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Report
The Jerusalem
R
August 22, 2022
COVERING ISRAEL, THE MIDDLE EAST & THE JEWISH WORLD
Said’s
shadow
Yosef Abramowitz on the
Bedouin spirits that may
sway Israel’s election
המחיר בישראל:‏ ₪21.00 באילת:‏ ₪17.90

Cover
The shadow
of Said
Can Bedouin spirits
sway Israel’s election?
By Yosef Israel Abramowitz
The vast Negev desert can be both punishing
and beautiful, partly dependent on whether
you have access to water and electricity. A son
of the Negev, Said al-Harumi’s shadow in the
bright early mornings cast a long and outsized
figure wherever he walked, especially amid the
35 unrecognized Bedouin villages – home to
90,000 people – that remain unconnected to
power and water.
Yet the man’s shadow stretches not only at
sunrise, but especially at the end of the day,
when the golden light surrounds an increasingly
growing profile as the sun sinks in the sky
and darkness ultimately prevails.
David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s founding prime
minister, famously said that the future of Israel
and humanity will be determined in the Negev.
That prophetic vision was aimed at blooming
the desert with agriculture, water and solar
power. As Israel enters yet another election
season, the future of the Zionist enterprise is
likely to be determined in the Negev, by the
Bedouin, and especially by the long shadow
that Said al-Harumi casts over his loyal, yet
now unsettled supporters.
Israel’s November 1 election is haunted, and
its result will likely be determined by several
Bedouin spirits – especially that of al-Harumi,
who died suddenly at 49 of a heart attack a year
ago, one month after he assumed the position
of chairman of the Knesset Interior and Environment
Committee on behalf of the Islamic
United Arab List (Ra’am).
In 2021, 167,064 citizens voted for the party,
which cleared the 3.25% electoral threshold by
Former MK Said al-Harumi
half a percentage point and thus changed the
Israeli political map forever: finally breaking
Israel’s longest-running political taboo by including
an Arab party in a ruling coalition.
“Most Bedouin didn’t vote for Ra’am but
for Said,” says a senior advisor to Dr. Mansour
Abbas, chairman of Ra’am. “That is how
Mansour Abbas was able to break away from
the Arab Joint List, which sees its primary
role in the opposition, and enter the Knesset
as an independent Islamic list and then complete
an unlikely eight-party broad coalition
that replaced Benjamin Netanyahu. Mansour
wouldn’t have cleared the electoral threshold
if it wasn’t for Said and his voters.”
Sami Abed Elhamed/Wikipedia
10
The Jerusalem Report August 22, 2022

There are 146,000 eligible Bedouin voters,
enough to swing a national election in Israel’s
razor-thin coalition math, depending on
voter turnout. Weekly national polling reports
a swing between 59 and 61 seats for either
the Netanyahu-led block or the coalition of
change, which can’t form a parliamentary majority
without Ra’am.
“The State of Israel was born as a Jewish
state, and the question is how we integrate
Arab society into it,” Mansour Abbas told a
Globes business conference last December.
“We are at the beginning of the partnership, but
I believe in it. You can’t wait for change without
creating a new reality. We always demanded
change without moving forward. Instead
of waiting for it to happen before there was a
partnership, Ra’am came along and said ‘Let’s
form a partnership that will bring the change.’”
The question is now that Harumi is not on
the ballot, what percentage of Bedouin still
believe in Abbas’s vision of an Arab-Jewish
partnership and will come out to vote? And for
whom?
Al-Harumi may be gone, yet from the grave,
his spirit continues to fight for Bedouin rights
across the Negev, and, by extension, for Ra’am
to squeak past the electoral threshold.
Israel’s first Bedouin solar field at Tarabin: the author with Raed al-Kinnan and Micha
Price, co-director of the Said al-Harumi Initiative.
MICHA PRICE
MICHA PRICE
Dr. Mansour Abbas and Dr. Mohammed al-Nabari outside the tent of mourning for al-
Harumi at Segev Shalom. ‘Now that Said is gone, it is your responsibility to work twice as
hard to realize his solar vision,’ the Ra’am chairman tells the author.
SAID WAS running late one day, which is the
norm for members of Knesset. An apologetic
Knesset aide sits with Micha Price and me in
his parliamentary office, checking his phone
for updates.
“It is done!” the aide informs us of the formal
handing over to Harumi of the chairmanship of
the key Knesset committee that oversees both
police and solar energy – key issues for the
Bedouin community.
