‘Judaize the Galilee’: West Bank settlers’ flagship movement is eyeing Israel’s North
Ramat Arbel in 2023
Kim Legziel reports in Haaretz on 5 March 2025:
A few months into the cease-fire in the north, there is still uncertainty about the region’s future. But it turns out that the real estate market in the Lower Galilee, the heartland of the north, is heating up – and right-wing, religious newcomers are responsible.
Nitzan Peleg, the head of the Lower Galilee Regional Council, says that last month a local resident told him he received an offer to buy a quarter acre in the region’s Ramat Arbel area for 1 million shekels ($278,000). “I told him not to go near it,” Peleg says. “This is a settlement in the Galilee that has been raising land prices and damaging local communities.”
Ramat Arbel can be characterized as an “illegal outpost” in the Lower Galilee. It sits on privately owned agricultural land west of the Sea of Galilee and east of Route 65, near the Christian Arab village of Eilabun and Kibbutz Ravid. Though some landowners apparently allowed the establishment of this community, the land is zoned for agricultural use – and settling on it is against the law.
Ever since its inception around three years ago, Ramat Arbel has been making headlines at a dizzying pace; for example, when cabinet members had their pictures taken there. It’s not surprising that this place is in the news; the organization behind it is Nachala, better known as a movement that has set up illegal outposts in the West Bank.
Nachala is headed by Daniella Weiss, who wants Israel to build settlements in Gaza. The Canadian government has imposed sanctions on her and six others “for their role in facilitating, supporting or financially contributing to acts of violence by Israeli extremist settlers against Palestinian civilians and their property.”
The headlines and support from the government are helping Ramat Arbel. Two sources told TheMarker, Haaretz’s business newspaper, that the police refuse to help the enforcement authorities tear down illegal construction at Ramat Arbel. Since this unit cannot carry out enforcement without a police escort, it is not demolishing the illegal houses.
Ties to officials in the governing coalition won cabinet approval for Ramat Arbel in July 2023, based on the coalition agreement between Itamar Ben-Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit party, Bezalel Smotrich’s Religious Zionism and Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud. Officially, land for the community has not yet been selected, but it is expected to be public land on a nearby hill. Cabinet approval was awarded despite officials’ objections for years. They note that establishing a new community costs the government far more than expanding an existing one. Also, the necessary massive infrastructure work, such as roads and a sewer system, would damage open spaces and draw well-to-do people from Tiberias to the east.
The establishment of Ramat Arbel was first approved in 2002, but in 2006 a subcommittee on planning issues overwhelmingly voted against the move, basing its decision on a study by planning officials. In 2007, the National Planning and Building Council also voted no.
But when the current government took over in late 2022, approval for Ramat Arbel was added to Likud’s coalition agreement with the far-right Otzma Yehudit and Religious Zionism parties.
Celebrating the first anniversary of the establishment of Ramat Arbel.
‘Lower land prices for Jews’
Families in Ramat Arbel say they are on board with the notion of “Judaizing the Galilee.” “We came from Moshav Hazorim; we lived for 12 years on our grandfather and grandmother’s property,” Bilha Ehrlich says, referring to an agricultural community nearby. “We … felt that options for the Jewish community were shrinking and becoming more expensive, in comparison to the prospering Arab community. More and more people feel like a minority in the Galilee,” she says.
“We then heard about a group that staged an event here to raise awareness of the issue. They decided that their protest would be to remain here, a statement of ‘We are here until the government fulfills its promises and resolves the issue of Judaizing the Galilee.’ We realized that an emergency plan was needed; we Jews are just 14 percent of the Lower Galilee. How low will we go? We must not give up on this region.”
