|
btives who live in the “autonomy” region of Samaria, and in the bGalilee 300,000 Arabs already make up a majority in a region bthat touches Lebanon, the Golan Heights, and Samaria. The bGalilee—Israel’s future Northern Ireland-Cyprus. bThe Galilee. Where Arabs outnumber Jews by a small bpercentage but where the Arabs make up 75 percent of the hill bareas. From the slopes of the Nazareth hills up to the Lebanon bborder there are more than one million dunams (a quarter of a bmillion acres), almost exclusively Arab. Where the Arab bbirthrate grows by between 4 and 6 percent a year, among the bvery highest rates in the world. Where the Arab population will bdouble in less than fifteen years. Where in a six-mile radius baround the lonely Jewish town of Carmiel there are twenty-sev- ben non-Jews for every Jew. bThe Galilee. Of which Shimon Peres said: “The areas in bIsrael that are still unsettled, or settled only in a certain manner, bare and will continue to be a subject for special attention beyond bIsrael’s settlement policy. The Arab countries which covet areas binhabited by Jews will be all the more greedy for the completely buninhabited regions and parts where there are no Jews.” bThe Galilee. Where Arab growth gives birth to Jewish bfright and flight. Where the army must build parallel roads that bbypass Arab villages so that Jewish women will not have to go bthrough them at night. Where in Upper Nazareth apartments bstand empty because Jews have left the town or refuse to go bthere. Where in the past twenty-five years 10,000 Jews have bcome to Kiryat Shmona and left; one-fifth of its homes stand bempty; in July 1979 some 500 families, including 70 teachers, bthreatened to leave. bThe Galilee. An area of which Yehoshua Ben-Porat wrote b(Yediot Aharonot, August 28, 1965): “Another reason offered was bthat ‘the claim has been repeatedly made that Galilee was not bintended as part of Israel according to the Partition Plan, and bthis continues to feed the hope that a plebiscite will be held in bthe area, which is after all Arab and not Jewish.’ Thus ‘the prob- blem of Galilee is a Jewish problem . . . it is an Arab empire bwithin our borders . . . and those who believe with the govern- bment that military rule alone will liberate [Galilee] are simply bmistaken.’” bThe Galilee. Where the city of Acre threatens to “go Ara- bbic.” And so Maariv writer Menahem Rahat (May 9, 1977) b
|
|