The Jerusalem District Planning and Building Committee on Monday
approved a plan to construct 500 housing units in Ramat Shlomo, a Jewish
neighborhood situated over the Green Line in East Jerusalem.
The construction plan is one of two in East Jerusalem
declared by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week,
reportedly as part of the response to Palestinian violence in the
capital. The original plan for Ramat Shlomo was for 640 housing units,
but the planning committee has only approved 500. The U.S.
administration has
already condemned construction in both areas.
The construction plan is to extend over 76 dunams (19 acres) in the
northern part of the ultra-Orthodox Ramat Shlomo neighborhood and will
bring it very close to the Palestinian neighborhood of Beit Hanina. This
plan was discussed a few years ago but rejected when it was realized
that in order to build the neighborhood, land would have to be
expropriated from Palestinian owners. That is because while the
neighborhood itself is built on Jewish-owned land, the road to it passes
through Palestinian-owned land. However, the area of the plan was
earmarked for future construction in Jerusalem’s new master plan,
despite vigorous objections from environmental groups.
Although the areas in question are privately owned, the plan was
submitted to the district planning committee by the Jerusalem
municipality and Moriah, a municipality-owned infrastructure company.
Planning officials said Sunday they believed the submission was made by
these bodies so the expropriation of land could be moved forward.
Most of the area planned for the new neighborhood has been marked in an
urban nature survey by the Society for the Protection of Nature in
Israel as Atarot Stream South. The SPNI survey describes the site as
rich in terms of nature, with a herd of deer, hyraxes and other mammals,
and as an important feeding and hunting zone for birds that winter in
Jerusalem and nest there in spring. It is also home to a variety of
reptiles and insects, the report states, and is one of the westernmost
sites where hyraxes have been observed.
The new plan joins an older one to expand Ramat Shlomo that was
approved by the district planning committee in 2010. That sparked a
major diplomatic crisis with the United States because the approval came
during an official visit by Vice President Joe Biden to Israel.
A crisis with the United States also broke out last week over the
decision to advance the current plan. A few hours after the prime
minister announced the construction in East Jerusalem, State Department
spokeswoman Jen Psaki said that such construction is not “conducive to
what they state they want to achieve, which is peace in the region and a
two-state solution.” Psaki said U.S. policy was clear and “continues to
oppose unilateral steps that would prejudge the outcome of negotiations
on Jerusalem.”
The European Union also criticized the planned construction in East Jerusalem and asked Israel for clarifications.
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