Palestinian citizens of Israel fear they’re next target if far-right wins

Majd al-Krum, Israel – The police closed the road to al-Rus, so the villagers found other ways up there.

Beginning on September 13, local Palestinian citizens of Israel made the steep climb to the pine-covered hilltop above Majd al-Krum using horses, off-road vehicles and on foot. A couple of weeks earlier, settlers from the occupied West Bank had begun building an outpost there, on village land – one of the first such attempts on this side of the Green Line, the name used for the boundary between Israel and the occupied West Bank.

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The young Israeli settlers said they were there to graze livestock with a Jewish National Fund (JNF) permit. But there was no livestock, noted Hussein Mannaa, 50, a lawyer and member of the town’s Popular Committee. Within a week, the camp had grown from a handful of people to between 25 and 30, according to villagers, with a kitchen, a toilet, a water line and electricity.

Villagers rushed to the scene, so police closed the road to the site. Yet local Palestinians came in droves nonetheless.

Anas Sgaier, a 21-year-old law student and youth organiser, made the nearly hour-long climb up the mountain. “I remember one moment: I’m going up and it’s hard for me to breathe,” he said. “And to my right, I saw an older woman, in her 80s, with her husband … walking up 50 minutes, just to show her presence.”

After almost a week of peaceful protests that saw hundreds of Palestinians from Majd al-Krum and across the region come every day, the JNF ordered the settler tents removed. By September 16, the site was cleared out.

The village had won, for now.

Palestinian citizens of Israel gather on al-Rus during protests against attempts to establish Jewish settlements in the area [Courtesy of Basil Sgaier]

A ‘pilot’ experiment

A little more than a month later, Israelis head to the polls on Tuesday, and Palestinian villagers fear al-Rus was a prelude to what may come next. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich is campaigning on a promise to “Judaise” the Galilee, where Palestinian citizens of Israel make up a large proportion of the population, and says he will repeat there “the revolution we carried out in [the occupied West Bank]”.

“The al-Rus experiment is like a pilot … experiment: ‘come on, let’s see the reaction’,” said Husein Khalaily, 50, an economic consultant, while sitting at his home in Majd al-Krum.

Reaction was swift: the village’s Popular Committee met as soon as the rumours of the settler outpost were confirmed and, with the local council, called daily demonstrations. “The popular struggle alongside the legal track is what bore fruit,” said Mannaa, a mainstay at the weeklong demonstrations at the site.

It was young people who drove the protests, villagers said. “Bring your coffee and come,” beckoned Sgaier in Instagram posts alongside his cousin. “We’re only going up to drink coffee, because that’s our land.”

“Not only the people of Majd al-Krum: Deir al-Asad, al-Bi’na, Sakhnin, Arrabeh … from the Naqab they came,” recalled Mannaa. Some left-leaning residents of nearby Jewish communities also turned up. “There was this incredible solidarity,” said Khalaily.

Hanan, a Palestinian Christian from a nearby village, said the outposts she read about in the occupied West Bank had felt far away – until Majd al-Krum. “I never saw the Arab community so united and really fighting for their lands,” she said.

Smotrich came to Majd al-Krum, a village long known for its political activism, to campaign with a police force and a water cannon. “The young people were hot-blooded and wanted to go out and confront him,” Khalaily said, but the local committees and political parties talked them down.

But the targeting continued. On September 18, police announced the arrest of a 32-year-old Majd al-Krum resident over alleged contact with a Lebanese agent. Smotrich seized on it, saying Galilee residents were “in the atmosphere of October 6”, a reference to the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.

Anas Sgaier, a law student from Majd al-Krum [Al Jazeera]

‘The language is clear’

On August 27, Smotrich posted a plan promising one million more Jews and 40 new Jewish communities in the Galilee and al-Naqab, another area of Israel where many of the residents are Palestinian. His party then released an AI-generated video in which a West Bank Palestinian frantically warns a relative in the Galilee that “the Jews are coming” to “do to you what they did to us”.

Sgaier said he and his friends laughed at the absurdity of the video. Then they watched it come to life at al-Rus.

“He came here and said it clearly: ‘I want to Judaise the Galilee,’” said Khalaily. “Back in the day, they used to say, ‘we want to develop the Galilee.’ Today – the language is clear.”

