Municipality promoting controversial plans to build housing in Jerusalem - Haaretz

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Fri., December 21, 2007 Tevet 12, 5768

Israel Time: 02:03 (EST+7)

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Municipality promoting controversial plans to build housing in Jerusalem

By Jonathan Lis

The construction boom about to take place in Jerusalem, including areas of controversy, should surprise no one: Most of the projects now being promoted - among them the plans for Har Homa and Atarot - are old ones. If they are implemented, some 20,000 new housing units will be built in the city, mostly outside the Green Line but within the city limits.

Alongside political declarations about construction in these areas is a simple demographic fact: Jerusalem's land reserves for construction have been used up, the demand is significantly greater than the supply, and housing prices have sky-rocketed in recent years.

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Young couples, both ultra-Orthodox and secular, can hardly allow themselves to buy an apartment in Jerusalem, and many Jerusalem families are seeking their future in other communities.

Last November, Jerusalem Mayor Uri Lupoliansky put the kibosh on the Safdie plan once and for all. The plan was to have allowed some 20,000 housing units to go up in open space around the city. Lupoliansky acceded to the demands of the environmental organizations that protested the damage that would be done to nature around the city, but declared that he would act as soon as possible to promote alternative projects within the city.

But the municipality has made clear over the past few months that plans for extensive construction beyond the Green Line certainly have clear political significance as well.

Deputy Mayor Yehoshua Pollack, chairman of the Local Planning and Construction Commission, explained recently that the goal of the plans is to create Jewish contiguity between Gush Etzion south of the city, and the settlements in the Beit El area in the north. The neighborhood planned for area E1, near Ma'aleh Adumim, would create a wedge between the Palestinian villages in the area and Jerusalem, to thwart the intention to turn the city into a Palestinian capital, and at the same time would create Jewish territorial contiguity between Jerusalem and Ma'aleh Adumim.

Over the past few months, the city has been moving ahead with the plan to construct tens of thousand of housing units near Atarot, and promoting another project, of similar proportions, for the village of Walajeh, southwest of the city. But while the Housing Ministry is working to promote the Atarot plan, and has even sought initial "permission to plan" from the Israel Lands Administration, the plan for the area near Walajeh has encountered serious difficulty because much of the land slated for the neighborhood is owned by several individuals.

Alongside these plans, intended mainly for the ultra-Orthodox population of Jerusalem, another controversial plan is afoot to build 307 new units in Har Homa near Bethlehem.

Another neighborhood of 500 units is to be built, funded by right-wing activists, between Abu Dis and East Jerusalem, in the heart of a densely populated Palestinian area.

The municipality has said recently that construction in Jerusalem is not intended only for the ultra-Orthodox. For example, the city announced for the first time that a new neighborhood of 1,900 units would be built for the Arab population in Isawiyah. The purpose of that plan, part of the municipal master plan - initiated by the Bamakom association - is, among other things, to grant retroactive legal recognition to apartments built illegally in the neighborhood, and build new units as part of its natural expansion.

Isawiyah is presently home to 12,000 people, a population that by 2020 is expected to grow to 18,500. Lupoliansky said last week - with the publication of the tenders for Har Homa - that this was not political construction, and that construction was "for the Jewish and the Arab sectors, as needed."

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