The new settlement strategy squeezing Arabs in northern Israel

BEN LYNFIELD visits an outpost where Ben-Gvir followers have launched a drive to assert Jewish supremacy over the Palestinian population — inside the Green Line.

To supporters of what the government terms “Judaisation of the Galilee,” turning an illegal outpost here into the engine for a drive to change the character of northern Israel is an example of good old-fashioned Zionist pioneering.

“We need more Jews in the Galilee, the Arabs are taking over everything,” said Eitan Rabinovich, an information science consultant who came to join in celebrations on Monday night of the far-right government’s recent decision to legalise the outpost, Ramat Arbel, and turn it into an all-Jewish town.

“I lived in Eli,” he continued, referring to the settlement north of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank. “We are talking about identical struggles for Eretz Yisrael.”

Opponents of the government’s Judaisation plan agree there are stark similarities with the settlement in the West Bank. However, they view this as cause for great concern, warning against the importing of Jewish supremacist norms, ideology and practices inside the Green Line.

“There is apartheid in the occupied territories and we are witnessing creeping apartheid in Israel,” says Thabet Abu Rass, co-director of the Abraham Fund Initiatives, an NGO which promotes Jewish-Arab coexistence.

The Monday night celebrations started as a debacle for organisers, with more than a thousand anti-government protesters from Jewish areas in the vicinity protesting against the presence of far-right politicians. Waving Israeli flags, they chanted “disgrace,” blew horns and beat drums that drowned out the festive songs.

Still, minsters including Jewish Power leader Itamar Ben-Gvir, Minister for the Negev and Galilee Yitzhak Wasserlauf and Likud MK Aryeh Kellner danced shoulder to shoulder with activists who a year ago established, without authorisation, a presence in this valley near the Arab town of Eilabun.