image, the website included a comment box where people wrote various notes in Arabic, added information about the photograph, or discussed historical information pertaining to the image. Interestingly, however, the comments connected to this digitised photograph on Palestineremembered. com included not only blessings and memorials to the shaykh (as would be expected) but also insults pertaining to the shaykh and his al-Ṣānaʿ descendants. They read translated from Arabic into English: Comment 1: May you rest in peace (God have mercy on you Shaykh) you give birth to sons who are considered most respected among Arabs, especially his son [anonymised], may you rest in peace. Comment 2: Shaykh who is not worthy and his sons are also worthless (disrespected). Comment 3: To [Anonymised] al-Ṣānaʿ, please fear God (you should not say that) about these people who controlled the land, may God show you the right way instead of attacking each other, may he rest in peace. Comment 4: May he rest in peace but al-Ṣānaʿ family is not Gdīrāt, they originally came from the area of Shobak Jordan but there they are called al-Musa. Comment 5: Seriously the courage is noticed by the look of Salmān, and he is noble (ʾaṣīl) and brave, come and see his sons and grandsons who had children and did not die. Comment 6: This is my grandfather, may rest in peace, everything after him has gone down the drain. Subsequently, while the display of forefather portraits such as Salmān al-Ṣānaʿ’s among extended family (ʿāʾila) may venerate ancestors and family histories families

Circulating Images: Tribal Histories of Lineages  195 inside homes and lineage archives, their presences in other public venues have the potential to encourage broader debate about the origins and reputations of particular lineage and their pasts. In particular, this image spawned a debate about the ‘worthiness’ of the al-Ṣānaʿ, their claims to have Naqab origins through the Gdīrāt subconfederation (ṣaff), and perspectives about the quality of Bedouin life in southern Israel after 1948. Moreover, while Ḥamād strove to protect the original photograph confining it within his photographic archive and declining to show it to outsiders such as myself, the image nonetheless escaped the confines of his library, assisted by the very family members he allowed to make copies of it for their homes. Coincidently, it now travels the Internet as both a historical image of Palestinian Beersheba, a visual signifier of the history of Lagīya, and a focal point for an extremely public discussion between lineage members about the ­worthiness of their ancestors and the ancestry of the al-Ṣānaʿ’s lineage itself. Afterlives These finite biographies explored the ambulating circulations of a series of images, be they incomplete or imperfect, in order to account for their reuses and changing material and digital polyvalences as: family heirlooms contained within a photographic album; artefacts of tribal (ʿāʾiliyya) reputation hung on the walls of meeting places (shigg); Orientalist illustrations of Bedouin exoticism in al-ʿĀrif’s book; records of Bedouin leaders as Israeli Arabs; and digital images of Naqab Bedouin history on the Internet. To do so, I detailed their original and replication productions, their physical and symbolic consumptions during their material and digital circulations, and their diverse displays in various visual economies as they relate to tribal histories in southern Israel. The biographies of the photographs discussed in this chapter revealed that most images were initially produced within global and macro national visual economies as Orientalist visualisations of Bedouin ‘natives’, documentary evidence of the Nakba, images of well-known leaders and events created by outsiders such as Israeli government press photographers. Their historical significances or values changed, however, and as the images’ work beyond the initial contexts in which they were created as they intentionally and unintentionally circulated into and between ‘closer’ or meso visual economies associated with named linages (ʿāʾilāt) and extended families (ʿāʾila). As these case studies illustrate, there are divergent accounts among Bedouin about who initially produced old images, where they came from, what type of information they contained, and the circumstances through which they came to the Naqab. Until the late 1990s, the only access many had to archival images was largely from books found in regional libraries such as BGU or those photographs given to individuals by visiting outsiders, such as NATO Commander Elmo Hutchison, as gifts. Today original images are still typically unavailable to local collectors as archival photographs and, along with other historically significant documents, are held in external institutions or Israeli state archives. Consequently, in most instances, the original production information or providences of old images remains unknown amongst members. For example, aside from the aforementioned Bedouin professor at BGU, when asked about the historical images in ʿĀrif al-ʿĀrif’s books most people admit that they assumed al-ʿĀrif had taken the photographs himself since they had copied them from his volumes (see Figure 5.9). This comes

196 Photographs as American Colony photographers, John Whiting, Lewis Larsson, and Eric Matson, who produced most of the images for al-ʿĀrif’s books, were not cited and thus were not locally ‘known’ among Bedouin.

Figure 5.9  Naqab shaykhs in ʿĀrif al-ʿĀrif’s book on Bedouin tribal history. Reprint: ʿĀrif al-ʿĀrif’s (1934) book Taʾrikh Biʾr al-Sabʿ wa-Qabāʾiliha. Original creator(s): American Colony (Jerusalem) Photo Department, photographer. Location of original: Matson (G. Eric and Edith) Photograph Collection. Location of book: personal collection. Producer of copy: Emilie Le Febvre. Original source: Library of C ­ ongress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA. Original date: c. 1920 to 1933.  Access date: 20 May 2013. 

When old photographs originate or arrive in the Naqab, they are typically valued as the property of specific lineage members who own, protect, source out, and (try to) regulate or control their exchanges among their own networks. Individuals such as Ḥassan, ʿĀʾisha, and her uncle regard the old photographs in their family archives as objects that ‘mean’ something for their tribal histories and thus they frame them, purposely hang them on walls, and preserve them in albums. It must be said here that not all families and lineages possess extensive image collections or photographic archives depicting ancestors, past events, or groups, however. In fact, the al-Huzayyil and al-Ṣānaʿ and the local image-keepers discussed here are exceptional and Bedouin outside of these lineages

Circulating Images: Tribal Histories of Lineages  197 publicly acclaim these members’ large photographic collections. Notwithstanding, most lineages and families typically possess smaller but less cohesive collections, mostly random forefather portraits, and old family snapshots. Yet, research found that they also exchange and care for them as valuable historical objects. In fact, most people, in both the villages and towns that I visited, hung these types of images in their salons and stored them in family albums and plastic bags. Over the last twenty years, however, the Internet has substantially expanded people’s ability to research photographic databases and source documentary information about their past. Search engines such as Google allow them to locate and share important archival materials, which they continually add to their collections as they are found. Unlike historical images that originate or ‘gifted’ in the Naqab, local collectors seem even less concerned about the images’ providence or the quality of the images found online. Most digital reproductions such as the shaykh’s portraits resourced from Wikipedia, Facebook, and other webpages such as Palestineremembered.com are simply taken from their original production contexts or uploaded onto other websites through copy-paste applications into new formats omitting citations or simply printed onto paper and displayed in hosting areas such as one’s salon. Once sourced, most members’ ability to produce meaning and value from both photographic and digital images is based on their capacity to name, recognise, and more significantly identify the ancestral shaykhs, people, objects, and landscapes within them. While these practices are further theorised as a unique type of visual historicity in the conclusion, Bedouin visual knowledge involves reading and translating pictorial symbolisms, graphic content, physical features, and characterisations recorded by photographs of their people. For example, I often heard people say: ‘That is a member of the al-Ṣānaʿ. You can tell by the shape of his nose’. This interpretation came irrespective of an image’s lack of text-based captions or other contextualising information. Ultimately, the value of old images of Naqab Bedouin for local accounts of the past is partly dependent on their graphic contents and the languages of visualisation, history, and identification unique to this society not those of the photographs’ original and often outside producers. With that said, spokespersons and image-keepers also strive to control the reading or consumption of historical images through their strategic exhibition in public venues connected to the lineage and moving them between material and digital displays. Similar to Shryock’s description in Balgā Bedouin in Jordan: Buying the pictures and hanging them on the walls of one’s own home turned out to be the most decisive means by which a person could gain control over what was considered, by everyone involved, a kind of documentary evidence.46 Similarly, Bedouin in the Naqab deliberately exhibit copies of significant images in v­ arious visiting areas and other public and political venues such as meeting places (shiggs) and salons. As described in the first case study, Ḥassan owned several copies of the Shaykh Salmān II portrait that he tactfully displayed in different spaces in order to celebrate his father’s life, work, and power. One such location was the picture wall he created in the al-Huzayyil’s meeting place (see Figure 5.10).

198 Photographs

Figure 5.10  Picture wall in the al-Huzayyil’s agnate meeting house. Original creator(s): Emilie Le Febvre. Date: 17 July 2012.

There Ḥassan fashioned a shrine-like gallery showcasing historical images and other objects associated with general Bedouin material culture. He also used this space to create and construct his lineage’s specific genealogical and tribal past through material culture, recasting items such as photographs, coffee urns, water pipes, hand-woven rugs, and embroidered textiles as historical artefacts and using them to symbolise his father’s legacy and thus preserve the history of their extended family (ʿāʾila). Such a display relies on both the physical and simulated ambiguities offered by images, also their multi-media work (be they continually altered), and relationships with material artefacts, books, oral stories, and websites. Through such exercises, Bedouin also re-contextualise the significances of images by disregarding or actively countering information and placements that do not fit with their purposes. Rather than merely using the Internet to resource old images as discussed earlier in this section, Bedouin are also actively using the platform to circulate and reframe them as evidence of their particular versions of local history. They are doing so by creating webpages, producing YouTube videos, organising photographic essays on Instagram, and sharing images via social media. In all, the Internet has become a tool for constructing and promoting their lineage’s versions of history to wider Arabic-, Hebrew-, and Englishreading publics. As described in the case studies, Wikipedia and Facebook have become extremely popular and accessible websites for tribesmen and women to fulfil these goals. Wikipedia, for example, not only allows the average person to insert information on the

Circulating Images: Tribal Histories of Lineages  199 page but also promotes open-source editing. It also seems to be viewed by members as a legitimate resource through which they can advance their own historical perspectives. Ultimately, photographs allow people to solidify their own versions of the reconstructed past and mediated legacies in public. Through the re-contextualisation and strategic placement of both material photographs and digital images, lineage members set out to rectify perceived untruths or to ‘set the record straight’ about their tribal legacies as presented in other visual economies such as the visual narratives of Bedouin constructed and advocated by the state of Israel. Nevertheless, as I demonstrated in Chapter 2, tribal histories differ and are often produced in opposition to the histories of other lineages as they compete for prestige and influence through the legacies of their leaders. For example, the photographs of the al-Huzayyil are used to prove that Shaykh Salmān II’s work with the Israeli government was crucial for making claims that he mediated the ongoing residence of Bedouin people in the Naqab after 1948. For the al-Ṣānaʿ, the Hutchison photographs proved Shaykh Ibrāhīm’s legacy of resistance to the Israeli state and Arab nationalism. At the same time, lineages also disregard and actively counter, ignore, or play with specific information that does not bolster particular interpretations of the past. For example, al-Arif included the younger Shaykh Salmān II’s portrait in the English edition (1944) to illustrate the uniqueness of their culture. The insertion of the portrait in the text does not convey specific information about the al-Huzayyil tribe, but, rather, the image portrays a man who ‘indulges’ in polygamous marriages. Contemporary ­al-Huzayyil, in attempting to dislodge the photographic portrait from this unfavourable textual account, have physically and digitally removed the image from its original found context, and subsequently disconnected it from al-ʿĀrif’s writings in order to instead promote the longevity of their tribal presence in the Naqab. In summary, historical images are a critical form of documentary evidence that can be isolated from unflattering oral and textual narratives simply by cutting away captions and repositioning them in new contexts. In doing so, members can reconstruct their own historical truths. Photographs are a versatile medium for spokespersons as authorship, dates, and places can be ignored, changed, and revised. These exercises are more difficult to achieve with oral and text-based media. For both, oral stories and writings, authorship is often paramount to the validity of the information represented in audio and textual forms. Bedouin, however, do not treat authorship of an image or a photographer in the same regard. Authorship comes second to content and ownership. While these images contribute to the histories of the Naqab tribal lineages, they are not, however, limitless or plastic resources. Recoding labours are determined by members’ differential access to photographic technologies and equipment such as frames, cameras, computers, and printers. As detailed in the conclusion, they must also respond to pre-existing forms of historical knowledge, which both local and outsiders have produced, and the local authority of specific members with their own political positions (or lack thereof), gendered restrictions, and generational perspectives. For example, recontextualisation efforts are often dictated by a spokesperson’s access to and control over oral genealogies and books (e.g., the al-ʿĀrif’s, Hutchison’s, and Cohen’s writings), which are typically owned by renowned male elders (kbār). At the same time, the use of images must also contend with the relative fixity of an image’s graphic content and interpretations of history held by influential outsiders with their own various Orientalist, Israeli, and Palestinian agendas. In all, it is these interwoven dialectics of power, control, and response between Naqab Bedouin and others not only influence the making of tribal (gabaliyya and ʿāʾiliyya) histories but also the afterlives of the photographs making them.

200 Photographs These contentions also frame Bedouin ‘community’ histories in southern Israel – a discourse wherein members are taking advantage of the physical and simulated ambiguities offered by photographs to respond to rising tensions with Israeli state officials and pay testament to their developing civic and Islamic histories. Notes 1 My attention on these families came about for several reasons: general happenstance of meeting people with these associations, their accessibility in terms of language, and mutual interest in old photographs. 2 Some authors misidentify Salmān as Salaam or Suleīmān. 3 These ‘misunderstandings’ occurred during the War of Zāri’. The Ottomans did not intervene the internal conflict until Shaykh Salmān al-Huzayyil I came to control the Tiyāhā. At this point the Ottomans interceded and executed him as a ‘troublemaker’. Marx 1967. 4 al-ʿĀrif, ʿĀrif. 1944. Bedouin, Love, Law, and Legend, Jerusalem: Cosmos Publishing. 5 Many members have connections to Germany. This is due in part to the legacy of WWI Turkish-­ Germany influence in the Naqab and the fact that many younger men travel to Germany to obtain undergraduate degrees. 6 al-ʿĀrif 1944, 72 (original italics). 7 There are no images in Hillelson’s (1937, 1938a, 1938b) English translations of the Taʾrikh. Secondly, Leo Haefeli (1938) translated Bedouin Love, Law, and Legend into German but I am unaware if there are images in this version. Al-‘Arif, ‘Arif. 2000. Tuldut Bir Sheva’ Vashabatim: Shavati Habado’im Bamahoz Bir Sheva, E. Nawi (trans.), Yerushalayim: ‘Ari’el Prima Publishing; Al-‘Arif, ‘Arif. 1938. Die Beduinen von Beerseba; ihre rechtsverhältnisse, sitten und gebräuche. L. Haefeli (trans.), Luzern: Räber. 8 Al-Huzayyil, n.n. 2013. ‘Salman al-Huzayyil’, Wikipedia, http://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/‫_ןאמלס‬ ‫לייזוה_לא‬, Accessed 17 January 2013. 9 Al-Huzayyil, ʿAhmed. 2001. Shaykh Salman al-Huzayyil, Shamo Shel ha-Aba of ba-Negev, Yerushalayim: Presim Ari’el. 10 Sir Samuel served as Britain’s 1st High Commissioner of Palestine between 1 July 1920 and 30 June 1925. 11 Powers 2009, 32. 12 Fareed Naseef, the Lind Brothers, Furman Baldwin and Hanna Safieh were also Colony ­photographers but I am unable to detail their work due to limited space. 13 Gavish, Dov. 2004, ‘The American Colony and Its Photographers’, trans. Sharon Horwitz, Library of Congress, unpublished, 9. 14 Lev 2021. 15 Powers 2009. 16 Ibid. 17 Ibid., 41. 18 Gröndahl, Mia. 2005. The Dream of Jerusalem: Lewis Larsson and the American Colony ­Photographers, Stockholm: Journal. 19 Powers 2009, 40. 20 Likhovski, Assaf. 2006. Law and Identity in Mandate Palestine, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 198–199. 21 Al-Huzayyil 2013. 22 The Sydney Morning Herald. 1957. ‘Mrs. Roosevelt Refused, But 1,000 Want a Sheik’, (8 December 1957), http://news. google.com/newspapers, Accessed 2 September 2013. 23 The Sydney Morning Herald. 1960. ‘Mrs. Roosevelt – The Sheik Still Tries’ (17 January 1960), http://news.google.com /newspapers, Accessed 2 September 2013. 24 The book was initially published in Hebrew in 2006 with an English translation completed in 2010. 25 Cohen 2006, 2010. 26 Ibid. 27 Public access to these archives had been previously restricted by the government because of security concerns.

Circulating Images: Tribal Histories of Lineages  201 28 During the British Mandate, Ibrāhīm al-Ṣānaʿ was made the shaykh of the al- Ṣāneʿ and led them from 1927 until his death in 1952 (Abu Rabia 2001). Ibrāhīm was educated in Beersheba and Istanbul at the Tribal School. Ibrāhīm has hence became an important figure during the British Mandate as a tribal judge on the district council of Beersheba (al-ʿĀrif 1934). He was known as al-Salah (al- Ṣāneʿ the Righteous). 29 For more information about the UNTSO’s work in Israel, see Theobald (2009). 30 It should be noted here that part of the al-Ṣānaʿ were expelled to Gaza. 31 Parts of this account have been adapted from my Master’s thesis, later published in ­Dahan-Kalev et al. (2012). 32 According to family members, Ibrāhīm sent a message to King Abdullah that said, ‘I bring you ʿAshīrat al- al-Ṣānaʿ’. The Jordanian king, however, responded with ‘Stay in Palestine!’ despite of their previous good relationship. 33 Hutchison 1956, 30. 34 The title ‘Ḥajj’ refers to a person that completes a pilgrimage to Mecca. In the Naqab, it is also used as a term of respect. 35 Hutchison 1956, 33–34. 36 Dahan-Kalev et al. 2012, 59. 37 Ibid., 35. 38 Ibid., 38. 39 Nasasra 2010, 1. 40 See Major-General E.L.M. Burns (1897–1985) and John Bagot Glubb (1897–1986). 41 Theobold, Andrew. 2009. Watching the War and Keeping the Peace: The United Nations Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO) in the Middle East, 1949–1956, Unpublished PhD ­Dissertation, Canada: Queen’s University, 75. 42 The American Friends of the Middle East is a private organisation whose purpose is to improve relations between the United States and Middle East nations. 43 The New York Times. 1964. ‘Elmo Hutchison, Aide in Middle East’ (26 June 1964), http:// news.google.com.newspapers, Accessed 15 September 2014. 44 The name of this lineage has been anonymised in light of controversial nature of the discussion. 45 In 1937 Ibrāhīm hosted the Grand Mufti Amın al-Hussıny in his home along with many shaykhs in order to coordinate a response to the influx of Jewish settlers in the Naqab emigrating with the Zionist Movement (see Abu Rabia 2001). He circulated a pledge among the Naqab shaykhs in which they promised not to sell land to them. 46 Ibid.

