For 17 years, Abu Hassan Zarzir found honor serving as an Arab in the Israeli army. Gifted with the tracking skills for which his Bedouin people are renowned, Zarzir even trained recruits on how to follow the enemy. That meant other Arabs.
“In principle we are Arabs, and we feel with every drop of blood when an Arab is injured,” said the 51-year-old military veteran, whose son will volunteer for the Israeli army next month.
“But on the other side, we have duties to fulfill,” said Zarzir, who like many Bedouins has a surname matching his tribe and town. “If you depend on a country for your livelihood, then you must serve and protect this country.”
Nowadays, however, fewer young Bedouins share his opinion. No longer drawn by the special status that made them more trusted in the military than other Arabs, the number of Bedouins volunteering for military service has fallen by half since the latest Palestinian uprising began 17 months ago, government officials said.
Taleb al-Sana, a Bedouin who is a member of the Israeli parliament, has been a leading voice suggesting that Bedouins not join the Israeli armed forces.
“I don’t think an Arab should shoot against another Arab,” he said. “I don’t think we should be part of the war machine against our own people, especially when Israel is not in a position where it needs to defend itself.
“Israel is defending its occupation. Settlers in the West Bank, whom the army is defending, hate Arabs and Bedouins,” said al-Sana, who lived a traditional Bedouin life herding livestock and living in a tent in the Negev Desert until age 10.
He expressed his frustration when two Palestinians recently killed four Israeli soldiers–three Bedouins and an Arab Christian–manning a desert outpost near the Gaza Strip on the Egyptian border. He called on the military to disband the special units for Israeli Arab fighters and accused the military of putting Arabs in the most dangerous outposts facing Palestinians.
In the village of Zarzir, a modest collection of stone and stucco houses in the rolling hills of the Galilee, just outside Nazareth, this is not an abstract issue.
One of the soldiers who died in the outpost attack was Maj. Ashraf Hawash Ben Khaled, 28, of Zarzir. Friends and relatives said he was planning to marry his hometown sweetheart in August in a traditional outdoor Bedouin wedding.
“People are sad for losing someone so close, but it’s the price we have to pay for the existence of the state,” said Abu Hassan Zarzir, who also is the town’s deputy mayor.
Bedouins willing to face peril
Bedouins are prized recruits for the Israeli army because they are willing to take some of the toughest and most dangerous assignments.
But the Bedouins’ military service puts their blood ties with fellow Arab Palestinians into conflict with their blood pact with Israel, which they have served–and died for–since its founding in 1948. One out of five Israelis is Arab, officials said.
Despite putting their lives on the line for Israel, the Bedouins have faced widespread discrimination, according to al-Sana. The government confiscated their tribal grazing land decades ago and forced them to live in concentrated areas, he said.
“The Bedouin heritage is disappearing, and at the same time, the rate of crime and drug abuse is on the rise. A rupture has taken place in the family because the government has expropriated their land,” he said.
While al-Sana predicted fewer Arabs will want to join the army as the conflict continues, military and government officials are considering more recruiting incentives such as additional college scholarships and housing assistance.
Israeli army officials would not release any details on the numbers of Arabs in their military. Unlike Jews, these minorities are not conscripted.
“Arabs are allowed to volunteer and serve if they pass a security check, but there are very few of them,” said a military spokesman in Jerusalem.
Experts acknowledge a rift in the Bedouin community, in which educated members are encouraging youths not to join the Israeli armed forces.
“They often call the ones who do serve in the army as collaborators or traitors,” said Clinton Bailey, a political science professor at Trinity College in Connecticut. But, he said, Bedouins historically have never felt part of the Palestinian national movement, going back to the British occupation.
“First of all, economically, it’s a job,” Bailey said of the Bedouins’ enlistment tradition. “Secondly, they get power within their own communities. They get a gun,” which is a useful symbol during clan rivalries, he said.
The benefits of service
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Military service can have political benefits too.
Zarzir was recently governed by a Jewish local council from a neighboring town, but now the Bedouin village has its own council, officials said. The Israeli government also recently funded the village’s first 16 preschools, two new elementary schools, two high school wings, a new side road and a modern streetscape with cobblestone sidewalk on the main road, officials said.
Such benefits have been showered on Zarzir, local Bedouins say, because of the community’s longtime military service.
Ali al-Heib, 18, who left high school after 11th grade, is one among those willing to maintain the village’s tradition of service in the Israeli military. Unable to find work during the last two years, he expects to enlist in the coming weeks. His father served in the army, as did several of his uncles.
When asked about the prospect of choosing sides in the Palestinian uprising, he said: “It’s not hard to make choices. They live in the West Bank and we live in Israel, and we are with Israel.”
The scarcity of jobs is a major factor in many Bedouin youths’ decision to enlist, teens said. About 60 percent of the men in the village have served or are serving in the army, residents said.
Emir al-Heib, 24, who is not directly related to Ali, said he has not joined the army because his family construction business provides him with an income five times the amount a soldier earns.
“In high school, some of my classmates were from Nazareth and some were from the village, and all of them from the village joined the army except for me,” he said, standing outside a cinder block and concrete house being built near a grove of olive trees. “Those who can’t find jobs–the poor guys, so to speak–join the army.”
On the patio of one home, Bedouin storytelling was in full swing as Mosa Eyadat, 35, an army veteran, told his son and two teenage male relatives about legendary Bedouin trackers serving in the Israeli army.
A tracker’s boasts
One tracker, he said, had the ability to distinguish not only which footprints belonged to a man or a woman, but whether the woman was a virgin. This was Bedouin lore in the making.
“A virgin walks on her toes, on the front part of her foot, while a non-virgin walks with her full foot,” he said without breaking a smile.
His brother, Mohamed, 30, added that the secret to being a good tracker is a herder’s patience to study vast open spaces, though few youths in the village bother with herding sheep and goats any more.
“You have to observe everything. You have to do this all day long,” Mohamed said. “You know where everything is. You know where every stone is and whether it’s been kicked or knocked over or stepped on.”