Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked is pursuing an ambitious plan to build 16 new communities in the Negev, as reported by Israel Hayom. This sounds like an important decision, meant to strengthen the Negev as the country's weakest and most far-flung peripheral region and solve the housing shortage crisis in Israel. However, a deeper analysis of the plan raises questions about its motivations and quickly leads one to the conclusion that these new communities are earmarked for those who are already socio-economically strong and for real estate investment – and that any relation to bolstering the periphery is declarative at best.
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Even before the plan was approved the communities were named, and soon the wrangling will begin over the street names. But what about the existing communities in the Negev? They are starving for attention and help, from Kuseife and Tel Sheva to Yeroham and Ofakim. The minister and her staff have yet to provide even one solution to the serious troubles afflicting the residents of the area, and are already pushing a grandiose plan that will cost taxpayers and the state tens and perhaps hundreds of billions of shekels, and it's doubtful these communities will contribute to strengthening the Negev. Perhaps the opposite, they will only exacerbate the current gaps and hurt the existing communities.
Beyond the issue of the harsh treatment toward Bedouin communities, for example with home demolitions, the population in the Negev doesn't receive the proper care in any regard. The State of Israel is perhaps the only country in the world that invests a fortune in building dozens of new communities for just one sector of the population – while refusing to recognize the existing ones, some of them from before the state's creation.
It seems the idea to build 16 new Jewish communities stems more from political motives than a desire to ease the housing crisis. This plan is the answer Shaked has planned for the criticism she is bound to face once the government fulfills its coalition commitments to the Ra'am party and recognizes three Bedouin communities in the Negev. Shaked will have to ratify this recognition with her own signature to ensure the coalition's survival. And what are three measly and meager Bedouin communities compared to 16 brand new communities for the Judaization of the Negev and enhancement of governability?
Imagine to yourselves the feelings that Arab citizens of Israel have had to carry throughout the seven decades since the country's inception: hundreds of communities – towns, moshavs, kibbutzim, cities – erected for Jews throughout the years, expanded and cultivated. In all that time, however, the state couldn't find one opportunity to establish a new Arab city with modern infrastructure attractive to young, urban, middle-class Arabs. Most young Arab couples who can't buy land or afford to build a home in the Arab communities are "forced" to live in mixed or predominantly Jewish cities in order to buy a home and start a family.
What is actually needed is to strengthen the 16 communities in the Negev that already exist, Jewish and Arab alike, not to run ahead with 16 new ones that will not only deepen the gaps and perpetuate the neglect but also fail to achieve the stated goals – social, Zionistic, economic and otherwise.
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