The Special Knesset Committee for Towns on the Eastern Border convened for its first committee meeting on Tuesday. The topic of the meeting was to receive a status report of a government plan from 2021 to promote sustained demographic growth in the Golan Heights.
The committee, which is chaired by United Right MK Ze’ev Elkin and includes nine MKs, was approved in the Knesset Home Committee and then in the Knesset plenum on September 12. The approval came just four days before news broke that Elkin’s party leader, MK Gideon Sa’ar, was in advanced talks with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to enter the government and serve as defense minister.
Some members of the opposition argued that Elkin’s chairmanship of the new committee was a political payoff by the coalition.
However, sources in the party argued that the two issues were unrelated and that Elkin was awarded the chairmanship since United Right, after breaking away from the National Unity Party in March, was the only party without a committee chairman in the Knesset.
The committee’s prerogative, as defined by the Knesset Home Committee, is to “hold oversight meetings of the actions of state authorities regarding towns that are in the following areas: Eilat, the Arava, the Dead Sea, and the Golan Heights, them being an important national strategic asset, while emphasizing environmental issues that are unique to the Dead Sea.”
Strategies to double Golan Heights population
Elkin said at the start of Tuesday’s meeting that the towns on Israel’s eastern border were a strategic issue that sometimes “does not attract enough attention.” Elkin added that the committee will examine whether the government is implementing its decisions, and “encourage and hasten” the government when this was not the case.
The issue at the heart of the meeting was a detailed plan passed under former prime minister Naftali Bennett to double the Golan’s population by 2025 through a series of government investments in housing, infrastructure, and services.
The Golan includes two local authorities: the Golan Regional Council and the Katzrin Local Council. The heads of both authorities described during the meeting the difficulties they have faced since the outbreak of the war in October 2023, as the Golan Heights have been targeted numerous times by Hezbollah rockets.
Rather than increase the area’s population, the two authority heads said that their focus was on maintaining the existing citizens, and ensuring that they do not leave the Golan for good.