In the context of a deeply troubled region in the world, this is a story of constructive cooperation among Muslims and Jews, Bedouin and Israeli partners, women and men. It’s a story about community, collaboration, overcoming differences and rejecting the tensions of history. It is exactly the opposite of the stories of haters and killers and hostage takers. They make the nightly news. In contrast, I offer this story. Note I have independently verified what is written here.
Today please meet some folks: Itzik Zivan, CEO of Al-Sanabel, the Hura women’s catering enterprise, and Mohammed Al Nabari, CEO of Yanabia, a partnering strategic infrastructure organization. They work in the Negev region of southern Israel to improve the lives and the prospects of the Bedouin people who live there. The Bedouins, who number about 320,000 in the area, are indigenous citizens of Israel whose presence there long predates the formation of the State of Israel (1948).
A public benefit corporation that began in 2008 with philanthropic grants, Al-Sanabel operates in the Bedouin town of Hura. It employs 34 workers in two locations, preparing hot meals for Bedouin schoolchildren in an area where residents’ socio-economic status is low. Israel’s food security act, enacted in 2004, guarantees one hot meal each day, often the only full meal of the day for many children. And the food is good; it’s not packaged fare — it is local cuisine instead, seasoned with spices traditionally used in Bedouin cooking. Salads are freshly made.
Al-Sanabel employs Bedouin women who are coming out of unemployment and who are thus disadvantaged in competing for other jobs. It provides them a means to become breadwinners, and it provides them educational opportunities — some of the women have earned their bachelor’s and even their master’s degree. They manage the business. Thus Al-Sanabel serves the Bedouin community in multiple ways, as a model of economic development and the economic empowerment of capable, hardworking women, as well as a model meal program that can be duplicated elsewhere. It has grown to serve 11,000 meals a day, with a profit margin of 13.3%. The profits of this “social business” are reinvested in the employees and in community projects. For more background, see “Al Sanabel (‘Crops’),” https://ajeec-nisped.org.il/?page_id=17115&lang=en, and “Al-Sanabel Catering: The Hura Model Making Business Mutual Case,”https://www.sbs.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/2018-06/al-sanabel_catering_the_hura-model.pdf.
At a recent meeting announcing the acquisition of a building in Arad that will come to house expanded and diversified operations, CEO Itzik Zivan articulated the vision behind Al-Sanabel as a social business that brings people together:
These are very difficult times. Many people in the country are in distress and struggling with negative feelings. We came here to bring hope. We came here to show that coexistence is possible in this shared space of the Negev, and what we are doing is for all the inhabitants of the Negev, not only the residents of any particular town. I hope that collaborations like this will only continue to grow. It’s good for us. It’s good for the town. And it’s a role model for the entire country, showing that when people come with good intentions and willingness and a bit of proper management, it is possible to make money, invest in the community, and coexist.
When it is ready next year, the building will provide space to double the number of meals that Al-Sanabel can produce, and it will provide space for three other social businesses dedicated to redeploying profits for the benefit of the community — one will produce condiments and sauces at the facility, another pasta, and another electronics. These four social businesses will provide an income for some 300 Bedouin and Jewish families in Arad.
Al-Sanabel numbers Yanabia (https://www.eng.yanabia.org.il) among its partners. Yanabia, which means in Arabic “springing forth from within,” is an NGO dedicated to working with “local authorities, nonprofits, and the business sector to build a bridge of trust for a successful collaboration between the Israeli government and the Negev Bedouins.” Yanabia’s activities encompass the areas of housing, education and other forms of human capital development, health (with an eye to closing the seven-year life expectancy gap between Bedouins and other Israeli citizens), economic development, local government, and improving the relationship between the Bedouin people and the State of Israel. Yanabia aims to nurture the capacities of the Bedouin community such that it can become an economic engine providing greater prosperity and quality of life across the Negev.
While today’s missive cannot showcase all projects that Yanabia is involved with, I will mention two. One is the recently announced Yanabia Al-Tebbi Medical Center project, which represents a partnership that includes the Israeli Ministry of Health and Sheba Tel HaShomer Global Patient Services. The project will provide 10+ clinics serving Bedouin and Arab communities in Israel, an imaging center, a dialysis unit, two labs, a gastro ward, and four operating rooms.
Another is an educational program called Desert Stars, which is designed to equip young Bedouins to succeed in higher education, to provide transformational leadership in their communities, to solve community problems, to engage in cross-tribal collaborations, and to help better the relationship between the Bedouin community and Israel. (https://www.desertstars.org.il/about-english). Dimensions of Desert Stars include the Desert Stars Leadership High School; the ‘Rawafed’ Extracurricular Center; two gap-year programs, one designed to empower young women; and an alumni program that provides support to graduates through their higher education and beyond. Desert Stars alumni collaborate, become leaders, and help to initiate and orchestrate community projects. Learning and growth for Desert Stars is mission-oriented and lifelong, and young people who are a part of the program are significantly more positive about their relationship with Israel. For more information on Desert Stars, see “Out of the Desert: How Leadership Education Is Helping a Tribal Society Integrate and Develop,” https://www.forbes.com/sites/dennisjaffe/2019/05/07/out-of-the-desert-how-leadership-education-is-helping-a-tribal-society-integrate-and-develop/.
The world sees daily reports of destructive forces, with an intensifying multifront war in the Middle East. But the world can be shaped by constructive forces, too. The work of Al-Sanabel, Yanabia, and other partners in the Negev provides models that are effecting positive social and economic change and that can well serve in many other places.
Readers, please note that the haters and murderers like Hamas try to undermine these positive forces. Hamas kidnapped Bedouins on October 7th. Some Bedouins were casualties of Hamas rockets. Some were victims of attempted radicalization indoctrination. Unfortunately, you don’t see that story told on the nightly news.
