In March 1875 Claude R. Conder, leader of the Palestine Exploration Fund survey team, reported the land south of Ain Jidy, close to Masada, belonged to the Jahalin. He met one of their sheikhs, Abu Dahuk, and noted the size and strength of their horses and their fondness for tobacco. He states that they had recently been driven from their country by Dhullam Arabs and mentions a war going on three hours from the team's camp at Bayt Jibrin.[1] Earlier in the same year one of Conder's colleagues on the survey listed the Jahalin as numbering 150 men, with 100 tents, after noting the "utmost civility" of all Arabs, settled or Bedouin, from the Ghor area (the Jordan River and Dead Sea rift valley).[2]
The Jahalin lived in the Tel Arad region of the Negev at the time of the creation of the state of Israel.[3]
Near Jericho under Jordanian rule (1952-1967)
In 1952, the Jahalin were evicted from their lands by the Israeli army and they settled at a location southwest of Jericho, within the Jordanian-ruled West Bank.[3] There, they took up their traditional seminomadic lifestyle, grazing livestock in the nearby area and the Jordan Valley.
On 17 April 2012 a documentary about the Jahalin, "Nowhere left to go" directed by Harvey Stein, was premiered at the French Cultural Centre, Jerusalem.[8]
Since 2014, a football team made up of Jahalin Bedouin, the Desert Hawks, has been training and competing in the nearby Palestinian city of Bethlehem.[9]
References
^Palestine Exploration Fund Quarterly Statement for 1875. London. Page 132. "we found fully worthy of Dr. Robinson's remark that they are the filthiest and most degraded of Arabs."
^ abcPalestine & Palestinians. Beit Sahour: Alternative Tourism Group. September 2008. p. 162. ISBN9950-319-01-3.
^ abc"Bedouins around Ma'ale Adumim". B'Tselem. 18 May 2014. Retrieved 7 March 2016. The members of the tribe were nomadic, roaming in this area and in the Jordan Valley to graze the livestock on which their livelihood depended. After the occupation of the West Bank by Israel in 1967, the Israeli military increasingly restricted the Bedouins' access to many of the grazing grounds. Little by little, they were forced into the vicinity of the Jerusalem‐Jericho road. There, until the 1980s, the Jahalin Bedouins established semi-permanent encampments, as well as at least two permanent structures.
