KFAR AZA, Israel— Sitting in his home in Kfar Aza, a northern Negev kibbutz close to Israel's
border with the Gaza Strip, the treasurer of the Jewish Agency for Israel, Shai Hermesh, worries not only about the Palestinians across the line, but also about the accelerating birth rate of non-Jewish residents in the Negev and the Galil (the Hebrew word for the Galilee).

Unless current trends are reversed, he said, Jews some day will be a majority only along Israel's Mediterranean coast and perhaps in Jerusalem. They will be in the minority on most of the land mass of current-day Israel.

Already, he notes, Arabs constitute a 52 percent majority in the Galilee. In the ancient fortress city of Akko, north of Haifa, he said, their majority assures that city will have an Arab mayor rather than a Jewish one.

In his own beloved Negev, he said, 72 percent are Jews and 28 percent are Bedouins, but with their birth rate, the Bedouin percentage will be bigger.

"If we don¹t bring in more Jews to the Negev, in two generations the Bedouins will hold most of the area of the Negev."

Understanding the demographic challenge to an Israel that wants to remain both Jewish and democratic, Hermesh with the backing of Israel's Prime Minister Ariel Sharon recently won approval for a national project called "New Challenge: Zionist Majority in the Negev and the Galil" In essence, it is a crash program to populate both areas of the country with Jews.

These Jews will come from at least two places, possibly three, Hermesh said. First, he said, the Jewish Agency plans to provide greater benefits to new immigrants to Israel who agree to settle in communities within the Negev and the Galil. Second, it will work with the government of Israel to create a set of incentives to lure Israelis out of central Israel to these two areas on the periphery.

And the third source of Jews?

Hermesh gives a very political answer. "While the Jewish Agency takes no position on whether settlers in the territories in Gaza and the West Bank should be relocated to Israel proper, if they are, the Jewish Agency will welcome them."

To persuade Israelis to move from Tel Aviv to the Galil or to the Negev, he said, it will be necessary for the Israeli government to improve educational, employment and housing opportunities in these two areas.

There is no university in the Sha'ar Hanegev (Gates of the Negev) region that includes Kfar Aza. There is only Sapir College, which, though respected for its undergraduate programs, is not authorized to offer master's or doctoral degrees. This means that students who hope to advance
in professional careers have to attend universities in other parts of the country, leading to a decrease in Sha¹ar Hanegev's population rather than to an increase.

A more far-reaching educational program in Sha'ar Hanegev also could help spur industrial growth in the region, thereby providing the jobs necessary to attract and to retain the needed population, said Hermesh.

The Jewish Agency official said there should be a build-up in the number of scholarships for students attending Sapir College, grants for professors and expenditures for laboratories and other necessary equipment.

Hermesh served as Sha'ar Hanegev's mayor prior to his elevation to the number-two position in the Jewish Agency, which is the chief policy-making body for cooperation between Israel and the Jews of the Diaspora. He was succeeded as mayor by his friend, Alon Schuster, who is a member of nearby Kibbutz Mefalsim.

The national government will offer incentives to start-up industries to locate in the Galil and the Negev, including interest-free or close-to-interest-free loans that would be unavailable to them if they located in Israel's central core.

In his determination to pack the Negev and the Galil with Jews, Hermesh becomes impatient, even irritated, with some freelance efforts to help Israel, such as two recent solicitation campaigns seen in the United States.

One suggested that Israel in the current economy was facing a hunger crisis, while the other contended that Israel was unable to buy bulletproof vests for its soldiers. Neither is true, Hermesh said indignantly.

Those alleging hunger seized on the case of an Ethiopian soldier seen begging in the street for food to feed himself on Shabbat. Hermesh said if the soldier simply had stayed with his unit over Shabbat he would have had plenty to eat.

Overall, he said, less than 2 percent of the people of Israel can be classified as hungry— a percentage that Hermesh said is lower than that of the United States. Furthermore, he added, even if people become hungry, they never would need to starve because Israel offers them a safety net through its national insurance and national hospitalization programs.

As for the bulletproof vests, he said, some well-meaning Americans asked a retired Israeli general what the Army needs and he told them vests. But the Army has the budget to buy its own, and hardly likes the idea that any friend or foe might think it can't even properly protect its soldiers.

Yossi Coten, director of the Negev development center for Amdocs— an Israeli company that specializes in billing and telephone listing systems for phone companies around the world — said if the government wants to lure more businesses to the Negev and the Galil, it needs to recognize that the costs there are higher and be prepared to subsidize them.

In his office in the Sapir Industrial Park, which also is in the Sha'ar Hanegev region, Coten said national testing has indicated that students graduating from colleges in the Negev and the Galil are behind their peers in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Haifa in such subjects as math and English— both
quite important in the world of computer software design.

Amdocs has had to design special courses to bring some employees up to speed in these areas, Coten said. With countries all over the world competing for new industries and offering a wide variety of incentives, he said, industry will be waiting to see action on the part of the Israeli government, not just policies.

At the Sappir College itself— named for former Israel Finance Minister Pinchas Sapir, who later became chairman of the Jewish Agency — dean of students Alon Gayer is openly skeptical of the new plans for the Galil and the Negev.

"Most of the governments over the last 20 years invested in the Occupied Territories, not in the Negev," he said. "I believe a train will be built sooner to Ariel (a city on the West Bank) than it will be to here. In every place I will shout it: the government made its investment in the stupid
Occupied Territories."

Unless the government now emphasizes the Negev and the Galil, he predicted, nothing will be done.

Currently, Sapir College is not permitted to offer a four-year degree in engineering, only a two-year degree. Those who wish to continue their studies must leave the Sha'ar Hanegev area for either Ben-Gurion University, located in the more southern Negev city of Be'ersheva, or travel north to one of the universities in Israel¹s central core or Jerusalem.

Alon Schuster, current mayor of Sha'ar Hanegev, said his region needs Sapir College to be upgraded to one where professors are encouraged to conduct research in their fields, rather than to simply teach. Furthermore, he said, Sapir College should be permitted to develop specialties in which it could excel. With such encouragement the college could present itself not as a
second choice to Tel Aviv University (or other major universities in Israel), but as an alternative.

"If you don¹t have a degree, you can't earn enough money," agreed Nili Schchory, manager of the Sapir Industrial Park. "The economy here is deteriorating."