An unusual settlement fight

Residents are fighting new construction in central Ma’aleh Adumim.

By SAM SOKOL
An unusual settlement fight (photo credit: COURTESY EZRA DOUEK)
An unusual settlement fight
(photo credit: COURTESY EZRA DOUEK)
Those who follow the news know how the story typically runs. The government announces the granting of building permits within a West Bank community or, as a result of a terror attack, a group of teenagers establishes a new hilltop community.
Peace Now and the US State Department protest, and the settlers explain their case to a skeptical media. However, a planned urban renewal project in Ma’aleh Adumim has turned the standard narrative on its head.
While Peace Now is silent and Meretz doesn’t care, some residents of Ma’aleh Adumim itself have risen up in arms against a plan to erect several 25-story high-rises in the center of their community.
Ma’aleh Adumim is a quiet community of 40,000 just outside the Green Line with a large American population. While building in the so-called E1 corridor between the settlement and Jerusalem is controversial and has become an object of international interest, construction within the city’s current boundaries, which most Israelis believe will remain part of the Jewish state under a future peace agreement, is not quite as newsworthy.
On the tree-lined Hakeren Street in the middle of the town, Ezra Douek points to two long, low-slung buildings known as “the train.” Douek, a longtime resident of Ma’aleh Adumim and an Australian-born building contractor, is working on a plan to tear down these buildings and replace them with a series of high-rise towers, complete with an underground shopping center and parking area. Those who own apartments in the buildings, he says, will receive upgraded apartments at no extra cost.
“The train” buildings were constructed in a hurry during the early days of the town and are not in the best of shape. Housing low-income residents, including many Russian and Ethiopian immigrants, the buildings are beginning to fall apart. Stones from the buildings’ cladding have begun to fall off, prompting municipal engineers to declare the buildings unsafe, although they have not been condemned, and to place large metal nets above all entrances to prevent injuries to residents from falling debris.
As Douek walks through the complex, stopping to greet the residents, who all seem to know him, he points out one of the grills that is attached to the building at an abnormal angle, indicating that it had been hit with great force.
Douek’s pinui u’binui project (the Israeli term for an urban renewal initiative that moves tenants out while their buildings are torn down and then rebuilt) came after a meeting with Ma’aleh Adumim Mayor Benny Kashriel, who has been looking for a solution to the problem of the dilapidated structures, although they are not technically municipal property.
Douek’s plan to replace the buildings with seven towers – six of 25 stories and one of 30, totaling more than 750 units – has met with disapproval from some local American-born residents, who claim that the buildings will change the suburban nature of the town.
However, Douek says that such an argument is unfounded, given that Ma’aleh Adumim is a growing city and such concerns should not be allowed to stand in the way of expansion and the good of the denizens of “the train.” Such an expansion, says Douek, would help stem the flow of young people to outside communities due to the lack of sufficient housing to keep up with a growing population.
However, residents such as lawyer Ami Bogot have objected on several grounds, including traffic, and have claimed it is unnecessary to build to almost 30 stories in the middle of the town.
Douek, though, does not agree.
While Bogot claims that the buildings can be shored up and that only a couple of stories must be added to make the project fiscally viable, Douek replies scornfully that the objectors have not commissioned engineering studies of the buildings nor have they gone over the spreadsheets examining the minimum amount of work necessary to make this endeavor profitable.
While some residents are worried about the ability of those who will receive upgraded apartments to pay higher monthly maintenance costs when the buildings are repurposed as luxury apartments, other factors underlie the objections.
At a public meeting with the mayor last week, one resident told In Jerusalem that she does not believe that “the train’s” Ethiopian and Russian residents will not be able to get a good price when they try to sell their upgraded apartments and that they will have nowhere to go. Moreover, she said, the tenants currently renting in these buildings will have nowhere else to go.
One of the major objections to the plan is that it would affect traffic. Their neighborhood, already suffering from traffic problems, would incur gridlock should the new buildings go up.
When many communities such as Beit El are fighting for every building permit and struggling for every additional resident, the opposers of the plan in Ma’aleh Adumim are against the resulting population increase.
While the residents of “the train” who greeted Douek seemed to be happy enough with his presence and his plans, many of the Anglo residents are appalled. As one local resident put it, “It’s getting nasty,” and many of those involved in the dispute “are/were friends.”
Whether or not the local residents are correct in their objections, they are certainly putting themselves in the strange position of being settlers opposed to settlement expansion.
That’s one for the books.