Yerushalayim Seizes Trump-Era Building Opportunity

YERUSHALAYIM
Caravans in Givat Hamatos in 2014. (Flash90)

Plans for the building surge that began with the arrival of the Trump administration continued over the weekend as the Yerushalayim municipality disclosed plans to build over the Green Line, Globes reported.

“We waited for Trump and we’ll exploit the situation to produce extensive construction plans for Yerushalayim,” Meir Turgeman, deputy mayor of Yerushalayim and chairman of the Yerushalayim Local Planning Committee, said at the conference of the Association of Contractors and Builders in Yerushalayim and the Association of Contractors and Builders in Beersheva and the Negev on Friday.

Givat Hamatos, in the southeast of the city, was reportedly high on the agenda. Turgeman said that he and Mayor Nir Barkat will press Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to develop the area’s infrastructure in order to expedite housing construction there. The construction plan for Givat Hamatos was approved three years ago, but has been held up by delays in infrastructure work. The plan calls for 2,600 housing units for the Jewish population and 600 units earmarked for young people from the Arab population.

Givat Hamatos is Hebrew for “Airplane Hill.” It was named after an Israel Air Force plane that crashed there on June 6, 1967, the second day of the Six-Day War, after being hit by Jordanian anti-aircraft artillery. The pilot, Lt. Dan Givon, Hy”d, was killed.

In addition, the city engineer is looking at plans for building in Atarot in the northeast of the city. Some 15,000 housing units are slated for the chareidi population, filling out a continuous belt of chareidi neighborhoods in the north of Yerushalayim.

Last week, the Local Planning Committee approved the construction of 560 housing units in chareidi neighborhoods in Ramot and Ramat Shlomo.

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