Strategic collapse in the Galilee
As the Jewish presence is shrinking in large areas, while Arab settlements are spreading over vast territories, the security threat is already visible on the horizon.
In 2016, the cabinet of the Benjamin Netanyahu and Avigdor Lieberman government approved, in a sort of ambush, a plan for the dramatic expansion of the Palestinian city of Qalqilya. The city, which has about 50,000 people, touches Route 6 and Kfar Saba, and is 14 km from the sea and 20 km from the center of Tel Aviv. As survivors of the massacre in the Gaza envelope, where terrorists reached Ofakim (23 km from Gaza), we understand that from 50,000 people one can build an army of about 3,000 people who will breach the fence in 20 places; the size of the terror army is proportional to the size of the city.
This was a complete failure of the leadership: Chief of Staff Gadi Eizenkot, Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The scandal was exposed by the head of the Samaria Regional Council, who alerted the heads of neighboring authorities on the Green Line, and the plan was stopped. This dangerous plan was built by the "guru" of Arab planning in Israel, Prof. Rassem Khamaisi, a man of the Southern Islamic Movement (Ra'am) and a member of the Islamic "Al-Aqsa" association.
In 2019, he participated in a conference in Turkey organized by AARDI, an organization whose "fundamental problem" is the very existence of a Jewish nation-state. In 2017, at a conference of the "Follow-up Committee," which is a kind of shadow government for Israeli Arabs, he presented his grand plan for a "comprehensive national project" that views Israeli Arabs as "Palestinians," indigenous people, and landowners who adhere to the right of return. His tactic is cooperation with planning institutions and their exploitation to grant huge areas to Arab authorities.
An impressive project by the "Jewish Voice" website has revealed how these general words have turned into a strategic catastrophe in the Galilee, with the energetic assistance of the State of Israel. In the center of the Galilee, 80% of the territory is currently under Arab municipal control, while Jewish settlements and main axes are becoming isolated enclaves. The tactic is inflating the future needs of Arab settlements and generous land allocation without proportions to their future size. This occurs while Arab birth rates are in constant decline, and from the moment the land passes from the state to the Arab authorities, enforcement against illegal construction ceases.
For example, the settlement of Kafr Kanna is supposed to grow threefold for 76,000 residents, without need, because today there are about 24,000 and the forecast for 2065 is only 45,000. It will expand east and north and effectively connect to Tur'an, while Route 77 near the Golani junction and the large IDF base there will become an enclave. For this purpose, a KKL forest will be cut down, which was once planted to preserve national lands when the institutions were still Zionist. This is probably a prize from the State of Israel to a settlement where, during Operation "Guardian of the Walls," there were riots, stone-throwing, and shooting at police by its residents.
This loss of control and sovereignty led Major General Itzik Turgeman to say openly that the IDF will not use Wadi Ara in an emergency. In the National Outline Plan (TAMA 35), Khamaisi participated in writing the chapter on the development of Arab settlements, in which "affirmative action" was defined in favor of Arabs in the Galilee, the Negev, and Jerusalem. This integrated into a government policy of removing the Jewish population from the periphery to live in towers in cities, through strict restrictions on the size of Jewish settlements to a few hundred families while encouraging the growth of settlements with an Arab majority, and charging Jews 5-10 times more for land and development than Arabs.
This policy succeeded and shrank the Jewish population in the heart of the Galilee to about 15%. Farms and "hilltop youth" are needed in the Galilee and the Negev, who stopped the parallel "Fayyad Plan" in Judea and Samaria to take over the territory. In the current government, the curbing of anti-Jewish discrimination has begun by Minister Orit Strock, who equalized the conditions for land allocation and prevented at least part of the future damage. But a future government that will depend on Islamist parties could finally collapse the Jewish presence in the Galilee.