6 Circulating Images Community Histories

In addition to the region’s tribal historical landscape, representations of the past in the Naqab are also produced by various communities. Bedouin connections to Islamic heritage and ethnohistory and members’ articulations of these affiliations in certain publics have expanded alongside the growing authority of community organisations, ideals, and politics in the region over the last thirty years. For example, political parties, civil society NGOs, and community centres have acquired powerful sway in this society; specifically in towns such as Rāhaṭ and among ever-increasing numbers of younger people including both males and females from all status groups. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, these community organisations, which range in size, demographics, and engagements, began to play a prominent role in history-making. They have created micro-economic projects tapping into folk art; restored and preserved Muslim cemeteries; defended and amplified Islamic heritage in the south; hosted ‘Bedouin cultural days’ at schools; and organised political tours through which outsiders learn about ‘historical processes’ in the Naqab. Aside from these engagements, these community organisations also promulgate specific rationalisations of Naqab Bedouin history and society among both members and outsiders alike through oral presentations, written text, and photographs. This comes as civic, political, and religious spokespersons have begun to serve as public liaisons for their communities in recent decades. Along with political tours, they coordinate meetings between stakeholders, give presentations to outsiders and the media, and most significantly disseminate specific ‘information’ about their people connected to specific universalisms such as religion and civic politics. In all, during my fieldwork, I found that organisations and their spokespersons not only routinely construct different histories of the Naqab Bedouin amidst the abovementioned activities, but they have also intensified their use of photography in their presentations to outsiders. Since 2007, I observed the increased presence of photographic and digital images on the walls of NGO lobbies, in the hallways of community centres, municipal offices, on local websites, in regional newspapers, and in other public venues. Moreover, community organisations had also begun to systematically hire young Bedouin commercial photographers. These people were not only asked to take pictures of community projects, they were also considered visual historians playing an important role in finding and consolidating iconic images to display and archive in NGOs, regional centres, and schools.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003185703-10

Circulating Images: Community Histories  203 While the photographs they produce and collect possess diverse formats, ages, and contents, they also exert unique meanings for ideals of ‘community’ history. Newer images (c.  1990) include depictions of ‘Bedouin culture’ including camels, tents, and other material culture; children living in poverty; and protests confronting lines of Israeli police forces. Older pictures (c. 1906-1948) in these contexts present early-to-midcentury events such as inaugurations of Beersheba buildings, the ‘Bedouin Market’, wedding fests, and official visits from various foreign and domestic governmental personnel. Similar to those described in the last chapter, these images not only circulate within and between various visual economies, they also often rely on oral and textual work to communicate their messages and exist in different formats. Nevertheless, they are unique from those concentrated within familial and lineage (ʿāʾilāt) visual economies because (be it through chance or strategy) they largely authenticate different aspects of the Naqab Bedouin’s ‘community’ narratives. To complicate the history work of these types of images in more distant settings, this chapter explores: the selective views of community history and society evidenced by these photographs; and their role in highly regulated public places in which encounters with outsiders are frequent. To do so, as part of my fieldwork focused on community photographers and visual historians working with several prominent organisations including AJEEC (Arab-Jewish Economic and Empower Centre), the southern Islamic Movement, NCF (Negev Coexistence Forum for Civil Equality), the Rāhaṭ Community Centre, the Mandel Centre, and the Step Forward Foundation. My focus on these local Bedouin photographers and organisations arose for several reasons: their local reputations as professional spokespersons and image-keepers; their presence and activities in community organisations, their accessibility in terms of language (Hebrew, dialect, and English), and their willingness to participate in my research project on images. Here, I argue that members differentiate community images from closer images associated with lineages (ʿāʾilāt) because the former depict themes and tropes solely associated with civic and religious narratives that ‘appear’ to lie firmly outside of the highly regulated spaces of family, genealogies, and tribal relations. For the most part, these images efface inter-tribal histories and contentions and instead promote communalisms on various public stages inside and outside of the Naqab. Bedouin communities, as imaged, spoken, and written about, are strategic and controlled discourses for members. Consequently, visual representations of them tend to convey information about pre-designated spaces, peoples, and events deemed relevant or evidentiary to universalisms, like those associated with civil society and Islam, in the pursuit of recognition and resources from outside donors, state institutions, and international charities. These images, however, rarely depict the inner workings of Bedouin society itself. Photographs among Community Organisations Rather than describing the photographic activities of the aforementioned individuals and organisations per se, the case studies focus on the afterlives of two photographs (1906 and 2010) along with their mediations with oral stories and books in which community stakeholders engage. They explore visual themes associated with community histories.

204 Photographs These images were chosen for investigation due to their popularity among organisations and the insight they provide into international, national, and regional socio-political relations. The first case study traces the circulations of a photograph depicting the Ottoman’s inauguration of Beersheba’s Grand Mosque (c. 1906); and the second focuses on an image of Ṣayīāḥ Abū Madīgam al-Ṭūrī during the ‘now famous’ protest in al-ʿAragīb in 2010. These case studies are again ordered chronologically, by the age of the images’ biographies and my own introduction to them. This section also details my own interactions with community spokespersons and highlights civic and Islamic narratives responding to nationalised ­readings of regional history, visual activisms, and Bedouin heritage in southern Israel. Framing the Grand Mosque

At the beginning of my fieldwork, several informants told me that AJEEC’s Bedouin Volunteer Tent (BVT) possessed a large collection of historical images. AJEEC was established by ʿĀʾisha (anonymised) al-Ṣānaʿ in 1998 and is a subsidiary of the Israeli Jewishadministered Negev Institute for Peace and Development (NISPED). Over the course of fifteen years, AJEEC has created a series of empowerment and economic projects with ‘the Negev Arab Bedouin community’. Several months later, I arranged a meeting with the organisation’s official photographer, ʾĀnas (anonymised) al-ʿUbra, an activist from Rāhaṭ who agreed to show me their collection and tell me more about the BVT’s work with a subsidiary organisation that strengthens ‘communal responsibility and active ­citizenship’ among the Bedouin.1 Their facilities are composed of two buildings in an area known today as B ­ eersheba’s old city. The Ottoman government originally constructed the ‘old city’ in the early 1900s (see Chapter 1). It is comprised of administrative buildings such as the Governor’s House, the old Police Station, the Grand Mosque, and private stone houses constructed by wealthy shaykhs, which they temporarily occupied during meetings with Turkish officials and business trips in Beersheba. Mostly Jewish businesses now own these houses. AJEEC’s office is comprised of two buildings, which have been converted into offices and meeting rooms to accommodate the NGO’s activities and guests. After a brief tour, ʾĀnas directed me to a large meeting room at the far-left corner of the southern complex. ‘And here is the Bedouin Tent’s meeting room’, he said while pointing to an open door. ʾĀnas directed me into the large room located at the back of the sunny interior courtyard. In it, chairs lined the walls, and above them, a collection of enlarged, framed photographs each encased behind glass hung at eye level. ‘See these!’ ʾĀnas said. ‘These are old photographs of the Bedouin community in the Naqab’. Scanning the room, I saw approximately twenty framed images ranging in size, content, and age. Some images were muted in colour and others were printed in black and white (see Figure 6.1). The content of images included portraits of young children sitting on dirt floors; others depicted livestock such as camels and goats; and some displayed items such as coffee pots. In addition to these, a few images recorded activities such as a man ­preparing coffee, a woman baking bread, and a young girl making cheese.

Circulating Images: Community Histories  205

Figure 6.1  AJEEC’s meeting room with framed images on walls. Original creator(s): Unknown. Photographer: Emilie Le Febvre. Access date: 10 December 2012.

While walking around the room looking at the assortment of photographs ­adorning the walls, I wondered why the NGO considered this collection significant and what about these ordinary or even stereotypical postcard-like images of Bedouin life were appealing to the organisation? While pondering these questions, one archival photograph located in the back right corner of the room caught my eye. The image was an enlarged black-and-white photograph whose content contrasted with that of the other images. The framed image depicted a ceremonial event in the centre of old Beersheba recognisable from the Grand Mosque and the Governor’s House located in the background. Behind the building, the landscape was open indicating the image was taken, most likely, during the Ottoman period when the city was a small outpost and had few buildings. In the foreground, a large assembly of men stood around a stage decorated with Ottoman flags, white curtains, and woollen rugs. On the stage stood a group of men wearing fezzes, military uniforms, and moustaches typical of the style, dress, and grooming of Ottoman military officers at the end of the nineteenth century. Facing the stage and located several metres from its front stood a line of men wearing fezzes with lighter coloured uniforms. To the left of the platform was a crowd of what appeared to be men identifiable by their white kūfiyya and long dark robes. The men in front also stood in a line five persons deep diagonally extending outward from the stage. To the right of the stage were also men but on horseback, each with their rifle raised (see Figure 6.2).

206 Photographs

Figure 6.2 Framed photograph of ‘Ottoman opening of Beersheba’ in AJEEC’s meeting room. Original creator(s): possibly John Whiting. Photocopier: Unknown. Producer of copy: Emilie Le Febvre. Original date: 1906.  Accessed date: 10 December 2012.

The picture appeared to be a photocopy and I asked ʾĀnas where it had come from. He briefly explained that it depicted the Ottoman opening of the city of Beersheba during which the officials invited notable leaders and bestowed gifts of honour upon them. I went on to inquire about the entire collection: ʾĀnas: Emilie: ʾĀnas:

Emilie: ʾĀnas: Emilie: ʾĀnas:

The pictures came to AJEEC in 2003. Do you know anything about the person who brought them here? We used to have a photographic curator, here, at the Bedouin Tent. However, he had a stroke and he can’t remember much about the photos. I think he lost his long-term memory. But the story is that he collected them from a rubbish bin in one of the kibbutz around here in the Naqab. Either he got them from the trash or someone gave them to him. But we don’t know what year this happened or what year the photos were taken. Do you know anyone in the photos? No, no one. Not even the curator knows this information. No one knows this information. It is lost. You know that this building, AJEEC’s office, and the photographs on the wall were purposely set on fire last year? Yes, several people here told me about the fire here at AJEEC. At first, we thought it was conservative Bedouin or Jewish people that had difficulties with the social agenda of the Bedouin Tent and they set fire to the

Circulating Images: Community Histories  207

Emilie: ʾĀnas:

Emilie: ʾĀnas:

building in order to stop our activities here. However, the police said that someone probably did it by mistake. That someone wanted to burn the house next to us but accidently burnt AJEEC. But we do not believe this is what happened. Were the originals of the photographs burned or copies? I don’t know. The original copies that the curator brought here were large. When he found them, they were large photos, so maybe they were used in a museum or someone’s house in the kibbutz. These, the new ones you see here hung on the walls, have been reprinted on canvas. Luckily, we had copies of the photographs on file and after the fire we sent them to Netanya, up north, to get repaired and now they are here as you see them. Why did you or AJEEC decide to hang them here? They are photographs of the Arab-Bedouin community here. They show our way of life and history here in the Naqab.

We finished our tour of the meeting room and ʾĀnas took me back out to the courtyard. He served tea and asked if I would be interested in seeing more historical photographs of the community. I said I would, thinking that the NGO might have a photographic album or hard copies of other photographs. To my surprise, ʾĀnas went into the office and brought back a laptop computer. Sitting next to me, he turned it on and opened his Facebook account. ‘This is the best way to see old photographs of the Bedouin community’, he explained. After several minutes, he found one of his friend’s profile pages and clicked on his albums. ‘My friend here, he is from the north but he collects historical photographs from all over Palestine but there are some of the Bedouin here. They are very rare and important images that only he owns’. We spent the next hour viewing each image in his friend’s ‘original’ digital collection. Despite ʾĀnas’s proclamation, however, most of the images had been copied and pasted from websites such as Palestineremembered.com and repurposed from digitised archives such as the Library of Congress’ Matson Collection. After ʾĀnas finished showing me his friend’s digital collection, I asked if he was familiar with the website Palestineremembered.com. ʾĀnas explained that he had heard of it and proceeded to find it on the web. After locating the site, ʾĀnas clicked on the city of Beersheba’s link. We slowly went through the image files when we came across an image entitled: ‘BEERSHEBA – The opening ceremony of the city, 1906’ [original capitals]. The image was uploaded on the website on 5 October 2011 by Rami Atwane. There was no additional information about the content, source, or photographer of the image. ‘Emilie, look it’s the same photograph that we have hanging in the meeting room!’ ʾĀnas exclaimed. The photograph was certainly taken during the Ottoman’s official opening ceremony of the Grand Mosque but a closer appraisal indicated that the image on ­Palestineremembered.com depicted a different moment of the same event. The empty space between the line of officers and the stage was gone, replaced by Bedouin men. I asked ʾĀnas once again if he knew where the photograph hanging in AJEEC’s meeting room came from. ‘I don’t know’, he replied. ‘I think the information is lost because of the curator’s stroke but you should go to the Photography Museum in the Grand Mosque. You might find out more information about historical images of Beersheba there’. Several days later, after my conversation with ʾĀnas at AJEEC, I stood at the roundabout connecting Hertzel and Ha-Atsmaut streets to get a better look at the Ottoman buildings surrounding Allenby Park, the location of the opening ceremony in the photograph (see Figure 6.2 above). Facing north, the old Tribal School was located to the southwest but was now covered in high barbed fencing and home to the city’s Police Department. The Grand Mosque and the Turkish Governor’s House were nestled within

208 Photographs a green park surrounded by a high-security fence with a gated entrance. ʿĀrif al-ʿĀrif’s house, which was built later during the British Mandate, was located in the northeast and is now privately owned by an Israeli insurance company. As cars quickly circled the roundabout, it seemed as if the heart of the old city of Beersheba was an unlikely, if not downright odd, place in which to view some of the oldest photographs of Naqab Bedouin, who today mostly live outside the predominantly Jewish-administered city. Walking in the direction of the Grand Mosque, I entered the gated entrance to the Negev’s Museum Complex, which is the grounds of the Grand Mosque and the Ottoman Governor’s House. According to Frommer’s English travel guide to Beersheba, the Museum complex includes: The museum’s small collection combines antiquities, historical artefacts, and contemporary art, all presently housed in the turn-of-the-20th-century Turkish governor’s house, set in a pleasant little park adjacent to Beersheva’s Ottoman-Turkish mosque in the centre of the Old City. Old photographs of paşhas, provincial governors, staff officers in ancient motorcars, and early settlers provide a glimpse into Beersheva’s early days as a municipality…. As you approach the mosque, the most beautiful and interesting building in Beersheva, note the graceful tughra (the Ottoman sultan’s monogram) in a medallion over the main door. After much of the area’s Arab population fled during the 1948 war, the mosque housed the museum for a number of decades, but it has recently been restored and returned to its original status as a house of worship.2 As with a considerable amount of travel information in Israel, the 2011 Frommer’s Guide was incorrect. In 2011, the state did not allow Muslims in the Naqab to pray in the mosque – instead, it housed The Beer Sheva Photography Museum. With my outdated travel guide in tow, I walked towards the mosque-turned-museum expecting it to be closed to the public in light of the ongoing controversy about the Photographic Museum. AJEEC’s staff had told me that visitor access to both the Grand Mosque and Governor’s House was sporadic at best, often being closed for renovations. This occasion, however, proved successful and I was able to visit the exhibition to try to locate the ‘original’ copy of the ‘Ottoman’s Inauguration of the city’, whose copy was displayed in AJEEC’s meeting room. The entrance to the ‘museum’ is located on the north side of the mosque through an unmarked side door. After knocking with no answer, I slowly entered into a room where two young women were busy working in what appeared to be an office. Surprised, one of the girls asked if she could help me. I told her I would like to visit the Photography Museum. I paid for a ticket and she pointed to the door and told me the exhibition’s entrance was across the interior courtyard. Once inside, I found the exhibition was located in the prayer hall or (musallā). In the centre of the room was a video installation. Surrounding the installation were exhibition walls constructed at the four corners of the musallā with photographs, mannequins dressed in military clothing, and artefacts hung and positioned against the interior walls of the mosque. The exhibition was loosely organised in chronological order with exhibition spaces dedicated to the Ottoman period and British Mandate, the 1948 War, Jewish emigration to the Naqab, and the urban development of Beersheba. Perusing the exhibition, I was particularly interested in the first display, which exhibited what the Museum labelled as its oldest collection of photographs. Each archival image had been enlarged, pasted onto matte board, and hung onto an exhibition wall. Next to each photograph was a small metal plate that identified the image’s caption, date, and archival source in English, Hebrew, and Arabic. All of the photographs in

Circulating Images: Community Histories  209 this display were, yet again, copies of originals sourced from four archives: the Library of Congress’s Matson Collection; the Negev Art Museum’s Australian War Memorial Collection; BGU’s Toviyahu Archive; and the Goel Drori Archive – The Turkish Album Collection. Many of the images depicted Ottoman, British, and Bedouin notables and visitors, the city’s historic monuments and urban development, military battles during the war, and encampments. Among them, just as ʾĀnas had informed me, was a photograph of the Ottoman inauguration of the city. The exhibition’s photograph was labelled ‘The inauguration of the four buildings – the distribution of gifts to the sheikhs (The Goel Drori Archive – The Turkish Album ­Collection)’. Neither a date nor a photographer was accredited to the photograph. At first glance, the image appeared to be the same photograph hanging on AJEEC’s wall. After closer appraisal, however, I found that it was not the same image, as the participants stood at a slightly different angle in this photograph of the event. Yet again, I had found a third image of the Ottoman ceremony that while similar to pictures in AJEEC and on Palestineremembered.com, was taken at the same event but at a different time. In the rest of the exhibition, the photographic collection went on to depict the history of Beersheba’s Israeli Jewish residents in a range of black-and-white and colour photographs, most of which appeared to be enlarged copies of originals. After 1948, indications of Bedouin residence in or around the city disappeared from the visual history of Beersheba as laid out in the exhibition, indicating that the exhibition’s intended audience was Israeli Jewish and foreign visitors, not the region’s Palestinian population. Completing my visit, I left the Negev Museum Complex and set out to research the three images of the Ottoman event circulating in the region, that is in AJEEC, on Palestineremebered. com, and in Beer Sheva’s Photography Museum. To do so, I interviewed several Bedouin and Israeli Jewish informants about the photographs of the Ottoman event, however, it quickly became apparent that the creation of the Photography Museum was controversial among the Naqab’s Bedouin residents. Indeed, their opinions about the photographs were all intrinsically connected to debates about the mosque and the Israeli Jewish-dominated visual history of the city in the ­exhibition – a situation that had become increasingly politicised in 2011 during my fieldwork. Bedouin interviewees explained that the mosque has been the centre of tensions between the Naqab’s Muslim and Jewish residents for the last decade. Several people explained that activists and the Islamic Movement in the south had filed several requests with the Major’s office about access to the Grand Mosque for Friday prayers. The Mayor had rejected their appeals. For example, several hundred local Muslims, mostly Bedouin residents associated with the southern Islamic Movement, tried to stage a prayer at the mosque which resulted in a conflict between city officials and ‘local Jewish right-wing’3 groups in 1997. After several years, the case went to Beersheba’s municipal court and eventually was referred to the Israeli Supreme Court, which ruled on 22 June 2011 that the Muslim community could not worship there but the city had to convert the mosque into a Museum dedicated to Islamic culture in the Naqab. Conversion of the building into an Islamic ­Cultural Museum had never occurred and city officials decided to convert the building into the Photographic Museum instead. The following explanation provided by a regional NGO clarifies the situation on their website: On 26 December 2011, Adalah sent a letter to the Mayor of Beer el-Sabe (Be’er Sheva) requesting a meeting to discuss the municipality’s total failure to implement the 22 June 2011 Israeli Supreme Court decision to open the city’s Big Mosque as an Islamic Museum. The Mayor’s office responded to the letter and a meeting is scheduled for 19

210 Photographs February 2012. Dr Thabet Abu Rass, Director of Adalah’s Negev Office, wrote the letter following the December 2011 opening of a general historical exhibit, entitled, ‘History of Be’er Sheva: From 1900 – 2011.’ In the letter, Adalah referred to the 2011 Supreme Court decision and inquired into the ‘preparation of the municipality in this matter’. On 27 ­December 2011, Dr Abu Rass also met with the municipality’s chief engineer, who is responsible for the preservation of historic sites. During the meeting, the engineer acknowledged that while she was aware of the Supreme Court’s decision, she had not received any direction to alter the municipality’s stated policy towards the mosque…. On 22 July 2011, the Supreme Court rejected the Municipality’s position that the mosque should be converted to a general museum, and stated that doing so ignored the history of the mosque, its design and cultural and religious importance for the Muslim community.4 This conflict came to a head in 2012 when city officials decided to host the Salut Wine and Beer Festival (the sixth consecutive year for the event) within the grounds of the mosque-now-museum. The southern branch of the Islamic Movement protested the event, arguing that it was an offence to the sanctity of the holy site. An Israeli academic, Seth Frantzman expressed his opinion about the event in the English edition of The Jerusalem Post. He argued that the politicisation of the wine festival by the Islamic ­Movement was indicative of the ‘re-Islamification of Beersheba’: The battle [over Beersheva’s Mosque] has to be understood as a struggle to re-Islamify unused sites in Israel. This is actually part of a global struggle by Muslims to re-assert their claims to former places of worship that were once in the Dar al-Islam, or the ‘domain of Islam’…. THE SUDDEN [original capitalisation] interest in the Beersheba Mosque is similar to these other battles. Does it reflect a true feeling that the mosque is being threatened with desecration and that it is a site that is deeply connected to the Bedouin population, or is the mosque simply an issue that politicians know they can get people to rally around to whip up sentiment and world opinion in order to expand their power base and test the commitment of the state to maintaining a free and s­ ecular environment in the public space?5 Between 2011 and 2013, the southern-based Islamic Movement organised mass prayers of a hundred or so people on the Great Festival (Id al-Fītr) in the courtyard of a mosque. In addition to mass prayers, the organisation has also hosted a series of events wherein the head of the southern branch’s Islamic Movement, for example, and others give speeches and distribute pamphlets calling for their right to be able to use the mosque for religious purposes. In addition to community events such as these, the Movement has also released statements to new syndicates articulating their protest against Muslims’ inability to worship in the mosque. Despite these efforts, the mosque continued to house Beersheba’s photographic heritage as of 2013. Returning to biographies of the Ottoman photographs, I went in search of the Museum’s photographic curator, Goel Drori. To paraphrase an acquaintance of Drori I interviewed: He is an extremely nice man who is extremely knowledgeable about the Negev’s photographic history. Drori has done a lot for the preservation of important photographs of the city but be extremely sensitive when approaching him for information about his photographic collection and position as the Museum’s curator. However, local and foreign journalists and politicians have hounded him about the controversies ­surrounding his photographic collection for the past year.

