I had just begun working with the Physicians for Human Rights project in unrecognized Bedouin villages in Israel, when I was invited to speak on a panel with Israeli Arab doctors and health educators on reproductive and general health issues in the Bedouin sector.
Organized by the Ma’an Forum of Bedouin Women’s Organizations, the panel was to address practical elements of important issues that have daily effects on Muslim Bedouin women who live a short drive from my comfortable house in Be’er Sheva, but in conditions that rival what we see in the third world.
Unrecognized townships and their trademark tin shacks dot the hills of the Negev, the desert that stretches across Southern Israel. Many Bedouins, particularly women, have a disproportionately high primary school dropout rates, and many do not speak good Hebrew. Feelings of marginalization serve to further alienate Bedouins, many of whom don’t know that a woman living in an unrecognized village is legally eligible for emergency health services, such as birth. But when women rush to the hospital, the inability to be understood in Arabic and speak in Hebrew results in many going back to their villages, mid-labor, where even the most complicated deliveries happen without modern medical care.
After presenting a report at the United Nations last July, the Ma’an Forum organized a conference held in Arabic to educate Bedouin women about their health and their rights. My task as a Jewish Israeli student was a dicey one: I was to speak to a population about them, in a language not my own.
Though Arabic is also an official language in Israel, it has never been treated with the same respect as Hebrew. While Israeli Arab schools require their students to learn Hebrew, most Israeli Jews do not learn Arabic. In fact, almost all the interactions between Jews and Arabs are conducted in Hebrew. The lack of linguistic recognition of the Arab minority, who comprise about 20 percent of Israel’s population, represents much more than official policy, many PHR activists say.
I realized how empowering it must be for a Bedouin woman to participate in a conference of activists, unobstructed by linguistic barriers. The conference signified to me a unique stage in the critical empowerment process of Bedouin women in a very traditional community. After presenting at the conference, I found myself more able to sympathize with the 200 Bedouin women who have struggled to finish high school and now are my fellow students at Ben Gurion University.
