Despite the fact that it conflicts with the "Jerusalem Master Plan" unveiled by Mayor Nir Barkat last May, and crosses over the capital's municipal boundaries into Gush Etzion, a proposal to build some 14,000 new residential units in southeast Jerusalem may be moving ahead.
Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat.
Photo: AP
According to an announcement released by the Jerusalem-based NGO Ir Amim on Monday, the Interior Ministry's district planning office will begin considering approval for the new housing project, dubbed Givat Yael, in the coming weeks.
The project, which according to Ir-Amim would create Israeli territorial contiguity from southeast Jerusalem to Gush Etzion, would also create housing for some 40,000 people just east of the capital's Malha neighborhood.
However, according to Ir Amim, the proposed development would also occur, in some places, beyond the municipal boundaries of Jerusalem and into Gush Etzion, and would encroach on land allocated by the Jerusalem Master Plan as a "green zone." The area was also allocated as such in the previous city plan, dubbed the "Jerusalem 2000 master plan", which was unveiled by former Mayor Uri Lupolianski in 2004.
Ir-Amim's announcement also raises the organization's objections to the plan based on revelations that the new construction would cut off the southeast Jerusalem neighborhood of Walaja from three directions, and isolate it from the West Bank.
Walaja, which straddles the Green Line just west of the Har Gilo settlement, was annexed into the Jerusalem Municipality in 1981, yet residents were not given blue ID cards as they were in other east Jerusalem neighborhoods annexed after the Six-Day War in 1967.
Additionally, the city's designation of the proposed area as a "green zone", Ir Amim stated, had been previously cited as a "basis for rejecting a plan offered by Walaja residents, who sought to expand the village's built-up area via retroactive approval of houses built without permits."
"Designating this land for residential use now in the master plan solely to enable approval of the Givat Yael initiative would signal once again that political considerations trump substantive and professional considerations in the decision-making of these planning authorities, with no regard for the well-being of local residents," according to Ir Amim.
"The fact that the project crosses the boundaries of municipal Jerusalem into the territory of the West Bank is evidence of a dangerous trend toward blurring the existing boundaries of the city in favor of the imaginary Greater Jerusalem - as manifest in the planned route of the Separation Barrier in the vicinity of Southwest Jerusalem," the organization added.
While residents of Walaja themselves have been steadfast in their opposition to the new project, construction planners for Givat Yael have nonetheless offered them a number of noteworthy concessions in return for their consent, including the retroactive approval for homes built without permits.
Residents however, have rejected the proposed construction project out of hand.
But, according to a municipality source, the area's designation as a green zone - and not Walaja residents' objections - may end up as the key point that halts the project once and for all.
While Barkat's master plan has yet to be fully approved, the source told the Jerusalem Post on Monday that the project, which has been put on hold for some six years, was not moving forward at all, and it had nothing to with "political considerations."
"From what I understand, the plan has stalled because it would be built on an area which was labeled as a 'green zone'," the source said. "That means, according to the planning, that the area is meant to be left as it is, and no construction, regardless of who is sponsoring it, would be permitted there."
