The government's new plan to strengthen the Golan is good news, although it is important that we do not overlook failures in the Negev, Judea and Samaria or the Galilee.
If the plan is carried out, it will happen after many years in which our governments neglect the Golan Heights and the Jordan Valley.
From the time of the first Rabin government in the mid-1970s until now, a perception has taken root here that belittled the Golan and the Jordan Valley.
This stemmed from a "right" preference of the mountain ridge in Samaria and Judea, or from a "leftist" misunderstanding of our vital need for demographic establishment of Israeli sovereignty on our eastern border, and a false desire to buy peace through the "sale" of the Golan Heights and the Jordan Valley.
The result is the backlog of Kiryat Shmona, Safed, Hatzor HaGlilit, Katzrin, Tiberias, Beit She'an and Ma'ale Ephraim. Yes, this is not a mistake - both Katzrin and Tiberias. Their fate is combined. This is the same area: the eastern boulevard of the State of Israel, from Mount Hermon, through the Galilee finger, the Golan Heights and the eastern valleys to the northern Dead Sea. In neglecting Katzrin, we neglected Tiberias. The fate of Beit She'an depends very much on what is happening in Afula and Ma'ale Ephraim, and the State of Israel has completely forgotten it. This space needs to be examined comprehensively. On the whole, to varying degrees, Israel has failed a strategic, demographic and settlement failure, abandoning vital interests of its own.
It is not too late to correct this omission.
Following the government plan, there should be even more comprehensive planning for the transfer of a broad population to the east of the country.
Such a transfer can only be in an urban settlement.
The main thing should be a massive condensation of the existing cities (to calm the environment) and the establishment of additional cities in places like Almog Junction, for example, east of Highway 1. The development of the Be'er Sheva metropolitan area is not enough to accommodate the congestion of Israelis on the coastal plain.
Urban development of the eastern Galilee and the Golan Heights, the Jordan Valley and the northern Dead Sea are also essential.
These areas are relatively empty, because they are mostly rural.
It is important to move there and wipe out a significant portion of our population, because otherwise our settlement hold in the country is fragile and invading immigrants.
It is a situation that inspires hope among those who want to uproot the Jewish state through labor migration, refugee migration, "family reunification" and settlement outside.
Therefore, and in order to differentiate between the Arabs in the country and the Arab world and its refugees, it is essential for us to move the population east, and this is possible only in urban settlement.
The current plan is indeed aimed at strengthening the town of Katzrin, but not to the extent necessary, nor out of a view of the connection between Katzrin development and the urban development of Tiberias.
Transportation plans must also serve urban settlement in the East.
Important examples: a highway and a usable train to Beit She'an from the current population centers;
Train to Tiberias, Katzrin and Kiryat Shmona;
Widening of Route 90;
And a road bypassing Ariel to Ma'ale Ephraim.
The question is, therefore, will the government plan herald an overall demographic and settlement strategy towards the east of the country?
This will probably require a different government.
While one can rejoice, with restraint, in the fact that the collective responsibility of ministers for government decisions has returned, even for a moment, the ministers of labor and Meretz to the roots of their lost Zionism.
But there is reason to fear that they will try to make the new Golan plan an isolated plan of action.
And even for the development of the Golan, opponents arose.
The public relations people of the green organizations were summoned to a media "blitz" against me.
Even in the Golan itself, there are residents who do not want the "people with the Golan" to come and settle there with its impudence.
The economic newspaper The Marker attacked unrestrained day after day: "privileges" for Jews, "a racist and dangerous plan," "destruction and devastation."
And not only is human settlement disgusting to environmentalists, but also energy from wind turbines and solar fields.
All of these, as well as the automatic resistance developed by the left to settlement, will have to prevail when we come to create another demographic center of gravity in the east of the State of Israel.
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