Abu Basma Regional Council

Abu Basma Regional Council (Hebrew: מועצה אזורית אבו בסמה‎‎, Moatza Ezorit Abu Basma, Arabic: مجلس إقليمي أبو بسمة‎‎, Majlis Iqlimi Abu Basma) was a regional council operating in 2003-2012 and covering several Bedouin villages in the northwestern Negev desert of Israel. Following the Minister of Interior decision on November 5, 2012 it was split into two newly created bodies: Neve Midbar Regional Council and al-Kasom Regional Council.

There were 11 recognized communities in the Abu Basma Regional Council, and their population is 30,000 residents. There were also approximately 50,000 “diaspora” Bedouins living in unrecognized villages outside the council’s jurisdiction.

Prior to the establishment of Israel, the Negev Bedouins were a semi-nomadic pastoralist society that had been through a process of sedentariness since the Ottoman rule of the region. During the British Mandate period, the administration did not provide a legal frame to justify and preserve lands’ ownership. In order to settle this issue, Israel’s land policy was adapted to a large extent from the Ottoman land regulations of 1858 as the only preceding legal frame. Thus Israel nationalized most of the Negev lands using the state’s land regulations from 1969 and designated most of it for military and national security purposes.

The 1947 UN Partition Plan, which was accepted by the Jewish leaders, envisaged most of the Negev (including most of the Negev Bedouin territory) as part of the planned Jewish state. After the rejection of the UN plan by the united Arab nations, their subsequent declaration of war on Israel, and their eventual defeat in the 1948 Palestine war, the Negev became part of Israel and the Negev Bedouin became Israeli citizens.

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