Circulating Images: Community Histories  211 During my first attempt to contact Goel via phone, I spoke with his wife and explained my interest in historical photographs. She told me he was busy and to call back in several days. Upon doing so, she told me that he was still busy and unable to speak with me. After several more attempts, I realised that I had made a mistake when I initially tried to contact him by explaining to his wife that I was researching the Naqab Bedouin while living in Khashem Zanaʿ. This comment along with my non-Israeli status might have positioned me as ‘pro-Bedouin’ and thus may have made Goel or his wife wary of my intentions for an interview. As such, I gave up on speaking directly with Goel and researched his work on the city’s visual history online and through informants. I subsequently found a 2011 article Yedi’oth (an Israeli Hebrew newspaper) entitled ‘Coded Images Beersheba: How it All Began’ written by Illana Curiel and Goel’s website http://drory.net. The latter was a link entitled ‘Society for Preservation of Israel Heritage Sites’ where Goel had uploaded several collections of images that mostly focused on the Naqab area and Beersheba. Investigating further, I located an article entitled ‘The Album of the Establishment of the Turkish City of Be’er Sheva’. There Goel explained how he had come to possess the ­Ottoman opening ceremony photograph.6 According to a Hebrew book entitled Beer Sheva ‘Iyad Abot vaBeneem (English – Be’er Sheva City Fathers and Sons) by Zev Vilnay,7 the Negev Museum, which was once the Tribal School, possessed a photographic album that contained a large collection of images of T ­ urkish Beersheba created approximately sixty years ago (c. 1900). The album was originally owed by the Ottoman pasha, a title indicating high rank, such as a governor of Beersheba, Assaf Belge Bey, at the turn of the nineteenth century. After his death, his son inherited the album and gifted it to the Israeli embassy in Turkey. Embassy officials decided to return the pasha’s album back to the city of Beersheba where it was housed at the Negev Museum Complex.8 At the time of Vilnay’s book publication in 1967, however, the Museum had lost its copy of the paşha’s album. The only indication of the album’s existence in the Museum was a receipt indicating the album’s successful arrival from the Israeli embassy in Turkey. In 1974, local Israeli scholar Sasson Bar Zvi discovered that a second copy of the pasha’s album had been given to Beersheba’s first Mayor, a Bedouin man named Shaykh Suleīmān al-ʿAṭāwna. After his death, his grandson inherited the album.9 As of 1974, this album was stored in the al-ʿAṭāwna family’s archive in Hebron. Sasson and Goel contacted him and asked if they could interview him and take the album to the Museum to make a copy. He refused but invited S­ asson and Goel to Hebron to make copies of it at his home. Goel told the journalists that the grandson ‘insisted we get up to Hebron … and refused to release the album from the city limits’.10 With the reproduced materials in tow, Goel made three additional copies of the album: one containing the negatives currently in Goel’s possession; a second album was given to Sasson; and a third album was gifted to the deputy mayor of Beersheba at the time. Goel explained to the newspaper, that as a visual historian, he had kept the album away from the public over the last decades until he found ‘a special moment to expose’ it to Beersheba’s community.11 This moment happened to be the opening of the city’s Photography Museum in the Grand Mosque in 2011. Omri Salmon, the CEO of the Council of Preservation and Heritage in Israel described the presence of the album in the Museum: The exhibition in Be’er Sheva, including the exposure of the Turkish pasha photo albums are … a salute from the conversation field and demonstrate to the Israeli people the work and devotion given to the upkeep of buildings, documents, photos and cultural enrichment of the state of Israel.12

212 Photographs In an article describing the event, the Yedi’oth author also included several copies of images found in Goel’s version of the paşha’s album. One happened to be the Ottoman inauguration which bore the heading: ‘Declaration ceremony in the city of Be’er Sheva by Akram Bay, governor of Jerusalem in 1906. Background mosque and the governor, the arch reads: Allah save thy Sultan’.13 While the article explained the source of the Museum’s photograph, it did not cite the image’s original photographer. Later research found that the only photographers working in Beersheba during the late Ottoman Empire were the photographers of the American Colony. While researching their photographic collection at the Library of Congress, I found another depiction of the event in the George Grantham Bain Collection (see Figure 6.3). The image was labelled, ‘Turk Negotiations with Arabs’ and, according to their archives, the photograph was taken by Whiting and later published by Bain News Service, an American news syndicate operating out of New York at the turn of the nineteenth century. The description of the photograph states: ‘Photo shows the official opening of Beersheba (Israel) by the Ottoman Turkish government before World War I’.14 The photograph was, yet again, another version of AJEEC’s

Figure 6.3  ‘Turk negotiations with Arabs’ in the Bain Media Collection at the Library of ­Congress (c. 1906) Original creator(s): Bain News Service, publisher. Medium: 1 negative: glass 5 x 7 in. or smaller. Summary: The photo shows the official opening of Beersheba (Israel) by the Ottoman Turkish government before World War I. Source: John D. ­Whiting Collection photographs: LOT 13833, no. 132 and no. 136.  Archive: Bain Media Collection at the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA. Catalogue Number: LC-B2- 2138-14 [P&P]. Original date: c. 1900 and 1915.  Accessed date: 1 May 2012.

Circulating Images: Community Histories  213 photograph and Goel’s images but also taken at a different time. In fact, it was the same image that had been cropped and uploaded on Palestineremebered.com. Unlike the others, however, this photograph possessed a handwritten note. The note suggested a more detailed narrative of the photographed historical event rather than the more general label attributed to the image in Israeli contexts as ‘The official opening of the city of Beersheba’. According to Bedouin interviewees, the event in the photograph evidences the Ottoman’s coercive practices with regard to tribal populations in the Empire (including Libya and Yemen), in which officials bestowed presents such as cars, horses, houses, and honorary titles upon notables who assisted Ottoman administrators in the periphery. These gifts were distributed to local men during special events organised by Ottoman officials who very publicly honoured Bedouin citizens through symbolic gestures and bribery. Selim Deringil further explained: The nomadic leaders or notables had to be treated carefully and all care was to be taken to avoid ‘provoking their wild nature and hatred’…. If at all possible, the leaders of the nomads or the provincial notables were to be won over by ‘giving them a little something’ … and ‘flattering their leaders’…. It is sufficient to flatter them and occasionally give them presents and robes of honour … for they are very fond of pomp and display.15 The Ottomans often organised special public events for Bedouin in Beersheba at different periods (c. 1900–c. 1915) during the city’s construction. The initial recognition of Beersheba as an Ottoman city was overseen by Isma’il Kamal Bey who ‘pitched a governor’s tent and took control of the wells’ on land purchased from a local tribe (ʿashīra) in 1896.16 The first stage of construction of the city occurred between 1900 and 1903 and was led by the second governor of the region, Muhammad Effendi Jaralla who oversaw the building of the Governor’s House, main streets, and barracks for policemen or gendarmerie. The second stage of construction occurred 1904–1906 and was overseen by the city’s third governor, Assaf Belge Bey, who built the Grand Mosque, a flour mill, post and telegraph office, market centre, and the Tribal School.17 This governor was well known among the Bedouin for hosting social events and ceremonies in Beersheba to which notable men were invited. According to ʿĀrif al-ʿĀrif, Assaf Belge Bey held a special inauguration of the Grand Mosque during which Beersheba was officially ‘enhanced’ as an important centre of Islam and Muslim religious activity in 1906.18 The surrounding tribes (ʿashā’ir) had donated thousands of pounds sterling for the construction of the Grand Mosque and the Ottomans coordinated a large public ceremony and feast to inaugurate its opening. At the time Ali Ekrem Bey (governor of the Jerusalem area from 1906 to 1908) encouraged these formalised gestures which he believed brought ‘the Bedouin closer to the government and capital city by means of generous presents and honours’.19 Taking into consideration the dates attributed to the photographs, the event most local historians such as Goel simply read as the ‘official opening of the city of Beersheba’ also depicts the 1906 inauguration of the Grand Mosque and the elevation of the city as an Islamic centre by Ottoman Empire, a historical event typically removed or left out of Israeli state readings of the image’s visual history. This event was organised by Assaf Belge Bey and led by his superior Ali Ekrem Bey during which they distributed copies of the Quʾrān and robes of honour to participating notables.

214 Photographs An additional photograph lent more information about the imaged occasion. Upon initial viewing, the connection between the images was not apparent as the photographs were housed in different archives. The image entitled the ‘Turk Negotiations with Arabs’ (Figure 6.3) is isolated from the others in the Bain Media Collection. The other photograph is located in the Library of Congress’s archive entitled ‘World War I in Palestine and the Sinai’. This archive is comprised of two photographic albums also produced by the American Colony photographers. The collection contains another image also taken at the Ottoman inauguration indicated by the presence of Ali Ekrem Bey, the same rug, decorations, and the men standing on the stage. It (see Figure 6.4) is entitled: ‘Turkish official opening of Beersheba in pre-war days. Faidy Eff. Haj’ Shawa of Gaza’.

Figure 6.4  ‘Turkish official opening of Beersheba in pre-war days, Faidy Eff. Haj’ Shawa of Gaza (c. 1906). Creator: Bain News Service, publisher. Source: Bain Media Collection at the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA. Reference number: LCDIG-ppmsca-13709-00133 (digital file from original on page 39, no.132). Original date: c. 1900 and 1915.  Accessed date: 1 May 2012.

Despite their different vantage points, the ‘Turk Negotiations with Arabs’ in the Bain Media Collection and the one mentioned above from the ‘World War I in Palestine and

Circulating Images: Community Histories  215 the Sinai’ Collection, were both accredited to the American Colony’s photographers who were known to have been regularly commissioned by Turkish officials to record important events in Ottoman-ruled Palestine and, according to both literature and my own research, they were the only ‘known’ resident photographers to have worked in the region at the time. As discussed in Chapter 4, the American Colony was a commercial studio and would have made copies of photographs, such as the ones discussed in this section, available to customers and patrons. Thus the ‘pasha’s album’ rediscovered by Sasson and Goel in 1974 was most likely commissioned by Assaf Belge Bey and originally photographed by the American Colony’s photographers, who during their attendance took the series of photographs which account for the various and multiple photographs of the event circulating today. With this information, I ended my research of the BVT’s specific photographic depiction of the Ottoman inauguration now hanging in AJEEC’s meeting room. Despite having not located the ‘original’ version of the image I initially encountered at the NGO (see Figure 6.2), I was satisfied with locating the image’s original producers and the history of the photographed event. During the last months of my fieldwork, however, I unintentionally came across an exact copy of AJEEC’s photograph. Before leaving the Naqab, I decided at the last minute to conduct a comprehensive review of books and documentary resources pertaining to the Naqab Bedouin history and society currently held at the Rāhaṭ Community Centre’s library in the city of Rāhaṭ. My interest was two-fold. First, to document the type of written materials pertaining to local history and society regularly available to members because access to many Jewish-run libraries and archives in Beersheba, such as that at BGU, is restricted to members. Second, to identify which of these resources contain the old photographs currently circulating and being displayed in the Naqab. The Rāhaṭ Community Centre’s library houses a large collection of Arabic and Hebrew literature including fiction and nonfiction books. Most of the nonfiction books are studies, descriptions, and writings on this society. During my visit, the librarian informed me that Akhbār an-Naqab, the newspaper syndicate operating out of Rāhaṭ, had recently bequeathed the institution a large collection of books previously kept at their office over the last decade. She directed me to the corner of the library where over a hundred books lay on a table awaiting shelving. Flipping through them, I found that most of the books were written by Israeli Jewish, Palestinian Arab, and Bedouin scholars and described numerous aspects of the Naqab region, Beersheba, and Bedouin society more generally. Within them were hundreds of photographs employed as secondary illustrations. Taking my own shots of the images, I hoped to keep them on file for later research. While doing so, I came across a Hebrew work entitled Beer Sheva va-Atareem (­English – Beer Sheva and Sites) published in 1991.20 The book was an edited volume with c­ hapters describing the Naqab, significant historical and archaeological sites, and the history of the city of Beersheba. Among these was an article written by Ilan Gal-Nar (1991) entitled, ‘Establishment of Beersheba in the Ottoman period’. In it were several photographs of Ottoman Beersheba including one labelled, ‘Celebrations and ceremonies held in Bedouin Beersheba featured by the Turks: Celebration of the inauguration of the city c. –1907’ (see Figure 6.5).

216 Photographs

Figure 6.5 ‘Celebrations and ceremonies held in Bedouin Beersheba featured by the Turks: ­Celebration of the inauguration of the city c. – 1907’ found in book Beer Sheva and Sites at the Rahat Library. Original creator(s): possibly John Whiting. Secondary producer: possibly Sasson Bar-Ziv. Third producer: Ilan Gal-Nar. Fourth producer: Emilie Le Febvre. Original source: Unknown. Secondary source: Gal-Nar, Ilan. 1991. ‘Establishment of Beersheba in the Ottoman period’, in Beer Sheva and Sites, Gideon Begar and Eli Shiler (eds.), Jerusalem: Ariel Publishing House. Original date: c. 1906. Secondary date. 1991. Accessed date. 25 May 2014.

This photograph happened to be the same depiction of the Ottoman inauguration in 1906 as that hanging in AJEEC. Unfortunately, similar to the AJEEC’s curator, the author did not identify the image’s photographer or any source information. Alternatively, the introduction pages of the entire book stated that the images fall within the book’s copyright and that Sasson, who discovered Assaf Belge Bey’s album in 1974, had consulted on the creation and publication of the book. Maybe Sasson provided the author with a copy of the Ottoman inauguration image from his own edition of the pasha’s album? Did he provide another one to AJEEC’s late curator? In the hopes of finding the answers, I contacted ʿĀʾisha, the founder of AJEEC. She, similar to ʾĀnas, explained the situation with AJEEC’s late curator and his stroke, stating that she did not know where the photograph had come from. Like others, she also relayed the controversy of the Grand Mosque in Beersheba and the inability of members to worship there. I concluded the conversation by asking why she hung this image in AJEEC’s meeting room along with other photographs depicting stereotypes of Bedouin life in the Naqab. She replied: You see, the Arab community has been here in the Negev for centuries. There were no Jews here then, during the Ottoman time. Only ʿarab lived here in the desert then. Do you

Circulating Images: Community Histories  217 see any Jewish people, any kippāh in the photograph? No, they were not here. Ottomans, unlike the Israelis now, respected us. They held events like this for the Bedouin…. They knew that they needed us in order to rule the Negev. The shaykhs were consulted by the Ottomans. Not like today, not like the Israelis who do not let us even worship in our own Mosque. This is why the picture is important for the Bedouin as a whole. It is our history. In all, the history work of the photograph of the Ottoman’s opening of the Grand Mosque and its various versions has a particularly long and complicated biography among both Israeli Jewish and Bedouin residents in the Naqab. The disparities between both the reading of historical events and the display of the images among these two populations are partly indicative of many Bedouin’s current cross-societal interactions in southern Israel. It also reflects their different understandings of the history of Beersheba, its role as an Islamic centre before 1948, and the significance of Islamic heritage for religious spokespersons but also civic leaders such as ʿĀʾisha. Notwithstanding, the value of this image for religious and civic community organisations is also unique to those circulating among the lineages (ʿāʾilāt) because the people pictured in it cannot be identified and thus cannot be singularly affiliated with one particular lineage, a situation making this photograph available to community spokespersons and photographers such as ʾĀnas. On other occasions, however, an image that is strategically displayed within community and nationalised contexts may also possess the opposite quality that is it depicts people and events locally associated with universal themes of Islamic heritage and idealised ­self-presentations of community’s solidarity. Visual Activism: Protests and Al-ʿAragīb

The office of NCF opened in 2006. The organisation was located in the Dalet neighbourhood of Beersheba and housed in a city bomb shelter in 2013. During my fieldwork, it was opened to the public during rocket attacks on Israel’s southern region coming from Gaza during Operation Pillar of Defence (November 2012). The NGO is comprised of meeting and exhibition space, officially known as the Multaqa-Mifgash Centre for Arab-Jewish Understanding. Early on during my fieldwork, several informants told me about NCF’s joint Jewish and Arab work and its director. She along with NCF’s Bedouin employees and other volunteers worked with local spokesmen in villages, such as Suleīmān in Khashem Zanaʿ, on advocacy and civil society projects to bring both ‘awareness’ and ‘resources’ to the villages. The NGO’s mission and activities are: NCF is engaged in a wide range of grassroots activities. Since 2000, for instance, we have worked with community leaders in ‘unrecognized’ Bedouin villages to deliver vital basic services to their communities…. In collaboration with other NGOs, the NCF has filed legal petitions against discriminatory practices affecting Bedouin communities in the Negev…. We also work to provide accurate, reliable information to the public and to decision-makers shaping public policy…. NCF ensures the reliability of the information contained in such reports by conducting its own fieldwork and research.21 I visited NCF to interview the director about the organisation’s photography workshops with Bedouin children and the regular photographic exhibitions hosted in their MultaqaMifgash Centre. Each year, the NGO organises an annual photography workshop for children living in villages during their winter school holidays. Volunteer photographers from around Israel are invited each day of the month-long photographic literacy workshop to teach the children photography techniques. In 2013, the workshop was held in al-Sir and Khashem Zanaʿ.22

218 Photographs Upon my arrival to the office, a secretary greeted me and told me the director would be with me in a minute and suggested that I take a look at their display tables upon which lay dozens of newsletters, maps, pamphlets, and NGO reports. Most of the literature was produced by the NCF and available for free to those interested in learning more about ‘Israel’s Bedouin citizens’ and the demolition of the villages. In addition to literature pertaining to the NGO’s activities, however, there were also photographic calendars, postcards, posters, and books for purchase. These photographic materials compile and present images taken by Bedouin youth in conjunction with their photographic literacy projects. Among both the literature and postcards were also business cards and flyers advertising the services and businesses of Bedouin members. While perusing these materials, I came across an advertisement for a local photographer, ʿAṭīya (anonymised) Abū Madīghem, who like a handful of commercial Bedouin photographers has begun producing, exhibiting, and circulating images on political themes of protest, particularly those associated with the ‘unrecognised villages’. The advertisement displayed several photographs taken by ʿAṭīya during Naqab Bedouin ‘community’ events throughout 2011 and 2013 in which people marched and protested against the Israeli state’s Prawer Plan and demolitions. Among them, in the top row, second on the right of the logo was a small cropped image of a moustached man wearing a white headscarf (kūfiyya) standing below a line of uniformed Israeli police, dressed in black and wearing helmets, holding metal shields and bludgeons. What drew me to the small, inset photograph was the fact that I had ‘seen’ this photograph many times before and later learned that it was similar to other images taken at the same dramatic ‘photographic event’ (see Figure 6.6). Looking at it, I realised that it was an image of Ṣayīāḥ Abū Madīghem al-Ṭūrī, during one of the armed evictions of villagers from their al-ʿAragīb lands – one of the better-documented protests that had occurred at the time of my fieldwork.

Figure 6.6  ʿAṭīya (anonymised) Abū Madīghem›s photograph taken at al-ʿAragīb 2010 protest. Original source: Abū Madīghem›s personal collection. Original date: July 2010.

Circulating Images: Community Histories  219 Al-ʿAragīb is located approximately five miles north of Beersheba and a mile or so east of highway 40. According to local spokesperson Nūrī al-ʿUgbī, the al-ʿUgbī have owned the land in al-ʿAragīb since the Ottoman’s 1858 Land Law. Like many members, at the time they registered their plots through sanād rather than with Turkish officials since registration entailed taxation. Nūrī explained that during the British Mandate and Israeli Military Administration, however, they paid taxes to both governments. [W]e have documents from September 22, 1937, stating that my grandfather paid taxes on that land. Also in the early period of the State of Israel, in October 1950, my father paid 113 pounds and 139 mils in taxes to the military governor for planting summer crops….23 In 1951, however, the Israeli state informed the lineage (ʿāʾilāt) that they were requisitioning their land for six months and relocated them next to Ḥura. After this six-month period, the lineage tried to move back to their land but received trespassing fines from the state who informed them that they must submit and register official claim forms with the Israeli Land Authority (ILA) in order to return to their property. They did so, but since the 1970s the Administration has never completed nor processed the lineage’s application for registration. He summarised the situation as such: Al-̕Arāqīb, historically, is the land belonging to the al-‘Okbi tribe. It is marked on the first map from the Ottoman period, and so it is on the second and third map…. In 1949 an aerial photograph was taken and al-Arāqīb is marked there too. The al-Ṭūrī family came to the region around 100 years ago, they came to us. They were farmers and cultivated land. They bought a piece of land from my grandfather, the father of my uncle…. All this is registered in the documents, Turkish and British ones. Even from the period of the Israeli military rule. There was a certificate from JNF-KKL which stated that people from the al-‘Okbi tribe, all the farmers in al-̕Arāqīb, possessed 26,000 dunams of land…. And today Israel is saying ‘You don’t have any land. It is state’s land, it is dead.’ How is it dead? And we, where are we from?24 In addition to the al-ʿUgbī, a portion of lands composing al-ʿAragīb (approximately 4,600 acres) are also owned by the Abū Madīghem al-Ṭūrī who purchased their land from al-Huzayyil in 1905. In an interview, Ṣayīāḥ described the Abū Madīghem al-Ṭūrī’s land purchase: We’ve been on this land since Turkish times, we bought it in 1905. In 1917 the ­ ritish occupation started, but we stayed in the same place, together with some other B ­families … In 1914, our forefathers built an Islamic cemetery here.… This cemetery with people buried in all different times, is the tangible proof that this has been our land, that we have been here continuously.… In 1953, when they ordered us to leave the area and [to move] towards the north, they told us, “It’s just for 6 months”. Yet, until now, we were not allowed to return.25 Since the 1990s, several families have built homes on the land when it appeared that the state was attempting to seize their lands because residents could not produce Ottoman land deeds to the ILA. In 2000, the state proceeded to ban families again from living there, demolished their homes, and fumigated their wheat fields by crop dusting poison as a way of ‘encouraging’ them to leave.

