JNS.org—The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu backed the building of a new Arab city to the east of Acre in northern Israel. Israel’s National Council for Planning and Building will discuss the final approval for the Arab city next week. The city would house about 40,000 people and would be the first new non-Bedouin Arab city since the founding of Israel.

“This is a great idea,” Prof. Sammy Smooha, a sociologist from the University of Haifa, told the Jerusalem Post. “New Arab towns and villages for the Arab population are highly needed,” he added. Smooha said that given that 60 percent of Israeli Arabs live in that area. “Its proximity to highways is another advantage… The new city should serve as a precedent to other housing solutions, including state-supported new neighborhoods in Arab towns and villages, and in Jewish cities as well as new mixed Arab-Jewish towns.”