Finance Minister and Additional Minister in the Ministry of Defense, settler Bezalel Smotrich, renewed his incitement against Palestinians, this time targeting the residents of Majd al-Krum in the Galilee within the 1948 territories. He threatened to replicate the “revolution” he is leading in the West Bank in the Galilee and the Negev as well. This came in response to the Majd al-Krum residents' resistance to a settlement outpost construction project on their land in the Shaghur area of the Galilee. Hundreds of young people held a sit-in there last night, chanting protest slogans such as: “Deir al-Mayy on the fig trees, long live Palestine!” and “Deir al-Mayy on the willow trees, we are a people who do not fear!”
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In Smotrich commented that the chants of “Long live Palestine” in the heart of the Galilee are an expression of the lack of governance and the need for a complete change in the behavior of the State of Israel in this occupied part of the country. Smotrich, in a tweet not devoid of electioneering, added: “It is time to look at the real threat looming over us from the north and the south. Only ‘religious Zionism’ has presented a detailed plan to change the reality in the Galilee and the Negev. Eisenkot is dependent on Mansour Abbas and therefore will let the Arabs act as they please. As for ‘religious Zionism,’ it will transfer the revolution in the West Bank to the Negev and the Galilee.”
Smotrich and other Israeli officials spoke before the announcement of the construction of the settlement outpost in Majd al-Krum about the need to move the settlement project from the West Bank to within the 1948 borders, especially in the Galilee and the Negev.
It should be noted that Smotrich and other Israeli officials, prior to the announcement of the construction of the settlement outpost in Majd al-Krum, had spoken in recent weeks about the necessity of transferring the settlement project from the West Bank to within the 1948 borders, particularly in the Galilee and the Negev. The Religious Zionist Party even released a video titled "We Are Judaizing," revealing its plan to Judaize the Negev and the Galilee. This racist demographic obsession exists among broad Israeli parties and circles, and predates the war on Gaza, stemming from the failure of all official plans since the 1948 Nakba to establish a Jewish majority in the Galilee. Even now, Arabs constitute approximately 53% of the population, according to leaked official data, despite their integration into settlements, especially after the confiscation of Arab lands in successive waves, the largest of which occurred in 1976, triggering the Land Day uprising on March 30, 1976.
In the Negev, the demographic concern is just as much, if not more so, especially in recent years, given that the number of Palestinian Bedouin Arabs in the Negev desert has doubled every 15 years. At the time of the Nakba, their number was about 12,000, and today it has become 350,000 and more, as a result of natural increase and the continuation of the phenomenon of polygamy, which the Israeli authorities are trying to combat through legal prosecution (polygamy is a legal violation in Israel) and by encouraging women to study at universities.
We will continue together until the outbreak is eliminated.
The Popular Committee and the Local Council of Majd al-Krum issued a statement yesterday, extending their greetings to the residents and youth of Majd al-Krum “for their honorable stand, their presence, and their role in defending our land and the rights of our people.” The joint statement called for continued struggle to remove the settlement outpost and reject its normalization, urging residents and youth to maintain their daily presence and participation every evening. The statement concluded with the words: “Together we protect our land, and through our unity we will continue until the outpost is removed.”
A chapter from the great conflict
Despite the presence of electoral considerations and calculations behind this escalation and heightened tensions between Jews and Arabs on the eve of the general elections on the 27th of next month, there is something larger, more dangerous, and deeper at play, related to the struggle over the land from the river to the sea and its identity, with the ultimate goal being the Judaization of the Galilee and the Negev. Since the day after the Nakba, Israeli racism has been practiced covertly under the guise of “developing the Galilee,” a euphemism for its true nature. Today, however, racism is being implemented openly and without embellishment, under the banners of “Judaizing the Galilee and the Negev” and “liberating the Galilee and the Negev.” Therefore, what is happening in Majd al-Krum today is an episode in a long-running series that began early on and is linked to this larger conflict. It is not merely a desire by some parties to inflame tensions for electoral purposes by trying to incite Jews against Arabs, continuing the inflammatory campaigns led by Netanyahu himself, such as the “Arabs are flocking to the polls by bus” campaign in the 2015 elections.
