The Bedouin may be peaceable but their numbers pose a major demographic threat and their pastoral way of life obstructs the fate intended for them penning them up tightly inside ghettoes.
Most of the Bedouin have title deeds to their lands that long predate Israel's creation. But Israel has refused to honour these claims and many tens of thousands have been criminalised by the state, their villages denied legal recognition.
For decades they have been forced to live in tin shacks or tents because the authorities refuse to approve proper homes and they are denied public services like schools, water and electricity.
The Bedouin have one option if they wish to live within the law: they must abandon their ancestral lands and their way of life to relocate to one of the poor townships.
Many of the Bedouin have resisted, clinging on to their historic lands despite the dire conditions imposed on them.
One such unrecognised village, Al Araqib, has been used to set an example. Israeli forces have demolished the makeshift homes there more than 160 times in less than a decade. In August, an Israeli court approved the state billing six of the villagers $370,000 (Dh1.6 million) for the repeated evictions.
Al Araqib's 70-year-old leader, Sheikh Sayah Abu Madhim, recently spent months in jail after his conviction for trespassing, even though his tent is a stone's throw from the cemetery where his ancestors are buried.
Now the Israel authorities are losing patience with the Bedouin.
Last January, plans were unveiled for the urgent and forcible eviction of nearly 40,000 Bedouin from their homes in unrecognised villages under the guise of "economic development" projects. It will be the largest expulsion in decades.
"Development", like "security", has a different connotation in Israel. It really means Jewish development, or Judaisation not development for Palestinians.
The projects include a new highway, a high-voltage power line, a weapons testing facility, a military live-fire zone and a phosphate mine.
It was revealed last week that the families would be forced into displacement centres in the townships, living in temporary accommodation for years as their ultimate fate is decided. Already these sites are being compared to the refugee camps established for Palestinians in the wake of the Nakba.
The barely concealed aim is to impose on the Bedouin such awful conditions that they will eventually agree to be confined for good in the townships on Israel's terms.
Six leading United Nations human rights experts sent a letter to Israel in the summer protesting the grave violations of the Bedouin families' rights in international law and arguing that alternative approaches were possible.
Adalah, a legal group for Palestinians in Israel, notes that Israel has been forcibly evicting the Bedouin over seven decades, treating them not as human beings but as pawns in its never-ending battle to replace them with Jewish settlers.
The Bedouin's living space has endlessly shrunk and their way of life has been crushed.
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