Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s announcement of a plan to settle one million Jews and establish 40 new communities in the Negev and Galilee has sparked an uproar in the Arab media and triggered a wave of fierce condemnation among Israel’s Arab population.
Prominent Arab activists claimed that the plan is a far-reaching attempt to alter the demographic and geographic balance in the region, accused Smotrich of “ethnic cleansing," and called on the Arab sector to turn out at the polls in the upcoming elections in order to stop it.
Hadash chairman Yousef Jabareen said he was concerned about the plan presented by Smotrich, describing it as apartheid. “If you read a similar plan by a minister in Europe, and instead of talking about Arab communities he were talking about Jewish residents, what would you say? That it was a racist and antisemitic plan."
Yousef Ibrahim, a member of the political bureau of the Abnaa al-Balad movement, discussed the plan on the Al-Jarmaq network and called on the Arab public to take a closer look at Israeli policy. “Our problem is that we do not study our opponents in depth," he said, calling for a “recalibration of the compass" regarding the elections and participation in voting.
Ibrahim argued that confronting what he called “settlement and Judaization projects" requires a broader understanding of Israeli policy. He called on the Arab public to “take responsibility toward the masses of our people" and participate in the elections.
Author and political activist Nivin Abu Rahmoun also argued that Smotrich’s announcement should not be viewed merely as election propaganda. According to her, it is part of a broader settlement project intended, she claimed, to reshape the demographic and geographic reality in the Negev and Galilee.
Abu Rahmoun linked the remarks to the “Decisive Plan" and what she described as a policy of Judaizing the land and strengthening Jewish communities. She said that viewing the plan merely as an electoral move “ignores the broader and more dangerous picture."
The controversy also reached Arab media outlets outside Israel. The Saudi Al-Hadath channel described the plan as “escalatory messaging ahead of the elections" and also referred to Smotrich’s stated intention to pursue changes in public institutions through legislation.
It further reported that the minister intends to remove anti-Zionist and post-Zionist elements who, he claims, have taken control of the institutions, and replace them with “good people who understand the challenge of Judaizing the Negev and Galilee, through legislation."
Al-Quds Al-Arabi reported that the plan had drawn condemnation across Arab, Islamic and European circles. The report claimed that the plan originated in the 1990s and was subsequently revived in stages.
Particularly harsh criticism appeared in an editorial in Al-Ittihad, the newspaper affiliated with Hadash. The editorial claimed that Smotrich had declared “a new war against the Arab-Palestinian citizens in the Galilee and Negev," seeking to transfer what it called “the settlement farms, the incubators of terror, from the occupied West Bank to the heart of the large population centers of Palestinian citizens within Israel’s borders."
The newspaper launched a fierce attack, writing: “This racist minister, and those like him, exploit every opportunity and every minute to advance not only scattered settlement plans, but an entire comprehensive project of ethnic cleansing that does not stop in Gaza or the West Bank, but creeps without disguise or masks toward the Palestinians who are citizens of this state. Thus, he is not threatening for electoral purposes, but announcing his next steps."
The editorial continued: “Judaization projects are not new, but in the minds and jaws of the unrestrained fascists, they will become more dangerous and violent. This is a real, direct and tangible threat to every Arab town, village and city, to each and every one of us. No one has the privilege of treating this with any kind of laxity or delay."
At the conclusion of the editorial, the newspaper called on the Arab public to vote in the elections in order to stop the plan: “With the utmost clarity, we say-the first step toward repelling and breaking this declared campaign of violent war in every sense of the word against the neighborhoods, homes and streets of Arab citizens in this state is to bring down the government, beginning with the next elections, in which the Arab masses must throw all their weight behind sending these fascists to the dustbin of history."