The author reviews indigenous experiences of and responses to urbanization in a number of nation-states throughout the world, and examines the experience of the indigenous Palestinian Bedouin community in southern Israel, whose traditional lifestyle of land-based semi-nomadic pastoralism is being replaced by landlessness and government-planned urbanization. The author explores related key issues, including the historical political context and state-indigenous relations, the conflict over land, and the settler-colonial vision inherent in the conceptualization and implementation of the urban models. Finally, Bedouin responses and resistance to the government’s urbanization program are discussed.
Abu-Saad, Ismael