Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has put a plan to “Judaize” the Galilee and Negev at the center of his campaign ahead of the October 27 election. “What we did in Judea and Samaria will be done three times over in the Negev and the Galilee,” he wrote, referring to the occupied West Bank.
The plan aims to bring 1 million Jews to the two regions through 40 new communities, farms and hundreds of thousands of housing units, and to cancel plans that create “continuous Arab settlement” in the Galilee. Palestinians make up about 53% of northern Israel’s population and Bedouins 25-30% of the Negev’s; critics call the plan openly discriminatory.