A staff doctor at Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba was wounded, Tuesday, March 24, after he had just returned from a shift at the hospital when an Iranian missile launched at Israel was intercepted near the Israeli-US Nevatim airbase and munitions fragments fell near his house in the “unrecognized” Arab Bedouin village of A-Sira in the Negev. The family is one of the few in the village with a safe room, which is where they were when the fragment hit their home.
One “shelter” at a Bedouin community in the Negev, March 24, 2026 (Photo: Regional Council for Unrecognized Villages of the Negev)
The Hadash Negev branch said that the far-right government neglect of the Arab Bedouin unrecognized villages reflects “an explicitly racist policy” and “blatant discrimination against Arab citizens in the Negev.” According to Hadash, gap in shelters stems largely from state planning and policy decisions, including limited building permits in Bedouin communities and the state’s refusal to formally recognize dozens of villages in the Negev. Without approved planning schemes, residents often cannot legally build permanent homes with reinforced safe rooms, which are required in newer construction across Israel.
The Abraham Initiatives organization said in a statement: “The failure of protection in the Negev costs more victims. We warned for years about the protection-gap in the Arab community in general, and the Bedouin villages in particular.” “This war continues to expose, in a tragic way, the Israeli government’s policy of abandonment toward the Arab community. The time has come for an emergency protection plan,” it said.
According to a January report by the Negev Coexistence Forum’s research center, Nagabiyah, only around 35% of Arab Bedouins have access to an in-home shelter. There are only six public shelters in Bedouin communities across the northern Negev, all but one of which are in the city of Rahat, leaving most Bedouin without any shelter. Since the American-Israeli war against Iran began on February 28, 25 Israeli civilians and foreign nationals have been killed in Israel in Iranian ballistic missile attacks, along with four Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. More than 5,000 Israelis were wounded during the attacks.
