Settlers from West Bank said trying to set up outpost near Galilee Arab town

Israeli youths, said to be settlers from the West Bank, are filmed trying to set up an encampment near the Arab town of Majd al-Krum in the Galilee.

The youths can be seen setting up tents, cookers and stringing electric cables at the site.

Police were preventing local residents and left-wing political activists from reaching the scene.

“The settlers here on the lands of Majd al-Krum are hilltop youth from the West Bank who arrived here to set up a new settlement,” local council head Raouf Hamoud says in a video posted to social media.

Far-left MK Ofer Cassif from the Arab majority Hadash party, accuses the settlers of trying to replicate the tactics used to drive Arabs off their land in the West Bank, in northern Israel.

???? מתנחלים מקימים אוהלים גדולים על אדמות מג'ד אל-כרום בגליל. pic.twitter.com/fKMU3t9njw

— Asslan Khalil (@KhalilAsslan) September 13, 2026

“What I saw with my own eyes on the lands of Majd al-Krum is the creeping transfer, copied from the the West Bank into the State of Israel,” Cassif says in a post on X.

“A group of extremist minors led by an adult Kahanist bully are taking over Arab lands under the protection of the police and seemingly in accordance with the (apartheid) laws,” he writes.

The Haaretz daily reports that the land, while in the municipal borders of the town, belongs to the Jewish National Fund which leased it to the settler for grazing purposes. However, no sheep or goats are to be seen in the vicinity.

The incident comes after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said last month his government is working to expand Jewish settlement in the Negev and Galilee, including by offering reservists preferential access to land.

That came three days after Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich unveiled a pre-election plan to expand what he calls his settlement “revolution” from the West Bank to the Negev and Galilee, explicitly describing the initiative as a program to “Judaize” the regions.