Hura

Hura, or Houra (Hebrew: חוּרָה, חוּרָא, Arabic: حورة‎) is a Bedouin town in the Southern District of Israel. It is located near Beersheba and beside the town Meitar. The town was established in 1989 as a part of solution offered by the state for the Negev Bedouin population, and was declared a local council in 1996. In 2017 it had a population of 20,782.A private house in Hura, 2012One of Hura's schools, 2012Another school in Hura, 2012A Library in Hura, 2015 Hura, or Houra (Hebrew: חוּרָה, חוּרָא, Arabic: حورة‎) is a Bedouin town in the Southern District of Israel. It is located near Beersheba and beside the town Meitar. The town was established in 1989 as a part of solution offered by the state for the Negev Bedouin population, and was declared a local council in 1996. In 2017 it had a population of 20,782. Hura is one of seven Bedouin townships in the Negev desert with approved plans and developed infrastructure (other six are: Ar'arat an-Naqab (Ar'ara BaNegev), Lakiya, Shaqib al-Salam (Segev Shalom), Kuseife (Kseife), Tel as-Sabi (Tel-Sheva) and the city of Rahat, the largest among them). Prior to the establishment of Israel, the Negev Bedouins were a semi-nomadic society that had been through a process of sedentariness since the Ottoman rule of the region. Most researchers agree that Bedouins arrived to the Negev around 1800 AD, but there is evidence of earlier migrations as well. During the British Mandate period, the administration did not provide a legal framework to justify and preserve land 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 framework. This enabled Israel to nationalize most of the Negev lands using the state land regulations of 1969. Israel has continued the policy of sedentarization of Negev Bedouin imposed by the Ottoman authorities, and at first it included regulation and re-location - during the 1950s Israel re-located two-thirds of the Negev Bedouin into an area that was under a martial law. The next step was to establish seven townships built especially for Bedouin in order to sedentarize and urbanize them by offering them better life conditions, proper infrastructure and high quality public services in sanitation, health and education, and municipal services. This was seen as particularly important since the birth rate of the Bedouin population in Israel is among the highest in the world - it doubles its size every 15 years. Not all Bedouin have agreed to move from tents and structures built on the state lands into permanent apartments prepared for them. Only about 60% of Bedouin citizens of Israel live in permanent planned villages like Hura, while the rest live in what are considered illegal homes and settlements spread all over the northern Negev. Primarily members of three Bedouin family clans reside in Hura: Abu Alkian, Al-Atawneh and Al-Nabari. According to the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS), the population of Hura was 17,500 in December 2010, up from 16,600 at the end of 2009. Hura's jurisdiction is 6,646 dunams. Unlike illegal villages with scarce access to water, electricity, and services, which are repeatedly demolished by Israel, Hura provides the residents with all their basic needs and the State encourages scattered Bedouin tribes to settle in Hura by selling them land plots with ready built homes at a nominal cost.