On the evening of December 15th the BBC News website published a report by two UK based journalists – Emily Atkinson and Jack Burgess – headlined ‘Israel plans to expand Golan settlements after fall of Assad’.
The report opens by telling readers that:
“Israel’s government has approved a plan to encourage the expansion of settlements in the occupied Golan Heights.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the move was necessary because a “new front” had opened up on Israel’s border with Syria after the fall of the Assad regime to an Islamist-led rebel alliance.
Netanyahu said he wanted to double the population of the Golan Heights, which Israel seized during the 1967 Six-Day War and is considered illegally occupied under international law.”
A link to that article also appeared in a report by Lucy Williamson and others published later the same evening under the headline ’‘We just need peace’: BBC speaks to Syrians watching Israel’s incursion’.
“And Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has announced new plans to double the population of Israeli settlements in the occupied Golan Heights, saying the move was needed because of “the new front” that had opened up in Syria.”
The report by Atkinson and Burgess was updated several times after its initial publication, with an amendment added late in the evening telling readers that:
“However, former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert said he did not “see any reason” for the country to expand into Golan Heights [sic].
“The prime minster [Netanyahu] said we are not interested in expanding the confrontation with Syria and we hope we will not need to fight against the new rebels that are presently taking over Syria. So why do we do precisely the opposite?” he told the BBC World Service’s Newshour programme.
He added: “We have enough problems to deals with.””
That interview with Ehud Olmert was the lead item in the December 15th evening edition of the BBC World Service radio programme ‘Newshour’ (from 01:41 here), with the synopsis telling BBC audiences that:
“Israel’s government has approved a plan to encourage the expansion of settlements in the occupied Golan Heights. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the move was necessary because a “new front” had opened up on Israel’s border with Syria, after the fall of the Assad regime. We hear from a former Israeli Prime Minister, who says the move is an unnecessary provocation.” [emphasis added]
During that interview, listeners heard the term “provoke” from Olmert and both he and presenter James Menendez referred to the “expansion of settlements in the Golan Heights”. Olmert referred to “building new Israeli settlements in the Golan Heights” while Menendez asked about “extra territory […] that Israel seems to be taking there”.
A news bulletin in the same programme (25:04) told listeners that:
“The Israeli government says it will encourage the expansion of settlements in the occupied Golan Heights.”
BBC audiences could clearly be forgiven for understanding that Israel is about to build new communities in the Golan Heights or even on land lying to the east of the 1974 ceasefire line. So, what exactly did the Israeli government decide?
At a cabinet meeting held on December 15th, approval was given for a plan to invest some 40 million shekels ($11 million) in the Golan Heights in order to “encourage demographic growth in the Golan communities and Katzrin”. As reported by the Times of Israel:
“The money will go toward education, renewable energy, the establishment of a student village, and a plan for absorbing new residents, said the Prime Minister’s Office.”
That latter plan is described in the official announcement as a “plan for organisational development which will help the Golan regional council to absorb new residents who arrive”.
In other words; no “new Israeli settlements” apart from a student village (presumably intended to free up accommodation currently rented by students at the one college in the Golan) and no plans to “expand” into what Menendez called “extra territory”.
Perhaps because it did not cover it at the time, the BBC is apparently unaware of the fact that three years ago, the previous Israeli government announced a similar – but more generously funded – plan. As the Jerusalem Post and others reported in December 2021:
“The Israeli government approved a NIS 1 billion plan to develop the Golan Heights that will at least double its Jewish population and allow for the creation of two new towns in the region. […]
The goal of the development plan is to double the population on the Golan within five years, including through the construction of two new neighborhoods in the town of Katzrin and the creation of two new towns already named Asif and Matar, Bennett said.
The plan calls for a NIS 576m. investment in housing to allow for 23,000 new Golan residents. This would include the construction of 7,300 new units of which 3,300 would be in Katzrin and the remainder in the communities under the Golan Regional Council. This includes 18 moshavim, 10 kibbutzim and four towns.
Another 4,000 units would be built in the two planned new towns, Asif and Matar.
The plan also calls for NIS 160 million for transportation systems and healthcare facilities. It will also invest in education and the Odem Plan for technological-security leadership in Katzrin.
Another NIS 162m. will be allocated for regional economic development, including tourism. Some 2,000 jobs will be created in agritech, hotels, agriculture and commercial sectors, according to the government.
The Golan Heights will become the “renewal energy capital,” the government said in summary notes of the meeting. This will include investments in solar projects as well as agri-voltaic projects and research across 200 hectares.”
Very little of that plan came to fruition in the three years since it was announced. Those “two new towns” have not been built, the population has nowhere near ‘doubled’ and the infrastructure has seen little improvement. As reported by Ha’aretz, the December 2024 cabinet decision that is the topic of these BBC reports is in fact a continuation of the plan launched by the previous government in 2021, albeit with a lower budget and some new aims such as the rehabilitation of land damaged during the war.
Remarkably, while that 2021 plan did not interest the BBC at all, the more modest 2024 version has received cross-platform coverage. The sole explanation for that is because it enables the BBC to promote a narrative concerning supposed “incursion” and “unnecessary provocation” by Israel.
Anyone who believes a word the BBC prints needs medical help immediately #defundthebbc