At Wadi Attir, Bedouin mix agricultural tradition with hi-tech innovation
One example of Wadi Attir’s innovative approach is a shipping-container-like machine that absorbs moisture from the desert air and turns it into drinking water.
By NICHOLAS POTTERUpdated: JANUARY 29, 2025 16:01 Wadi Attir, an innovative project that aims to promote sustainable agriculture among Israel’s Bedouin community in the Negev, January 28,2025.(photo credit: Nicholas potter)
From a distance, the site looks like yet another sandy plot nestled between a desert village and a highway. A closer look, however, reveals a blooming farm – one with a mission.Just off Route 31, which connects Beersheba with the Dead Sea, sits Wadi Attir, an innovative project that aims to promote sustainable agriculture among Israel’s Bedouin community right in the heart of the Negev.“The project empowers one of Israel’s most vulnerable and marginalized communities to be leaders in sustainability practices and environmental stewardship,” according to Project Wadi Attir, which was launched in 2009 by the New York-based nonprofit Sustainability Laboratory and the Hura Municipal Council, the governing body of a local Bedouin township, with funding from the Jewish National Fund USA.
The wadi – an Arabic term for desert valley beds that are mostly dry except after rainfall – boasts sheep pens, horse stables, olive groves, and herb fields, producing a range of products, including cheese and medicinal plants.Wadi Attir’s agricultural school teaches young Bedouin the skills that once enabled the nomadic Arab tribes to survive in the harsh desert heat for generations, a tradition increasingly lost as the community adjusts to urbanization.
Wadi Attir in the Negev, aims to promote sustainable agriculture among Israel's Bedouin community, January 28, 2025. (credit: Nicholas potter)Bedouins in the Negev
Some 300,000 Bedouin live in the Negev Desert, according to Adalah – a Haifa-based legal center for Arab minority rights in Israel. Some 80,000 of them live in 37 unrecognized Bedouin villages, in which demolitions under pressure from the Israeli authorities are commonplace. Many are not connected to Israel’s power grid or water supply. Another 192,000 live in government-planned townships that are chronically underfunded.Traditionally, Bedouin herded animals and passed on knowledge from generation to generation orally. Today, many struggle to find their place within Israeli’s hi-tech society.More than two-thirds of Bedouin live below the poverty line, according to Adalah, which is three times higher than the poverty rate in the general population. They also have some of the lowest rates of higher education. And their very way of life is under threat.“For me and my community, this project is far more than a physical site demonstrating sustainable living in an arid environment,” Muhammad al-Nabari told The Jerusalem Post. The 54-year-old is a co-founder of Wadi Attir and former mayor of the nearby Bedouin town Hura.“It represents a transformative empowerment process for the entire community,” he said. “It showcases how Bedouin heritage and sustainable principles can come together to address modern challenges.”
The project allows Bedouin to export their knowledge to the world, Nabari said, and it helps tackle climate change in the process by leveraging traditional practices and modern science.It also offers the community, which he said has been left lagging behind the modern Israeli Start-Up Nation, a chance to catch up.“With a remarkably young population – more than 70% of us are under the age of 30 – we have the potential to become a significant engine of growth for the Negev region and for Israeli society as a whole,” Nabari said.A prime example of this potential is Jamila Abu Kaf, a 33-year-old Bedouin woman from the nearby village Umm Batin. She directs the agricultural farm at the wadi and is also a fellow at the Sustainability Laboratory in New York. She was just named in The Marker’s “40 Promising People Under 40” list.“I was born here, I live here, I work here,” Abu Kaf told the Post during a recent visit to the project, where women take on a central role. “This is my community; it’s a part of me.”
Local Bedouin school groups visit Wadi Attir once a week for two hours to learn about science, sustainability, and innovation, she said in a classroom full of students at the project. The agricultural center hosts children and teenagers from 31 different schools across the community each year.“We enhance their curriculum,” Abu Kaf said about the haptic, vocational approach to agriculture at the project, where 13 teachers work. “They use their head and their hearts and their hands together.”“Being a Bedouin in Israel means adjusting to the challenges here and living in harmony with nature,” Abu Kaf said while giving a tour of the agricultural center, pointing to various herbs and plants along the way.There are many challenges, she said, citing waste, violence, and poverty as key problems within the community.“I believe that education is our main method to make the change,” Abu Kaf said. “We don’t have another way.”One example of Wadi Attir’s innovative approach is a shipping-container-like machine that absorbs moisture from the desert air and turns it into drinking water. Another is the project’s “soil enhancement program,” which conducts experiments with the introduction of various plants, high-nutrient grass, and small amounts of manure to optimize crop yields.“From my point of view, Project Wadi Attir is an island of sanity in this chaotic world,” Wadi Attir CEO Nimrod Rogel, 40, told the Post. “I think that we didn’t face this issue of the Bedouin and the Jewish people living together in the Negev enough in these past years. The Bedouin people are my neighbors, and if we don’t get to know them, and they don’t get to know us, it will be bad for the whole Negev and for the whole Israel society.”Jewish Israelis have much to learn from Bedouin, he said, including “how to survive in harsh conditions. The Bedouin people have survived and prospered in the desert for many years.”But modernization, urbanization, and industrialization have rapidly changed Bedouin society, Rogel said.“They have gone from being nomads to settlers,” he said. “So, here in this project, we try to bring it back – all of this knowledge that is getting lost.”However, urbanization is not the only challenge. The October 7 massacre and the ensuing Israel-Hamas War has also affected the Bedouin community deeply. Twenty-two Bedouin were killed in the Hamas terrorist attack. And eight Bedouin were kidnapped to Gaza, according to the Hostage and Missing Families Forum.In September 2024, a Bedouin hostage, Farhan al-Qadi, was rescued after he was found by the IDF in a tunnel near Rafah. And in November 2023, two Bedouin women, Bilal and Aisha Ziyadne, were released in the first ceasefire deal after 50 days in captivity.But not all of them have been so lucky, Earlier this month, the IDF recovered the bodies of Bilal and Aisha Ziyadne’s father, Youssef, and brother Hamza in a Hamas tunnel.“Like the rest of Israeli society, the Bedouin community has endured the tragic consequences of October 7,” co-founder Muhammad al-Nabari said. “However, the Bedouin community also faces unique challenges. Many have relatives in Gaza – often close family members, such as uncles and aunts, due to historical and familial ties.”With hundreds of thousands of Bedouin in Gaza, the conflict has added another layer of complexity and distress to their lives, he said.
