(April 19, 2022 / JNS) Israel’s government has approved 13 new communities in the southern Negev region, where the spread of unregulated Bedouin encampments has grown to such dimensions that some Israelis call it a national security threat. The government hopes that the new towns, approved over the last few months, will check illegal Bedouin squatting and strengthen Israeli sovereignty in the region. It approved plans for Kasif, designed as an ultra-Orthodox city of 100,000, in the northeast of the Negev; Telah, a city of 20,000 in the region’s northwest; and Nitzana for 2,200 families in the southwest along the...