Far-right party, Likud agree on major plan to ‘Judaize’ Negev, Galilee


Accord between Netanyahu’s party and Religious Zionism said to include discounts on land, other benefits for Jews only, expansion of law that allows communities to disqualify potential residents

A Bedouin outpost in the Negev, north of Be’er Sheva

Or Kashti reports in Haaretz on 25 December 2022:

The coalition agreement between Prime Minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party and the far-right Religious Zionism party specifies that the new government will draw up and execute plans to “Judaize” the Galilee and the Negev, areas in Israel’s north and south, with significant Arab populations.

Judging by the party platform of Religious Zionism, and according to assessments by officials in civil-society organizations, the main instrument to increasing Jewish settlement in these areas will be the extension of certain economic benefits only to Jews who move to them. These may include discounts on purchasing state-owned land, with veterans receiving additional discounts.

In addition, the government may sponsor an amendment to a law permitting certain types of small cooperative communities to screen applicants.

Religious Zionism, which is headed by Bezalel Smotrich, will also gain influence over land policy through its representation on the council of the Israel Land Authority.

In addition, Itamar Ben-Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit party, which ran together with Religious Zionism in the November 1 election and split from it afterward, will obtain significant levers of influence over Arab communities in the Negev and Galilee: The main enforcement units of the Environmental Protection Ministry, the Israel Nature and Parks Authority and the Israel Land Authority are all destined to be reassigned to the expanded Public Security Ministry, which Ben-Gvir will control under its new name, the National Security Ministry.

“Civilian possession of the land is a precondition for the sovereignty of the State of Israel,” states the Religious Zionism platform, which promises “to eradicate the bureaucracy in land and planning policy.”  “Weakening of the settlements, especially in sensitive parts of the country such as the central Galilee and the northeastern Negev, constitutes a danger of the first order to Israeli society.” According to the party’s plan, the strengthening of Jewish settlement will be done through “removal of administrative and bureaucratic impediments … regardless of the decisions and judgment of legal officials.”

To ensure this, the incoming government has agreed to enact a law giving ministry directors general the authority to appoint the legal advisers of their ministries. In addition, measures are being considered to force government delegates at bodies such as the Israel Land Authority and the National Planning and Construction Council, some of whom are still considered professional bureaucrats, to support and promote the government’s decisions.

The coalition agreement between Likud and Religious Zionism also specifies that MK Orit Strock, in her additional role as national missions minister (formerly the settlement affairs minister), will also join the council of the Israel Land Authority. This body sets the organization’s policy on the allocation of state-owned land.

The National Missions Ministry will also have a seat on the National Planning and Construction Council and on each of the regional councils in so-called national priority areas. Control of these planning bodies will enable the party to abolish certain restrictions and increase the sale of land zoned for construction in rural Jewish communities, without increasing population density.

Another route to the development of Jewish communities only, which Smotrich has exploited in the past, is the expansion of the Admissions Committees Law.

At present this law applies only to so-called cooperative communities as well as neighborhoods built on former communal property in moshavim and kibbutzim. It allows such communities in the Negev and the Galilee with up to 400 households, to disqualify prospective residents on the basis of criteria such as “unsuitability for the local communal life” or the community’s “social-cultural fabric.”

A bill submitted by Religious Zionism in the previous Knesset would expand the bill to communities of up to 700 households and to “the entirety of communal settlements in the periphery” – including the territories.

Another mechanism is government support for education and industrial zones and in allocating land for construction, among other areas, by including various localities in a “map of national priority areas.” In 2006, the High Court of Justice overturned after an appeal by the Higher Arab Monitoring Committee the map for state funding of schools, finding that it discriminated against Arab communities.

In the years since there have been several other maps. In 2020, Adalah, The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, petitioned the court on behalf of seven Arab local governments in Wadi Ara demanding that they be included in the national priority area in regard to housing.  In April 2021 the High Court issued a temporary injunction against the state, requiring the state to explain why it won’t repeal its priorities map, and why the Arab localities shouldn’t be included in it. At the last hearing on the petition six weeks ago, the state argued that the matter must be put before the new government after it is sworn in.

Suhad Bishara, Adalah’s legal director and director of the organization’s land and planning rights unit, says that based on past experience she believes the new government will “find a mechanism to maintain the priorities area map mostly for Jews, for instance, under a new definition of ‘national fortitude.’”

A suggestion of this can perhaps be seen in a provision in Likud’s coalition agreement with Otzma Yehudit redefining the scope of the Negev, Galilee and Rural Development Ministry to exclude “social periphery” communities outside the Negev and Galilee – which include many Arab municipalities. The Jewish communities that are dropped from the ministry’s authority as a result would receive funding from other state agencies.

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