The Judaization of Israel, 1949-present

By March 1949, the war for Palestine had ended, but the process of Judaizing the country had only just begun. Israel continued to expel Palestinians from their homes, take over Palestinian land, and confine Palestinians into smaller and smaller areas of the state, and has continued to pursue each of these tactics to the present day. Alas, Zionism keeps doing what Zionism does. This is a brief history of the Judaization of Israel, 1949-present.

Settlement outpost Mishor Adumim, 1977. (Photo: Kopel Gad Phinehas, Creative Commons)

Between 1948-1953, the newly established state, led by the “leftist” Mapai party, established 370 new Jewish locales, 350 of which were built on confiscated Palestinian property. The stolen land included both the property of the Palestinian refugees abroad as well as 40-60% of the property of internally displaced Palestinians who remained within the borders of the State after 1948. 6,000 Palestinians from Umm al-Fahm, for instance, lost 80% of their land to government expropriation immediately after the war.

Israel’s goal was to Judaize the country all the while making it impossible for the refugees and internally displaced persons to return to their homes.

Meanwhile, between 1949-1952, Israel expelled another 17,000 Arabs from the country, according to a 1953 Israeli Foreign Ministry report. In Nov. 1949 and May 1950, for example, Israel expelled thousands of Bedouins living in the Southern Desert to Jordan. In Sep. 1950, the ‘Azazme tribe was violently ethnically cleansed from the Southern Desert to the Sinai Peninsula. In Sep. 1952, Israel also forced the Sanna tribe out of the northern Negev into the southern Hebron Hills in the West Bank.

Arabs who escaped expulsion out of the country faced dislocation within the country. Between 1948 and 1953, Israel forcibly concentrated the remaining 11,000 Naqb Bedouins into reservations comprising 10% of their ancestral lands, while the remaining 90% of the Southern Desert was taken for Jewish development.

By the mid-1950s, Israel’s Judaization efforts shifted to the north, where Palestinian Arabs constituted 70-80% in some areas. Jewish majorities were apparently needed in Galilee to minimize "the Arab threat" and prevent the formation of "a nucleus of Arab nationalism within the Jewish state," as Yosef Nahmani and Yosef Weitz put it. Zionism to the rescue!

In 1955, the Israeli government, still led by the Mapai, confiscated 74,000 dunams of land in the central Galilee and in 1959 took over an area near Baqa al Gharbiya in the Triangle for army maneuvers. Palestinian land has long been an ideal place to train soldiers, since Israel’s courts rarely challenge land theft when the reason provided by the government is “security.”

In 1976, Israel’s “left-wing” Labor government announced plans to confiscate 20,000 dunams of Arab-owned land between Sakhnin and Arraba to Judaize the Galilee. Palestinians protested non-violently everywhere in Israel, from the Galilee to the Southern Desert. In response, the Israeli military and police killed 6 and injured more than 100 Palestinians. 

In 1977, the right-wing Likud Party came into power, and the Judaization policies continued uninterrupted. Israel’s Minister of Agriculture, Ariel Sharon, was concerned that Galilee land without Jewish settlements would “fall” into Palestinian Arab hands. Zionism to the rescue!

So Sharon ordered the construction of a new round of Jewish settlements in the north, reviving the Judaization efforts. Some 30 “Mitzpe” (meaning “lookout”) communities were established to “separate the ability to secure land from the pace at which permanent settlements are built.”  

Israel wanted to take over land but couldn’t convince any Jews to live on it. Apparently, not enough Jews were interested in securing territory for Jews through building fences and planting trees. Zionism has long required personal sacrifice, and there were not always enough willing to take a hit for team Zionism.

So, instead, the communities were inhabited by soldiers from the Nahal brigade. To use a phrase beloved by Israeli leaders, they served as human shields, acting as civilians settling the land but also as soldiers defending it by force of arms.

Then, in 1991, as Minister of Housing and Construction, Sharon introduced his “Seven Stars” initiative, planting Jewish settlements along the Green Line to create a Jewish demographic barrier separating Palestinians on one side of the green line from Palestinians on the other side of the green line. 

In 1967, Israel annexed some 70 square kilometers of the West Bank into the Jerusalem Municipality. Israel annexed the land, but of course not the people living on it, who were not given Israeli citizenship. Instead, they were given residency permits that can be revoked if Palestinians fail to prove Jerusalem is their “center of life.” Since 1967, some 15,000 Palestinian natives of Jerusalem have been stripped of their right to live in Jerusalem. Israel also rejects the overwhelming majority of building permit applications in East Jerusalem in its effort to ensure a Jewish supermajority in the country’s capital.

Meanwhile, the Judaization project continues in the south. In 2012, proposals were submitted to the Prime Minister's Office to push for the establishment of 10 new villages in a 180 square kilometer area of land straddling the Green Line between Arad and Meitar. The goal is to “prevent the Bedouin from taking over the area.” 

In fact, over the past decade, Israel’s southern towns have seen a take over by officials identifying with Israel’s religious Zionist camp. Their aim is to Judaize the entire area by building new communities to “check the growth of the unrecognized Bedouin locales nearby.” Zionism to the rescue!

What’s more, Israel does not recognize dozens of Palestinian Bedouin communities in the Naqab. They face constant threat of forcible transfer and are not provided electricity, water or bus service. In May 2024, for instance, Israeli authorities’ demolished 47 homes in Wadi al-Khalil, an unrecognized Palestinian Bedouin village in the Southern Desert, after its residents committed the grave crime of birthing themselves to parents of the wrong religion. 

Since 2008, a parallel effort has been taking place in Jaffa, where religious Zionists have been “systematically” building religious seminaries and pre-military academies exclusively for religious-Zionists. They would march through the streets of Jaffa chanting, “Jaffa for Jews.” One scholar has even described the whole affair as the “Hebronization of Jaffa,” since the Jews claim they need police protection, exacerbating tensions, leading to more protests, and thus more police, and thus more violence against protests, and so on.

Liberal Zionists will try to convince you the problem is the occupation. But it was Israel’s left-wing Mapai and Labor parties that spearheaded the Judaization efforts for nearly three decades. The problem runs deeper than the occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, since Israel’s Judaization efforts are taking place all over Israel, from Jaffa to Jerusalem and from the Galilee to the Southern Desert. The problem, in a sentence, is Israel’s attempts to Judaize Israel through violent expulsion, land confiscation and settlement. The problem, in a word, is Zionism.

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