RAHAT, Israel—This week’s rescue of an Israeli hostage from a Gaza tunnel highlights a fact often obscured about the Jewish state: not everyone who lives there is Jewish.
The rescued man, Qaid Farhan Alkadi, a 52-year-old Israeli citizen, is a Bedouin.
Alkadi, having lost weight but in good health, ran toward the commandos in the tunnel after his captors fled. They quickly led him to a truck and then put him into a helicopter, which took him to Soroka Hospital in Beersheba.
He was taken hostage while working as a security guard at a vegetable packing plant next to Kibbutz Magen, a plant that was destroyed on Oct. 7. He and his family—two wives and 11 children—live near Rahat, a large Bedouin town in southern Israel.
Bedouins, like other Israelis, were caught up in the events of Oct. 7, when 3,000 Hamas terrorists invaded.
The 1,200 people killed included 21 Bedouins, Wahid Elhosi'il, a retired lieutenant colonel in the Israeli army and himself a Bedouin, told the The Epoch Times recently.
Bedouin Heroes
Like Israeli Jews and other groups, the Bedouins had their share of heroes that day, men who risked their lives to save others. Elhosi'il, speaking through a translator, told their stories to The Epoch Times.One of them was Yusuf Ziadna, a minibus driver at the Nova Music Festival, the site of some of the massacre’s worst atrocities, where hundreds were killed. He crammed 30 people into a minibus designed for 17, took it off-road, and led a convoy of escaping cars through the fields to an army base 20 miles away, Elhosi'il said. He picked up wounded people along the way.
Another hero was Elhosi‘il’s cousin, Remo Salman Elhosi’il, an off-duty policeman and one of the festival’s security guards.
Remo Elhosi‘il had begun work at 6 a.m. on Oct. 7, his cousin said. When the attack started around 6:30 a.m., he seized an abandoned car and for seven hours ferried people out of the danger zone to safety, returning again and again to get more, Wahid Elhosi’il said.
Opportunities, Challenges
He said that enlisting in the Israel Defence Force (IDF) was an opportunity for him. Having dropped out of school at age 13, like many Bedouin youths do, to go to work, he volunteered for the army at age 19.
That offered him a route to finish his high school education, go to the IDF’s academy for officer cadets, and work his way up.
Bedouins are not subject to Israel’s draft, but about 400 of them volunteer each year, he told The Epoch Times.
By the time he retired after 23 years in the army, he told The Epoch Times through a translator, he was the highest-ranking Bedouin in the IDF and the only one to command a unit, the Desert Scouts, which is an all-Bedouin reconnaissance unit.
Now in his 50s, he works as a speaker discussing subjects related to Bedouins and Israel’s Arab community. They face many challenges, he said.
“My father couldn’t have his cattle anymore. He sold them and built a house,” he said. “Suddenly there were a lot of bills. For water, for power. He didn’t have any money. He sent us kids to work.”
Elhosi'il left school in 7th grade. By day, he worked in agriculture. By night, he worked in security, guarding tractors.
Bedouin kids dropping out of school is a big problem, he said. Education is compulsory in Israel, but in Bedouin communities, the truancy enforcement is lax. “The government didn’t care and let them drop out. Or they never came to school at all.”
His organization, Ka'ad Kadima, “A Step Forward,” is a conservative Bedouin group that aids the families of those wounded or killed on Oct. 7. One thing he admires about Israel, he said, is the way its citizens launch new organizations to address any need that emerges.
Part of his message, when he gives talks, is that people “should see Israel as a country belonging to all its citizens. A lot has to change. There are things to correct and make better,” such as better education and services. “But in general, all Israeli citizens, Jews and Arabs, are riding the same bus and voting in the same process,” he said.
This Is Going to Take Some Time
The Bedouins, who are Muslims, have a history that differs from surrounding Arabs. Nomadic herders continued to roam with their flocks into the 20th century. Some found themselves in Israel after Israel’s 1948 War of Independence or its capture of the West Bank, Sinai, and the Golan Heights in 1967. Sometimes, they found Israelis treating them better than they'd been treated when their lands were in Arab countries.But they still faced a difficult transition to modernity.
Roni Gilo, a retired IDF lieutenant colonel who served as a translator for The Epoch Times’ interview with Elhosi'il, recalled his friendship with a young Bedouin soldier during his mandatory military service around 1980.
His Bedouin comrade took him home for a holiday. When they arrived, Gilo said he found his friend’s family living in tents in the yard, while their sheep stayed in the house, drinking from the toilet.
“This is going to take some time,” Gilo’s friend told him.
Rahat has a population of more than 79,000, making it the largest Bedouin city in the world. Elhosi'il’s background is distinctive: he is black. His ancestors were once African slaves owned by Bedouins, long enough ago that no one recalls the details, he said.
Rahat has gained many jobs recently. Sodastream, a successful Israeli company now owned by PepsiCo, sells home systems for carbonated soft drinks worldwide. It had a plant in the West Bank town of Ma'ale Adumim that employed many Arabs who lived nearby.
Illegal Encampments
There’s plenty of opportunity in Israel for Bedouins who stay in school and follow a conventional path, Elhosi'il said. He knows many Bedouins who have graduated from college and have promising careers, ranging from doctors and nurses to bank managers, teachers, and police officers.Not everyone manages that due to poverty, truancy, and crime. Bedouins in Israel don’t all live in modern housing.
Many, including Alkadi, the freed hostage, live in illegal encampments without power, water, or sewage hookups.
They are a common sight in southern Israel: mobile homes near a roadside surrounded by old cars, construction debris, and other junk. Garbage may be rotting nearby. They don’t have adequate bomb shelters or warning systems to protect them from Hamas rocket attacks.
Israel seeks to demolish such eyesores and resettle their residents in recognized Bedouin townships like Rahat.
Those in Alkadi’s village, Karkur, don’t want to move to towns and prefer a rural lifestyle, said Muhammad Abu Tailakh, head of Karkur’s local council and a public health lecturer at Ben Gurion University in nearby Beersheba.
Tailakh said the government ought to recognize Karkur, which has been there since the 1950s. The Israeli government says it’s in a protected forest. Tailakh said they'd be open to moving to another area but not to a city.
Since November, the government has told about 70 percent of Karkur’s residents that their homes will be razed. Alkadi’s family didn’t get a notice, and the government said that in light of Alkadi’s return, they wouldn’t get one.
