Smotrich unveils sweeping plan to ‘Judaize’ the Negev and Galilee

By Sam Sokol 27 August 2026, 5:12 pm

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Sam Sokol is a former political correspondent at The Times of Israel. He was previously a reporter for the Jerusalem Post, Jewish Telegraphic Agency and Haaretz. He is the author of "Putin’s Hybrid War and the Jews"

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich unveils a plan on August 27, 2026, to 'Judaize' the Negev and Galilee. (Courtesy Religious Zionism)

Hard-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich unveils his “Yes, Judaization” plan for the Negev and Galilee, promising to significantly expand the periphery’s Jewish population while curtailing Arab building and intensifying “enforcement against illegal construction and the takeover of state land.”

Despite his Religious Zionism party’s failure to crack the electoral threshold in many polls, Smotrich declares that in the next government he will “demand” control over the Planning Administration and Israel Lands Authority in order to streamline building and reach his goal of “an additional million Jews in the Negev and Galilee through the establishment of 40 new settlements and dozens of farms, significant expansion of existing settlements, and the creation of hundreds of thousands of housing solutions.”

In order to secure these new communities, Smotrich calls for a broad initiative to “confiscate illegal weapons and target criminal organizations,” a reference to mounting crime in the Arab sector, which many critics blame on the current government.

At the same time, Smotrich’s plan calls for the cancellation of “the reckless plans approved in recent years in Arab localities, which have taken over vast land reserves and threaten the potential for Jewish development and settlement in the region.”

Smotrich says he will promote incentives for Jews to move there — including housing benefits aimed at doctors, educators, technology professionals and reservists — and establish large industrial zones.

This “national program for the Judaization of the Negev and the Galilee” is intended to “bring the revolution [Smotrich] led in recent years in Judea and Samaria to these regions,” Religious Zionism says in a statement, using the Biblical name for the region comprising the West Bank.

Smotrich, who holds sweeping powers in the West Bank as a minister within the Defense Ministry in addition to his post as finance minister, has worked to significantly boost settlement expansion, including the controversial E1 settlement project, legalize outposts and reestablish West Bank settlements evacuated during the 2006 Disengagement from Gaza.

Alongside his proposal — unveiled exactly two months before the upcoming national election — Religious Zionism releases an AI-generated video of two Arabs panicking over Smotrich’s plan.