NAZARETH, ISRAEL // Israel’s housing minister called for strict
segregation between the country’s Jewish and Arab populations last week as he
unveiled plans to move large numbers of fundamentalist religious Jews to
Israel’s north to prevent what he described as an “Arab takeover” of the region.
Ariel Atias said he considered it a “national mission” to bring
ultra-Orthodox Jews – or Haredim, distinctive for their formal black and white
clothing – into Arab areas, and announced that he would also create the north’s
first exclusively Haredi town.
The new settlement drive, according to Mr Atias, is intended to
revive previous failed efforts by the state to “Judaise”, or create a Jewish
majority in, the country’s heavily Arab north.
Analysts say the announcement is a disturbing indication that the
Haredim, who have traditionally been hostile to Zionism because of their strict
reading of the Bible, are rapidly being recruited to the Judaisation project in
both Israel and the occupied territories.
Mr Atias, of the ultra-Orthodox party Shas, is drawing on a model
already successfully developed over the past decade in the West Bank, where the
Haredim, the group with the highest birth rate in Israel, have been encouraged
to move into separate settlements that have rapidly eaten into large chunks of
Palestinian territory.
Several mayors of large northern cities in Israel have appealed
to Mr Atias to help them “save” the Jewishness of their communities in a similar
manner by recruiting Haredim to swell the numbers of Jews in the north.
Mr Atias revealed his new drive on Thursday as he spoke at an
Israeli Bar Association conference in Tel Aviv to discuss land reform plans. He
told the delegates: “We can all be bleeding hearts, but I think it is unsuitable
[for Jews and Arabs] to live together.”
His priority, he said, was to prevent the “spread” of Arab
citizens, who comprise one-fifth of the country’s population and are mostly
restricted to their own overcrowded communities in two northern regions, the
Galilee and Wadi Ara.
Referring to the Galilee, where Arab citizens are a small
majority of the population, he said: “If we go on like we have until now, we
will lose the Galilee. Populations that should not mix are spreading there.”
Mr Atias also revealed that mayors of several large northern
cities where Arab citizens had started to move into Jewish neighbourhoods had
asked him how they could “salvage” their cities.
One, Shimon Lankry, the mayor of Acre, where there were
intercommunal clashes last year, met with the minister only last week. “He told
me ‘Bring a bunch of Haredim and we’ll save the city’,” Mr Atias said.
“He told me that Arabs are living in Jewish buildings and running
them [Jews] out.”
The Haredim have a birth rate – estimated at eight children per
woman – that is twice that of the Muslim population and are increasingly seen as
a useful demographic weapon to stop the erosion of Israel’s Jewish majority.
Mr Atias’s comments brought swift condemnation from Israel’s Arab
lawmakers. Mohammad Barakeh, the head of the Communist Party, told the popular
Israeli website Ynet: “Racism is spreading throughout the government and
Minister Atias is the latest to express it.”
The key initiative proposed by Mr Atias is the development of a
large Haredi town of 20,000 homes based on an existing small community at Harish
in the Wadi Ara, a region close to the West Bank.
Harish was established in the early 1990s
by the housing minister of the time, Ariel Sharon, as part of a huge settlement
drive inside both Israel and the occupied territories.
Harish and a dozen communities known as
“star points” were built on the Green Line – the pre-1967 border between Israel
and the West Bank – as a way to erode its political significance.
Most of the communities, however, were located in densely
populated Arab areas and failed to attract Israelis.
Until recently the settler population had spurned settling in
Israel and has been drawn instead either to Palestinian areas close to Jerusalem
or to frontier communities deep in the West Bank.
Cesar Yehudkin of Bimkom, a group of Israeli town planners
critical of government planning policy, said the goal of Harish was to occupy a
large swathe of land in Wadi Ara to prevent the “natural growth” of Arab
localities. “Harish is an attractive option for rapid development because the
infrastructure for a large town is already in place,” he said.
Mr Atias told Israel’s Bar Association that Harish was a vital
way to stop “illegal Arab expansion” and that the Haredim “are the only ones
willing to live there”.
The Israeli media revealed two weeks ago similar plans by Shimon
Gapso, the mayor of Upper Nazareth, a Jewish town established 50 years ago in
the Galilee region to restrict the growth of the neighbouring Arab city of
Nazareth.
He announced that 3,000 homes are to be built next year for the
Haredim to increase Jewish dominance of the city, which has seen a steady
migration of Arabs from Nazareth and its surrounding villages desperate for a
place to live.
Tight planning restrictions on Arab communities mean that there
are few places for Arab citizens to build legally and they are excluded from
hundreds of Jewish rural communities through vetting committees, Mr Yehudkin
said.
Mr Gapso, who is identified with the Yisrael Beiteinu Party of
the foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, has complained about the “demographic
threat” posed by Arabs moving into Upper Nazareth.
He recently told the Israeli media: “As a man of Greater Israel,
I think it more important to settle the Galilee than Judea and Samaria [the West
Bank] … I urge the settlers to come here.”
Some 600 ultra-Orthodox families have already signed up to live
in the new Upper Nazareth neighbourhood, which has the backing of Eli Yishai,
the interior minister and leader of Shas.
In a related Judaisation drive, Nefesh B’Nefesh, one of the main
organisations bringing Jewish immigrants to Israel, announced in December a
programme to offer financial incentives to new immigrants to settle in northern
Israel.
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