"The Jews Are Going, the Arabs Are Coming"

by Daniel Pipes
(May 17, 2009)

(As it appeared in my e-mail today I thought it was still worthwhile to post)

That phrase comes from an analysis of settlement patterns in "Little Israel" (i.e. pre-1967 Israel) by Nadav Shragai in Ha'aretz, titled "Settling Jaffa, Acre, Lod and Ramle." Shragai finds that Israel is losing its grip on these cities with mixed Arab-Jewish populations:

Neighborhoods and apartment buildings in which Jews have lived in the past are being bought by Arabs. Some of these transactions are private initiatives, while others are part of a deliberate campaign. Take, for example, the plot near the Golani junction where a Hamas charity front nearly succeeded in acquiring land from a cash-strapped Jew. Jewish investors managed to raise the necessary funds, thus rescuing 50 dunams (some 12 acres) of agricultural land.

These rescue missions do not always have a happy ending. In Upper Nazareth, a town established over 50 years ago to solve the demographic problem posed by Arab Nazareth, "for sale" signs adorn dozens of residential structures. The sellers are Jews. The buyers, for the most part, are Arabs. A residential neighborhood originally planned to house career army officers is today inhabited by Arabs. In addition, the population of the Hakramim neighborhood is changing. The Jews are going, the Arabs are coming.

Comments: (1) This pattern precisely reverses the trend of a century ago, when Jews purchased Arab land.

(2) It fits several developments that I have noted over the years: Palestinians imitating Zionists; Muslim Zionism as a more powerful force than Jewish Zionism; Muslims wanting to live in Israel, not the Palestinian Authority; and the growing tactic of terminating the Jewish state through demographics and politics rather than through violence. (May 17, 2009)