220 Photographs In 2005, Nūrī made an additional request to the Administration (similarly to those made previously) that it finalised his tribe’s (ʿashīra) land registry. On this occasion, however, the state decided to formally sue him for trespassing on what they claimed was now mawat land (Ottoman term for unused land). In response, Nūrī proceeded to construct a small tent in al-ʿAragīb, in protest of the suit and the state’s refusal to formally acknowledge his land claim. Soon after, a large number of Israeli police demolished his tent and arrested him. Several weeks later, once released from jail, he travelled back to his land and reconstructed his tent, this time his efforts were supported by Bedouin advocacy groups. Over time, other former and scattered residents of al-ʿAragīb, most of whom now live in Rāhaṭ, joined Nūrī in constructing dwellings on their lands.26 In 2010, the Jewish National Fund (Keren Kayemet LeYisrael – JNF-KKL) announced a forestation project in the Naqab. This plan was labelled the Ambassadors’ Forest in which foreign diplomats and international Jewish and Christian groups are solicited to purchase trees and plant them in order to ‘Make the Desert Bloom’, an early Zionist motto referring to the Naqab Desert promoted by JNF-KKL representatives. Soon after launching the initiative, JNF-KKL ploughs began tilling and terracing lands in areas where the state had experienced ongoing conflict with Bedouin residents regarding land rights and what the state considers to be their illegal residence in villages such as al-ʿAragīb. In July 2010, under orders of the ILA, over 1,300 Israeli Police Officers were dispatched to al-ʿAragīb to evict and demolish resident dwellings, arrest residents and a slew of Bedouin, Jewish, and Palestinian activists who had come to protest JNF-KKL’s ‘planting’. Back at the Multaqa-Mifgash Centre, I had picked up the advertisement with the image and placed it in my bag when NCF’s director greeted me. Sitting on a sofa, I interviewed her about NCF’s activities including the photography workshops and their mapping and research of the villages. During the interview, I asked her about the picture of Ṣayīāḥ circulating amongst people and on the Internet. She explained that during the 2010 large-scale demolition, a large group of Bedouin and Israeli photographers took pictures ­during the mass police operation. Besides herself, other professional photographers with Activestills and Bedouin photographers had joined the al-ʿAragīb residents and protesters the night before when it was learned that the police operation was s­ cheduled for the next day. The director told me: Several of us were taking pictures and were standing at the right angle to capture Ṣayīāḥ walking up the stone steps to confront the police. It was a particularly dramatic moment during the demolition and we all knew it would make for a great picture. Among these photographers was ʿAṭīya (anonymised), a member of the Abū Madīghem al-Ṭūrī lineage in al-ʿAragīb. He lives in Rāhaṭ and studied photography for a year and a half at Sapir College. Since then, he has become interested in both fine art photography and photojournalism. Today he is a commercial photographer (see Chapter 4). ʿAṭīya’s photograph of the event (and the one of more popular images of the event circulating throughout the region today) is slightly different from the more spontaneous snapshots taken by the NCF director or the quiet drama of Activestills’ photographer Oren’s widerangle image captured at the same time. ʿAṭīya’s photograph, instead, captures Ṣayīāḥ with his arm stretched out and pointing defiantly at the Israeli police unit. Since the photographic event in 2010, I found that ʿAṭīya has printed, exhibited, and disseminated this particular photograph in several physical and virtual venues within and beyond the Naqab. He created a photographic exhibition entitled ‘Bāqūn’ (remaining) which documents ‘people in the Negev who insist on clinging to their ancestral lands’

Circulating Images: Community Histories  221 through photography. His first exhibition was held in al-ʿAragīb in 2012 in the newly constructed agnate meeting place (shigg) and was shown in the Community Centre in Rāhaṭ, the NCF in Beersheba, Zochrot in Tel Aviv, and Kafr Qara in northern Israel along with several other venues. On 11th June 2013 he was invited by NCF to exhibit at the Multaqa-Mifgash Centre to a mixed audience of Israeli Jewish residents from Beersheba and surrounding moshavim and Bedouin residents from various towns and villages. The centre serves as a proposed civic place to encourage face-to-face debate and to ‘bring communities together’ by providing ‘opportunities for Jews and Arabs to come together in meaningful ways’ and working ‘towards changing the way people think and dispelling myths and prejudices’.28 The venue also hosts regular talks on the Naqab Bedouin by Israeli Jewish and Bedouin experts; photographic exhibitions displaying images produced by both the NCF in coordination with their Photography Literacy Projects along with foreign and local photographers; and film screenings. Later, ʿAṭīya went on to present this image along with others in Tel Aviv with an organisation named Zochrot that was established in 2002. As an organisation, it sets out to ‘challenge the Israeli Jewish public’s preconceptions and promote awareness, political and cultural change within it to create the conditions for the Return of Palestinian Refugees and a shared life in this country’.29 Their work includes political education workshops, visual research in the form of photographic and visual art exhibitions and projects, tours of destroyed Palestinian homes in Israel, film festivals, and oral and text research in the form of books, audio-recorded interviews, re-mappings, and the ‘Truth Commission’, a local conference and testimonies by former Israeli military about the Nakba. Similar to NCF, their audience largely includes Israeli Jewish, international, and Palestinian residents in Israel. Their Tel Aviv office also hosts a Visual Research Laboratory or exhibition space where visual artists, filmmakers, and photographers display their works and give presentations about their inspiration and goals. ʿAṭīya’s exhibition was held in July 2013 in Tel Aviv and curated by Eitan Bronstein Aparicio. It ran from 28th July 2013 to 19th September 2013. During his opening interview, ʿAṭīya explained his exhibition in Hebrew:30 27

[Eitan]: Tell me about the photographs… [ʿAtīya]: … They document demolitions, demonstrations, life in the Negev. The photos ˙ in the exhibit were taken on July 27, 2010, the day Araqib was demolished for the first time. The photographs were first exhibited in Araqib in 2012; they became part of the struggle to remain there. The large demonstrations that were held show that the population organised and came together during that period. Everyone participated, women, children and men… [Eitan]: So you’re an activist photographer? [ʿAtīya]: You could say that. When the first demolitions occurred they called me at ˙ 11 PM and told me to come quickly because Araqib was being destroyed. My parents didn’t want me to go; they were afraid something bad would happen to me. I spoke to my older brother, who convinced them to agree. When I arrived I was surprised to discover that the demolition crews hadn’t come yet. We went to sleep there. There were about 150 of us, from both Israel and from abroad, who’d come in solidarity. Toward morning we received a phone call announcing that the Lahavim junction had been blocked and that forces were mobilising at a gas station in Beersheba. The entire route from the main road to Araqib was closed down. There were about 1200 soldiers and police

222 Photographs officers. I’ll never forget how they stood in a line facing us; the commander you see in this photograph said over his loudspeaker: Either you leave peacefully or we’ll use force. One photograph shows the Shaykh standing opposite the security forces, pointing his finger accusingly at the destruction they caused. Eitan: Do you live in an unrecognised locality? [ʿAtīya]: No, I live in Rahat. ˙ […] [Eitan]: What made you begin taking photographs? [ʿAtīya]: I studied photography at Sapir College, and learned more on my own. When ˙ I began photographing, it wasn’t an obvious decision. People wondered what I was doing, why I was involved in art. Later they saw it helped and today there are more photographers and I’m happy to assist them. I’m a photographer who comes from the community; I know what is permissible to photograph and what’s forbidden. When I photograph a woman, I don’t show her face. Usually it’s a problem, but they know me and grant me permission. They know I do so for the good of the Bedouin population.31 ʿAtīya’s exhibitions coincided with what was intended to be the state’s implementation of the˙ Prawer Plan. In September 2011, the Israeli parliament introduced a bill entitled the Prawer (also known as the Praver or the ‘Bill on the Arrangement of Bedouin Settlement in the Negev’) which proposed to resettle between 30,000 and 40,0000 ‘semi-nomadic Bedouin’32 living in villages in Naqab into designated townships. Government officials argue that the bill aims to narrow the gaps between the Bedouin and the rest of the Jewish Israeli residents in Naqab by investing ‘millions of shekels’ for their ‘inclusion and modernisation’.33 The bills drew on the Goldberg Commission 2007 run by a retired judge, Eliezer Goldberg who was commissioned by the Israeli government to make recommendations about ‘dealing’ with the Naqab Bedouin ‘land problem’. After meeting with Bedouin representatives, Goldberg advised that most of the villages should be officially recognised because of their historic claims to the land. Ehud Prawer, head of policy planning in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office, was put in charge of implementing Goldberg’s recommendations and went on to lead what came to be known as the Prawer Plan. He proposed that fifty per cent of land currently occupied by families should be transferred to the state, with minimal compensation for the remaining land, from which families would be relocated. In alteration of Goldberg’s plan, the Prawer Plan called for the demolition of thirty-five villages because they did not possess ‘the correct’ documentation of their land rights. Naqab Bedouin leaders, academics, and activists all argued that the Prawer Plan was ‘a declaration of war’34 on the Bedouin because the population was not consulted nor involved with the development of the plan. Alternatively, they argued that the bill set out to consolidate people from the villages into a smaller geographical area in order to remove them from their established landholdings and eradicate their customary way of life. Clinton Bailey was quoted in the Haaretz, an international Israeli newspaper, saying; ‘They’re giving the Bedouin much too little, much less than they deserve…. It doesn’t really relate to all the Bedouin population, whereas it should, in terms of reparations for land that’s been taken, in land or in money’.35 Bailey also explained that the basic wording of the government plan was insulting to Bedouin: Generally speaking, most Bedouin are opposed to it. These people had land claims. They were based on unwritten law. Our legal system depends on written evidence of

Circulating Images: Community Histories  223 such things, deeds, contracts. They didn’t have it, and we also wanted to make sure that we controlled as much of the Negev as possible, because it’s half the size of the country. So there was a natural conflict…. But they don’t want the whole Negev, they want certain parts of it. And there were ways of dealing with it respectfully and fairly.36 In response to the Prawer Initiative, local advocates held a protest on the 6th October 2011 where over 8,000 men, women, and children, along with outside supporters rallied in central Beersheba. According to Bailey, ‘That’s the largest demonstration that the Bedouin have ever gotten together. This has served to unite Bedouin in a way that nothing else has ever been able to’.37 Since its announcement in 2011, civil society organisations such as the NCF, Adalah, AJEEC, and numerous others include activists from the youth movement strategically set out to protest and advocate against the implementation of the Prawer Plan within and outside of Israel. Over the course of two years, spokespersons gave interviews on a host of Israeli news syndicates such as Haaretz, Aharonot, and Yedi’oth, and international news outlets such as CNN, BBC, Al Jazeera, The New York Times, and the Guardian – community activism(s) that substantially increased in 2014. For instance, Morād al-Ṣānaʿ discussed the Prawer Plan and its implications for ‘Palestinian Bedouin in the Naqab’ at the Palestine centre in Washington, DC. Morād, who worked as a lawyer and director of Adalah, described the plan as Israel’s ‘final solution’ for Bedouin in the Naqab. Amid the protests and media engagements, arguments between non-Bedouin Israelis and international news commentators soon arose. On various news sites, blogs, social media, and public platforms, these outsiders debated the framing of not merely the Prawer Plan as a state initiative to regularise land settlement among Israel’s southern Bedouin population but also debated as to whether or not the Naqab Bedouin are Israeli or ­Palestinian. For example, Haviv Rettig stated in the English edition of The Times of Israel: In October, the second-largest bloc in the European Parliament, the Socialists and Democrats group, held a conference on the issue in which posters urged parliamentarians to ‘Stop Prawer-Begin Plan, no ethnic cleansing of Palestinian Bedouin’. The idea of the plan … is to move some of the Negev’s Bedouin, Arab Israelis who lead a semi-nomadic lifestyle, off of unrecognized hamlets on state land and into cities. Last week, 50 British artists, musicians and left-wing activists penned a letter to the Guardian newspaper accusing Israel of planning the ‘the expulsion and confinement of up to 70,000 Palestinian Bedouins’, and of ‘systematic discrimination and separation.’… But it wasn’t the British activists or European parliamentarians who set the tone in framing the Bedouin resettlement debate as part of a generations-long Arab-­ Jewish war … Israeli Arab leaders, never ones to miss an opportunity to benefit from populist rabble-rousing, teamed up with the most incendiary of Jewish politicians to transform a carefully crafted development scheme, cultivated over several years by professional planners and economists, into a nationalist tug-of-war…. And it is the ordinary, unassuming families of the sprawling tent-cities who are the true suffering victims of their own leaders’, and Israel’s, collective neglect. And who are not being usefully served by the passionate, largely under-informed, and in some cases perniciously motivated international outcry.38 ʿAṭīya’s photograph of Ṣayīāḥ pointing at the Israeli police unit in 2010 soon became a visual signer for both sides of the debate. For example, on Al Jazeera’s ‘The Stream’ in July 2013, bloggers continued to argue as to whether or not the Naqab Bedouin were Israeli or Palestinians when web administrators posted ʿAṭīya’s photograph on their Google+ feed.

224 Photographs In 2013, the first official reading of the Prawer Plan passed in the Knesset and, by the fall, protests soon escalated as did international and national media coverage of Bedouin community-led advocacy against it; including information tours in the form of lectures, interviews, seminars, and rallies supported by fellow Israelis and Palestinians in both Israel and the West Bank. For example, in September 2013, Ṣayīāḥ and ʿAṭīya travelled north to the Arab village of Kafr Qasim’s municipal Community Centre, which hosted both ʿAṭīya and Ṣayīāḥ during a ‘Solidarity Event’, which set out to strengthen dialogue between Arab residents in the north and south of Israel. There Ṣayīāḥ was introduced to a large crowd of non-Bedouin Palestinian residents as a ‘Negev Bedouin freedom fighter’.39 During his speech in Arabic, he discussed the problems of the Prawer Plan and the experiences of al-ʿAragīb. During the event, ʿAṭīya also re-exhibited his photographic collection on the centre’s walls. Their hosts in Kafr Qasim declared that ʿAṭīya’s photographs showed the ‘punishment of settlement’ and ‘the bitter reality and claws of the Bill on the Arrangement of Bedouin Settlement in the Naqab and dire situation of these villages’.40 In November 2013, Naqab Bedouin community advocates along with supportive Israeli and Palestinian activists organised a ‘Day of Rage’ in further protest of the Prawer Plan. Advocates gathered on Saturday 30th November 2013 in an area located outside of the town of Ḥura and were joined by others organised throughout Israel, the West Bank, and internationally in places such as London. ʿAṭīya’s photograph was redesigned into a poster advertising the event (see Figure 6.7).41

Figure 6.7  Day of Rage poster with ʿAṭīya’s photograph 2013.  Original source: Abū Madīghem’s personal collection. Original date: 2010.

Circulating Images: Community Histories  225 The protest in Ḥura brought over a thousand protesters and, similar to other protests, they were met by several hundred armoured and mounted Israeli riot police who tried to confine the protest to a small barricaded area and move the event away from the visibility of the highway. Soon, younger protesters tried to leave the barricade but undercover Israeli police within the crowds began to clash with protesters. A week after the protest, state officials released a statement ordering all Israeli media to hand over their photographs and digital images taken during the ‘Day of Rage’ to the police. The Haaretz reported: Police provided no explanation for the unusual order, but they are investigating violent clashes between stone-throwing demonstrators and police, who employed stun grenades, tear gas and water cannons during the protests against the Prawer Plan. The ‘day of rage’ demonstrations ended with 34 protesters arrested and 15 officers wounded. The Southern District of the Israel Police communicated the order, which was approved by Beer Sheva Magistrate’s Court…, directly to photographers via a text message. ‘All the media in the State of Israel to hand over any documentation of the riots at Hura Junction and the surroundings on November 30, 2013,’ the message said….42 A month after the ‘Day of Rage’ protest, Benny Begin who had worked on the bill with Ehud Prawer told the media during a press conference that ‘the prime minister accepted my advice to delay bringing the Bill on the Arrangement of Bedouin Settlement in the Naqab to a Knesset vote’.43 He stated that there was not enough of a majority in the Knesset to support the bill and ‘all sorts of interest groups have gotten involved, trying to take advantage of the plight of the Naqab Bedouin in order to achieve political gain’.44 Begin also acknowledged that despite claims by Ehud Prawer, local representatives had not been consulted on the drafting of the bill. The bill was subsequently put on hold. For Naqab Bedouin advocates and visual activists such as ʿAṭīya, the state’s decision to shelve the Prawer Plan was considered a great success of ‘Bedouin community activism’ and international media engagement. For al-ʿAragīb, however, the cancellation of the Prawer Plan did not stop the demolition of the village as it was destroyed twenty-nine times between 2013 and 2014. The corpus of visual works used for community narratives such as al-ʿAragīb by professional photographers such as ʿAṭīya also increasingly include images produced by amateur Bedouin image-makers. For local advocates with connections to al-ʿAragīb, for example, image-making itself has now become a form of visual activism which allows them to document and then later evidence their own marginalisation and discriminations at the hands of the state of Israel. Schejter and Tirosh describe how young people use their smartphones to: organise meetings; share news of recent demolitions; social network with family, friends, journalists, and activists; and record demolitions, protests, and visits by Israeli Jewish, other Palestinian, and international representatives.45 A young activist explained: “I photo the homes when they are here when being wrecked and after being wrecked … the photo is the big testifier,” she said. “It is the one [record] that tells the truth, let’s us see the truth…. I take photos to send to the world so they will see how they destroy [what is] ours and how they beat us up”.46 As mentioned at the beginning of this case study, activist photography in al-ʿAragīb is not only practiced by residents and relatives but also by NGO staff who record the events

226 Photographs and conditions in the villages and regularly instruct local advocates and children about how to do the same. For example, NCF hosts a photography course in the villages and provides children with digital cameras for these purposes. For example, during my stay in Khashem Zanaʿ, Suleīmān and NCF’s director arranged for an NGO to host a monthlong photographic literacy project with children from the village over their winter school holiday. The goal of the project was to teach village children basic photography skills so that they could document their lives in the ‘unrecognised villages’. Each week a professional photographer, mostly Israeli Jewish individuals from Tel Aviv travelled with NCF’s female Bedouin coordinator to Khashem Zanaʿ. Once there, they would meet a group of ‘village children’ which were in fact mostly Suleīmān’s offspring and those of close relatives in the pre-school building located on his property (which was built by another NGO several years prior). In the class, the children were given digital cameras by the NGOs (see Figure 6.8). The instructor would explain in Hebrew, which the female coordinator translated into dialect to the children, about how to use the camera and image-making techniques. Once explained, instructors would then try to take the children to the top of the hill behind Suleīmān’s home to capture images of the landscape, houses, or livestock. The problem was that many of the instructors did not realise that they could not simply wander about the village. Suleīmān usually came from his house to direct the instructor to a specific location behind his property for the purposes of guiding the instructors on where they could travel in the village – the very place each Israeli, Palestinian, and international tour group was brought during their visit or ‘village experience’ in Khashem Zanaʿ, as I described in Chapter 2.

Figure 6.8  Children in Khashem Zanaʿ participating in NCF-Dukium’s Visual Literacy Project. Original creator(s): Emilie Le Febvre. Original date: 20 December 2012.

