For a Packed Part of Jerusalem, Expansion Plans Have Built Mostly Outrage - NYTimes.com
▻http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/04/world/middleeast/for-a-packed-part-of-jerusalem-expansion-plans-have-built-mostly-outrage-.h
But Shuafat residents point out that the whole neighborhood is on land that once belonged to their families. Israel recently took 20 more acres to build a new road in the area, and Palestinians fear that the road will make it more difficult for them to access their olive trees. They, too, are constructing illegal dwellings to absorb growth, since only a handful of building permits have been granted in recent years.
Named for Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Auerbach, a yeshiva chief beloved across Orthodox sects who died in 1995, the neighborhood now has 42 large synagogues, according to Mr. Berger, including a red brick replica of 770 Eastern Parkway, the Brooklyn headquarters of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement. There is a small post office, but no bank. There are also remnants of a quarry where King Herod may have taken stones for the Second Temple more than 2,000 years ago.
Ramat Shlomo’s official population in 2012 was 17,200, though Mr. Berger puts it at 23,000. There are 2,320 legal housing units, averaging about 1,000 square feet. Hundreds of illegal ones, most of them 200 square feet with pirated electricity and water, rent for $1,000 a month.
The so-called “Biden units,” reduced to 1,500, were approved again in December 2012 as part of Israel’s response to the United Nations General Assembly vote granting Palestine status as an observer state. And they were approved again in October 2013, after Palestinians who had served long terms in Israeli prisons were released amid American-brokered peace talks.
Tenders for 600 of the units were published in January, apparently as part of Mr. Netanyahu’s effort to offset domestic political fallout from another prisoner release. In June, yet another announcement was made about moving forward with the project, in retaliation for the Palestinians forming a new government based on a reconciliation pact with the militant Islamist Hamas movement.
Then last week, Mr. Netanyahu revived a plan that both Mr. Berger and Ir Amim say has been dormant since 2006, for about 600 units to be built on private land at the neighborhood’s northern tip, which the committee approved Monday with a reduction of about 100 units.
