This video about Jewish life in Ariel and its environs from The New York Times is about as "evenhanded" as one can expect from them. Many Jews, especially Ron Nachman and Daniella Weiss are interviewed. There's an Arab who claimed that his family "farmed" on the hills of Ariel, but Arabs didn't farm on distant high hills over thirty years ago. They lived on the slopes and farmed, if at all, in the valleys. We're here in Shiloh, just southeast of Ariel for thirty years already. The Arab agriculture you see now is all new, mostly from the last ten to fifteen years. So anyone who claims that his grandfather and great-grandfather had farmed here for generations is out and out lying.
Just like the fact that a large percentage of the Arabs in the area of Israel, including Judea, Samaria and the Jordan Valley only moved here from other places in the Arab world once the Zionist movement began and made it financially attractive, the market for produce grown here is very recent. People eat differently today. That includes both Israelis and Arabs.
When we first came to Shiloh, the local Arabs didn't have electric refrigeration. Jordan, and prior to that the British Mandate, hadn't brought in modern electricity, water, sewers and telephone lines. Only after Israel's 1967 victory and liberation of the Land did Israel invest in all of these basic services. None of the Arabs ever tell you that! And you won't read it in The New York Times.