Circulating Images: Community Histories  227 Upon the close of the workshop, several instructors along with representatives of the NGO expressed their dismay at the minimal success of this project in Khashem Zanaʿ. They explained that children in other villages seemed more interested in the Photography Literacy initiative, took better photographs, and were ‘more responsive’ to the project goals. In particular, the organisers were upset that Suleīmān had only allowed children from his lineage (ʿāʾilāt) and neighbouring houses to participate in the project, mostly boys. ‘The project in al-Sir was much better than in Khashem Zanaʿ. The children there were less exposed to cameras so the act of photography was also less new to them’.47 For example, after the NGO organisers and consulting instructors left for the day, Suleīmān’s youngest daughter often took her camera with her while we led the sheep and goats to graze in the hills behind her father’s property. During chores, she often took photographs but complained that the camera’s resolution was poor although she enjoyed its video capacity. In fact, contrary to assumptions by NGOs, children in the village had been ‘exposed’ to digital devices and cameras long before the arrival of the project. For example, most nights the family sat together in the tent with their mobiles, smartphones, computers, and iPads connected to the Internet and electricity via an extension cable run from the generator in the main house. Nevertheless, once the photography project was completed, the organisation provided each child with a thumb drive with copies of their images saved on it. The organisers had selected what they thought to be the best photographs taken by the children in each village, printed off copies, and then reprinted them into books, calendars, and pamphlets. These images were then exhibited and sold in Multaqa-Mifgash Centre and other outside venues (see Figure 6.9).

Figure 6.9 NCF-Dukium’s lobby with Visual Literacy Project exhibition. Original creator(s): Bedouin children. Copy: Emilie Le Febvre. Original date: 1 November 2012.

Ultimately, the number of photography books depicting children’s photographs and other visual essays produced by a range of photographers depicting life and ‘conditions’ in the villages have grown substantially in the last twenty years and are often shown to visitors in the villages by local village representatives. For example, upon a visit to

228 Photographs

Figure 6.10  Child taking a photo with his mobile phone of EU delegation looking at photographic essay book in al-ʿAragīb. Original creator(s): Emilie Le Febvre. Original date: 29 April 2012.

al-ʿAragīb with the EU delegation, we were shown a large collection of photography books, snapshots, and digital images on a spokesperson’s computer as part of the village tour (see Figure 6.10). These same images are also uploaded onto al-ʿAragīb’s Facebook pages. Schejter and Tiosh explained: ‘M’, the villager … launched a Facebook page called…‘We are all Al-’Arakeeb’ to which he uploads pictures and videos of events that take place in the village. ‘It’s as if I am the communications person for Al-’Arakeeb,’ he said….When he was away once, one of the villagers recruited a professional photographer who took pictures of a demolition ‘and after 20 minutes it was already on the Internet. It even made it to the cellular [phones] of journalists. One journalist called me and said, “I heard you have the material, pass it on to me immediately,” and I did.’48 Together, however, these photographs and digital pictures are increasingly becoming a part of the Naqab Bedouin community’s ‘visual history’ – a complex discourse wherein the interests of the lineage are being re-contextualised as community issues and worked out in public venues.

Circulating Images: Community Histories  229 Afterlives In this chapter, I traced the fractured biographies of several images and documented their changing meanings and material and digital transformations as: photographs of community heritage hung on the walls of NGO meeting rooms; printed illustrations of Bedouin culture found in textbooks and newspapers; pictures of Bedouin history hung on exhibition walls; and digital images of Naqab Bedouin protest on the web. These photographs and digital pictures were initially produced by various sources from various (a) global, (b) macro, and (c) meso-visual economies. The photograph of the Ottoman inauguration of the Grand Mosque (and its different copies and versions) is the oldest (c. 1906) known image of the Naqab Bedouin community and consequently possesses a long and convoluted biography. As with the images discussed in Chapter 5, outsiders such as the American Colony photographers, Israeli Jewish citizens, and government officials have nearly always produced the older images circulating in this society. In the last decade, however, members have begun to create their own community images. As photographers like ʿAṭīya become proficient in photography, their photographic and digital works reflect the viewpoints, aesthetics, and socio-political interests of their Bedouin creators. For example, ʿAṭīya’s photograph of Ṣayīāḥ Abū Madīghem al-Ṭūrī, unlike those taken by Israeli Jewish representatives of NCF and Activestills, presents a ‘resistance fighter’ with Ṣayīāḥ’s arm stretched and pointing at the Israeli police. In both instances, the graphic contents of community images are unique in that they are nearly always taken during specific photographic encounters that were largely staged (or re-staged) public events such as the c. 1906 Ottoman inauguration and 2013 Day of Rage in Ḥura in which Bedouin not only engaged with each other but also with outsiders such as government officials, visitors, and neighbours. These images depict specific places, people, and events associated with community histories and experiences. They are, however, unique in that include demolition sites but not the houses themselves, mosques but rarely the extended families owning them, protests in public spaces but never tribal conflicts over lands, and subjects such as community advocates and protesters but not the elders (kbār) observing them on the side-lines. The latter aspects of this society cannot be isolated from their tribal families, classes, and lineages – these associations are the antithesis to shared community narratives such as those articulated by the southern Islamic Movement and civil society NGOs such as AJEEC. Today the production of community images, particularly those created by ʿAṭīya and children from NCF’s Visual Literacy Project, has acquired an additional purpose. In the early to mid-twentieth century photographers recorded official events, notable persons, and noteworthy activities. Image-making has, however, also become valued as a type of snapshot evidentiary enterprise whereby both Bedouin and non-Bedouin photographers use their cameras for political advocacy by recording protests, conflicts, and discriminations; a type of visual activism in which images are transformed into evidence that document abuses by Israeli state officials. Activist photographers are not only purposefully attending contentious events such as the 2010 al-ʿAragīb protest but also demolitions, marches, and demonstrations in Gaza and the West Bank during which they visually record and monitor happenings in these places through photography. Israeli police and government also treat these photographers and their images as a type of evidence and are beginning to demand that they turn over unflattering or controversial images in an attempt to restrict their consumption and circulation.

230 Photographs As such, the circulations of community images are characteristically wide and publicly diverse, much more so than images associated with specific lineages (ʿāʾilāt). Many of these images are hung on regional and international exhibition walls and installations such as those in AJEEC and the Rāhaṭ Community Centre. In many instances, community images are displayed and valued as aesthetic objects pertaining to fine art photography and Naqab Bedouin ‘culture’. Here they are also sold as pieces of art and advertisements on calendars, books, and postcards. Increasingly, however, these artworks are transformed, re-framed, and valued as objects of evidence particularly documenting Bedouin activism. For example, these types of images are frequently inserted into politically motivated visual essays depicting scenes of poverty, destruction, and protest. On other occasions, these images are valued as auxiliary illustrations used in news articles, blogs, books, and websites to prove happenings at events, the participation of specific people, and the viewpoints of various political players. The consumption of community images is ultimately dependent on their physical and digital circulations as they transform from film and code and travel from exhibition walls to textbooks and websites. During these movements, images present multiple types of community discourses wherein members participate in southern Israel. For example, the photograph of the Ottoman inauguration of the Grand Mosque travelled from a photographic album located in Hebron to an Israeli textbook on Naqab Bedouin culture to the exhibition walls inside the Grand Mosque itself and AJEEC’s gallery in the old city. During its various sojourns the image was used by a diverse set of Bedouin and outside stakeholders all significantly contributing to imaginings of history, their connections to historical Beersheba, Islamic heritage, and their history of ongoing marginalisation as Palestinians in Israel. In another example, when ʿAṭīya’s photograph was exhibited in al-ʿAragīb it was connected to the Abū Madīghem al-Ṭūrī (of which he is a member), it also joined others in his collection to demonstrate the struggles of ‘Israel’s Bedouin minority’ in Tel Aviv, and it also depicted ‘Bedouin resist fighters’ in Kafr Qasim. With each sojourn outside of this society, however, the value of these community images shifted from depictions of Bedouin kin to Israeli citizens to Palestinian nationals to an ethnic Arab minority to a Muslim community. In all, this chapter highlighted how images’ evidentiary capacities, as both a material and representational medium, are not merely accrued through their production or consumption but through their controlled display and circulation in society. Similar to the historical significance of photographs and digital images described in the last chapter, these images are also valued as the property of specific members largely those associated with community organisations who own, protect, source out, and (try to) regulate their exchanges among their own members and viewers in their NGOs, galleries, and civic and Islamic spaces. This comes as the histories derived and instrumentalised from these image documents are typically used by members to substantiate socio-political collaborations and record their communities’ activities. Visual evidence of these community histories, similar to those discussed in the last chapter; however, is also not a limitless or plastic resource. Particular images are chosen over others for their ‘truth values’ often evaluated by their imaging of well-known but controversial historical events such as the 2013 Prawer Protest. Moreover, re-contextualisation efforts in their society typically rely on the authority of spokespersons employing them as evidence during speeches and news articles about the Naqab Bedouin. These labours must also contend with external interpretations of particular historical accounts, for example by the Israeli state and EU political tourists, and the increasing influence of civic and Islamic universalisms in their

Circulating Images: Community Histories  231 society – a constantly changing and complex landscape whereby Bedouin strategically instrumentalise images to validate their presence, rights, and histories in southern Israel. Notes 1 Arab and Jewish Center for Equality Empowerment, and Cooperation (AJEEC). 2011. ‘The Facts’, http://en.ajeec-nisped.org.il/the-facts/bedouin-of-southern-israel/, Accessed 1 February 2011. 2 Ullian, Robert. 2010. Frommer’s Israel, New Jersey: Wiley Publishing, Inc, 434. 3 Adalah. 2012. ‘The Right to Pray in the Big Mosque in Beer el-Sebe (Beer Sheva)’, http://www. adalah.org/en/ content/view/6677, Accessed 3 April 2014. 4 Ibid. [original insertions]. 5 Frantzman, Seth. 2012. ‘Terra Incognita: The re-Islamification of Beersheba’, (9 May 2012), The Jerusalem Post, http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Terra-Incognita-The-­re-Islamificationof-Beersheba, Accessed 1 November 2012. [original capitals]. 6 Drori, Goel. 2010. ‘Website’, http://drory.net, Accessed 1 March 2012. 7 Vilnay, Zvi. 1967. Beer Sheva ‘Iyad Abot vaBeneem, Yerushalayim: Presim Ari’el. 8 Curiel, Ilan. 2011. ‘Tamonot Makoddot Beer Sheva’, Yedi’oth (20 May 2011), http://www. ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-4070905,00.html, Accessed 30 November 2013. 9 Ibid. 10 Ibid. According to Abu Rabia (2001), portions of al-ʿAṭāwna were expelled to the Hebron after 1948. 11 Ibid. 12 Ibid. 13 Ibid. 14 Archive – Library of Congress 2014. 15 Deringil 2003: 330–331. 16 Abu Rabia 2001, 10. 17 Abu Rabia 2001. 18 Al-ʿĀrif, 1934. 19 Abu Rabia 2001, 13. 20 Gal-Nar, Ilan. 1991. ‘Ha-‘Ikamot Beer Sheva baTakopah haOttomanot’, Beer Sheva va-­ Atareem, Gideon Begar and Eli Shiler (eds.), Yerushalayim: Presim Ari’el, 28–38. 21 Dukium 2014. 22 This workshop is detailed later in this section. 23 Lori, Haaretz 27 August 2010. 24 Hall 2014, 153–154. 25 Ibid. 26 Nūrī al-ʿUgbī’s land claim was finally taken up by the Israeli court in 2011. It was denied. 27 Zochrot 2013. ‘Baqon (Remaining): Photography Exhibit’, http://zochrot.org/n/gallery/54886, Accessed 3 March 2015. 28 Dukium 2014. ‘Advocacy’, http://www.dukium.org/eng/?page_id=2502, Accessed 10 March 2014. 29 Zochrot 2013. 30 This name has been anonymised in this text. 31 Zochrot 2013. 32 Benjamin Netanyahu in The Times of Israel. 2013. ‘Government bill aims to regular Bedouin settlement’, (6 May 2013), http://www.timesofisrael.com/government-bill-aims-to-regulatebedouin-settlement/, Accessed 4 August 2014. 33 Ibid. 34 Bailey cited in Sheen 2011. Sheen, David. 2011. ‘Israeli Plan to Relocate 30,000 Bedouin a Gross Injustice, Say Researchers’, (21 October 2011), Hareetz, http://www.hareetz.com, Accessed November 2011. 35 Ibid. 36 Ibid. 37 Ibid.

232 Photographs 38 Staff, Toi. 2013. ‘Government Bill Aims to Regular Bedouin Settlement’, (6 May 2013), Times of Israel, http://www.timesofisrael.com/government-bill-aims-to-regulate-bedouin-settlement/, Accessed 4 August 2014. 39 Alqaira.net. 2013. ‘No title’, (8 September 2013), Alqaria, http://www.kufur-kassem.com/ news-32-117864.html, Accessed 10 November 2014. 40 Ibid. 41 Today ʿAṭīya is currently working as a freelance graphic designer. 42 Seidler, Shirly. 2013. ‘Israel Police order Media Hand Over all Photos from Bedouin ­Protests in the Negev’, (2 December 2013), Haaretz, http://www.haaretz.com/news/israel/.­ premium-1.561354, Accessed 23 November 2014. 43 The Times of Israel 2013. 44 Ibid. 45 Schejter and Tirosh 2012. 46 Ibid., 311. 47 Interview 2012. 48 Ibid., 310–311.

Conclusion Historical Persuasion and Photographs in the Desert

This book began with the premise that the Naqab Desert is a landscape c­ haracterised by diverse interactions between, in our case, people (Bedouin), ideas (histories), practices (photography), and things (photographs). When carried out constantly over time,1 these interplays coalesce and influence the associations with which members identify and relate with one another and the world around them. They inform and reflect Bedouin internal connections acquired through descent, for example, but also those derived from broader political economies of meaning which include (but are not limited to) community, national, and global exchanges. Over the centuries, however, Bedouin collective identities have been singularly defined by academics and governments alike en masse via tribes,2 a situation that overlooks the relational but also wider socio-political networks in which members’ connectivities emerge. In all, Bedouin sociality in the Naqab is characterised by simultaneous affiliations with lineages and tribes, and other universal civic and religious communities, and nationalities. These relationships to others, to ideas, to actions, and to things do not simply exist; however, they are constantly being made, mediated, and reproduced over time and place. As such, the continuity of these connections (be them establishing one’s lineage or nationality, for example) relies on and draws from members’ knowledge of the past and its representations in specific lived contexts such as the online and offline places of history-making described throughout this book. In order to explore contemporary Bedouin history-making and representational contentions associated with these practices, I first examined historiography produced by a vast range of Western, Israeli, and Palestinian scholars. These works over time have come together to create learned representations of Bedouin past and experiences in southern Israel – narratives that have also come to sway members’ own constructions of history since the late twentieth century. It is a history based on Western approaches to the past ‘predicated on the principle of historicism: the idea that the “past” is separated from the present’.3 As a result, studies of history typically focus on one type of spokesperson (that is elders [kbār] or civic activists), one type of narrative (typically tribal or national), or one type of media practice (namely oral or text). By doing so, academic discussions about the Bedouin past(s) in southern Israel have been inevitably trapped by Western chronologies, singularisms, temporalisms, and authorship. Consequently, not only has the diversity of Bedouin histories in this part of the world been overlooked but also members’ own history-making efforts and the significance of photography and photographs for their practices. Similar to many peoples throughout the world, the past, present, and future are not separate for many Bedouin peoples, particularly intimate history projects associated DOI: 10.4324/9781003185703-11

234  Conclusion: Historical Persuasion and Photographs in the Desert with genealogy (nasab) and tribalism (gabaliyya and ʿāʾiliyya) – an occurrence that has been noted by anthropologists of the Middle East since the mid-twentieth century.4 As described in Chapter 2, genealogical reckoning is a specific type of historical account that employs idealised and revised stories for comprehending present-day social ordering, status, wealth, and ownership of territories by specific groups of people. As such, there is a strategic-ness associated with constructing the past with genealogies, where history-making discourses and practices often appear indistinguishable from everyday life.5 For instance, Steven Caton discussed how in tribal Yemen the act of reciting poems and epic stories contributed to ‘being’ a tribes-person, and through poetry, people recreated identities.6 Through connections to common apical ancestors, genealogies provide descriptions of historically significant events that established local relationships between individuals and ancestors, lineages and descent networks, and family property and tribal lands. Therewith, as Paul Dresch argued, it is not important to ask whether or not the genealogies are historically accurate or not, but we should instead question why members use genealogies to express their connections and how they go about creating these references.7 Since the last half of the twentieth century, Bedouin history-making in the Middle East has increasingly focused on efforts to inscribe oral narratives of the past in the forms of writings amid the growing literary consciousness throughout the region.8 As people in the region become more literate, they also construct local histories in the form of biographical writings connecting their families and lineages to notable ancestral figures, Islamic heritage, and national events and places. For example, through the written word, people not only recall their local history by connecting it to the history of the Caliphate9 such as the narratives expressed by Suleīmān, but spokespersons are also seeking out archival documents located outside their localities to legitimate these narratives. These practices are similar to that described by Judith Scheele in Kabyle society where older written resources do not (or seem not to) exist, but nonetheless, social value continues to be placed on the imagined existence of these ‘original’ documents and their assumed ability to legitimate family histories as learned resources.10 Similarly, written records (be them official records, scholarly texts, or self-authored writings) are valued artefacts for producing and expressing knowledge of the past in the Naqab. In all, Bedouin not only possess the capacity to ‘create history’11 amid prevailing the particularisms and universalisms defining their lives, but they also maintain their own unique yet varied ‘historical imaginations’12 in southern Israel – histories produced through the continual adaptation and diversification of their representational practices. This comes as what constitutes local knowledge of the past, and the production of histories more generally among people, indelibly change. In our case, Bedouin who customarily relied on incorporating practices to share their histories and preserve their social customs, now privilege inscription practices, especially within the last twenty years. As literacy levels rise and multi-media engagements intensify, peoples who previously did not possess linear storylines about their past now make efforts to interweave separate narratives and transform them into official collective knowledge through uniform chronology and media diversification. However, like many other peoples in the Global South, Bedouin are forced to respond to dominate Western, Palestinian, and Israeli versions, concepts, and practices of history. In particular, spokespersons must regularly work with the chronological ordering, use of archival documents, and ‘learned’ scholarship about their own history that has been produced and valued by a large network of non-Bedouin outsiders over the last century.

