Israel is ‘restoring governance’ to the Negev — by terrorizing Palestinians
Israeli police fire tear gas during a visit by Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir to the Bedouin village of Tarabin Al-Sana, southern Israel, 28 December 2025
Oren Ziv writes in +972 on 9 January 2026:
It took Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir and his police forces less than two weeks to turn a quiet Bedouin village in southern Israel into a bloody battleground.
Tarabin Al-Sana is home to around 1,000 people. Unlike dozens of other Bedouin villages in the Negev (Naqab), it is officially recognized by the state. In the most recent national elections in 2022, over half of the village’s eligible voters did not cast a ballot, but among those who did almost 60 percent voted for the Likud Party of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Yet that has not prevented the government from ill-treating them, like all Palestinians, as enemies of the state.
The escalation began with a report of a stolen horse from a farm in the Jewish community of Klahim on Dec. 27. Police who arrived the following day to conduct a search in Tarabin Al-Sana were blocked by residents and forced to retreat. Following this “humiliation,” larger forces arrived. Later, police claim, residents set vehicles on fire in the nearby Jewish communities of Giv’ot Bar and Mishmar Hanegev in protest.
The full-scale police operation, which so far has included no fewer than five visits to the village by Ben Gvir himself, began immediately thereafter. As in the West Bank, the state’s logic in the Negev is limited solely to the use of force, collective punishment, and ever bolder displays of meshilut — a Hebrew word meaning “governance” that has become a euphemism for harassment and collective punishment of Arab citizens.
Accordingly, Tarabin was sealed off from all sides. Police set up a checkpoint at the village’s entrance — which included a command post with Israeli flags — to search every passing vehicle, and blocked all other exits with concrete barriers. Supplies to the local grocery store were halted, effectively putting it out of service, and anyone wishing to enter or leave the village was forced to stand in line and undergo humiliating checks, including being photographed.
Regular police units along with the militarized Border Police and the National Guard (the latter established in 2024 by Ben Gvir) began patrolling the village, searching homes, detaining residents, and firing tear gas. Representatives of government bodies, including the state electricity company and the tax authority, also arrived in the village as part of a broader enforcement operation to find people who are not paying tax or are connecting to electricity illegally.