Al-Harumi rushes in with a megawatt smile,
reminiscent of that of former finance minister
Moshe Kahlon, and also of Prime Minister
Yair Lapid.
Celebratory hugs, handshakes and “mabruk”
(congratulations) fill the room. “Yosef, take
out all those plans for solar energy for the Bedouin
and let’s get to work!”
When our family moved from Newton, Massachusetts
to Kibbutz Ketura in the Arava at the
end of August 2006, I knew little about solar
energy or the condition of the Bedouin, Israel’s
poorest community. I had been involved in
the US with social and political issues, had the
privilege of working with Coretta Scott King,
and also led the anti-apartheid movement at
Boston University. So I made aliyah with the
value of equality in my DNA, which is a vision
also enshrined in Israel’s Declaration of Independence,
a copy of which hung in my Boston
childhood home.
When my partners and I launched the first
solar field in the Middle East in 2011 at Kibbutz
Ketura, Faiz Abu Sahiben, mayor of the
Bedouin city Rahat, and also Hajj Moussa Tarabin,
spoke at the news conference. Construction
on Tarabin’s solar field was expected to
begin within a year as our second field, which
was supposed to launch an era of social and
economic development in the Negev through
impact solar investments. These solar fields
would have also incentivized win-win compromises
between the State of Israel and the
Bedouin, who have filed 25,000 land claims.
Solar energy was about to become the economic
engine of the Negev – for the kibbutzim,
moshavim, and especially for the Bedouin.
It didn’t play out that way. The kibbutzim
and moshavim won all the solar licenses and
bids, and thus enjoyed all the upside, and also
blocked the ability of potential Bedouin fields
to be connected to the grid. I had a front-row
seat to see the systematic discrimination and
The Jerusalem Report August 22, 2022 11

Cover
President Isaac Herzog posted this
photograph of himself with al-Harumi in
a condolence message to the family on
Twitter last August 25.
humiliation against fellow Israeli citizens, and
the disadvantages they endured compared with
Jewish landowners.
My trusted guides in the Bedouin community
were Raed Al-Kinnan, an educational
and community activist who met his wife,
Mariam, through al-Harumi, her teacher; and
Abed el-Said, a well-connected leader of the
recognized village bearing his name. Together
they shepherded me to meet hundreds of Bedouin
families, drank a lot of strong coffee and
sweet tea, celebrated the Muslim holidays, attended
court hearings, shared their frustrations
at government meetings, peered over dozens
of maps, and walked dusty disputed lands for
hours.
The Public Utilities Authority, the electricity
regulator, threw out Moussa Tarabin’s license
request at the last minute in 2012, on dubious
grounds that were clearly discriminatory. A
staff member at the regulator, who supported
the license application, whispered to us to appeal
to the Supreme Court.
Tarabin’s 10MW solar field was finally built
in 2018, losing out on the better economics that
the kibbutzim and moshavim received through
early higher tariffs, and nine years after the
process began – meaning that the entrepreneurs
lost millions of shekels.
When the door slammed on Tarabin’s solar
field in 2012 – even after appeals to the Prime
Minister’s Office and other officials – I took
the model of economic and social development
for vulnerable populations through green
energy investments to Africa. While the State
of Israel actively undermined the opportunity
in the Negev, the White House was receptive,
and the first solar success for the Obama-Biden
administration in sub-Sahara Africa took place
in Rwanda.
In 2014, Chaim Motzen and I connected a
PRESIDENT’S OFFICE
$24 million solar field at the Agahozo Shalom
Youth Village that provides income for the
village, good employment, women’s empowerment
and covered the health costs for 500 orphans
in the village for 25 years. This field became
the poster child worldwide for economic
and social development through solar investment,
and even Bono from U2 – an anti-poverty
activist – came to marvel. “Gigawatt Global
has created a crazy, futuristic solar field that’s
boosted Rwanda’s generation capacity by 6%
and has basically blown my circuits with its
possibilities,” wrote Bono following his visit.
More recently, Michael Fichtenberg and I,
with our impact investment partners and professional
team, have since also interconnected
a 8.6MW solar field in Burundi, the world’s
poorest country, which created hundreds of
jobs and is supplying 10% of the country’s
power, the first African solar win for the
Biden-Harris White House.
