UTJ: Close Har Hotzvim industrial park

City council members call on J'lem mayor to close park south of northwestern Ramot neighborhood to vacate room for more homes.

By MELANIE LIDMAN
Jerusalem skyline 521 (photo credit: Adi Benzaquen)
Jerusalem skyline 521
(photo credit: Adi Benzaquen)
City council members from United Torah Judaism on Thursday afternoon called on Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat to close the Har Hotzvim industrial park south of the northwestern Ramot neighborhood to make way for apartments.
“We, the city’s taxpayers, are obliged to do something to see to the future development of more residential areas, while allocating land for industry and hi-tech on the real edges of the city,” Yaakov Halperin, the head of the UTJ faction in the city council, wrote in a letter sent to the mayor, Globes reported.
Har Hatzovim is home to approximately 100 companies, including Intel and Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, and employs 10,000 people.
Halperin complained that the industrial park, which is open on Shabbat, disturbs the haredi neighborhoods that surround it.
In a letter to Barkat and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, city councilwoman Rachel Azaria (Yerushalmim) called it “unmitigated chutzpa” for the haredi politicians to complain that their constituents do not have jobs while at the same time trying to shut down one of the largest employers in the area.