By Donald H. Harrison
KFAR AZA, Israel— Sitting in his home in Kfar Aza, a northern Negev
kibbutz close to Israel's
border with the Gaza Strip, the treasurer of the Jewish
Agency for Israel, Shai Hermesh, worries not only about the Palestinians
across the line, but also about the accelerating birth rate of non-Jewish
residents in the Negev and the Galil (the Hebrew word for the Galilee).
Unless current trends are reversed, he said, Jews some day will be a majority
only along Israel's Mediterranean coast and perhaps in Jerusalem. They will be
in the minority on most of the land mass of current-day Israel.
Already, he notes, Arabs constitute a 52 percent majority in the Galilee. In
the ancient fortress city of Akko, north of Haifa, he said, their majority
assures that city will have an Arab mayor rather than a Jewish one.
In his own beloved Negev, he said, 72 percent are Jews and 28 percent are
Bedouins, but with their birth rate, the Bedouin percentage will be bigger.
"If we don¹t bring in more Jews to the Negev, in two generations the
Bedouins will hold most of the area of the Negev."
Understanding the demographic challenge to an Israel that wants to remain both
Jewish and democratic, Hermesh with the backing of Israel's Prime Minister
Ariel Sharon recently won approval for a national project called "New
Challenge: Zionist Majority in the Negev and the Galil" In essence, it is
a crash program to populate both areas of the country with Jews.
These Jews will come from at least two places, possibly three, Hermesh said.
First, he said, the Jewish Agency plans to provide greater benefits to new
immigrants to Israel who agree to settle in communities within the Negev and
the Galil. Second, it will work with the government of Israel to create a set
of incentives to lure Israelis out of central Israel to these two areas on the
periphery.
And the third source of Jews?
Hermesh gives a very political answer. "While the Jewish Agency takes no
position on whether settlers in the territories in Gaza and the West Bank
should be relocated to Israel proper, if they are, the Jewish Agency will
welcome them."
To persuade Israelis to move from Tel Aviv to the Galil or to the Negev, he
said, it will be necessary for the Israeli government to improve educational,
employment and housing opportunities in these two areas.
There is no university in the Sha'ar Hanegev (Gates of the Negev) region that
includes Kfar Aza. There is only Sapir College, which, though respected for
its undergraduate programs, is not authorized to offer master's or doctoral
degrees. This means that students who hope to advance
in professional careers have to attend universities in other parts of the
country, leading to a decrease in Sha¹ar Hanegev's population rather than to
an increase.
A more far-reaching educational program in Sha'ar Hanegev also could help spur
industrial growth in the region, thereby providing the jobs necessary to
attract and to retain the needed population, said Hermesh.
The Jewish Agency official said there should be a build-up in the number of
scholarships for students attending Sapir College, grants for professors and
expenditures for laboratories and other necessary equipment.
Hermesh served as Sha'ar Hanegev's mayor prior to his elevation to the
number-two position in the Jewish Agency, which is the chief policy-making
body for cooperation between Israel and the Jews of the Diaspora. He was
succeeded as mayor by his friend, Alon Schuster, who is a member of nearby
Kibbutz Mefalsim.
The national government will offer incentives to start-up industries to locate
in the Galil and the Negev, including interest-free or close-to-interest-free
loans that would be unavailable to them if they located in Israel's central
core.
In his determination to pack the Negev and the Galil with Jews, Hermesh
becomes impatient, even irritated, with some freelance efforts to help Israel,
such as two recent solicitation campaigns seen in the United States.
One suggested that Israel in the current economy was facing a hunger crisis,
while the other contended that Israel was unable to buy bulletproof vests for
its soldiers. Neither is true, Hermesh said indignantly.
Those alleging hunger seized on the case of an Ethiopian soldier seen begging
in the street for food to feed himself on Shabbat. Hermesh said if the soldier
simply had stayed with his unit over Shabbat he would have had plenty to eat.
Overall, he said, less than 2 percent of the people of Israel can be
classified as hungry— a percentage that Hermesh said is lower than that of
the United States. Furthermore, he added, even if people become hungry, they
never would need to starve because Israel offers them a safety net through its
national insurance and national hospitalization programs.
As for the bulletproof vests, he said, some well-meaning Americans asked a
retired Israeli general what the Army needs and he told them vests. But the
Army has the budget to buy its own, and hardly likes the idea that any friend
or foe might think it can't even properly protect its soldiers.
Yossi Coten, director of the Negev development center for Amdocs— an Israeli
company that specializes in billing and telephone listing systems for phone
companies around the world — said if the government wants to lure more
businesses to the Negev and the Galil, it needs to recognize that the costs
there are higher and be prepared to subsidize them.
In his office in the Sapir Industrial Park, which also is in the Sha'ar
Hanegev region, Coten said national testing has indicated that students
graduating from colleges in the Negev and the Galil are behind their peers in
Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Haifa in such subjects as math and English— both
quite important in the world of computer software design.
Amdocs has had to design special courses to bring some employees up to speed
in these areas, Coten said. With countries all over the world competing for
new industries and offering a wide variety of incentives, he said, industry
will be waiting to see action on the part of the Israeli government, not just
policies.
At the Sappir College itself— named for former Israel Finance Minister
Pinchas Sapir, who later became chairman of the Jewish Agency — dean of
students Alon Gayer is openly skeptical of the new plans for the Galil and the
Negev.
"Most of the governments over the last 20 years invested in the Occupied
Territories, not in the Negev," he said. "I believe a train will be
built sooner to Ariel (a city on the West Bank) than it will be to here. In
every place I will shout it: the government made its investment in the stupid
Occupied Territories."
Unless the government now emphasizes the Negev and the Galil, he predicted,
nothing will be done.
Currently, Sapir College is not permitted to offer a four-year degree in
engineering, only a two-year degree. Those who wish to continue their studies
must leave the Sha'ar Hanegev area for either Ben-Gurion University, located
in the more southern Negev city of Be'ersheva, or travel north to one of the
universities in Israel¹s central core or Jerusalem.
Alon Schuster, current mayor of Sha'ar Hanegev, said his region needs Sapir
College to be upgraded to one where professors are encouraged to conduct
research in their fields, rather than to simply teach. Furthermore, he said,
Sapir College should be permitted to develop specialties in which it could
excel. With such encouragement the college could present itself not as a
second choice to Tel Aviv University (or other major universities in Israel),
but as an alternative.
"If you don¹t have a degree, you can't earn enough money," agreed
Nili Schchory, manager of the Sapir Industrial Park. "The economy here is
deteriorating."
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