BACK HOME in Israel, Raed al-Kinnan was
understandably frustrated. He had used all his
contacts and goodwill to bring reluctant Bedouin
families to the table with Jewish investors
to plan solar fields, and there was simply zero
progress. When I would go with Raed to visit
Moussa Tarabin year after year in front of an
empty field to encourage him to keep the faith
and stay in the deal, he would say, “To where
have you disappeared? We need you here, not
in Africa.”
But there was simply no one in the government
to talk to. The regulator, largely controlled
by the Finance Ministry, blindly refused
– and still refuses – to make any special
provisions to enable the Bedouin to take part in
any of the solar programs, undermining their
economic empowerment even further. Perhaps
we should take them to court: how could it be
that in the democratic State of Israel nearly all
the solar fields are on Jewish land?
Raed realized that if his solar dreams are
going to work in the Negev, there would need
to be a government decision to establish a
solar quota for minorities, affirmative action
in zoning, a bonus tariff to account for extra
costs and time, and priority interconnection to
the electric grid. He rallied Bedouin mayors,
including Faiz Abu Sahiben from Rahat and
Dr. Mohammed al-Nabari from Hura, to sign
a petition. We testified in the Knesset and went
to endless meetings. Nothing.
So when al-Harumi sprang into his Knesset
office on July 26, 2021, commanding us to get
to work, the plan of action was ready from a
decade ago.
He quickly outlined three steps: a regional
consultation in the Negev on October 3 at
Yanabia, an NGO headed by al-Nabari, to outline
the plan and receive input from the Energy
and Environmental ministries, Bedouin, private
sector investors and key NGOs.
Al-Nabari is also chairman of Wadi Atir, an
innovative Bedouin NGO combining traditional
agricultural practices with new Israeli
technologies established by a government
decision, but also recently denied solar rights
in a new pilot program that went only to Jewish-owned
lands.
The former Hura mayor is leading several
new initiatives. One is planning a second
major Bedouin city. Another is women-led
Bedouin agricultural cooperatives that would
deploy agro-voltaics, which means installing
panels above where they are growing lettuce
and tomatoes to benefit from the shade with
the solar income providing a secondary revenue
stream to pay for higher education for the
women.
The second step al-Harumi commanded
was a hearing in his Knesset Interior and Environment
Committee to present a draft government
recommendation for a solar quota for
minorities of 5,000MW through 2030, which
would create 10,000 jobs and attract $5 billion
in private sector investment. Since minorities
will represent 25% of Israeli citizens by 2030,
he reasoned, climate justice simply mandated
that 25% of Israel’s power should be also be
generated by them.
The third step was for Ra’am chief Abbas to
bring the climate justice government decision
to a vote in the cabinet.
The whole process was supposed to take
three months, to be quarterbacked by Micha
Price, a talented graduate of the Arava Institute
for Environmental Studies. The shortterm
initiative bearing al-Harumi’s name also
benefited from a seed grant from the Merage
Foundation, which promotes economic development
in the Negev, and came under Life &
Environment, the umbrella of the environmental
movement in Israel. Speed of action was
important because no one knew how long the
government of change was going to last, and
al-Harumi needed to deliver tangible benefits
to his voters to justify the bold and controversial
step of Ra’am joining a government.
We vigorously shook on the plan of action
going forward. As I stood up at the end of the
meeting, al-Harumi gently took my arm and
pulled me aside. “Even while we are planning
the government decision and the big projects,
promise me you won’t forget the schools. I
12
The Jerusalem Report August 22, 2022

was a teacher. Many schools for Bedouin are
running on diesel generators, which poison the
kids. Promise me you will bring solar power
to them.” I gave him my word. A month later,
Said al-Harumi was dead.
Outside the tent of mourning in the village of
Segev Shalom, Abbas is barefoot and leaning
against an old water tank. He lifts one foot for
washing, then the other. The Ra’am leader is
flanked by al-Nabari and the two men are in
somber, focused discussion. I sense that Mansour
is asking him to consider taking al-Harumi’s
place on the Ra’am list; it is only two
months since the government was sworn in,
and the representative of the Bedouin community,
who brought in the key votes, is now
gone.
Two hundred men sit on benches under
the makeshift black tent, the pebbled ground
crunching lightly as mourners stream in to join
the greeting line.
I wear the lone kippah. And Raed arranges
for me to speak.
