Former Israeli General: ‘The Bedouin Are Not Terrorists But Their Situation Is A Hotbed For Terrorism’

JERUSALEM (VINnews) — The murderous attack in Beersheva on Tuesday afternoon which claimed the lives of four Israeli citizens has shocked the country to the core. Despite a spate of terrorist attacks in recent weeks in Jerusalem and the advent of Ramadan which usually brings more shrill anti-Israel rhetoric, the last place where terror was expected was in the Bedouin community.

Despite being involved in theft, drugs and illegal weapon distribution, the Bedouin community in the south of Israel had yet to be actively involved in terror of any kind. Moreover, recent years have seen a warming of relations between Bedouin and the state of Israel. The fact that a commissioner has been appointed to oversee Bedouin affairs and that Arabs including a member of the Bedouin community sit in the Knesset demonstrate that the community wants to integrate into Israeli society. Many Bedouin voluntarily join the IDF and new programs have seen hundreds of Bedouin join the police force and other security echelons. Many new police stations have opened in the south in an attempt to quell crime in the community.

Yet some intelligence sources have been noting the radicalism in the community and state that the terrorist act was not as unexpected and surprising as it appeared. General (res.) Eyal Ben-Reuven, a former Knesset member and a member of the Foreign Affairs and Security committee, said Wednesday that “I learnt from the media that the despicable murderer succeeded in moving from location to location and was eventually stopped by citizens and not by security forces. We need to learn from this so that it does not happen again. It is not good and we need to emphasize these issues in order to rectify them. The Shin Bet will investigate whether there were people assisting the terrorist and whether it was possible to reveal that a terror attack was planned.” [two family members of the terrorist were arrested Wednesday on charges of not preventing the attack].

However Ben-Reuven stressed that we cannot tar the entire Bedouin community due to this terrorist act. “we know that there will be those who start to besmirch all of the Bedouin. The Bedouin are good people. However this event lights a warning light regarding Israel’s treatment of the community, which suffers from an awful economy situation. This impacts education and violence in the community and can serve as a hotbed for terror organizations, who know this and search for collaborators.

“We need to do everything to prevent such a terror hotbed in out midst. We need to be careful- the Bedouin are not terrorists by nature. They serve in the IDF, but they have serious problems in the way they live and the unrecognized illegal villages. We need to perform a serious treatment of these issues and solve them in coordination with the community.”

Ben-Reuven’s approach was sharply criticized by right-wing commentators who claimed that the Bedouin had been granted huge government investments in recent years and despite this turned to terror. Yinon Magal, a Likud supporter, wrote that the town of Houra, where the terrorist came from, had received nearly half a billion NIS in support in recent years, including 200 classrooms, a new industrial zone, public buildings, parks and 15,000 new apartments. Magal added cynically on his Twitter account “There is no doubt that this warrants murder of Jews.”