A Bedouin woman works in the kitchen of her home in the ‘unrecognised’ village of Um Al-Hiram in southern Israel’s Negev desert, yesterday. For decades Arab Bedouins have eked out a meagre existence in the Negev desert, living without mains water, electricity or sanitation, and largely under the government’s radar, but now Israel wants to move some 40,000 Bedouins from more than 30 ‘unrecognised’ villages into government-built townships.