Police or Army? How the “Fight Against Crime” Became a Tool for Controlling the Bedouins

Over the past several years, a consistent pattern of policing has taken hold towards the Bedouin population in Israel’s Negev region—one that  far more resembles the conduct of a military force operating in hostile territory than civilian law enforcement in a democratic state. Night raids and ambushes, the use of tactical units, helicopters, roadblocks and cordons around entire communities, collective punishment, and intensive use of live fire during enforcement operations—these are not the hallmarks of civilian policing. They are practices associated with military control over an enemy space.

The turning point was the police raid on Umm al-Hiran in January 2017. Police and Border Police forces entered the unrecognized Bedouin village before dawn to secure home demolitions. During the operation, Yaqub Abu al-Qian, a schoolteacher, was shot and killed and immediately labeled a terrorist who had carried out a vehicular attack. It later became clear there was no high level of certainty that Abu al-Qian acted with criminal intent. Even without resolving the legal debate, the method itself—a pre-dawn raid with live fire in a civilian village—marked a conceptual shift: civilian law enforcement conducted according to the logic of a military operation in enemy territory.

Since then, this pattern has repeated itself. Even in officially recognized Bedouin towns and villages, police actions follow the same logic. In Bir Hadaj, for example, residents have experienced a series of large-scale raids over the years: dozens of officers entering the community, sometimes at night or in the early morning hours, blocking roads and carrying out arrests. In Abu Talul and Bir Hadaj alike, repeated operations have been conducted in the context of demolitions and enforcement of planning and land-use orders. Even when the underlying issues are clearly civilian—land, planning, housing—the timing and methods convey a security-based approach of deterrence and domination.

In November 2021, this pattern reached an especially extreme expression when, during a massive police operation involving hundreds of officers, counterterrorism unit personnel were filmed rappelling from a helicopter in broad daylight into the heart of the village of Abu Talul, in front of stunned residents. This is imagery taken from a battlefield, not from routine civilian policing.

The same logic was applied in January 2022 during the protests surrounding Tu Bishvat tree-planting on lands belonging to the village of Sa’wa (officially known as Molada). What was essentially a civilian dispute over land and planning was framed and handled as a matter of security and public order, leading to clashes and arrests rather than political or civil resolution.

It is crucial to note the broader context: most murders and serious violent crime within Israel’s Arab society do not take place in the Negev. Major crime hubs exist in the north, in the Triangle region, and in mixed cities. Yet it is the Negev that has been turned into the central arena of the “fight against crime” and the rhetoric of “restoring governance.” This is not a neutral reflection of where crime occurs. It is a deliberate choice by the state about where extraordinary force is deployed—and where it is not.

The cumulative effect of these actions creates a lived reality of communities under continuous coercive control, rather than protected by law enforcement. In each case, those harmed or killed are described as posing a “security threat,” supposedly justifying a security-style response rather than civilian policing.

The most recent peak came in late 2025 and early 2026 in the village of Tirabin. Reports described roadblocks and restrictions on entry and exit—a de facto siege. During a nighttime raid, Muhammad Hussein Tirabin al-Sana was killed by police gunfire. The officer involved was investigated by the Police Internal Investigations Department. Beyond the specific circumstances, the very act of imposing a cordon on an entire civilian community is a tool well known from military doctrine—and one that is almost never applied to Jewish localities in the context of fighting crime.

When one connects Umm al-Hiran, al-Araqib, Sa’wa, Abu Talul, Bir Hadaj, Tirabin, and other Bedouin communities, it becomes difficult to deny that this is a systemic approach. The police are not acting only against individual criminals—who primarily threaten their own communities—but are using criminality as justification to treat entire Bedouin localities, and everyone living in them, as enemy territory.

The test is simple: would anyone accept a siege on a Jewish town because of the activity of organized crime families? Would police deploy helicopters and tactical units into the heart of a Jewish neighborhood as part of routine law enforcement? If the answer is no—and it clearly is—then the issue is not crime, but how the state chooses to view different groups of citizens.

This must be said plainly: the state is actively setting up the Bedouin population as an “enemy.” Not by accident. A population labeled as an enemy becomes politically and civically weaker, less able to organize, resist, or negotiate. It becomes easier to control. In this way, transforming the Bedouin into an enemy entrenches their status as weak citizens and facilitates the imposition of coerced settlement arrangements, the reduction of living space, and top-down solutions—with minimal resistance and maximum official legitimacy.