(IsraelNN.com) Housing and Construction Minister Ariel Attias raised a stir Thursday when he warned against a growing anti-Israel Arab population in the Galilee and stated that mixed Arab-Jewish cities were “unsuitable.” He also said that hareidi-religious and secular Jews should live separately.

Attias, a member of the hareidi-religious Shas party, spoke at a conference held by the Israel Bar Association in Tel Aviv.

Attias spoke about the planned hareidi-religious town of Harish in the part of north-central Israel known as Wadi Ara, or Nachal Eeron. Bringing a large Jewish hareidi population there would “stop the expansion from Wadi Ara of a population that does not love the state of Israel, to say the least,” he said, in a clear reference to Arabs.

Wadi Ara, a winding valley between Hadera and Afula, is an area of Israel that was not conquered by the IDF in 1948 but rather turned over to the state in 1949, as part of a ceasefire accord with Jordan. It is home to a largely Arab population.

A town almost lost to Arabs
Harish was planned as a Jewish city, and infrastructures for several neighborhoods were laid down there in the mid-1990s. However, only two neighborhoods were ever built. Development of the city came to a halt in 1998, when the government brought an Arab crime family -- the Karaja clan from Ramleh -- to live in the fledgling Jewish city. The crime family had become involved in an armed feud with another clan and the then-Minister of Public Security, Avigdor Kahalani, was under pressure to relocate them. Seeing as no other community, including Arab ones, would consent to take them in, he brought them to Harish. The small local population was largely made up of newly arrived Jewish immigrants from the Caucasian Mountains who were not able to put up an effective struggle against the Karajas.

Since then, no developers have been willing to invest in the city. At a certain point it seemed as though the town might turn into an Arab one. A religious-Zionist seed group saved the day, however, by moving in and preventing any further expansion of the Arab presence. The seed group now numbers over 60 families, but it is not clear whether these will still be wanted at Harish when the hareidi populace moves in.

Losing the Galilee?
"If things continue this way, we will lose the Galilee,” Attias continued. “Populations are expanding there that should not be mixed.” The government should provide land for Arab housing instead of creating a situation where Arabs move into Jewish cities, he suggested.

Attias said that Arabs and Jews were better off living separately. “We can be 'bleeding hearts' about it, but it's not suitable,” he said. “Look what happened in Akko,” he added, referring to major riots that broke out in late 2008 in the mixed city of Akko (Acre) in which Arabs and Jews fought for several nights in the streets of the city.

Continuing to refer to Akko, Attias said Akko mayor Shimon Lankry had told him to bring hareidi-religious Jews to the area in order to save the city, and said it was worth it to do so even if it meant that he, Lankry, would be voted out of office by the new population. Arab residents of the city are harassing Jews and driving them away, Attias quoted Lankry as saying.

Hareidi, Secular Populations should Separate
Not only should Jews and Arabs live separately, Attias said, but some separation should exist within the Jewish population as well. Hareidi-religious Jews should live in their own areas, instead of moving into areas where most are not religiously observant, in order to avoid friction, he said.

"As a hareidi man, I don't think that hareidi Jews should live in non-observant neighborhoods, so that there won't be friction,” he explained. Friction is caused “because in the hareidi population, 5,000 or 6,000 couples marry each year,” he continued, creating a housing squeeze that can lead non-hareidi residents to fear a hareidi takeover.

Government at Fault for Housing Crisis
The government bears responsibility for the housing crisis in the hareidi-religious community and other segments of Israeli society, Attias said. Few government-owned lands have been offered for housing in recent years despite a quickly growing population, due in part to the high turnover in the Housing Ministry and the Israeli Lands Authority, which prevented long-term planning, he said.

Attias listed some of his own ideas for solving the crisis, and said he planned to begin by releasing large tracts of land for development. Land will be designated for all populations, including Arabs, hareidi-religious Jews and other Jews, he said.

Gil Ronen contributed to this article.