Villagers believe the recent provocations are intended to create a pretext for making that happen, where Palestinian citizens hold rights that Palestinians under military occupation in the West Bank do not, making dispossession a harder proposition. “Building the outposts, they wanted to lead the people into a confrontation,” said Mannaa. “They want to impose a state of chaos because chaos benefits them.”

The settlers pointed to a grazing permit granted on the land of al-Rus from the quasi-governmental JNF. But according to Khalaily, the plot, about 8.4 dunams (roughly two acres), is half privately owned by his cousin, and half administered by the Israel Land Authority, which has long refused to partition it so the owner can tell which part is his.

“They chose Majd al-Krum because it’s hard to break,” said Mannaa, pointing to the village’s history of defiance since the Nakba in 1948, when many villagers were expelled from their homes. “If they break Majd al-Krum,” said Khaled Kewan, 27, a singer from the village, “[it’s] going to happen all over the Galilee”.

The JNF later said the “grazing” initiative would move to another plot about 500 metres away on land villagers consider theirs. But the village rejects any relocation, “even one tent”, Mannaa said.

Al Jazeera has reached out to the JNF, the Israeli police and the Israeli Finance Ministry for comment, but has yet to receive a response.

Election campaign posters in Majd al-Krum [Al Jazeera]

‘Coming not just for Majd al-Krum’

Whether Smotrich remains in power depends on the election results on Tuesday – where the Palestinian vote will likely figure prominently. Polls suggest neither of the main Zionist blocs can reach 61 seats without support from the Arab parties.

Turnout by Palestinian citizens of Israel has hovered between 45 and 65 percent in recent years. However, organisers believe the demographic’s turnout may hit 70 to 75 percent, a level last seen in 1999.

After the settlers’ attempts and provocations in Majd al-Krum, Mannaa boldly predicted the town “will go past 80 percent”.

Khalaily, a longtime boycotter who has only ever voted once, now urges turnout at every talk he gives. “These prominent racists who are there now have to be removed, even if just for a stage,” he said. He sees little difference between Netanyahu’s government and its likely replacement, “except that Smotrich and [far-right National Security Minister Itamar] Ben-Gvir won’t be in it”.

After October 7, fear kept Palestinian citizens away from demonstrating. “People got busy with other things,” said Khalaily. “Busy with fear, with making a living.” Crime in the town made it worse. “I’ll be sitting here at night and I hear the sound of shooting,” said Khalaily, who has children who witnessed three men murdered. “Nothing moves. It’s become normal.”

Palestinian citizens have more rights than those in the West Bank, leaving them caught between a system they oppose but must live in. “We here have the most to lose,” he said, “because we’re settled on our land and we stayed on it.”

As a result, many stayed quiet in recent years. “We left Gaza alone, left the West Bank alone, left Lebanon alone,” said Sgaier. “I said after that our time is coming.”

“I just didn’t expect it to come this early.”

However, after Smotrich’s rhetoric and the settlers’ local incursions, “the people who were indifferent about the elections, who didn’t want to take part or vote: the matter provoked them,” said Mannaa. “They know well what awaits us if this government returns to power.”

Some, like Sgaier, will still boycott. “What happened in Majd al-Krum, we solve it by going out [to] the street – not through the Knesset [parliament] and the laws,” said Sgaier, who sees little difference between the two Zionist political blocs. “They don’t want Palestinians here.”

Sgaier believes there was a real change where it counts: on the streets. During the protests at al-Rus, he saw people he never expected. “They are not politically engaged,” he said, “but they came, too”.

The settlers’ tents are gone, leaving only sparse remains and Hebrew graffiti proclaiming “the nation of Israel lives”. Nonetheless, villagers keep trekking up the mountain every day. Families barbecue there, and schoolchildren draw and play music.

During the weeklong protests, Khaled Kewan would leave al-Rus in the evenings to go to a recording studio. He and fellow musicians from the town made the song “Ibn Bladi”:

“Oh, land of mine, land of my ancestors!” he sings. “No matter how many walls they build across my country … I am a son of this land, a son of my own country.”

The inspiration was clear, but Kewan deliberately chose not to name Majd al-Krum explicitly. “Haifa’s my town too, Akka’s my town too, Sakhnin’s my town too, Arraba’s my town too … I love the whole homeland,” he said.

The settlers’ “Judaisation” efforts, he said, “are coming not just for Majd al-Krum, but for the whole Galilee.”