Ehrlich’s number, however, is false. According to an analysis by TheMarker of data from the Central Bureau of Statistics, in the region classified as the Lower Galilee, not including the Beit She’an Valley to the southeast, 38.7 percent of residents are Jews, while 61.3 percent are non-Jews – Muslims, Christians and others. According to Ehrlich, “We decided to do something far from simple, under rough conditions. We live a simple life here – electricity and water are never enough. This is our way of saying that Israel must have a plan to establish many Jewish communities, extend Jewish communities and generate lower land prices for Jews.
“This is why we are here, not from a place of taking over land, and not from a place of illegal construction. We want to wake the country up and change policy. It can’t be that in a region in Jewish Israel, which has room for minorities, we’re more a Jewish minority than in any other place in the country.”
Regarding Nachala’s joining of this effort, she says, “This is a great match because it’s hard to live like this. You need somebody to help you, and Nachala realized that the story isn’t just Samaria [the northern West Bank], the story is the entire country. This is exciting.” Ehrlich says that for two and a half years the people of Nachala “have been with us in applying political pressure, and they help maintain this financially. The community won’t be built here exactly; it will start on the hill in front of us, but, God willing, stage four of the community will extend all the way here.”
Ehrlich believes that the justification for Ramat Arbel lies in security issues. “After all, what did Russia want in Ukraine? It wanted places where there was a Russian majority. In a few years, Arabs will rise up and say they want autonomy in the Galilee.
“There should be a Jewish majority everywhere to ensure that we have one home in this world, or God help us. The stretch of Arab settlement from Nablus [in the northern West Bank] to Lebanon is a security risk for us; this is clear to every simple person. This is what Hezbollah based its plan on for the occupation of the Galilee.
“A state that wants to preserve its existence must establish communities that will block this [encroachment]. You see it in Samaria, in Gush Katif [Israel’s former settlements in Gaza]. Settlement inside an Arab population provides the military with better control on the ground, so that we won’t wake up to a bomb like we did on October 7.”
The real estate bonanza around Ramat Arbel is fueled by the assumption that the people there will not be evicted, and that even if they are evicted, their supporters in the governing coalition will ensure that the community is built there.
Trailers at Ramat Arbel
To Samaria– and beyond
Despite Nachala’s subversive image, and the Canadian sanctions on Weiss, it seems that as part of the changes Israel is experiencing under the current government, the mainstream is committed to the establishment of Ramat Arbel. Real estate agency Remax has been marketing that quarter acre [1 dunam] of agricultural land on the classified-adds website Yad2 for 630,000 shekels. The Holy Land real estate agency has been marketing no fewer than 11 dunams of privately owned agricultural land at 450,000 shekels per dunam.
A Holy Land ad calls this “an excellent investment” located “inside the plan” for the future Ramat Arbel. Additional agricultural land, apparently intended as part of the community, is also discussed on Facebook.
The real estate bonanza around Ramat Arbel is fueled by the assumption that the people there will not be evicted, and that even if they are evicted, their supporters in the governing coalition will ensure that the community is built there, where trailers stand at the moment. This land that is designated for agricultural use will become immeasurably more valuable if it is rezoned as residential. It will become a hub of private houses.
The Construction and Housing Ministry has only approved the planning of communities on public land. But the minister, Yitzchak Goldknopf, supports Ramat Arbel, something that a source at the Justice Ministry called “surprising” given that the people there are Religious Zionists, not ultra-Orthodox. Some observers, therefore, believe that there is more to Ramat Arbel than meets the eye.
Peleg, the head of the Lower Galilee Regional Council, says he’s the last person to object to the establishment of Ramat Arbel. But he says the place is illegal and the real estate wheeling and dealing is harmful.
He recalls that, even 20 years ago, the initiative for establishing a community there was based on privately owned land, owned in part by Jews from abroad. At this point, it’s impossible to figure out who owns the land where the trailers stand; there’s no evidence at the land registry. According to the national land website, “the property is in the process of being registered.” That is, changes are being made to the deed.
