Sarah Urwin Jones Journalist, Writer, Broadcaster

Dispossessing peoples of their land and corralling them into more manageable townships is an act that has taken place in the name of “civilisation” for centuries. But in Israel, of course, dispossession takes on a whole other resonance. When Moshe Dayan declared in 1963 that in two generations Israel could “fix” the urbanisation of the nomadic Bedouin Arabs, so that “this phenomenon of the Bedouin will disappear”, he clearly never imagined failure. But one look at Ahlam Shibli’s moving photos currently showing at DCA makes one wonder how he would have judged success.

Two vast series of photographs document the lives of Bedouin Arabs (of which Shibli is one) living - barely - in Israel. The first series is called Goter, comprising a study of the everyday life of the dispossessed in makeshift settlements in Israel. The second, larger series is called Tracker, after the name of the “minority Israeli” army division for which young Bedouin men volunteer.

The black-and-white gloom of Shibli’s Goter peels away the warmth of the blazing Middle Eastern sun to reveal the litter-scattered shanty towns, unrecognised by the Israeli authorities, of Bedouin from the Naqab. These are some of the 50,000 or so who refused to move into townships created to free up land for Jewish settlers. Forbidden from building permanent structures in unofficial settlements, their corrugated iron homes are frequently bulldozed, and as such their rights to water, to a job, and hence their ability to become part of modern Israeli society, are limited.

Shibli’s work raises many questions about why the Bedouin live in these temporary, unrecognised towns - the assumption is that their land has been taken from them completely. But the how is equally compelling. Shibli shows the Bedouin corralled by ugly metal fences, within which they make a home, set up in makeshift but homely offices, relaxing in corrugated, communal, iron shed-tents. Their dead are buried close-set in earthen mounds, marked by higgledy-piggledy stone slabs - it is a half-permanent scene that reflects the state of the living. A lone rural photo of a tree with a bag hanging from it - presumably to keep food away from scavengers - and a large folded canvas at its base, no human in sight, seems emblematic of the move away from a nomadic lifestyle.

Ahlam Shibli is a photographer of immense perception. Many consider the Trackers collaborators with an occupying force, but Shibli presents them on more neutral ground - photographing free time, visits home and training rather than the frontline. The men in these fascinating, touching photos display an innocence of sorts - the camaraderie of young men in an institution which gives them some of the rights enjoyed by their Jewish Israeli colleagues, and yet in which they are still regarded with some suspicion by the state which they serve. The question, of course, still persists in the background - who are they being trained to shoot?

Traces of traditional culture remain - a uniformed soldier posing by a herd of cows, an off-duty horse race. Elsewhere, a shot of a uniformed Bedouin officer reclining on floor cushions recalls the half-settled nomads of the Goter series, reclining, smoking, in their corrugated iron tents. These soldiers have the trappings of modern Israeli life, to an extent - the uniform, the beer, the take-aways, the sweat pants, urban “progress” - but still interpreted through their own traditions and sense of self. For what Shibli really shows in these photos is a sense of belonging to a community, one which can be created anywhere, regardless of whether the walls surrounding them are permanent or temporary.

http://www.theherald.co.uk/features/features/display.var.1185659.0.0.php