Ramat Negev Regional Council Ramat Negev Regional Council Ramat Negev Regional Council (, "Mo'atza Azorit Ramat Negev", "lit." Negev Heights Regional Council) is a regional council in the Negev desert in Israel. The largest regional council in the country, its headquarters are located on Highway 40 between Mashabei Sadeh and Tlalim. Ramat Negev communities are all kibbutzim, moshavim and community settlements. Revivim and Sde Boker are notable as former residences of Prime Ministers Golda Meir and David Ben-Gurion respectively. Some 6,000 Jews live within the jurisdiction of the Ramat Negev Regional Council. In 2012, the council approved the establishment of a new community, Ramat
Negev of the Negev are Jews, while 160,000 or 25% are Bedouin. Of the Bedouin population (a demographic with a semi-nomadic tradition), half live in unrecognized villages, and half live in towns built for them by the Israeli government between the 1960s and 1980s; the largest of these is Rahat. The population of the Negev is expected to reach 1.2 million by 2025. It has been projected that the Beersheba metropolitan area will reach a population of 1 million by 2020, and Arad, Yeruham, and Dimona will triple in size by 2025. Blueprint Negev is a Jewish National Fund project introduced