There’s another layer of complexity: The land is registered as musha land – co-ownership that stretches back to Ottoman law, under which the various plots belonging to each owner cannot be separated. It’s only known that this is privately owned land, owned by several people, some of whom are not Jewish.
But the wheels of the rule of law are still in motion, however slowly. On February 12, a demolition order was issued for a 50-square-meter (538-square-foot) structure with a cement floor in Ramat Arbel. That same day, the community’s supporters in the Knesset sent a letter to Netanyahu, with a copy sent to Goldknopf. They begged the prime minister to intervene and settle Ramat Arbel’s status immediately – even though the cabinet had already provided approval.
The letter is signed by Knesset members Limor Son Har-Melech, Yitzhak Kroizer, Amichay Eliyahu, Itamar Ben-Gvir and Tzvika Foghel of Otzma Yehudit, and Nissim Vaturi, Tally Gotliv, Ariel Kallner, Osher Shkalim, Amit Halevi and Etty Atia of Likud.
‘A generator and a water tank’
Weiss believes that Nachala’s first project in Israel should take a page from the efforts in the West Bank. “Two and a half years ago we were in the middle of a campaign of establishing outposts in Judea and Samaria, and we were approached by a group of Galilee families interested in establishing a new community – after no new Jewish community had been established in the Galilee for over 25 years,” she says.
“There was a dramatic nighttime meeting between the Galileans and the Samaria people, and [the Galileans] asked how to establish a community. We told them it takes a group committed to the idea, a generator and a water tank – and goodwill. They already had a group, and Nachala gave them a generator and a water tank.
“The spot chosen for the community is on public land, and partly on privately owned land purchased by Jews. A Bedouin man nearby has a herd of cows, and [the community] gradually took over parts of the privately owned property and parts of the public land. After we gave them the basic equipment, they set up a few basic cabins, and families moved in. That’s when the legal-illegal saga started.
“We as a movement and the people who live there have no private interest in properties there. This is merely leverage for Jewish settlement in the Galilee. We want to bring many Jews to the Galilee.”
From what I gather, quite a few people from Samaria are arriving for Shabbat and holidays.
“There are always people arriving, from Samaria too. We’re the parents supporting the founders, idealists helping idealists. We have no material interest, we have a goal: to raise the flag of settling the Galilee, using similar methods to those that brought us above 300 communities in Judea and Samaria. There’s a lot learn from Judea and Samaria.”
The unauthorized construction leads to real estate speculation in the area.
“Really? I’m not familiar with this. What’s for certain is that the families living there aren’t doing it.”
You claim that Ramat Arbel prevents an illegal takeover by Arab Israelis, but you’re also using illegal methods. There’s a contradiction here.
“The reason is to avoid a vacuum. Our toehold there – the last thing you can call it is illegal. This is just a statement that goes hand in hand with our statement to the minister and his team – we have no intention beyond raising the flag of Jewish settlement in the Galilee. “Our toehold there says something. This is how we move forward. Comparing the situation of Jews and Arabs in the Galilee and drawing on that – ‘they’re breaking the law, you’re breaking the law’ – this is seeing the wrong picture.”
For their part, the police said that they “regularly help various civilian entities throughout the year carry out their legal duties. Of course, we will not provide further details.”
The Construction and Housing Ministry added: “The ministry is promoting the establishment of new communities in northern Israel in order to expand housing options and to ensure that residents enjoy a high standard of living. Under these planning procedures, various alternatives are considered for each community, each with its own advantages and disadvantages, and [communities] are being built according to local and national needs.
“In the meantime, the ministry is preparing a survey for the establishment of Ramat Arbel, intended to be a high-density community. The survey is in its preliminary stages and three alternatives are in consideration, each with a different sized community.” The ministry said the various alternatives will soon be brought for debate at the planning and building committee for the north, after which they will be brought before the National Planning and Building Council, where a decision will be made. “We wish to make clear that the ministry is committed to acting according to legal planning procedures and is not involved in privately owned land,” the ministry said.
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