Conclusion: Historical Persuasion and Photographs in the Desert  235 I argued that two significant changes in this society since 1948 have come to inform these processes in the Naqab: The diversity of representatives as a result of the institutionalisation of the state-assigned shaykhs (mukhtār-shuyūkh) in the 1950s (and their later discontinuation) and the creation of municipalities from the 1960s onward; and The rising authority of Bedouin academics, civic activists, and religious leaders (alongside tribal leaders and politicians) serving as both knowledge makers and representatives of Naqab Bedouin to outsiders since the 1980s. Both of these occurrences suspended the quasi-exclusivity of Bedouin histories as more diverse groups of people created and inserted their own narratives of the past into established discourses. In order to contextualise their production by this evergrowing number of spokespersons, I used empirical research describing the local trends associated with oral and text-based constructions of the past. I then went on to suggest that lineages (ʿāʾilāt) commonly rely on a diverse group of members within their own extended families and tribal (ʿāʾiliyya) networks to gain much-needed resources including historical capital. They include customary (kbār) and community representatives who hold authority and regularly engage in specific public venues wherein history-making occurs. This type of representational division of labour is unique when compared with other Bedouin populations in the Middle East due to the regularity with which members in southern Israel must ‘convince’ others that their experiences are legitimate amid the extraordinary identity clashes characterising the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The combined efforts of these liaisons have increasingly standardised genealogical and tribal histories, Islamic heritage, and ethnohistory in their society. At the same time, these representatives oscillate between these histories when dealing with state criticisms, Orientalist claims of Bedouin primitivism, and internal tribal competitions. Thus, what initially appears to be representational antagonism between spokespersons on particular public platforms, are in fact acts of persuasion that are attuned to one’s audience, social status, and context in the Naqab – a practice that has not only resulted in the diversification of histories but also their intensified mediation. This conclusion is similar to Michael Herzfeld’s argument pertaining to the politics of heritage in a Cretan town associated with ‘conflicting versions of the past and their realisation in the present’.13 As he argued, people do not deny their history in light of encroaching nationalisms or alter their local engagements with the past. Instead, people strategically multiply the regional meanings of history and diversify the ways in which they present it.14 In order to further theorise the role of photography in these practices, I put forward the concept of Bedouin visual historicity. Toward a Theory of Visual Historicity Over the last decade, the notion of historicity has emerged in the field of anthropology as a new approach to cultural perceptions of the past. The theory was adapted by Eric Hirsch and Charles Stewart and attests to the inherent ‘relationality’ of knowledges of times past, particularly amongst non-Western peoples like Bedouin whose ideas of chronology, temporality, and history may differ from (while still incorporating) ‘postEnlightenment historicisms’.15 They suggested that anthropologists should not approach historicity in terms of accuracy, which is how historians typically employ the concept in Western paradigms amid efforts to distinguish historical facts from legends through objective analyses.16 Alternatively, Stewart argued that: [H]istoricity in anthropology orientates a different objective, namely to discover the ways (beyond Western historicism) in which people, whether within or outside the

236  Conclusion: Historical Persuasion and Photographs in the Desert West, construe and represent the past. Historicity, which is grounded on a notion of temporality, offers a framework for approaching time as nonlinear and may thus be suited to studying other histories without fundamentally measuring how well they conform to Western history.17 Here, historicity describes the fluidity of human experiences with times past. It refers to relationships between knowledges and subjectivities, between pasts and presents, between the personal and the social, and between objects and subjects in specific ethnographic contexts. In response, Stewart suggests that anthropologists must first acknowledge the different types of pasts that simultaneously exist in any given society, which Western historicisms (such as those associated with ethnohistories, for example) often form one discourse among many others such as tribalism (gabaliyya and ʿāʾiliyya) in our case. Secondly, anthropologists must take into consideration the culturally specific means of perceiving, understanding, and representing these pasts and peoples’ creative and strategic negotiations of them.18 Because of these reasons, I argue that the concept of historicity offers a novel opportunity for the study of Bedouin histories in the Palestinian-Israeli context, particularly for scholars who endeavour ‘to give voice’ to their marginalisations in southern Israel but whose insular focus on ethnohistories and counter-narratives typically disregard the Bedouin’s own ‘architecture of local thinking about the past’.19 For Stewart, the concept of historicity is particularly useful for describing the ­relational knowledges that emerge during phenomenological experiences such as those derived from dreams, which do not reference the past through ‘tangible documentary evidence’.20 I question here, however, whether the notion of historicity (as adapted in anthropology) might also have the potential to address people’s diverse relationships with photographs as authenticating but interpretive documents of history. Photographs are both vehicles for ‘historical consciousness’21 and ‘historicism’.22 For example, Morton and Newbury demonstrated that photographs are ‘authored documents as well as sites of cultural encounter and interacting histories’.23 In the African context, they are historical records that perform simultaneous subjective and objective understandings of the past, and the relationship between the two, specifically photographs as documents and history as knowledge, is ultimately defined by ‘social practices of looking’.24 Konstantinos Kalantzis also described how Sfakians in Crete engage photographs ‘in ways that transpose and produce history in the present’.25 He argued that photographs are ‘historicising devices’26 that enable people to not only imagine the past but they also create a ‘framework for sensing and appropriating the past and making it relevant’.27 These temporal dynamics also hold true in the Naqab Desert where the photographs work as both representations of and instruments for making Bedouin histories with which ­members call forth and shape their sociality in the present day. Drawing on these perspectives, I suggest that a theory of visual historicity has the potential to further illuminate the modes by which people create historical knowledge about their past in the present while imagining their futures with photographs. In particular, the concept of visual historicity addresses how photographs, as circulating signifiers and evidentiary objects, influence how Bedouin produce their histories with photography. Applying information brought together via my anthropological approach, biographical methodology, and visual economies model, I explore here how a theory of visual historicity attends to the relationship between photography and history in this society. Namely: the intertwined contexts wherein people, objects, vision, knowledges, and pasts are exchanged (assembled here as entangled visual economies); the practices of interpretation and material/digital culture used by members to know and present their

Conclusion: Historical Persuasion and Photographs in the Desert  237 pasts; the cultural principles and socio-politics that guide these understandings; and finally, ‘the senses of time (temporality) that condition actors as individuals and members of society’.28 To address the diverse but connected contexts in which Bedouin in the Naqab relate to the past, I first mapped the concentric representational landscapes where iconography has been produced and consumed over the last century. I discussed production periods that ranged from the invention of the medium 2013, the technological qualities of these images from dry plates to digital codes, and the discursive politics behind the consumption of photographs in this society. Here, Orientalist imaginings of the ‘noble nomad’, Palestinian imagery of the ‘steadfast Bedouin’, Israeli images of the ‘primitive Arab’, and the Bedouin’s own vernacular photography have shaped their visual histories. These discourses are not isolated, however. Rather they come together in the form of entangled visual economies – scaled environs arranged by proximity wherein photographs intermingle and inform shifting knowledges and visions of the past. While my treatment of photographs in this model distinguished the characteristics of each visual economy, many photographs regularly circulate between and into unintended image worlds. During their sojourns, these photographs acquire different types of ‘historical significances’ and perform the past in unique ways. To detail these relational processes, I presented a set of biographies that documented the afterlives of a collection of images (c. 1900-c. 2013). These case studies traced their physical and virtual circulations, and polysemous meanings and polyvalences. The photographs in Chapter 5 were originally produced by photographers from different visual economies through various photographies with largely non-Bedouin (typically international) audiences in mind. Today, contemporary members use these same images to reference parochial events and figures. They are displayed in agnate meeting houses (shigg) and lineage Facebook pages, for example. While produced in broader visual economies, once images of lineages arrive to the Naqab, their circulations are characteristically closer as their displays of proof are directed at other Bedouin and convey local knowledge. The afterlives of community images discussed in Chapter 6 differ. They are produced during highly public photographic encounters and only depict broader community places, people, and events. Specific families, classes, and lineages rarely display or consume these photographs. The travels of community images are characteristically wider than those associated with tribal histories as their displays of proof are more often than not directed to non-Bedouin outsiders as they capture Bedouin collaborations, civic resistances, and collective oppressions. These images are also more likely to perform in community venues such as non-profit exhibitions in places such as Tel Aviv and circulated by members on international platforms like Al Jazeera’s website through practices of digitisation and advocacy. In all, these biographies illustrate that Bedouin visual historicity is firstly shaped by the movement and assemblage of photographs in visual economies that reflect the diversity of members’ contemporary identities. For example, Yaqub explained that photographs posted and circulated on the Tel al-Zaʾtar Facebook groups also serve as focal points for visualising ‘networks of affiliation based on a shared past’29 as people use them to virtually reconstruct their identities, connect to other members, and share a geography that was lost to them in 1976.30 Ultimately, by treating contexts of viewing and visual practice as entangled networks, I was able to examine photographs as documentary actants that actively participate in the shaping of representational ‘conversations’ between Bedouin and their neighbours, Westerners, and fellow Palestinians and Israelis. Thus, by

238  Conclusion: Historical Persuasion and Photographs in the Desert theorising these processes as visual historicity rather than regional visual history, the photographic mediation of history in the Naqab is recognised as a form of exchange – between networks of people, photographs, and ideas. These diverse relationships come together to influence the production of history in this desert society today. Some photographs possess greater historical resonance in specific contexts where they acquire value as learned evidence. I argued in Chapter 3 that members esteem photographs as authenticating documents and the concept of visual historicity calls attention to the role of photographs and their truth values for making knowledge claims. Without delving too far into epistemology, spokespersons treat photographs (and their digital copies) as ‘sources of proof’ (masdār aṣ-ṣaḥīḥ) or documentary artefacts that trap local knowledge (ʿilm). They value the perceived ‘truth (ṣaḥīḥ) of sight’ that photographs provide and the medium’s ability to realistically capture and inscribe historical moments, experiences, and individuals. Similar to the Egyptian context described by Ryzova,31 the age of a photograph is important here. Bedouin similarly believe that archival and older photographs (along with their digital scans and photocopies) hold more truth or more visual authenticity because of their antiquity. Taking up Timothy Williamson’s position,32 I suggest that when photographs (such as these) are treated as evidence, they are ultimately valued by people for the existing local knowledge they are used to support. Therewith, photographs only possess factual status if the person using them knows what types of ideals, practices, connectivities, and associations are being justified through them. As a result, the authenticating potential of any given image is predicated on members’ ability to interpret their contents and connect that information to ‘known’ landscapes, peoples, and events. The connections between local knowledge (ʿilm) and photographic indexicality (in part) transform specific images into commodities amongst Bedouin, who then make ownership claims to them. The fact that the photograph was taken of an ancestor, group events, or Naqab landscape also allows members to profess and evidence their own and their people’s influences. This is especially the case for those who have the ability to interpret photographed content with a degree of certainty; even more so when this information can be validated by oral and text-based stories or captions. For example, amongst lineages whose ancestors can be visually identified, orally confirmed, and textually labelled, historical images authenticate the ‘most noble and public’ of their shaykhs and leaders in antiquity.33 Historical significance is transferred by the simple ‘fact’ that photographic images of their ancestors, lands, and events exist. They were pictured and therefore visually memorialised. Moreover, Bedouin also consider visual depictions of their shared ancestors and communities as presentations of their collective reputation. The existence of an image allows members to present their historical ‘truth’ and legitimate their socio-political status in the region in various visual economies. Photographs’ ability to wield historical authority also relies on their interplays with oral, text-based, and performative histories in the Naqab. This comes as their interpretation work is inherently tied to writings, oral presentations, and acts of knowledges but members also ‘play’ with an image’s intermediality and materiality. They cut and paste the captions of photographs and adhere different texts to them. They physically remove and collect images from foreign sources. They make photocopies of them and place them in boxes, albums, and folders. They frame images and their copies on hung on walls and carried by persons. They pull them out when telling oral stories and giving lectures. They strategically display photographs alongside books, collections of papers, and artefacts exhibited in agnate meeting places (shiggs) and the lobbies of nonprofits. In all of these

Conclusion: Historical Persuasion and Photographs in the Desert  239 instances, Bedouin interpret and re-interpret how specific images ‘read’ history while the photographs themselves perform intermedial work as objects amid the broader forms of multimodal coercion by which they construct history. While members value the ‘truth (ṣaḥīḥ) of sight’ provided by the photographs’ ability to inscribe the past, they also revere them as ‘objects of historical persuasion’ whose indexes can be experienced, touched, owned, compiled, and displayed. The interpretation and commoditisation of photographs also occur in digital environments where images travel and transform more ‘freely’. Marcus Banks and ­Richard Vokes pointed out that local peoples are increasingly obtaining old images through digital platforms and networking technologies such as the Internet and email.34 In these occasions, it is not the photographic object that circulates but its graphic contents. These ambulating visual signs appear on televisions and computer screens. They are displayed and collected on mobile phones and social media websites. Most Bedouin, however, appear to be ambivalent about images’ formatting (whether an original, ­re-materialised copy, or digital code), proveniences (citing source information, dates, and photographers), and preservation (open archival access) but highly committed to their local contextualisation, controlled display, reading, and ownership. As Yehuda Kalay argued, when members use digital media to exhibit histories, they also strive to control how people interpret and consume their pasts. For example, when Ḥassan (anonymised) ­al-Huzayyil uploaded images of his father on Facebook he digitally modified their original providences by adding and removing names of depicted the places, peoples, and the events. On some occasions, he restored or acknowledged names and dates. In other instances, he ‘managed’35 their readings by monitoring the Facebook comments tied to them. In all, he strived to control readings that might appear counter-productive to his and his lineage’s interests. In addition to modes of exchange, interpretation, and material/digital performance, Bedouin visual historicity is also determined by a range of cultural principles. For the purposes of analysis, I examine how ideals and practices of naming and descent (sulāla), discernment (firāsa), ‘the face of honour’ (wajh), status or worth (gīma), ‘community’ (mujtama), and steadfast-ness (ṣumūd) frame acts of historical persuasion with photographs. As suggested above, old images within tribal (ʿāʾiliyya) networks hold more value when members are able to name, identify, and reference the ancestral shaykhs, famous outsiders, and (often vaguely) familiar historical events, local landscapes, and cultural objects depicted in them. By doing so, they establish connections between themselves (and their present-day familial namesakes) to recognisable ancestors (often distinguished by facial or dress indicators, for example). Peers and Brown argued that for many indigenous and minority peoples throughout the world, the power to recognise and assign ‘names’ to photographed people of the past is key to their cultural constructions of history.36 They demonstrated that in Kainai society, names provide members with ‘social structures through which history has been experienced and through which one understands the past and its relationship to the present’.37 In the Naqab, making connections by ‘naming’ is significant. Namesakes represent specific affiliations. They establish a person’s ‘place’ with descent (sulāla) groups and therewith situate individuals in their society. While descent orders the Bedouin sociopolitical landscape, photographs serve as ‘sites of connectivity’38 for reflecting on and defining these relationships. Amongst extended families (ʿāʾila) for example, connections to other members may wane the further distance they have to the photographed individual. For example, Heike Behrend described how images of deceased family members

240  Conclusion: Historical Persuasion and Photographs in the Desert in Kenya are used by relatives to present ideals of togetherness between a range of people such as kin, extended family, friends, and colleagues. Here: [P]hotographs can be read as a social map, giving information about people’s networks, shifting power relations and hierarchy. And of course, sometimes they cause debates and even conflicts. They also mark a boundary, giving evidence of who belongs to the family and who is excluded.39 The photographs in the Naqab perform similar history work, specifically, the portraits of shaykhs and elders (kbār) displayed in the various households constitute a distinct type of an ancestral image that presents an individual with the highest social status from which members within a descent group can then connect with one another. In all, photographs give members a way and means to symbolically orient, establish, and manipulate ‘known’ associative idioms through the namesakes of their ‘lineage’ by paying visual reference to past people and places. The ability to translate photographic content is also a valued skill. An individual’s ability to ‘call forth’ historical meaning from visual depictions (particularly older images) demonstrates their power to express local knowledge (ʿilm) through discernment (‘ilm al-firāsa). This cultural treatment of intellectualism (ʿulūm) has a long tradition in the Middle East. It is predicated on the belief that God bestows the skill to accurately distinguish between truth and falsehood, advantage and disadvantage, and honesty and lies amongst his followers. Firāsa (discernment) can be defined as the intellectual capacity to productivity and coherently express thought, and form of opinions, establish meaning, and act with consideration. As such, the reading of photographs for visual knowledge of the past can also be understood as a performance of discernment. For example, a member’s ability to name and visually identify an ancestral shaykh is essential for maintaining their lineages’ reputations and status. It allows them to profess and ‘prove’ the longevity of their genealogical connections and their lineage’s endurance and ongoing presence in the Naqab. Ascertaining this type of knowledge is morally significant in this society, one that intertwines with other principles such as generosity (karam), autonomy or freedom (ḥurrīa), and nobility or origins (ʾaṣīl). These ideals form part of basis of their ‘moral imagination’40 which is expressed through displays of honour such as reciting poetry, acting in respectively in significant interactions, and possessing coveted objects and relationships. For example, Bedouin who claim ‘noble origins’ (ʾaṣīl) ideally share public or outward-facing honour (sharaf), whereas dependents (mahmiyāt) are said to possess virtue (ʿirḍ). They include the descendants of previous clients, females, children, and the elderly. Places and lands also have virtue (ʾarḍ), particularly private spaces occupied and used by wards. With regard to the public honour, ‘the face of honour’ (wajh) also shapes Bedouin visual historicity. Dresch argued that the ‘face is a metaphor for a man’s honour’.41 He explained that lineages or groups of tribal peoples in places like Yemen do not have a ‘face’, instead patriarchs such as shaykhs and elders (kbār) typically ‘give their faces’ on behalf of their affiliates.42 Linda Layne pointed that, in this manner, patriarchs are ‘powerful symbols of their tribe to their tribe’ and despite their changing and declining political powers (via the state of Israel in our case), they are still ‘public emblems’ or the ‘faces’ for their people.43 As a result, these men ‘embody the values that the tribe holds dear and by which tribespeople identify themselves’,44 such as representing their nobility (ʾaṣīl). Reflecting these beliefs, Bedouin portraiture often exemplifies the ‘the noble  nomad’

Conclusion: Historical Persuasion and Photographs in the Desert  241 (much like the image presented on the front cover of this book) with both vernacular and foreign photographers capturing the ‘Bedouin faces of honour’. These visual proclivities are also, however, the photographic products or outcomes of a centuries-long representational dialectic or exchange between local ideals of public honour (sharaf) and Orientalist iconography produced by outsiders that have romanticised ‘Bedouin culture’ throughout the centuries. This occurrence in Jordan is summed up by Andrew Shryock, ‘The nobler the face – and the more public its expression – the more likely it is to merit photographic attention’.45 Because photography and photographs reflect ways of ‘looking’ at the world through public honour (sharaf), visual historicity also plays an important role in maintaining and validating peoples’ status (gīma) and representational authority. With regard to the former, individuals in this society (within the same status groups, such as aṣīl), ideologically, do not have ‘ascribed’ or fixed hierarchical status. Alternatively, persons are ideally awarded standing through their actions, autonomy, adherence to moral codes of conduct, and loyalty.46 Structural equals (be them individuals or groups) ought to express, enact, protect, and compete for respect and rank within this socio-political system. These practices require acts of persuasion, such as those discussed earlier, in order to uphold the patrilineal segmentary order while head-nodding to cultural commitments of egalitarianism.47 Nevertheless, as Chapter 1 described, the status (gīma) of particular lineages can change and shift over time as a result of catastrophic upheavals brought on, for example, by the ‘Fall of Beersheba’ (Kasret al-Sabʿi), forced governmental incursions, and Israeli marginalisation. Changes to a lineage’s status may also occur internally through the strategic establishment of marriages and an extended families’ (ʿāʾila) ability to acquire and maintain patronages, land claims, economic resources, and historical capital. Photographs allow members to visually indicate their status (gīma) within the broader socio-political order without using words or text (despite often doing so) and thus images (particularly old ones) are valued as rare and sought-after artefacts. They are objects to be owned, controlled, and used by members to gain repute. For example, Daniel Miller and Heather Horst pointed out that old images are a form of currency to be shared, passed around, collected, and kept.48 The treatment of photographs in this society is comparable to other artefacts that display historical capital such as books, swords, and material culture in the region.49 Through the use of photographs, members can also publicly demonstrate their ownership and control over an important archival resource. For the most part, outsiders cannot create this value. Instead, photographs are valued as commodities by members who have vested personal interests in ‘owning’ old images as it publicises their representational authority as an ‘official gatekeeper’ of historical evidence to other members and outsiders.50 At the same time, however, much like spokespersons’ engagements with both images and histories are influenced and limited by their gendered and generational knowledge, they are also dictated by people’s regulated access to material cultural objects and technologies such as cameras, photocopy machines, computers, and the Internet. Another cultural principal framing visual historicity is the local diversification of collective identities and notions of peoplehood, which increasingly includes ‘community’ (mujtama) ideals today. Because both civic and Islamic histories involved larger intermixed groups of Bedouin, photographs promoting these affiliations must ultimately rely on notions of ‘community’ (mujtama) that has steadily developed in the Naqab since the 1980s. During interactions with outsiders, many people no longer regularly use the term ʿarab as it only references members with Arabian origins and thus excludes large numbers

242  Conclusion: Historical Persuasion and Photographs in the Desert of individuals from different status groups in their society. Today the term falls outside local decorum. For example, Parizot documented that when speaking to larger intermixed groups of Bedouin in regional public venues, spokespersons strived to avoid tribal namesakes and instead used terms such as ‘people’ (shaʾab), ‘honourable brothers’ (ʿakh ʿikhwān), ‘Arab unity’ (wḥida ʿarabiyya), and ‘community’ (mujtama).51 Locally, however, tribal political rhetoric cannot be avoided in neighbourhoods where certain lineages dominate. While photographs of community leaders, events, and spaces may visualise mujtama, their connections to extended familial affiliations are inevitably acknowledged and represented as tribal relations are ‘an inescapable metaphor for ­alluding to [and symbolising] political alliances’.52 The last cultural principle discussed here is the idea and practices of Bedouin ‘survival’ in the Naqab which is locally conveyed through the concept of ‘steadfastness’ (ṣumūd). This term denotes ideals of ‘perseverance, patience, and quite determination’53 informing Bedouin members’ non-violent ‘resistance’54 to the intensified demolition and marginalisation of their villages by the state of Israel. Spokespersons such as Suleīmān use the term to explain their refusal to move to towns and remain on what they consider to be their ancestral lands. Yiftachel explained that ṣumūd translates the ‘art of survival’55 in the villages where members must strategically negotiate their illegal status and obtain much-needed resources for their residents. These strategies also involve continuing efforts to rebuild after demolitions in places such as al-ʿAragīb. Here photographs such as ʿAṭīya (anonymised) Abū Madīghem al-Ṭūrī of Ṣayīāḥ not only visualise ṣumūd but also assist in the construction of a broader collective identity based on Bedouin cultural values, responses to sociopolitical discriminations, and the historical narratives used to explain them. Finally, visual historicity also influences members’ reticular organisation of time, that is Bedouin temporality. Stewart argued that there is a ‘small step between temporalities, which may be inchoate orientations, and historicities, which build on that temporality by adding experiences and cultural modals, and then another, step to the production of histories involving characters, event, a morality-infused emplotment’.56 As I have argued throughout this book, photography plays an integral role in the formalisation of temporal spectrums in the Naqab. Here, Campt’s concept of ‘performative indexicality’ is helpful for explaining how photographs establish linkages between peoples over time and places.57 Yaqab also argued photographs’ indexicality and iconicity blur the boundaries ‘between a person and a thing and of past and present’.58 These photographic efficacies influence how Bedouin closely relate to the past with images as recordings of the past and orient their senses of time but they are practices ultimately framed by internal sociopolitics (associated with status, age, generation, gender). For members like Ḥassan al-Huzayyil, old images that he framed, hung, and digitalised not only express nostalgia of times past and collective memories but also evidence his lineage’s reputation and the linear continuity of their tribal power spanning the Ottoman, British, and Israeli periods. For spokespersons like Suleīmān al-ʿAthāmīn, mid-century photographs temporally split their history to ‘before’ and ‘after’ the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948. At the same time, he and other members experience the Nakba as an ongoing ‘event’ that creates a reciprocal sense of time – a continual back-and-forth interplay between the past and present, between intimate recollections and official village histories of survival. For activists such as ʿĀʾisha al-Ṣānaʿ, photographs chronologically orient her peoples’ ‘resistance’ to an evolving timeline of ‘state oppression’ that has occurred since the Ottoman Empire and intensified in the present. These temporalities not only oscillate between and often combine Western, Palestinian, Israeli, and Bedouin

