Smotrich vows to Judaize Arab-majority areas in Israel’s periphery ‘like in the West Bank’

A Tourist Israel picture taken in Lower Galilee

Adi Hashmonai and Jack Khoury report in Haaretz on 27 August 2026:

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich launched a new campaign on Thursday outlining his plan to Judaize Arab-majority areas in Israel’s periphery, accusing Arab citizens of “occupying” the northern Galilee and southern Negev regions.

A Religious Zionism campaign ad published on Tuesday vowed to bring the so-called “settlement revolution” to the Negev and Galilee, while Smotrich himself made the comparison explicit in a press conference, saying he will do to these regions what he did in the West Bank.

The campaign ad, posted under the tagline “Ahmed is right to be scared,” featured an AI-generated video of a Palestinian in the West Bank calling an Arab Israeli, warning in clearly AI-generated Arabic script that “Smotrich is coming to do to you what he did to us.”

“He will take over land, build towns and farms; it’s already lost for us,” the Palestinian says.

In the press conference, Smotrich claimed that the “Arab occupation” in the periphery is in part a result of the “post-Zionist policy” of the Planning Administration. “We will replace these post-Zionist and anti-Zionist people [in the administration] to enable the moves we want,” he added.

When asked why he had not implemented his plan during the current government’s term, Smotrich replied: “That’s a question you can ask about any task. I’m comfortable standing here because I delivered. Why didn’t it happen? Because it didn’t happen … I did it in the West Bank.”

Joint List Chairman Prof. Yousef Jabareen responded to “racist” Smotrich’s plan calling it an “apartheid plan.” “Instead of proposing development plans, he seeks to harm Arab communities, prevent their development, block the flow of funding, expropriate land and demolish homes – all after many years of discrimination, deprivation and neglect,” he added.  “Arab citizens will not accept second- or third-class status. We will know how to punish Smotrich in two months in the upcoming election and keep him and his apartheid plan below the electoral threshold.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition has taken several steps to increase the Jewish population in Arab-majority areas, as part of the coalition agreement between the Likud, Smotrich’s Religious Zionism and Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit.

A focal point of the government’s support for the issue is their enthusiastic endorsement of an illegal Jewish community in the Galilee, Ramat Arbel, which can be characterized as an “illegal outpost”; it sits on privately owned agricultural land. Israeli police officers have declined to enforce demolition orders against the community.

Haaretz reported in November that the police were refusing to allocate forces to enforce the council’s demolition orders issued against the unauthorized structures. The orders eventually expired in late 2025 following the police’s refusal to enforce them.

Also in November, Ben-Gvir raised the issue with the head of the council, Idan Greenbaum, in an effort to dissuade him from enforcing the evacuation orders. Ben-Gvir said he sought “to Judaize the Galilee,” and accused Greenbaum of “obstructing settlement” efforts. Therefore, Ben-Gvir insisted that there should be no evacuation of the structures.

The right-wing organization Nachala, run by prominent West Bank settler activist Daniella Weiss, founded the illegal community in July on grazing lands used by Kibbutz Moran.

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