This chapter examines the evolving relationship between the State of Israel and its Bedouin community in the Negev between 1947 and the early 1970s, a formative period in Israel’s minority policy. Based on archival and scholarly sources, it explores three interrelated dimensions: land ownership and policy, governance mechanisms, particularly under military administration, and the transition from nomadism to urban settlement. These developments are analyzed through a hybrid framework of governance, emphasizing the state’s strategic engagement with tribal structures in a context of security pressures, administrative limitations, and cultural complexity. State policy shifted between centralization and tactical accommodation rather than following a fixed ideological path. The chapter further explores the legal implications of these policies, including the application of military regulations, contested land claims, and the institutionalization of tribal authority within nondemocratic frameworks. It shows how early legal and spatial arrangements continue to generate tensions around land rights, citizenship, and local governance. The Negev case reveals how state authority was pragmatically negotiated and exercised at the margins, with effects that still resonate today.