The government's decision to establish ten new settlements in the Negev was marketed in response to the terrible attack in the heart of Beer Sheva.
What is more true and Zionist than forming new settlements in the Arad and Dimona area?
Shaked and Elkin led, the prime minister greeted, and some of the heads of the Negev authorities supported.
What did they forget to tell us?
That these are community localities with admissions committees.
Bubble localities, which will only allow very certain people with very certain resources to be absorbed.
In addition, according to the Knesset Information and Research Center, each housing unit in such a locality will cost the state four times more than a housing unit in the neighborhoods of cities in the Negev, which are desperate for residents.
These are also localities that will be included in the only reserves of open spaces in Israel, which will double the number of its residents in the next 30 years.
And no one asked us, the residents of the Negev.
Suppose the government wants to allocate billions of shekels in favor of the Negev.
What was better than sitting down with local authorities, leaders and leaders in the region?
There are critical goals for the investment: reducing the shocking gap in outstanding matriculation data between the Negev and the center;
Expansion of quality employment opportunities;
Building a second hospital and treating the four years of life we live less in the Negev, compared to the center of the country.
Want housing?
Let's strengthen the cities.
Ofakim, Dimona, Rahat, Arad, Lakia, Mitzpe Ramon and Sderot.
If the "strong population" wants to reach the Negev, it is welcome to reach the neighborhoods.
In many cases, those who move to communal localities are the strongest population from the development cities themselves.
Studies on the effects of the Omer, Meitar and Lehavim satellite settlements on Be'er Sheva in the 1990s found economic and social damage in the city.
In the case of developing cities, the blow could be much more significant.
All of this brings us, perhaps, to the real motive.
About eight years ago, we struggled with a similar plan to establish ten localities, and we succeeded.
When we tried to understand its origins, we sometimes heard murmurs about "security needs."
Some see these plans as a means of protecting roads, ensuring a continuum of Jewish settlement and taking over the lands of the unrecognized villages.
Zionist?
patriotic?
Cowardly and streaked.
If that is the goal, then we are once again in a loop of pushing the Bedouin population into the corner of "enemies of the state", and in any case the establishment of several community settlements in a few years is not the way to deal with the conflict with these hundreds of thousands of Israeli citizens.
And if we see them as equal citizens, this discourse is unnecessary and harmful.
In the end, we are left with vague promises to invest in cities, alongside the establishment of bubble settlements.
The roof agreements that burdened the peripheral cities and towering neighborhoods of an urban wilderness have already been canceled in the central cities.
Establishing neighborhoods that provide housing solutions, without adequate transportation, education and urban nature infrastructure - is bad news for any city.
A new and updated Zionism is one that preserves the few open spaces we have for the benefit of the public, and not for fenced communities.
Such Zionism puts at the forefront of our minds a revolution in the power relations between the center and the periphery.
Were we wrong?
Fixed!
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