Although the total land area of all Arab towns in Israel today is less than 5%, settlement activity has focused on prominent Arab population centers, such as in the Galilee, where Arabs constitute the largest percentage of the population. This is evident in official data showing that the number of Arab schools and kindergartens is 60% higher than in Jewish towns compared to 40%. This reflects the demographic makeup of the region stretching from the latitude of Tiberias and Haifa in the north to the border with Lebanon. It's worth noting that Palestinians in Israel today make up 19% of the population and 15% of those eligible to vote in the Knesset elections.
settlement city
Within the Galilee, there are two large Arab communities that remain to this day. The first is the Shaghur region where adjacent Arab towns stretch along the edge of the historic Acre-Safed road. These towns include Majd al-Krum to the west and Ein al-Asad to the east, and in the center: Nahf, al-Ba'na, Deir al-Asad, Julis, al-Rama, and others. It was from this region that the idea of building the city of Karmiel in 1964 arose, as an application of the Judaization of the Galilee at the expense of the Arab lands of Shaghur. This followed a tour by David Ben-Gurion in the late 1950s, after which he remarked that he momentarily thought he was in Syria due to the high Arab population density.
Indeed, thousands of dunams were confiscated from Majd al-Krum and the rest of the towns in the Shaghour region in order to build “Karmiel.” The residents demonstrated and protested against the theft of their lands, especially since it constituted almost their only source of livelihood at that time, thanks to its vineyards and quarries from which thousands of stonemasons extracted building stones and sold them in arduous and difficult work at that time, as confirmed by lawyer Ali Rafeh, son of the town of Deir al-Asad.“Our majesty, you have no equal.”
Ali Rafeh, a classmate of the late Mahmoud Darwish in elementary school, recalls that in the 1960s, people took to the streets, chanting against land confiscation and Judaization, and reciting the words of the late poet Hanna Ibrahim, from the town of Al-Ba'na, near Majd al-Krum: "The late Hanna Ibrahim was a great man, distinguished by his morals, his humanitarian, internationalist, and nationalistic leanings." He noted that Ibrahim was a steadfast fighter who worked during the day in the quarries of the Galilee to provide for his family, and at night he became a writer and literary figure, considered one of the pioneers of the Palestinian short story, much of which was inspired by the Nakba of his people. Rafeh recalled some of the verses Ibrahim wrote, expressing his deep love for Palestine and the Galilee, which were chanted by demonstrators protesting the construction of Karmiel in the heart of the Galilee on Arab land.
The herald called out in Galilee,
the land of Arabism, for the Arabs
Our Galilee, you have no equal,
and your soil is more precious than gold.
We will not accept a life of humiliation,
even if it means becoming fuel for hell.
The confiscations and persecution of demonstrators continued, and the city of Karmiel was built as part of a Judaization project aimed at preventing Arab expansion in the heart of the Galilee and imposing an Arab character on the region. The late Prime Minister of the occupation government, Levi Eshkol, participated in the opening of the Jewish city. Karmiel was preceded by the construction of the city of Nazareth Illit in the early 1960s, adjacent to the Arab city of Nazareth and at the expense of its lands and the lands of neighboring towns such as Kafr Kanna, Reineh, Mashhad, Ein Mahel, Iksal, Daburiyya, and others.
The settlement outpost in Majd al-Krum appears to be just the beginning. There are numerous indications of a larger project to complete the settlement of the Galilee and the Negev, especially after October 7th. This necessitates organizing the Arab public through cooperation between local governments and popular committees, which should be established within every Arab town. This is in addition to efforts to enlist Jewish opponents of these racist projects. 300 Arab and Jewish figures sent a petition to the head of the Jewish National Fund (the global Jewish organization that owns most of the country's land), urging him to prevent the establishment of the settlement outpost in Majd al-Krum.
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