Free Republic

A crack IDF team, along with several police units, has discovered and confiscated a cache of illegal weapons. The weapons were discovered in a sheep pen in the Bedouin village of Hura in the Negev. A number of residents of the town were taken into custody. The weapons were found in several sacks hidden inside the pen. Among the weapons were M-16 rifles and dozens of cartridges for them. Other weapons were found as well. The owner of the pen said that he had no idea that the weapons were there, nor did he know how they got there. He...

Military and police officials in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula said on Friday that two U.S. tourists have been abducted by a Bedouin seeking to pressure officials to release his detained relative. Officials told The Associated Press the two Americans, a man and a woman, were taken along with their Egyptian tour guide, in a mountainous region in the center of the peninsula called Sabr el-Hitan. U.S. Embassy spokesman David Lynnfield told AP the embassy was looking into the kidnapping. Security officials say the Bedouin man abducted the tourists to pressure authorities to release his uncle detained in the Egyptian coastal city...

Two Negev Bedouin men have been indicted for murder in a blood feud that left a man dead in the town of Hura, near Be'er Sheva. Hussein and Osama Abu Elkayan were charged with murder, attempted murder, aggravated assault, carrying weapons and malicious injury. The indictments were filed Sunday in the Be'er Sheva District Court. The details of the murder, however were not simple; the attack resembles something more along the lines of the "Showdown at the O.K. Corral" than a shooting in Israel in 2012. The long-running feud between the Abu Elkayan and the Abu Sabit hamullahs (clans) had...

Two Bedouins threw rocks Saturday at Jews who live at the Geon HaYarden outpost in the eastern Binyamin region, overlooking the Jordan valley. One of the Jews, aged 19, suffered a broken leg. A Magen David Adom ambulance from nearby Kochav HaShachar evacuated him to Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem, in light to moderate condition. Another youth, who is 17, was lightly hurt and treated on the spot. Police were alerted to the scene and began searching for the Bedouin attackers, but were unable to find them. At the same time they found that one of the Jewish youths present was...

Civil war may break out among heavily-armed Bedouin tribes in the Sinai, which has become a lawless area since the Egyptian uprising this year. Violence in the volatile Sinai Peninsula, directly south of Gaza and bordering the Eilat-Gaza route, could bring more instability to Israel’s southern border, plagued for years by slave trade, infiltration, drug and weapons trafficking by Bedouin and Hamas terrorists. Egyptian sources warned Sunday that two rival Bedouin tribes, each accusing the other of murder and kidnapping, are headed for war, according to the Bethlehem-based Ma'an news agency. The BBC earlier this week also quoted local Bedouin...

URGENT: Gunfire heard in Cairo's Tahrir Square as supporters of President Mubarak and anti-government demonstrators clash hours after the embattled leader defiantly said he would serve out his term in office.

Navy pilot Michael "Scott" Speicher was shot down over the Iraq desert on the first night of the Gulf War in 1991, and it was there he apparently was buried by Bedouins, the sand hiding him from the world's mightiest military. For nearly two decades, the family Speicher left behind, from outside Jacksonville, Fla., pushed the Defense Department to find out what had happened to him. On Sunday, the Pentagon disclosed that Marines had recovered Speicher's bones and skeletal fragments — enough for a positive identification. Shot down over west-central Iraq on a combat mission in his FA-18 Hornet on...

Egyptian authorities are investigating claims that many Gazans bought land in Sinai in the past few weeks. Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit. Photo: AP [file] Leaders of several Beduin tribes living in Sinai have sent a message to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in which they strongly denied that their families sold land to Palestinians who poured into Egypt after the border was breached on January 23. Egyptian law prohibits foreigners from purchasing land in Sinai. The investigation comes amid growing tension between Egypt and Hamas over the tearing down of the security fence along the border with the Gaza...

Film Tries to Capture 'Truth' of Bedouin Life, in All Its Hues [Israel's democracy & Arab on black racism inside Muslim community] http://www.jewishexponent.com/article/13325/ Film Tries to Capture 'Truth' of Bedouin Life, in All Its HuesJune 21, 2007 - Carin M. Smilk, Managing Editor Exterior of "A Step Forward" in Rahat Nothing is ever black and white, especially when it comes to people. Take, for example, the situation with Israel's Bedouin population, particularly in the south of the country, in the Negev Desert. There, some 180,000 Bedouin reside -- all citizens of Israel, but some black, and some white. The so-called...

Bedouin feel the squeeze as Israel resettles the Negev desert Thousands displaced from ancient homeland Chris McGreal in Tel Al-MilehThursday February 27, 2003The Guardian The Israeli government has an offer for Jabir Abu Kaf. It will recognise a small patch of parched land as his own, provided he agrees to get off it and sell it to the state. Otherwise, Mr Abu Kaf will continue to be classified as a squatter in the desert his family roamed for generations, and to live in perpetual fear of being "civilised". It is no idle threat. To reinforce the tenuous nature of life...