“I am here on behalf of the environmental
movement to say that our hearts are broken
with yours,” I said, in the only Hebrew eulogy
of the day. “How is it possible that God has taken
Said from us at the very moment that he was
going to bring climate justice to the Bedouin?
Mansour, we are here to say you are not alone,
and we are here to be your partners to realize
Said’s dream.”
In front of the kaffiyeh-capped crowd, Mansour
beckons me to sit next to him for the
remainder of the eulogies. I feel al-Harumi’s
presence; a light electric charge is in the air.
Then Abbas and al-Nabari stand outside the
tent, and indicate that I should approach.
“You gave your Bedouin word to Said and
only he can absolve you of that,” says the head
of Israel’s Islamic party. “It is your responsibility
to now work twice as hard to realize his
vision. I will help you.”
Within two months, Abbas and I pen a joint
article in Haaretz titled, “Israel can help its
poorest citizens – and the planet – with green
energy,” and he had me appear in front of his
Knesset committee on Arab affairs to present
al-Harumi’s vision.
Al-Harumi – via a representative of the
council of unrecognized villages – sends me
and Micha out on a long bumpy path to a government-run
cluster of four kindergartens in
the unrecognized village of Elrara. The smell
of diesel is in the air, and the loud generator
drowns out normal conversation.
The municipality of Al-Kassoum spends
180,000 shekels a year of Israeli tax dollars on
Raed al-Kinnan and Hajj Moussa Tarabin discuss the need for a government decision to
advance more solar projects. Tarabin is the pioneer of solar in the Bedouin sector, with a
10MW solar field that was nixed by Israel’s regulator but eventually was built in 2018.
the diesel, which is often stolen and the kids
sit in darkness for weeks at a time. There is
also no running water. Kids regularly cross the
path from the school to go to the tiny infirmary
to use the ventilator or get referred to Soroka
Hospital for breathing problems. “This is our
Africa,” I say to Micha. “An hour and a half
from Tel Aviv.”
We go to the director of education of the
Al-Kassoum municipality to seek his support.
It is a hot Ramadan day, and he is running late.
As we are about to reschedule with his staff,
Omar Abu Asq comes in, obviously tired from
the heat and the fast. He sits behind his desk,
looks me over, pauses, and says, “Are you
Said?”
The electricity from the mourning tent is
back in the air; his spirit is hovering. And I am
stunned when I answer in the affirmative.
The director was asking in shorthand if we
are representing the Said al-Harumi Initiative,
but the phrasing of it took me by surprise.
“OK,” said Abu Asq. “Whatever Said needs,
I will approve.”
The plan was to raise money to build the
first solar school pilot and then catalyze government
funds for the other 23 diesel powered
schools. Over the course of the next six
months, three American Jewish philanthropies
– the Jacob and Hilda Blaustein Foundation,
the Lucius Littauer Foundation and James
Sternlicht’s Peace Department – stepped up to
support the initiative and the pilot.
President Isaac Herzog’s Climate Forum,
under the leadership of Dov Khenin and Dr.
Zohar Berman, have also endorsed the initiative
and are working to ensure its full implementation.
Meanwhile, Raed brought our previous Bedouin
solar land deals to fellow impact investor
Yoav Moaz, of the Marom solar company, and
they are about to launch Israel’s second Bedouin
solar field, a process that took six years,
yet the electric company still refuses to hook it
up until January 2024. We appealed this delay
to the Energy Ministry and are still waiting for
its resolution.
I later corner Energy Minister Karin Elharar
when she sat with Abbas at a recent Arab solar
conference, and she pledged – and actually
transferred! – NIS 15 million to swap out many
of the diesel generators for solar plus storage at
the schools. While some challenges remain with
building permits, which will be solved, al-Harumi,
from the grave, will be delivering this coming
year on his promise to the 10,000 Bedouin
kids affected. But not before the election.
And then, working with Abbas and many
others in civil society, the government passed a
sweeping decision, #1279, covering all aspects
of Bedouin life and allocating an additional
NIS 5.5b. over five years.
However, all the al-Harumi-related changes
we added in Section 11 for energy were removed
at the last minute by the ministries of
Finance, Energy and Justice, once again un-
MICHA PRICE
The Jerusalem Report August 22, 2022 13

Cover
Party leaders of the outgoing coalition,
including United Arab List party leader
Mansour Abbas (left), Labor leader
Merav Michaeli, Blue and White leader
Benny Gantz, Yesh Atid leader Yair
Lapid, Yamina leader Naftali Bennett,
New Hope leader Gideon Sa’ar, Yisrael
Beytenu leader Avigdor Liberman, and
Meretz leader Nitzan Horowitz pose
for a picture in the Knesset on June 13,
2021.
