Majd al-Krum: Is Israeli settler terrorism expanding across the Green Line?
Abed Abou Shhadeh writes in Middle East Eye on 17 September 2026:
Settlers from the occupied West Bank recently established an encampment in Majd al-Krum, a Palestinian-majority town in the Galilee.
As tents were erected, and electricity and water infrastructure appeared, local residents of the town in northern Israel became increasingly concerned that the outpost – initially described as a temporary grazing arrangement – was becoming more permanent.
These developments must be understood in their wider historical context. In 1949, a year after the Nakba, the Israeli government adopted a policy aimed at increasing Jewish settlement and demographic presence in the Galilee. In those early years of the state, such decisions were closely connected with Israel’s attempts to consolidate control over the land seized from Palestinians, prevent the return of refugees, and establish new Jewish communities, particularly in sensitive border regions.
Over time, this approach became embedded in Israeli planning. Jewish towns and settlements in border areas were not perceived merely as civilian communities; they were also assigned strategic and security significance. The idea of “Judaising” geographical areas – the Galilee, the Negev and, in different political forms, the occupied West Bank – gradually became a recurring element of Israeli political discourse.
In the Galilee, this policy was implemented through the construction of new Jewish towns, land expropriations, and accelerated development. Cities such as Karmiel, Upper Nazareth (today Nof HaGalil) and Maalot were part of this broader process.
By the late 1970s, the “mitzpim” programme had established dozens of small Jewish communities throughout the Galilee, explicitly intended to disperse Jewish settlement, strengthen control over state land, and alter the region’s demographic balance. The land policies of this era were among the developments that led to Palestinian Land Day protests in March 1976.
Shaping demographic realities
What is important here is that the idea was not historically confined to the Israeli right. During the 1970s, calls to strengthen Jewish settlement in the Galilee were also promoted within the Zionist Labor establishment.
The political vocabulary might have changed over the decades, but the underlying concept – using settlement and land policy as instruments for shaping demographic and territorial realities – remains deeply rooted in Israeli politics.
The settlement project in the occupied West Bank eventually developed this logic far beyond the planning mechanisms used inside Israel. Settlements and unauthorised outposts became not only places of residence, but political instruments for determining facts on the ground, breaking Palestinian territorial continuity and hindering the prospects for a Palestinian state.
In August, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich unveiled a pre-election plan to expand what he calls his settlement “revolution” from the occupied West Bank to the Negev and the Galilee, reportedly using the explicit language of “Judaising” these regions. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu subsequently spoke of expanding Jewish settlement in the Galilee and the Negev.
Then came Majd al-Krum. The Jewish National Fund (JNF), which owns part of the land, said it had leased the area for grazing purposes. Yet footage from the site showed an established camp and, according to media reports, no livestock.