Israel poised to approve long-frozen plans for massive new Jerusalem neighborhood

Plan expected to be approved this week would replace Jerusalem’s shuttered airport with 9,000 housing units, cutting off Ramallah from northern Jerusalem and squashing Palestinian plans for future construction.

By David Rosenberg, World Israel News

Israel is expected to move forward Wednesday with plans for a major expansion of Jerusalem, centered around the establishment of a whole new neighborhood on the city’s northern edge.

On Wednesday, the District Planning and Building Committee convened to discuss an ambitious plan to replace the abandoned Jerusalem International Airport in the Atarot area with some 9,000 new housing units for the city’s Jewish sector.

If the plans are approved, the new neighborhood will block efforts by the Palestinian Authority to create a contiguous chain of built-up areas from Ramallah, north of Jerusalem to Arab neighborhoods in and around eastern Jerusalem, south of the Qalandiya crossing point.

Because of the project’s political implications and potential impact on the future of the two-state solution, it has been dubbed the “E-1” of north Jerusalem, referring to Israel’s plans to expand the city of Ma’aleh Adumim up to Jerusalem’s eastern border, effectively blocking Palestinian contiguity from Samaria to Judea.

The site of the proposed neighborhood, the Atarot area, was purchased by Zionist activists prior to the First World War, with a moshav established in 1914.

The town was destroyed by Jordanian forces during the siege of Jerusalem in 1948.

After Israel liberated the area from Jordanian occupation in 1967, the ruins of Atarot were annexed to the city of Jerusalem, and the area was developed into an industrial zone with an airport.

During the Second Intifada, the airport was permanently shuttered, and following terror attacks in and around Atarot, business operations in the industrial park declined.

For decades, Israel has mulled various plans to replace the ruins of the abandoned airport with a new neighborhood, though international pressure has repeatedly led to the proposals being shelved.

In 2021, a renewed effort to push forward with the redevelopment of Atarot was stymied by bureaucratic objections from the Environmental Protection and Health ministries, which warned that the soil at and around the abandoned airport had been contaminated.

Two years later, however, the new Netanyahu government put the Atarot plans back on the agenda.

Earlier this month, the Finance Ministry requested that the Knesset’s Finance Committee allocate 16 million shekels for land rehabilitation projects, including decontaminating the Atarot site, in preparation for “development plans that the state has an interest in advancing for housing.”

According to the far-left Peace Now group, which opposes the Atarot plan, the new neighborhood will be marketed to Israel’s rapidly growing ultra-Orthodox population.

The proposed neighborhood will, if built, encompass only the land currently occupied by the abandoned airport, with no plans to demolish the industrial zone.

Should the plan be approved on Wednesday as expected, objections will be assessed and final approval granted within six months to a year, with another two to three years until building permits are issued by city hall.

Peace Now lamented that should the project move forward, it would “bury” the two-state solution.
“This is a destructive plan that, if implemented, would prevent any possibility of connecting East Jerusalem with the surrounding Palestinian area and would, in practice, prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel,” the group said.

“The Netanyahu government is seizing every moment to bury our chances for a future of peace and compromise.”