MK Said al-Harumi and Yosef
Abramowitz launch the solar initiative
for Bedouin in the Negev.
14
MICHA PRICE
dermining solar-powered equitable land compromises
and large-scale green energy investments
in the Bedouin communities. And then
the government fell on June 30, 10 months
after al-Harumi’s death.
Abbas is committed to adding another senior
Bedouin figure in the top four slots in the
upcoming election, probably our friend Abu
Sabihan, mayor of Rahat. And he is working
to expand his Arab representation to include
candidates from the Druze and Christian communities.
(There are rumors of even having a
Jewish representative on the Ra’am list, like
the Joint List has MK Ofer Kassif, and Dov
Khenin before him) A rival, more secular Bedouin
party is working to join the Joint List,
which may split the Bedouin vote and weaken
Ra’am’s chances of entering the Knesset.
Netanyahu began the process of legitimizing
Ra’am as a potential coalition partner, but
when they joined the Bennett-Lapid government
instead, he and other senior Likud officials
call them “terrorism supporters.”
Likud led a walk-out from the Knesset plenary
on January 5, with Mansour presiding in
the speaker’s chair, which then passed an electricity
law 61-0 supported by the Israel Electric
Company to hook up unlicensed Arab homes
to the national grid.
In Israel’s highly politicized political environment,
for every action, there is a counterreaction.
A week later, Likud provocatively
planted trees with JNF-KKL on disputed Bedouin
land in the Negev, knowing it would create
a flash-point to rally their right-wing electoral
base while trying to plant discord between
Ra’am and the rest of the coalition. Perched on
a hilltop above the fray, I watched in horror
as Israel deployed a show of force against the
Bedouin who had gathered in protest, and ran
for cover when drones dropped smoke bombs
and tear gas on us.
The Jerusalem Report August 22, 2022
ARIEL ZANDBERG/HANDOUT/REUTERS
I caught a lift out of the fight with Raed’s
father, and his uncle, who asked me to photograph
the bruise he received from a rubber
bullet on his back.
While al-Harumi’s shadow is the largest one
cast over the Bedouin sector, there is a second
Bedouin ghost hovering over the election. His
name is Yakub Abu al-Kiyan, another uncle of
Raed’s and an educator who was killed by Israeli
police in 2017 when they invaded Raed’s
village to demolish homes. A police officer,
Erez Levy, was also killed in the altercation.
Initial reports called it an ISIS attack but the
Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) later retracted
it, and three years later Netanyahu, in courting
Ra’am to join his coalition, apologized for
the incident.
Two nights after the killing, I and my oldest
daughter, Aliza, then 24, snuck into al-Hiran
village at 2 a.m. and slept on Raed and Mariam’s
couch and floor. The next morning 7,000
Bedouin men gathered for a spirited prayer
memorial rally at the foot of the village. We
were the only Jews, and Aliza the only woman.
“They killed Yakub twice,” said Raed from the
stage over the diesel-powered sound system.
“First with bullets and then his reputation.”
Repeated shouts of “Allahu Akbar” rang out
in unison.
Anywhere else in the world, Aliza and I
would have felt in danger. But not in Said
al-Harumi’s Negev, and not in Raed’s unrecognized
village. For most Bedouin leaders are
possessed by the spirit of openness to cooperate
with Jewish Israel at least through one more
election.
What is unclear, however, is whether enough
of their followers will take that sentiment to the
ballot box on November 1, so that Ra’am can
once again join the coalition and finally pass
al-Harumi’s government decision on transformative
social and economic development and
win-win land deals through solar investments.
At press time, Ra’am – and perhaps Said
al-Harumi’s spirit – is hovering just above the
electoral threshold.
“Ra’am has to remain in the Knesset because
they represent Jews and Arabs wanting to work
together,” says a senior official in a Bedouin
town. “I believe most believe in this path.” ■
Nominated by 12 African countries for the
Nobel Peace Prize for his solar work, Yosef Israel
Abramowitz is the co-founder of the Said
Al-Harumi Initiative, serves on President Herzog’s
Climate Forum, and is CEO of Energiya
Global Capital, an impact investment platform.
He can be followed @KaptainSunshine