Conclusion: Historical Persuasion and Photographs in the Desert  243 historicisms but they also orient members’ understandings of their shared pasts, presents, and futures in fluid ways. In all, photographic historicities service Bedouin sense(s) of time ‘by stepping up’ the local production of history – practices that are enacted during acts of persuasion and dictated by cultural principles that are unique to this society and the contentious Palestinian-Israeli political landscape in which they live. Conclusion In conclusion, the book described something that has not yet been investigated in the ­anthropology of the Middle East – how Bedouin people create and rework photographic representations and materials and mobilise them to fulfil their economic and political necessities in different socio-political contexts. This indicates members’ awareness of self and society but also infers their conscious appropriation of learned history and documentary evidence, which demonstrates the ongoing adaptation of customary representational practices in this Naqab society – efforts that are strategic and revisionary. While I highlighted the importance of acknowledging the varied history works of a series of photographs (as objects and digital copies) among Bedouin in the Naqab, future research is required to explore the influences of mobile and digital technologies, Internet websites such as Facebook and Wikipedia, and video cameras for Bedouin representations of the past and contemporary sociality. The ontologies of photographs, the absence of images, their role in processes of forgetting, and digital art are also topics for further inquiry along with the value of images for more mundane activities such as texting and communications on platforms such as WhatsApp are also noteworthy research pursuits that I was unable to explore here. While acknowledging these topics, the book demonstrated how an anthropological approach to the study of photography, photographs, and history in the Middle East that relies on combined archival and ethnographic research is both fruitful and much needed today. This comes as studies of the region have a tendency to analyse media ahistorically, overlooking the continued influence of customary modes of transmitting knowledge in a society and how people diversify their representational practices over time. Moreover, ethnographers of the Middle East must move out of urban centres and beyond national discourses to unexpected places such as the region’s crossroads where peoples such as the Bedouin are using photography and history in unique and surprising ways.

Figure 7.1 Abū Rabīʿa elder with framed photo. Original creator(s): Emilie Le Febvre. Date: 17 July 2012.

244  Conclusion: Historical Persuasion and Photographs in the Desert Notes 1 Dresch 1986. 2 Ibid. 1986, Layne 1994. 3 Hirsch and Stewart 2005. 4 Peters 1977. 5 Salamandra, Christa. 2004. A New Old Damascus: Authenticity and Distinction in Urban Syria, Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 6 Caton 1990, 21. 7 Dresch 1989. 8 Samin, 2019. 9 Peters 1977. 10 Scheele 2009, Also see Gilsenan 1982, Messick 1993, Atiyeh 1995, Shryock 1997. 11 Kaplan 2005, Peel 1984, and Sahlins 2004. 12 Collingwood 1961 [1946], Comaroff and Comaroff 1992. 13 Herzfeld 1991, 226. 14 Ibid. 15 Stewart, Charles. 2016. ‘Historicity and Anthropology’, Annual Review of Anthropology, 45: 79–94, 80. 16 Hirsch and Stewart 2005. 17 Stewart 2010, 79. 18 Ibid., 83. 19 Stewart 2016, 80. 20 Ibid., 83. 21 Stewart 2016, 86. 22 Kalantzis 2019. 23 Morton and Newbury 2015, 2. 24 Campbell 2014, 222–223. 25 Kalantzis 2019, 164. 26 Ibid., 170. 27 Ibid. 28 Stewart 2016, 86. 29 Yaqub 2015, 330. 30 Ibid. 31 Ryzova 2015b. 32 Williamson, Tim. 2000. Knowledge and Its Limits, Oxford: Oxford University Press. 33 Shryock 1997, 296. 34 Banks, Marcus and Richard Vokes. 2010, ‘Introduction: Anthropology, Photography, and the Archive’, History and Anthropology, 21 (4): 337–349, 338 (https://doi.org/10.1080/02757206 .2010.522375). 35 Kalay, Yehuda. 2007. ‘Introduction: Preserving Cultural Heritage through Digital Media’, New Heritage: New Media and Cultural Heritage, Yehuda Kalay, Thomas, Kvan, and Janice Affleck (eds.), New York: Routledge, 1–10. 36 Peers, Laura and Alison Brown. 2009. ‘Just by Bringing These Photographs…On the Other Meanings of Anthropological Images’, Photography, Anthropology, and History: Expanding the Frame, Christopher Morton and Elizabeth Edwards (eds.), London: Ashgate, 265–280, 273. 37 Ibid., 273. 38 Yaqub 2015. 39 Behrend, Heike. 2020. ‘‘Celebrating Life’: The Construction of Photographic Biographies in Funeral Rites among Kenyan Christians’, Christopher Morton and Darren Newbury (eds.), The African Photographic Archive: Research and Curatorial Strategies, London: Routledge, 77–93, 92. 40 Marcus, Michael. 1985. ‘History on the Moroccan Periphery: Moral Imagination, Poetry, and Islam’, Anthropological Quarterly, 58 (4): 152–160. 41 Dresch 1989, 59. 42 Ibid., 89. 43 Layne 1994, 114.

Conclusion: Historical Persuasion and Photographs in the Desert  245 44 Ibid., 114. 45 Shryock 1997, 296. 46 Lindholm, Charles. 1995. ‘The New Middle Eastern Ethnography’, Journal of the Royal ­Anthropological Institute, 1 (4): 805–820, 806. 47 Ibid. 48 Miller, Daniel and Heather Horst. (eds.) 2012. ‘The Digital and the Human: A Prospectus for Digital Anthropology’, Digital Anthropology, Heather Horst and Daniel Miller (eds.), London and New York: Berg Press, 3–38. 49 Maffi, Irene and Rami Daher. 2014. The Politics and Practices of Cultural Heritage in the ­Middle East: Positioning the Material Past in Contemporary Societies, London: IB Tauris. 50 Kalay 2007. 51 Parizot 2001a. 52 Parizot 2001a, 49. 53 Yiftachel 2009. 54 Nasasra 2017, 41. 55 Ibid., 250. 56 Stewart 2016, 86. 57 Campt 2012, 48. 58 Yaqub 2015, 333.

Appendices

Transliteration Guide and Glossary of Terms Arabic to English ‫ ء‬ ʾ ‫ ب‬b ‫ ت‬t ‫ ث‬th ‫ ج‬ g or j ‫ ح‬ ḥ ‫ خ‬kh ‫ د‬d ‫ ذ‬dh ‫ ر‬r ‫ ز‬z ‫ س‬s ‫ ش‬sh ‫ ص‬ ṣ ‫ ﺾ‬ ḍ Consonants ‫ ط‬ ṭ ‫ ظ‬ ẓ ‫ ع‬ ʿ ‫ غ‬gh ‫ ف‬f ‫ ق‬ q or g or k* ‫ ك‬k ‫ ل‬l ‫ م‬m ‫ ن‬n ‫ ﻫ‬h ‫ و‬w ‫ ة‬ a or at ‫ أ‬ ʾa

248 Appendices Long vowels ‫ ا‬ ā ‫ و‬ū ‫ ۑ‬ī Short vowels  َ◌ a  ُ◌  u ◌ ِ i or e Doubles   ّ◌ Doubled consonants (for example ‘nn’)   ّ◌‫ ي‬ yy   ّ◌‫ و‬ ww *In colloquial Arabic ‘q’ is pronounced ‘g’ and sometimes ‘k’. I also use ‘al-’ for the ­definite article ‫لا‬. Arabic, Hebrew, and Dialect Terms ʿĀʾila (pl. ʿāʾilāt) – dialect for or extended family, the plural term refers to a tribal lineage ʿĀʾiliyya – dialect for tribalism associated with one’s lineage (ʿāʾilāt) Al-aḥrār – dialect for freemen or ‘brown skin’ (sumrān) Aliyah – Hebrew for Jewish immigration Al-lajna al-maḥalliya – dialect for village committee ʿArab – dialect for those who claim Arabian descent ʿArabiyyūn – Arabic for pan-national Arab ethnicity ʾArḍ – dialect for virtue, protectionism, and privacy associated with land and property; eretz (Hebrew) ʿAshīra (pl. ʿashāʾir) – dialect for a tribe or pre-1948 tribes, the plural term refers to multiple affiliated tribes Ashkenazim – Hebrew for Jewish people of Caucasian backgrounds ʾAṣl (pl.ʾaṣīl) – dialect for those who claim Arabian origins, roots, or nobility Badal – dialect for exchange Badāwī (pl. badū) – Arabic for regional pastoralists and nomads; bedouin (English as pastoral nomad); Bedouin (English as ethnic group); and beduim (Hebrew) Bādiya – Arabic term for the desert Badū fallāḥīn – Phrase used in this book to describe tribal associates and previous tribal clients without Arabian origins Bayt (pl. buyūt) – dialect for house, plural meaning immediate family Beersheba – English for the Negev’s major city; Birüssebi (Turkish), Biʾr Sabʿ (contemporary Arabic); Beer Sheva (Hebrew); and as-sabʿ (pre-1948 Bedouin dialect) Damm – dialect for blood Dar (pl. dīra) – dialect for property, land, or territory Dīwān – Arabic for salon or formal living room Fallāḥ (pl. fallāḥīn) – dialect for regional villagers or farmers Fatāwā – Arabic for religious-legal judgements Firāsa – Arabic for discernment

Appendices  249 Gabaliyya – dialect for tribalism associated with one’s tribal confederation (gabīla) Gabīla (pl. gabā’il) – dialect for tribal confederation (gabīla) Ghurabāʾ – dialect for strangeness Gīma – dialect for the internal socio-political status or worth of a member or group Gōm (pl. agwām) – dialect for agnate network, co-liable group, or sub-lineage Ḥaḍarī (pl. ḥaḍar) – Arabic for regional urbanites or those who reside in cities Hādīth – Arabic for Islamic text Hajer – dialect for the custom of clearing stones from land to indicate ownership and use Hāra (pl. hārat) – dialect for neighbourhood Ḥarām – Arabic for forbidden Ḥurrīa – dialect for freedom ʿIlm – Arabic for knowledge Intifāḍa – Arabic for a period between 2000 and 2005 of intensified Palestinian-Israeli violence ʿIrḍ – dialect for personal virtue, integrity, protected, or privacy ʿIshra – dialect for social bonds ʿIzba – dialect for seasonal migrations ʿIzza – dialect for respect Kabīr (pl. kbār) – dialect for customary elders Karam – dialect for generosity Kfarim – Hebrew for towns Kfarim bilti mukarim – Hebrew for shantytowns in reference to the Bedouin ‘unrecognised villages’ Khūbaīzah – dialect for common mallow plant Kidhib – dialect for lying Kuf’ – dialect for unequal Mahmiyāt – dialect for dependents Masdār aṣ-ṣaḥīḥ – Arabic for authentic sources or proof Mizrahim – Hebrew for Jewish populations with Maghreb, Yemen, Middle East, and Central Asian descent Muḥra – dialect for intimate quarters; rab’a (private rooms) Mukhtār – Arabic for village headmen or the ‘chosen’; mukhtarim (Hebrew) Mukhtār-shuyūkh – Phrased used in this book to describe Israeli government assigned shaykhs Mujtama – Arabic for community Mutakhallifīn – dialect for backward Nakba – Arabic for ‘Catastrophe’ in reference to the 1948 Israeli-Arab War Nasab (pl. nasāb) – dialect for genealogies Naqab – contemporary Arabic term used by Bedouin to describe the southern desert region of Israel, other translations include: ‘Negev’ (Hebrew for dry); ‘Negeb’ (English Biblical name); or as-sabʿ (dialect) Naqab Bedouin – combination Arabic and English phrase used by Bedouin spokespersons to describing their society in southern Israel; Negev Bedouin – (English); Habeduim Banegev (Hebrew); Badū an-Naqab (contemporary Arabic); and ʿarab as-sabʿ (pre-1948 dialect) Pezurah – Hebrew for ‘desert diaspora’ Rubaʾ – dialect for quarter and tribal network connected by four generations by ­patrilineal ancestry

250 Appendices Ṣaff – dialect for tribal sub-confederation or super-tribe network Shaʾab – Arabic for people Sharaf – dialectic for shared public honour Shaykh (pl. shuyūkh) – dialect for customary tribal leaders Shevet (pl. shevatim) – Hebrew for administratively organised tribal units Shigg – dialect for agnate meeting place Sīyāj – dialect for ‘enclosed area’ or reservation Sulāla – dialect for descent Ṣumūd – Arabic for resistance or perseverance Sūq – Arabic for market Ṭābū – dialect for formal land registrations; customary land deeds (sanād) Tāʾrīkh – Arabic for history Tarwīd (pl. tarāwīd) – dialect for wedding songs sung by women Taṭawwur – dialect for progress or development Teuda Zehut – Hebrew for Identification Card Thaūb – dialect for traditional dress ʿUlamā – Arabic for learned men ʿUlūm – Arabic for intellectual traditions ʿUrfī – dialect for local custom Wajh – dialect for public or social ‘face’ Wasam – dialect for symbols, brands, and tattoos indicating something of value and owned or under the protection of a specific group of people Yishuv – Hebrew for Jewish community * This list disregards transliterated Arabic characters including alif and ʿayn or prefixes such as al- or abū in its alphabetisation. ‘Dialect’ also specifically refers to the type of Arabic spoken by Bedouin in the Naqab. List of Archives Physical Archives

Activestills Photography Archive (Tel Aviv, Israel) Ahkbar Al-Naqab’s Photographic Archive (Rāhaṭ, Israel) Arab Jewish Economic Empowerment and Corporation (AJEEC) – Bedouin Volunteer Tent’s (BTV) Photographic Collection (Beersheba, Israel) Bain Media Collection in the Library of Congress (Washington D.C., United States of America) Desert Embroidery’s Photographic Collection (Lagīya, Israel) Goel Drori Archive – The Turkish Album Collection (Beersheba, Israel) Joe Alon Museum of Bedouin Culture (Kibbutz Lahav, Israel) Matson Collection in the Library of Congress (Washington D.C., United States of America) Museum of Beersheba’s Photographic History (Great Mosque – Beersheba, Israel) Negev Coexistence Forum (NCF) Photography Collection (Beersheba, Israel) Rāhaṭ’s Community Centre Library’s Collection (Rāhaṭ, Israel) Sir Samuel Herbert’s Personal Collection in Parliamentary Archives (London, United Kingdom)

Appendices  251 Tuviyahu Archives at Ben Gurion University of the Negev (Beersheba, Israel) University of Oxford – St. Anthony College’s Middle East Photographic Archive ­(Oxford, United Kingdom) Zochrot Documentary Archive (Tel Aviv, Israel) Digital Archives

Goel Drory (http://drory.net) Israeli National Photography Collection (http://147.237.72.31/topsrch/defaulte.htm) Palestineremembered.com – Online Photographic Collection (http://www.­ palestineremembered.com/) Walla (http://www.walla.com) Personal and Lineage Archives

Anonymised Abū Latīf (Rāhaṭ, Israel) Anonymised Abū Madīgam (Rāhaṭ, Israel) Anonymised Abū Rabīʿa (Ksīfe, Israel) Anonymised al-Huzayyil (Rāhaṭ, Israel) Anonymised al-Ṣānaʿ (Beersheba, Israel) Anonymised al-Ṣānaʿ (Lagīya, Israel) Eli Atzmon (Beersheba, Israel) Klaus Otto-Hundt (Warwick, United Kingdom) Richard Randolph (University of California Santa Cruz, United States of America) Sheglah Weir (London, United Kingdom) Newspapers

Ahkbar an-Naqab (Rāhaṭ, Israel) Al-qaria.net (Nazareth, Israel) Arutz Sheva – International Israeli News (Jerusalem, Israel) Haaretz (Tel Aviv, Israel) Jerusalem Post (Jerusalem, Israel) Jewish Telegraphic Agency (New York, United States of America) New Yorker (New York, United States of America) New York Times (New York, United States of America) Panorama- Panet.net (Tel Aviv, Israel) Quds (Ramallah, Palestinian West Bank) St Petersburg Times (Tampa, United States of America) Sydney Morning Herald (Sydney, Australia) Times of Israel (Jerusalem, Israel) Yedi’oth Ahronoth (Tel Aviv, Israel)

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Index

Note: Bold page numbers refer to tables; italic page numbers refer to figures and page numbers followed by “n” denote endnotes. Absentees’ Property Law (1950) 30–31 Abu Basma Regional Council 40 Abu Lughod, Lila 83 Abū Madīghem 148, 218–220, 218, 229, 230, 242 Abu Rabia, Safa 36, 79, 81 Abu Rass, Thabet 210 Abu Saad, Ismael 62 academics, activists, and the localisation of history (c. 1990–2013) (Bedouin) 43–44 actor‑network approach 116 acts of persuasions 5, 6, 83, 84, 235 aerial photographs 109–110, 110 afterlives: community histories 229–230; tribal histories of lineages 195–200 AJEEC see Arab Jewish Center for Economic Empowerment and Corporation (AJEEC) al‑ʿĀrif, ʿĀrif 131, 132, 169–171; Bedouin Love, Law, and Legend (1944) 173– 174; books 169–171, 196; Tāʾrīkh Bʾir al‑sabʿ wa‑Qabāʾilihā (1934) 78 al‑ʿAthāmīn, Suleīmān 2, 3, 4, 63, 68, 75, 92, 141, 149, 150, 239 al‑Ḥawāshlah 33 al‑Huzayyil 31, 33, 41, 45, 155, 164–180, 196, 239; meeting place 198 al‑Huzayyil, Shaykh Salmān II 80, 97, 123, 155, 165, 166, 170, 170, 171, 172–174, 173, 178–180, 196, 198 Ali Ekrem Bey (1867–1937) 26, 212 al‑Jazīrī, ʿAbd al‑Qādīr 25 al‑Maqrīzī, ʿAḥmed ibn ʿAli (1364–1442) 25 al‑Qalqashandī, ʿAḥmed ibn ʿAbdallah (1356– 1418) 25 al‑Ṣānaʿ ʿĀʾisha 85–86, 89, 151, 155, 186, 214; photograph 239 al‑Ṣānaʿ, Shaykh Ibrāhīm 183 al‑Ṣānaʿ, Salmān 193–194

al‑ʿUgbī, Nūrī 89, 216, 217 Ambassadors’ Forest 217 American Colony: Jerusalem Collection (1886– 2007) 177; photographers 175–177 American Colony Photography Department 131, 177; American Colony Trademark 177 American Friends of the Middle East (ARAMCO) 186 anthropology of Bedouin photography and photographs: evidence, photographs as 107–110; image worlds, differentiating 120–123; itinerant photographs 117–119; polyvalent images 114–117; veiling 106; visual practices 105–107 Appadurai, Arjun 118 arab as‑sab (pre‑1948 dialect) 23 Arab‑Israeli War (1948) 1, 30 Arab Jewish Center for Economic Empowerment and Corporation (AJEEC) 181; framed photograph of ‘Ottoman opening of Beersheba’ in 206; meeting room with framed images on walls 205 Arab minority 24, 62 Arab Spring (2010) 88 Armistice (1949) 30 Ashīrat Ḥawāshlah 33 Assaf Belge Bey 212, 213 Atwane, Rami 205 authenticating genealogy 77 Azoulay, Ariella 108, 122, 129 Badu an‑Naqab (contemporary Arabic) 23 Bailey, Clinton 24, 44, 220 Bain Media Collection 212; Bain News Service Photograph Collection 177 Banks, Marcus 236 Bedouin: named linages (ʿāʾilāt) visual economy 151, 154–156, 155–156;

