Judaization of the Galilee (Arabic: تهويد الجليل, tahweed Al-Jaleel; Hebrew: Yehud ha-Galil) is a project and regional policy of various agencies of the Israeli government and associated non-governmental agencies that seeks to settle as many Jews as possible in the Galilee, a region within Israel with a Palestinian Arab majority.[1][2][3]
The project was the brainchild of Yosef Nahmani and Yosef Weitz who sought to create a Jewish majority in the Galilee to reduce "the Arab threat" and prevent the formation of "a nucleus of Arab nationalism within the Jewish state."[1]
Beginning in the early 1950s, the Jewish Agency, Israel Defence Forces (IDF) and Interior Ministry coordinated their efforts to increase the number of Jews living in the Galilee in accordance with the vision outlined by Nahmani and Weitz.[4]
Part of the effort to develop and populate the Galilee with a Jewish majority included the Land Acquisition Law of 1953 that resulted in the confiscation of 1,220,000 dunams of land belonging to Arabs over the course of the first year.[1]
Nahmani had advocated that particular attention be paid to settling Jews in the city of Nazareth in a 1953 letter to Prime Minister Ben-Gurion.[5] In the second half of 1954, the Defense Ministry expanded its role in plans for the settlement of the Galilee by setting up the Galilee Development Department which was concerned with, among other things, caring for the new Jewish settlement of Upper Nazareth founded by the government that year.[4] The subsequent creation of the Jewish city of Karmiel was also part of implementing the same policy.
Project implementation in the 1970s involved further confiscations of Arab land by the state, explicitly announced under the banner of the "Judaization of the Galilee" in February 1976.[6] The announcement provoked the calling of a general strike and demonstrations by the Arab population in which 6 Arab citizens were killed and many more wounded and arrested by state forces. These events are commemorated annually by Palestinians on Land Day.[6]
By the mid-1970s, "it was clear that the Jewish settlement drive in the Galilee was a failure."[7] Israel Koenig, author of the Koenig Memorandum, renewed the call for the Judaization of the Galilee in 1977.[7] The continued growth of the Arab population and their continued ownership of land were sources of consternation for Koenig, who advocated adopting measures to compel them to leave the country.[7]