For Arab civil society organizations in Israel, and for those committed to building a shared Arab-Jewish future, this is the most challenging period we have ever known. As a joint Arab-Jewish organization working with the Bedouin community in the Negev, it often feels as though every time we hit rock bottom, another trapdoor opens beneath us.
In recent months, the pace of home demolitions has surged to new and alarming levels. These are no longer justified, however spuriously, as targeted demolitions on planning and construction grounds. What we are witnessing now is the erasure of entire villages and communities. And this is only the beginning.
Amid the endless war – whose toll has been borne heavily by the Bedouin community – the government is advancing a new, sweeping plan that will have decisive and devastating consequences for Bedouin life in the Negev.
Known as the Focus Plan (Mikudim), its guiding principle is to concentrate as many Bedouin as possible on as little land as possible. The plan has been developed unilaterally, without any consultation with elected Bedouin local councils, community leaders, or civil society organizations, who for years have been working in partnership with government agencies.
The stated aim of the plan is to halt the “Palestinization” of Bedouin society through a series of measures. It approaches the Bedouin population of the Negev not as citizens with rights but through a security lens: as potential terrorists, border threats, and sources of disorder to be monitored, contained, and subdued. Among the draft clauses now under discussion is one that proposes deploying army snipers during the demolition of Bedouin homes.
The so-called “carrots” that the plan promises are nothing of the sort. They are the basic services any state owes its citizens: education, cultural programs, sports, healthcare, and infrastructure. These are not gifts to be bartered in exchange for demolitions; they are fundamental rights, and their denial for decades has been the root cause of inequality and alienation.
A path forward for Israel's Bedouin community
Reality has proven to us again and again that the only viable path forward with the Bedouin community is the slow and difficult work of building trust, mutual respect, and belonging. Not forced assimilation, but genuine partnership. Not policies of control, but practical measures of fairness and equality: economic development, closing gaps in employment and education, and recognizing the unrecognized villages.
For decades, successive Israeli governments have expected that a population living under such extreme deprivation – denied infrastructure, water, electricity, and roads in “unrecognized” villages – would nonetheless feel a sense of loyalty to the state, and even volunteer for military service. This expectation is not only unrealistic; it is dangerous. The gulf between what governments demand and the reality they have created is, at best, a cynical illusion meant to blind the wider Israeli public.
Worse still, the assumption that a community which has paid such a heavy price in this war – 18 killed and four kidnapped, with no recognition, no rehabilitation, and no meaningful inclusion in the national recovery effort – will somehow draw closer to the state is pure fantasy.
We had the immense privilege to work for many years with Vivian Silver, of blessed memory, who was murdered in her home in Be’eri on October 7. Vivian was a visionary. She drew practical blueprints for partnership and equality even in times of deep crisis, including during the struggle against the destructive Prawer Plan back in 2011. Her message is more urgent now than ever. In times such as these, we need a bold vision, one that plants anchors of hope deep in a lake that has been poisoned by despair. We need Vivian’s vision.
But Vivian was never only a dreamer; she was a woman of action. She led, along with Dr. Amal Elsana Alh’jooj, the evolution of the shared society discourse in civil society and in spaces of educational, social, and economic development. Fifteen years ago, the language we used was still one of “coexistence.”
At that time, success was defined as separate lives lived side by side, without conflict. Since then, we have awakened to a deeper truth: genuine partnership requires real, tangible steps to reduce the vast inequalities that define Arab-Jewish relations in Israel. Without closing those gaps, there can be no partnership, no shared life.
Even this understanding is no longer sufficient. “Shared society” is, at its core, a passive concept – it describes an outcome, not a path. Today’s grim reality demands more: a call to action, to shared purpose, to joint struggle. We must move from a paradigm of coexistence and then shared society, into what might be called active partnership. Vivian’s vision compels us toward precisely this kind of renewal.
The Israeli government must halt its destructive plan for the Bedouin in the Negev and instead reopen a genuine, inclusive dialogue with elected representatives, local authorities, and civil society. Real solutions will not emerge from bulldozers and rifles. They will only come through the practical implementation of the principles of partnership, transparency, and equality.
This is the vision we are now trying to give physical form to through the establishment of the Vivian Silver Center for Shared Society in the Negev, a regional hub for joint Arab-Jewish civic action, grounded in her legacy. On October 7, many of us felt that the foundations of Israel were deeply shaken. In that moment, what stood strong was us: civil society and local government – the people. And it is upon us to rebuild, to heal, to imagine anew.
Our role is not only to ensure recovery in the social and economic sense. It is also to articulate a new, alternative vision for Israeli society – one rooted in justice, equality, and inclusion. Only by doing so can we honor Vivian’s legacy and offer a future of hope for both Jews and Arabs in this land.
Dr. Ilan Amit is co-CEO and Kher Albaz is chairperson of AJEEC, the Arab-Jewish Center for Empowerment, Equality, and Cooperation.