Cabinet okays NIS 4 billion plan to boost country’s Druze, Circassians over 5 years
Community leaders welcome investment, but call it only a ‘first step,’ and express hope it won’t ‘remain on paper’ like previous promises
The government on Sunday approved a five-year plan worth approximately NIS 3.9 billion ($1.1 billion) to resolve housing and planning issues that have afflicted the Druze and Circassian communities in northern Israel.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich announced the plan in a joint statement. It was touted by the Prime Minister’s Office as the country’s largest ever focusing on the Druze and Circassian minorities, who number about 150,000 and 5,000, respectively, and mainly live in northern Israel.
“These actions reflect the strength of our bond with the Druze community. They fight alongside us, shoulder to shoulder. We have a unique alliance,” Netanyahu said in a pre-recorded video distributed by the PMO.
The prime minister noted that Israel’s commitment to the Druze community “includes the Druze in the region, in particular in Syria.”
Defense Minister Israel Katz announced Sunday that Syrian Druze would soon be allowed to work in Israel. Earlier this month, Netanyahu and Katz instructed the IDF to “prepare to defend” the Druze-majority city of Jaramana on the outskirts of Damascus in Syria, as regime forces clashed there with local Druze gunmen.
Netanyahu and Smotrich referred Sunday to the so-called “covenant of blood” between the State of Israel and its Druze citizens — a reference to Israeli Druze’s service in the military — and declared that it was also a “covenant of life.”
The five-year program, formulated in cooperation with relevant government ministries, will allocate NIS 650 million ($179 million) for planning and housing, establish a planning committee for Druze and Circassian localities, and accelerate urban and detailed planning, said the PMO.
NIS 450 million ($124 million) will be invested to align the education system with future job markets, it said.
The plan also seeks to improve electricity connections and subsidize new construction for discharged soldiers and young couples, as well as strengthen local authorities by investing over NIS 1 billion ($275 million) to increase their budgets and organizational efficiency, and to develop new income sources through economic projects.
Leaders glad but skeptical
The plan was welcomed by Druze and Circassian leaders but was received with a measure of skepticism.
Sheikh Muafak Tarik, the head of the Druze community in Israel, said the plan was a “first step,” and that more steps would be necessary to solve issues facing the community, in a statement quoted by Walla.
He called on “different government ministries [to] collaborate with the Forum of Druze and Circassian Local Authorities to fully realize all provisions of the plan, with an emphasis on schools, higher education, employment and economic growth.”
Tarik said the partnership between the Israeli state and its Druze community “must be expressed in the lives of the citizenry and not just in sharing the burden [of military service],” adding, “I’m glad that the prime minister emphasized this commitment and partnership, which must be translated into the language of action.”
Dr. Amir Khnifess, chairman of the Druze and Circassian Movement for Democracy and Equality, said in a statement, also quoted by Walla, that he was “happy about the plan” and hopes it “will not remain on the page, like previous plans and resolutions” that he said went unfulfilled and left local councils in a budgetary crisis, requiring them to turn to the public for funds.
Khnifess added that the government still has not repealed the “racist clauses in the Nation-State Law and the Kaminitz Law, which prevent the Druze community from advancing equally alongside Jews in day-to-day life,” despite the community’s sacrifices on the battlefield.
The community was angered by 2018’s controversial Nation-State Law, a Basic Law enshrining Israel as the Jewish national state, which was fiercely criticized as discriminating against minorities.
The so-called Kaminitz Law eases the state’s path towards destroying illegal building, despite the difficulty of obtaining building permits in Arab towns. Tarik, in his statement, also alluded to housing demolitions as a harm that the government must stop in order to support the Druze community.