268  Index society in Naqab visual economy 149– 151, 152–153; see also diversification of Bedouin histories and productions; histories in Bedouin society; Naqab Bedouin Bedouin Development Authority (est. 1984) 40 Bedouin Love, Law, and Legend (1944) (al‑ʿĀrif) 173–174 Bedouin Visual Archive (2015–2016) 143 Bedouin Volunteer Tent (BVT) 203 Beersheba Bedouin Market 26 ‘BEERSHEBA – The opening ceremony of the city, 1906’ 205 Beersheba under Ottoman and British Rule (c. 1900–1947) 25–29; divide‑and‑rule policies 27; Gaza region and Egypt 28–29; land values 28; Palestine and 26–27; peasants 29; Tarabin and Tiyaha 27–28 Beer Sheva ‘Iyad Abot vaBeneem (Be’er Sheva City Fathers and Sons) (Vilnay) 209 Beer Sheva Photography Museum 186, 206 Beer Sheva va‑Atareem (Beer Sheva and Sites) 213 Begin, Benny 222 Behad, Ali 121, 130 Behrend, Heike 236 Ben Gurion University (BGU) 173 Benjamin, Walter 109 biographies 4, 9–10, 116, 118, 123, 174–179, 193–194, 209, 214, 225–226, 231, 233, 234; see also community histories; tribal histories of lineages Black Goat Law (1950) 32 Brown, Alison 113, 236 Caliphate, Abbasid (749–1258) 130 camera obscura image 109 Campt, Tina 109 Caton, Steven 83, 231 circulating images: community histories (see community histories); tribal histories of lineages (see tribal histories of lineages) civic: community organisations 214–215; forward historical narratives 44 Cohen, Fritz 179 Cohen, Hillel: Good Arabs (2010 [2006]) 179–180 community histories 201–202, 240; activist photographers 226; consumption of community images 227; graphic contents of community images 226; older pictures 201–202; photographs among community organisations 202– 227; visual evidence 227 cultural intimacy 13–14; lineage politics 14

‘Day of Rage’ protest 222–223, 224 Deringil, Selim 211 Description de l’Egypte (1798) 131 Desert Embroidery 186–187, 190 digital: goods 118; images 118; media 236; photographs 118; photography 107 diversification of Bedouin histories and productions: articulations of Naqab Bedouin ethnohistory 70–73; genealogical reckoning 75–79; Islamic heritage expressions 73–75; lineage histories, making 79–82; unrecognised villages 69, 72 divided urbanisation (1962–1996) 34–37; Military Administration (1948–1966) 35; Rāhaṭ 35; Tel as‑Sabʿ 34–35; tribe (ʿashīra) 37 Doumani, Beshara 108 Dresch, Paul 231, 237 Drori, Goel 209 Eder, Jens 111 Edwards, Elizabeth 10, 113, 115, 116, 121, 129 Eickelman, Dale 62 entangled visual economies 120, 121, 128–162 Eretz Israeli Museum 143 ‘Establishment of Beersheba in the Ottoman period’ (Gal‑Nar) 213 ethnography: encounters 2–5; and positionality 12–15 Europe, visual economy 131 evidence: photographs as 107–110; tangible documentary 233; visual 227 extended family (ʿāʾila) visual economy 156–158, 158 Facebook 197 fine art photography 139, 143, 147, 149, 218, 227 Firāsa (discernment) 237 Frantzman, Seth 208 Gal‑Nar, Ilan: ‘Establishment of Beersheba in the Ottoman period’ 213 Geertz, Clifford 121 Gell, Alfred 116 genealogical reckoning 75–79, 231 George Grantham Bain Collection 210, 212 ‘G. Eric and Edith Matson Collection’ 177 Gidal, Susan 132; Gidal, Tim 132 Goldberg Commission (2007) 220; Goldberg, Eliezer 220 Grand Mosque in Beersheba 75, 93, 202– 205; black‑and‑white photograph 204; exhibition’s photograph 207;

Index 269 George Grantham Bain Collection 210, 212; Great Festival (Id al‑Fītr) 208–209; image for religious and civic community organisations 214–215; Islamic Movement 207–208; Negev Museum 206–207, 209; pasha’s album 209–213; photographs in AJEEC’s meeting room 204–206; public events for Bedouin in Beersheba 211–212; Salut Wine and Beer Festival 208 Great Festival (Id al‑Fītr) 208–209 Green Patrol (est. 1976) 40 Ground Truth: Destruction and Return in al‑’Araqīb 89 Gruber, Christine 106 Haaretz (newspaper) 143 Habeduim BaNaqab (Hebrew) 23 Haganah 30 Hanegbi, Michael 179, 180 Hassine, Carmit 147 Haugbølle, Sune 106 Herzfeld, Michael 13, 232 hijacking of history 61 Hillelson, Samuel 27 Hirsch, Eric 11, 232 historical persuasion 9, 11, 16, 87, 129, 238, 240 historicity 232–233; see also visual historicity histories in Bedouin society 61–63; compilation of land documents 95; diversification and productions 69–82; Grand Mosque located in centre of Beersheba 93; literacy and media skills 89–90; map of Khashem Zanaʿ 91; media technologies 88–90; page from ʿĀrif al‑ʿĀrif’s book on Bedouin tribal history 94; photographic modes of knowledge production 91–97; political tour in al‑ʿAragīb with European officials 92; representatives of past and strategic history‑making 82–87; room for hosting tourists in Suleīmān l‑ʿAthāmīn’s house 92; screenshot from Shaykh Suleīmān al‑Huzayyil II’s memorial Facebook page 97; social media and digital practices 88; socio‑political life and oral history in Khashem Zanaʿ (2012–2013) 63–69; Suleīmān’s main house with front tent 91; websites 88–89 Horst, Heather 238 Hourani, Albert 90 Hutchison, Elmo H. 30, 184–186, 189, 195, 198; Violent Truce (1956) 182–183, 184, 185–186

images 111–112; collection of 234; deceased family members 236–237; local knowledge and photographic indexicality 235; old images through digital platforms and networking technologies 236; see also image worlds image worlds 117, 120–123, 128; close‑distant relationships 121; entangled visual economies 120, 121, 128–162; multiple visual economies in Naqab 120–121; Naqab Desert, photography and photographs in 122–123, 123; photographic citizenship 122; visual economies 122 immediate family (buyūt) visual economy 158–159, 158 International Red Cross (1948) 132 international visual economy 130–133; Bedouin in Naqab 133, 135–137; Europe 131–132; Islamic art 130–131; Middle East 131–133; pastoral tribes 132–133; photographers 132; visual signifiers 132 Internet 196, 197 intervisuality 111 Iraqi, Amjad 14 Islamic heritage: Islamic Movement 74–75, 83, 207–208; mosques 74; Quʾrān 73–74 Israel: citizens and Palestinian people (1948–2013) 37–56; National Photo Collection 179; Planning and Construction Law (1965) 36; War of Independence 37 (see also Arab‑Israeli War (1948)); de facto civil rights 38–39; employment of men 41–42; income sources 42; livestock 42; local elections 41; men’s employment 41–42; policies of ethnicisation 38; politics 40–41; RCUV 40; schools 42; voting characteristics 39; women’s employment 42 Israeli Arab minority 72, 142 Israeli Defense Forces (est. 1948) 30 Israeli identification cards (Teuda Zehut) 32–33 Israeli Land Authority (ILA) 31, 216 Israeli‑Lebanon War (1982) 39 Israeli visual economies: commercial photography 142–143; ID cards 141; ID photographs 141; Israeli‑Jewish documentary photographers 143; Israeli‑Jewish photographers 142; Jewish photography (see Jewish photography); Naqab Bedouin 143; Palestinian‑Israeli national contexts 143; war and press photography 141

270  Index Israel’s Naqab Bedouin ‘tribesmen’ (1948– 1966) 29–34; Absentees’ Property Law (1950) 30–31; Israeli identification cards (Teuda Zehut) 32–33; Israeli Land Authority (ILA) 31; Jewish immigration 29–30; livestock 32; Military Administration (1948–1966) 34; reservation between B1 and B2 31–32; Tiyaha 30; Zionist movement 29 itinerant photographs 117–119; Activestills photographic exhibition in ‘The Protest Tent, Al Araqib, Israel 119; archival images 118; digital communications 117–118; historical knowledges 119 Jaussen, Antonin (1871–1962) 25 Jawhariyyeh, Wasif 115 Jerusalem (newspaper) 143 The Jerusalem Post (Frantzman) 208 Jewish National Fund (Keren Kayemet LeYisrael – JNF‑KKL) 217 Jewish photography 139–140; British Palestine 140; kibbutz 140–141; Land of Israel 139–140; war and press photography 141 Jewish Telegraphic Agency (19 February 1952) 178 Joe Alon Museum of Bedouin Culture 115, 143, 173 John D. Whiting Papers (1890–1970) 177 Judaism 73 justified true belief, defined as 6 Kalantzis, Konstantinos 233 Kalay, Yehuda 236 Karīm 107, 165, 192–193 Khālil, Whalid 138 Khashem Zanaʿ 63 kibbutz 140–141 Kirk, George 26 Klonk, Charlotte 111 knowledges: local knowledge and photographic indexicality of images 235; photographic modes of knowledge production 91–97 Kopytoff, Igor 115 Kratsman, Miki 142 Kressel, Gideon 67 Lagīya Women’s Association 180 Land Day Protest 144 Land Law (1858) 25 Lands of the Bible (1847) (Wilson) 131 Larsson, Lewis 175–177, 196 Layne, Linda 240 Lévi‑Strauss, Claude 24

Library of Congress 176; Matson Photo Collection 131, 207, 209 Likhovski, Assaf 177 lineages: histories, making 79–82; politics 14; tribal histories of 195–200 (see also tribal histories of lineages); visual activism 217–218 Lourie, Roger 186 Mansour, Salah 139 Marx, Emanuel 28, 31, 32 matrimonial alliances 67 Matson, Eric, G. 176, 177, 196; Matson Photo Services 177; trademark 176; Matson Collection 176–178, 207, 209 Meyers, Elijah 175, 176 Michael, Herzfeld 61 Middle East 234; photographs 108, 113; polyvalent images 115; visual economies 130–133, 139 Military Administration (1948–1966) 34, 35, 86, 140 Miller, Daniel 241 Minkley, Gary 129 Mirzoeff, Nicholas 111 Morton, Christopher 121, 236 mosques 36, 65, 74, 207–210, 229 Mouffe, Chantal 61 ‘Mrs Roosevelt Refused, but 1,000 want a sheik’ (article) 178; ‘Mrs Roosevelt: The sheik still tries’ (report) 178 Multaqa‑Mifgash Centre for Arab‑Jewish Understanding 217, 220 Murray, George 27 Musil, Alois 25, 81 Nakba 79–80; see also Arab‑Israeli War (1948) named linages (ʿāʾilāt) visual economy 150, 153–154, 157. 154–155 namesakes 25, 27, 28, 34, 36–37, 68, 75, 77, 78, 82, 153, 163, 164, 239–240, 242 Naqab Bedouin 4; histories and representational politics 5–7; photography and Bedouin Past 7–12; social history and historiography (see social history and historiography of Naqab Bedouin); see also Bedouin Naqab Desert 1, 4, 233 Nassar, Issam 11, 108, 137 Negev Arabs 39 Negev Bedouin 23, 39 Negev Co‑existence Forum (NCF) 71, 88 Negev Institute for Peace and Development (NISPED) 204 Negev Museum 211 Netanyahu, Benjamin 222

Index 271 Newbury, Darren 121, 236 Nora, Pierre 61 old images 239, 241 Operation Pillar of Defence (14–21 November 2012) 14 Operation Returning Echo (9–29 March 2012) 14 Orientalism 9, 112, 123, 129, 143; Orientalist iconography 113, 241; Orientalist photography 112 Oslo Accords (1992) 39 Otto‑Hundt, Klaus 132 Ottoman Empire 24; Ottoman’s 1858 Land Law 219; Ottoman Tribal School 26 Palestineremembered.com 139, 144, 193, 194, 196, 205, 207 Palestinian Arab Revolt (1936–1939) 27 Palestinian Bedouin (Israel) 72 Palestinian Exploration Fund 131 Palestinian‑Israeli conflict 7, 23; Palestinian‑Israeli landscape: visibility and invisibility issue 13 Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) 39 Palestinian visual economies 144–148; Beersheba 139; and Israeli visual economies 133–148; Jewish photography 139–140; Middle East 139; Naqab Bedouin 138–139; nationalist themes 136, 138; Palestinian‑Israeli national contexts 143; Palestinianremembered.com 139, 144; photographers 133, 136; wartime press photography 136; West Bank 133 Parizot, Cédric 5, 6, 29, 37, 39, 41, 68, 83, 239 Peel Commission (1937) 27 Peel, John 11 Peers, Laura 113, 236 persuasion 83; acts of 5, 6, 83, 84, 232; historical 9, 11, 16, 87, 130, 238, 240 Peters, Emrys 11, 63 photographers: activist 226; advertisement for local photographer 215–216; international visual economy 130; Israeli‑Jewish 142–143; Palestinian visual economies 133, 139; volunteer 215 Photography Literacy Projects 218 photography/photographs 9, 106, 238; aerial 109–110, 110; among community organisations 202–225; of Arabic and Hebrew text‑based media collected 96; and Bedouin Past 7–12; as complex historical documents 9; digital photography 107; evidence,

as 107–110; forensic examinations 9–10; images 111–112; interpretation and commoditisation 111, 236; intervisuality 111; Middle East 108, 113; oral, text‑based, and performative histories in Naqab 235–236; Orientalism and 112; and photographs 9; political tour and documentary picture wall in Wādī Naʾam 97; reuse of 112; truth, beyond 111–113; value 9 Pinney, Christopher 113, 122 Piot, Charles 87 Planning and Construction Law (1965) (Israel) 36 polyvalent images 114–117; exhibition of old Bedouin photographs 114; image worlds 116; installation of old Bedouin photographs at the Joe Alon Bedouin Center 117; Joe Alon Museum of Bedouin Culture 115; Middle East 115; old photographs 116 Poole, Deborah 10, 116, 120, 122 positionality: ethnography and 12–15 post‑Oslo paradigm (2000‑current) 23 Powers, Tim 177 Prawer, Ehud 220, 222 Prawer Plan 216, 219–220, 223 pre‑Nakba 80 presence 128–162 Quʾrān 73–74 radical empiricist approach 15 Rāhaṭ Community Centre’s library 213 Randolph, Richard 28, 32, 33, 68, 132 Rāssas, Khālil 138 Ratcliffe, Richard 5, 44 Regional Council of Unrecognised Villages (RCUV) 2, 40, 70 representational politics 5–7 Rettig, Haviv 221 Richter‑Devroe, Sophie 78, 80 Roosevelt, Eleanor 172, 178–180 Rose, Gillian 121, 157 Rowlands, Michael 79 Rubin, Lawrence 75 Ryzova, Lucie 11, 108, 113, 235 Safieh, Hanna 136 Said, Edward 112 Salman al‑Huzel (English – Salmān al‑Huzayyil) (webpage) 175 Salut Wine and Beer Festival 208 salvage anthropology 132 Samin, Nadav 77 Samuel, Herbert 176 sanād 81, 216

272  Index Sanbar, Elias 138 Sandys, George 131 scaled 6, 10, 120–122, 234 Scheele, Judith 231 Schejter, Amit 88, 223, 224 Schick, İrvn Cemıl 112 Sela, Roni 108 self‑curation 9, 107–109 Sheehi, Stephen 11, 108 Shiblī, Ahlām 138 Shibli, Amir 12 Shryock, Andrew 6, 62, 76–78, 89, 116, 196 Simon, Alberto 132 Six‑Day 1967 War 39 social history and historiography of Naqab Bedouin 23–24; academics, activists, and the localisation of history (c. 1990– 2013) 43–56; Antonin Jaussen Map of the Bedouin Tribes 1908 45; Arab minority 24; Aref al‑Aref with Bedouin Shaykhs 52; Bedouin meetings with Ottoman officials 1917 48; Bedouin town of Rahat, view of 55; Bedouin village of Khashem Zana, view of 55; Bedouin village of Tel Sheva 1969 54; Beersheba Bazaar 51; Beersheba Tribal Lands – Section of Naqab Desert Map (1948) 56; Beersheba under Ottoman and British Rule (c. 1900–1947) 25–29; British Survey of Palestine map from 1947 49; divided urbanisation (1962– 1996) 34–37; Flight into Egypt 53; Israeli citizens and a Palestinian people (1948–2013) 37–42; Israel’s Naqab Bedouin ‘tribesmen’ (1948–1966) 29–34; Ottoman Beersheba 1917 47; pre‑Ottoman archives (945–1516) 24; Tiyaha Shaykh 1847 46; Visit to Beersheba Agricultural Station (Experimental) by Brig. Gen. Allen and Bedouin shaykhs 1940 50 social media 88 socio‑political life and oral history in Khashem Zanaʿ (2012–2013): matrimonial strategies 66–67; social relations 67–69; territory division 65–66; village home 64–65 Southern Palestine Campaign (1917) 132 Stewart, Charles 11, 235, 236 Stoler, Ann 108 St. Petersburg Times (3 December 1957) 178 Strathman, Nicole 129 Sultan Abdülmejid I (1823–1861) 25 Sultan Abdülmejid II (1868–1944) 26 Swedenburg, Ted 137 The Sydney Morning Herald 178

ṭābū 80–81 Tamari, Salim 108 tangible documentary evidence 236 Tanzimât 25, 26, 57n21 Tarabīn 26, 27, 30, 76, 166, 168 Tāʾrīkh Bʾir al‑sabʿ wa‑Qabāʾilihā (al‑ʿĀrif) 78, 172 Tel Aviv Museum 142 Teuda Zehut (Israeli identification cards) 32–33 Theobald, Andrew 185 Thesiger, Wilfred 106 Tirosh, Naom 88, 225 Tiyāhā 30, 76, 77 tribal histories of lineages 163–164; archival images 195; family legacies: Al‑Huzayyil’s portraits 165–180; gender, authority, and contest: Al‑Ṣānaʿ 181–194; Internet 197; old photographs 195; Shaykh Salman II portrait 196–198; visual economies 194–195 tribalism 5, 6, 16, 18n19, 24, 25, 34, 37, 62, 63, 68, 77, 82, 86, 89, 130, 163, 231, 233 ‘Turk Negotiations with Arabs’ 212, 212 United Nations (1948) 132; United Nations Resolution (1947) 30; United Nations Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO) 182–184 veiling 106 Vilnay, Zev: Beer Sheva ‘Iyad Abot vaBeneem (Be’er Sheva City Fathers and Sons) 209 Violent Truce (1956) (Hutchison) 181–182, 184, 185–186 visual activism: protests and Al‑ʿAragīb 216; advertisement for local photographer 215–216; ʿĀʾisha’s exhibitions 219–220; ʿĀʾisha’s photograph 221–222; Bill on the Arrangement of Bedouin Settlement 222–223; civil society organisations 220–221; ‘Day of Rage’ protest 222, 224; JNF‑KKL 217; Khashem Zanaʿ 223–224, 224; land registry 217; lineage 216; Multaqa‑Mifgash Centre 218; NCF 215, 218; NCF‑Dukium’s lobby with Visual Literacy Project exhibition 224; photographers volunteer 215; photography books 224–225; Prawer Plan 219–221; visual history 225; Zochrot 218–219 visual activisms 10

Index 273 visual economies 10, 122, 128–130; Bedouin society in the Naqab 149–151; extended family (ʿāʾila) 156–158; immediate family (buyūt) 158–160; international 130–133; named linages (ʿāʾilāt) 151–156; Palestinian and Israel 133–149 visual historicity 232–240 Visual Literacy Project 226 visual practices 105–107; see also photography/photographs Vokes, Richard 236 volunteer photographers 215 websites 88–89 Weizman, Eyal 109

West Bank 133 Whiting, John, D. 176–178, 195 Wikipedia 197 Williamson, Timothy 235 Wilson, John: Lands of the Bible (1847) 131 World War I 132 Yaqub, Nadia 118, 234 Yedi’oth (newspaper) 143 Yemen 231 Yiftachel, Oren 39, 62, 63, 239 Zionist movement 29; Zionist narratives 108 Ziv, Oren 143 Zochrot 88, 218 Zvi, Sasson Bar 209