Peloni: This is a substantive victory! Well done to both Min. Chikli and Naomi!
Amichai Chikli leads a government decision to facilitate the absorption of residents of squatter camps into recognized Bedouin settlements.
Naomi Linder Kahn | May 28, 2025
The Ministerial Committee on Bedouin Affairs, led by Cabinet Minister Amichai Chikli, recently approved a policy decision that will empower a wide-ranging reform in land regulation policy in the Negev.
For the first time, the government has created a realistic framework for moving the region forward, approving a decision designed to facilitate the absorption of residents of squatter camps into recognized Bedouin settlements, on land that has been suspended in limbo for decades by “ownership claims.”
In the early 1970s, the Israeli government invited all Bedouin citizens to file land ownership claims. The process, intended to enable the state to investigate and make determinations of legal ownership, did not require Bedouin claimants to present any evidence or documentation of ownership, because the claim was not, in and of itself, intended to bestow any proprietary rights.
More than 3,000 ownership claims were submitted for a total area more than 15 times the size of Greater Tel Aviv.
To date, every Bedouin ownership claim for land in the Negev examined in court was deemed unfounded, unsupported and untenable (in sharp contrast with ownership claims filed for land in northern Israel). In every case, the land claimed by the Negev Bedouin was registered as state property.
Court decisions notwithstanding, the Bedouin citizens of the Negev adhered to traditional Bedouin practice rather than modern proprietary law: They continued to respect the claims of ownership as factual, binding statements of rights and refrained from moving to the plots allocated to them, free of charge, by the State of Israel.
They remain, to this day, in sprawling illegal encampments outside the Bedouin towns while the towns themselves remain largely uninhabited. Bedouin ownership claimants continue to reject every compensation offer—for land that does not legally belong to them—and continue to bar all other Bedouin from making legal, logical use of what is, by law, Israeli state land that has been allocated for the development of Bedouin communities.
The state’s efforts and massive investments to persuade Bedouins to leave the illegal squatter camps and move to recognized communities, where they are provided with plots for housing, infrastructure and all services and amenities to which every citizen of Israel is entitled, have been rejected over the years.
As a result, most of the Bedouin settlements of the Negev remain underdeveloped and underpopulated, creating a spiral of undesirability that has led to negative relocation: residents of legal towns have moved in alarming numbers to illegal squatter camps.
They continue to receive services and benefits from the municipalities but live beyond the reach of the law and the tax authorities. A thriving economy has grown around the rental and sale of ownership claims, when the self-proclaimed owners rake in profits from land that belongs to the Israeli public.
The Regavim Movement has been studying the dynamics of the Negev land crisis for nearly two decades. Our findings and recommendations have been studied by successive governments, but under the leadership of Chikli, real change has finally begun.
After extensive preparatory work, a government decision was formulated that brings significant reform to the compensation incentives granted by the state to Bedouin claimants: For the first time, Bedouin claimants will receive compensation for relinquishing ownership claims only after other Bedouin families settle on the claimed land parcel.
This is intended to bring an end to the “have my cake and eat it, too” technique employed by ownership claimants for many years: They accept state compensation—an alternative plot within the legal communities as well as hundreds of thousands of shekels in monetary compensation, all for land that does not belong to them, but do not allow other Bedouin to move into and develop the original plot without paying them exorbitant rent or purchase fees.
Another, perhaps even more important aspect of the new policy guidelines is the establishment of predetermined timelines for compensation, as opposed to the open-ended and ever-escalating compensation offers of the past that encouraged ownership claimants to hold their ground, literally and figuratively.
Under the new guidelines, compensation packages come with a clear deadline. If an ownership claimant does not accept the terms by the specified deadline, the disputed land is to be deducted from the municipal “blue line” of the settlement, significantly reducing its value. Compensation will be reduced commensurately, and then withdrawn altogether.
Regavim has long called for significant incentives, combined with continued substantial enforcement. We are convinced that the new policy guidelines will lead to a dramatic change in the willingness of the claimants to reach a settlement agreement, which will serve as a turning point in relocation and dissolution of the squatter camps.
This is a gateway to profound change in the Negev: No more lawlessness and loss of our national land resources; no more doing the same thing and expecting different results.
The State of Israel has walked the same path for decades, and that path has led us all to the verge of disaster. Kudos to Chikli for his leadership in this historic Zionist policy shift, which, together with meaningful and determined enforcement, will lead to real change on the ground that will benefit every citizen of the State of Israel for generations to come.
Noami Linder Khan can be reached at the following email for further information or any questions: naomi@regavim.org and the Regavim website can be found here: https://www.regavim.org/
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