Yaakov Havakook


Yaakov Havakook is an anthropologist and orientalist from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Be'er-Sheva.

Biography

He gained his Bachelor's degree in oriental studies from Tel-Aviv University, his Master's in anthropology from both Tel-Aviv and Be'er-Sheva Universities, an additional Master's in political science from Haifa University and graduated from.
Havakook researched the cave dwellers of Southern Mount Hebron, between 1977 and 1982. During his research he lived with the locals in the caves, khirbas and villages, wore their clothes, ate their food, spoke their language and carried an Arabic nickname. The resulting book, Life in the Caves of Mount Hebron, was published by the Israeli Ministry of Defense in 1985, and is used by both the Israeli army and the Palestinian inhabitants of the caves to bolster their arguments in the ongoing dispute over who has a right to them. His study of the living circumstances among the Negev Bedouin were published in 1985/1986.

Awards

Havakook won the Itzhak Sade award for military literature in 1999.

Books