AL QUDS, July 20: Israeli Premier Ariel Sharon’s office is planning to build 30 new towns, most of them in the northern Galilee and the southern Negev desert, the Israeli Ha’aretz daily reported Sunday.

An inter-ministerial committee in the office has issued a rush order to the ministries in charge of the project.

It asked the transport ministry to make preparations for a new road for towns to be built near the border with Egypt and another one for the towns in the north.

Ha’aretz quoted Sharon’s adviser on settlement, Uzi Keren, as saying the plan’s aim was to distribute the population of Israel, preserve state land and provide a buffer along Israel’s borders.

He denied that the plan was meant to stop Bedouin and Arab villages from expanding through illegal construction and said that the Arab citizens of Israel had a right to live in the Galilee just like the Jewish citizens.

But Housing Minister Effi Eitam said Sunday the plan aimed to create Jewish contiguity in the heart of the Arab population in the Galilee and Negev.

“These are regions of our homeland which really in the past years have seen wild Arab and Bedouin construction and it is about time that the state of Israel and the Jewish people renew their grip on these regions,” Eitam, of the ultra-right National Religious Party, told Israel Army Radio.

Settlement in the West Bank would not be affected by the project, he added.

The Galilee is predominantly inhabited by Muslim and Druze Arab Israelis, while many Bedouins live in the Negev desert.—dpa