The recognition of the Naqab Bedouin as indigenous people has been predicated, first and foremost, on establishing their cultural distinctiveness. This has meant that the Naqab Bedouin have had to be produced not only as distinct from the dominant Jewish-Israeli population, but also – and equally importantly – as distinct from the Palestinian population in Israel and from the Palestinian people more generally. As stated in a report submitted to the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues by the Negev Coexistence
Forum (NCF), a joint Bedouin–Israeli NGO and a leader in promoting the recognition of the Naqab Bedouin as indigenous:
The Bedouins have retained their language (a Bedouin dialect of Arabic), their religion (Islam), and their social, cultural, economic and political characteristics. They are ethnically distinct from the Jewish majority and socially distinct from the Palestinian Arab minority living in Israel. (NCF 2006, 8)
The Palestinians are a heterogeneous people who include diverse religious and ethnic groups such as Druze, Christians and Bedouin. To be clear, I am not trying to erase difference, or to undermine the various ways in which different Palestinian communities experience state violence along the intersections of race, ethnicity, class, gender and sexuality. The Naqab Bedouin are a distinctive group subjected to a particular form of colonial violence (as has been elaborated on in Chapter 3). This difference ought not be erased in the name of national unity or any other cause. However, we should ask what it is that makes the Bedouin indigenous. Is it cultural distinctiveness, or is it the structure of settler colonialism?
I suggest that there is a particular oriental and exotic imaginary of Bedouinness, without which the recognition of the Naqab Bedouin as indigenous would not have been possible. In other words, what makes possible the recognition of the indigeneity of Naqab Bedouin, as opposed to that of other groups of Palestinians, is the view that they conform to the cultural tenets of indigeneity. As Awad Abu-Freih states:
It is easy to recognise us [the Naqab Bedouin] as indigenous because we maintained our culture. And it is an indigenous culture, a desert culture and a very ancient one. They [foreigners] see a very simple life, living in the desert, in a tent, with your sheep and goats, far from urbanism. They don’t see that in Palestinians. When they see a Palestinian from Haifa, they do not see an indigenous way of living. I used to argue with them on these issues, but could not convince them that all Palestinians are indigenous to the land. (Interview, Awad Abu-Freih 2013)
Cultural distinctiveness, non-dominance and marginalisation are principles without which recognition of the Naqab Bedouin as indigenous cannot be established. The UNDRIP ‘accommodates situations where colonisation did not occur, as in parts of Asia and Africa’ (Saul 2016, 29). Therefore, as in the Bedouin case, recognition can be premised merely on a combination of principles of cultural distinctiveness, non-
dominance, and an experience of systemic marginalisation and discrimination. The grievances of the Naqab Bedouin are thus explained in relation to cultural difference and extreme conditions of cultural vulnerability, and they alone can justify recognition. Rodolfo Stavenhagen and Ahmad Amara exemplify this culturalist bias:
The Bedouins’ cultural distinctiveness from the Israeli Jewish majority and the ongoing marginalization and discrimination that the Bedouins suffer as a distinct collective are more than sufficient to grant them protection as an indigenous group under international law. (Stavenhagen and Amara 2012, 181)
The focus on Bedouin cultural distinctiveness builds on the scholarly commitment to multiculturalism. This bias should be understood in light of a context in which Bedouin cultural distinctiveness has been figured, at the state level, in only one way: a justification for dispossession, as discussed in Chapter 3. This is in contrast to the situations in Australia and Canada, where indigenous cultural distinctiveness at the state level operates in an ambivalent way, both as a structure of domination and as a ‘quality’ to be mobilised in securing (limited) recognition of land rights.
The focus on culturalist arguments and on cultural distinctiveness evokes the dangers of essentialism (Muehlebach 2001; Sylvain 2002). In this respect, it is important to address the only article on Bedouin indigeneity that addresses the relationship between indigeneity and essentialism. In this article, Oren Yiftachel, Batia Roded and Alexandre Kedar argue that:
… our approach to the concept of indigeneity is relational, historical and political, and has issue with the essentialist approach to the subject. In other words, we do not claim that it is a single system which formally and permanently defines groups with an indigenous identity around the world, and that the Bedouin group has characteristics that permanently and eternally assign it to the indigenous category. (Yiftachel, Roded and A. Kedar 2016, 4, emphasis added)
However, their argument fails to escape an essentialised and de-politicised conception of indigeneity. In fact, the article continues by justifying Bedouin indigeneity on the grounds of cultural distinctiveness and non-dominance. The argument constructs indigeneity merely as an opportunity structure rather than as an antagonistic political category, implying that at this temporal moment the Naqab Bedouin exhibit cultural characteristics that make indigeneity a suitable framework. This is why it is possible to ‘imagine later
stages in their struggle when indigeneity may become superfluous or taken-for-granted, and perhaps be replaced by other categories of struggle and resistance’ (Yiftachel, Roded and A. Kedar 2016, 5). The authors fail to acknowledge that a political approach to indigeneity must acknowledge that it is the settler who has brought the indigenous into existence and who perpetuates this existence (Fanon 1963, 36). As long as settler colonialism exists and as long as the logic of elimination continues to govern native lives, indigeneity as a political category remains relevant.
Failing to escape the yoke of an essentialised conception of indigeneity, the authors argue for strategic essentialism. However, native engagement in strategic essentialism does not necessarily eliminate the dangers of essentialism (see Spivak in Milevska 2003, 30). Furthermore, self-essentialising practices are embedded in histories and relations of extreme inequalities and imbalances of power (Sylvain 2002). This means that dire conditions of marginalisation and the need to expand opportunity structures can force indigenous peoples to engage in practices of self-essentialism in order to gain access to the human rights discourse in order to advance their cause.